EFFORTS SHIFT TO TERROR, SO CARTELS MOVE ON IN

CHACAHUA, Mexico They found the speedboat abandoned on a remote beach
in this faraway stretch of Mexico's Pacific coast. Beneath it,
smugglers had hastily buried one ton of plastic-wrapped cocaine in
the white sand.

Nobody knows why they walked away from a $20 million cache of drugs.
But the authorities say its discovery offers a small glimpse at how a
busy Pacific drug-smuggling route has exploded into a cocaine
superhighway.

The reason is that law enforcement has shifted focus since the Sept.
11 terror attacks on the United States. The country is devoting more
resources to the fight against terrorism, and much less to the war on
drugs, according to experts and officials on both sides of the border.

"We have had to move our vessels back to defend the goal line," said
Commander Jim McPherson, chief spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard,
explaining that as much as 75 percent of the U.S. anti-drug effort
has been refocused on domestic defense and counterterrorism patrols.

As a result, he said, agents are not seizing anywhere near what they
had been. "Our counter-drug intelligence support has dropped to
zero," he said.

"Fighting narcotics is mostly about information and intelligence. We
can have all the boats in the sea and they can be in the wrong
place." said a spokesman for the Mexican Navy, Salvador Gomez
Meillon, noting that the U.S. Coast Guard and Mexican Navy had
unprecedented levels of cooperation and intelligence sharing before
the attacks.

Some of that improvement can be credited to last year's election of
President Vicente Fox and the warm welcome he received in Washington.
Suddenly the two countries' law enforcement operations were
exhibiting trust in one another and sharing intelligence after long
years of distrust.

But now, the navy spokesman said, "The cooperation has decreased;
there hasn't been one combined operation since Sept. 11."

With the FBI and other agencies focusing almost exclusively on
guarding against terrorism, some drug trafficking experts estimate
that as little as 10 percent of the manpower once devoted to
interdicting drugs remains on that task.

Special agents who had worked on the drug war now are serving as sky
marshals aboard domestic U.S. flights. And many money-laundering
investigators formerly tracking billion-dollar drug trafficking
enterprises are on the money trail of Osama bin Laden.

As a result, Coast Guard drug seizures, which had been running at
all- time highs earlier this year, are down dramatically.

From Sept. 11 to Nov. 30, the Coast Guard seized about 10,000 pounds
(4,500 kilograms) of cocaine, down 66 percent from the 30,000 pounds
it seized during the same period last year. Seizures of marijuana
during that period dropped far more, from 7,000 pounds during those
weeks last year to only 480 this year.

"Fifty thousand people die every year in the U.S. because of drug
abuse," said one U.S. law enforcement official, questioning the
sudden, singular focus on terrorism. The change has not been limited
to the U.S. side of the border. Drug seizures by the Mexican Navy
also have nosedived since September.

Although tighter security along the U.S-Mexico border immediately
after Sept. 11 appeared to be squeezing the drug trade, three months
later the opposite appears to be true; drug traffickers have not had
it this easy in years.

Drug trafficking specialists also are seeing signs of a resurgence of
coca production in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, in part because of the
global crash in coffee prices.

So, as more drugs are available to ship, there is a new ease in
moving them to U.S. consumers through these Pacific waters, known as
the cocaine corridor.

"Activity has picked up big-time," said one U.S. border agent. IN
RECENT weeks there has been a flurry of large and small drug seizures
at the U.S.-Mexico border as well as three bold flights over the
border on a recent weekend, another indication that the traffickers
realize the change.

Law enforcement officials say that the Pacific waters of Mexico and
Central America are dotted with smugglers' boats, often called "go
fast" boats for their speed or "cigarette" boats for their long,
sleek shapes.

These boats spend idle days on the ocean, under sea-blue tarps that
make them harder to spot from the air. By night, planes from Colombia
swoop in low and drop a ton or two of plastic-encased cocaine into
the sea.

The speed-boat crews, usually two or three men in wet suits who can
earn as much as $250,000 during just one successful voyage, retrieve
the drugs from the ocean and rush them to shore in the darkness.

Once ashore, the cocaine is split up and eventually handed to dozens
of people who carry relatively small amounts into the United States.

A few members of this "ant patrol" invariably are caught, but the
vast majority make it through.

Until recently, U.S. surveillance and a concentration of busts at sea
made such operations more difficult.

The Coast Guard, often firing on the smugglers from helicopters,
seized a record 138,000 pounds of cocaine last year - more than 90
percent of it in Pacific waters.

But with U.S. ships now returned to ports from San Diego to
Charleston, South Carolina, the smugglers face only the overworked
and under-funded Mexican Navy, which has an annual budget of about
$800 million - the cost of a single U.S. Navy Aegis destroyer.
MEXICAN OFFICIALS say they are so short of cash that they cannot
follow up on many tips about drug movements at sea because they
cannot afford the fuel.

It is an unfair fight. Seven of the world's 11 largest drug-
trafficking organizations are Mexican. Since smuggling arrests often
lead to new information on drug cartel operations, a slowdown in
seizures is expected to curb efforts to dismantle them. The U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration particularly has been eager to arrest
leaders of the Tijuana-based Felix cartel, which last year killed
three Mexican anti-drug agents.

Jose Patino, a special prosecutor, was kidnapped in Mexico as he
returned from meeting U.S. officials in San Diego. His kidnappers put
his head in a vise and cracked it open, then they drove a car over
his body.

People in this remote part of southern Oaxaca state, 50 kilometers
(30 miles) west of Puerto Escondido, worry that as the drug trade
increases here, so may the violence. In recent weeks, soldiers with
machine guns have been patrolling this wilderness beach, where
fishermen usually watch their lines alone.

Soldiers camping under tall coconut palms near where $20 million of
cocaine was found said they could not talk about their mission. But
everyone is talking about them.

"The traffickers unload here," said Luis Narvaez, who runs a boat
ferry across the lagoon.

"But they are being closely watched now."