Pubdate: Tue, 05 Dec 2000
Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer (WA)
Copyright: 2000 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Contact:  P.O. Box 1909, Seattle, WA 98111-1909
Website: http://www.seattle-pi.com/
Author: Associated Press

COCA ERADICATION PLAN MAY NOT TAKE ROOT

Security Fears, Growers' Resistance Threaten Program

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Yanking a coca bush from the ground and planting a 
magnolia tree in its place, officials have kicked off an ambitious program 
to eradicate drug crops in the heart of Colombia's cocaine-producing region.

During the ceremony in southern Colombia's Putumayo province -- home of 
nearly half the world's cocaine-yielding acreage -- about 700 peasant 
farmers agreed to destroy their coca plots in return for government aid to 
adopt alternative, legal livelihoods.

The crop-substitution program is the "soft side" of a U.S.-backed military 
push into the region, in which remaining coca fields will be seized by 
government troops and destroyed by aerial fumigation. The pact was signed 
over the weekend in the village of Santa Ana and will be offered to other 
farmers in Putumayo in the coming months.

For the coca growers, the deal to wipe out their own crops -- and thereby 
avoid aerial fumigation -- sounds good on paper. But many are skeptical the 
promises will become reality. And there is little likelihood the initiative 
will sharply reduce the scale of the upcoming military offensive.

In return for seeds, technical assistance, better roads and electricity -- 
the government's part of the bargain -- communities living off coca pledge 
instead to grow food crops and tend chicken coops within a year. Later, 
officials say, they will invite farmers into more lucrative long-term 
projects such as cattle-raising, fish farms and rubber plantations.

The government says the alternative development program is backed by nearly 
$250 million in government aid, in addition to tens of millions of dollars 
in expected international funding.

But these so-called programs face myriad obstacles. Foremost is security. 
Colombia's largest leftist guerrilla army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces 
of Colombia, or FARC, controls much of rural Putumayo, and earns huge 
profits by protecting the cocaine-producing plantations and "taxing" the 
growers.

Battling more than 2,000 FARC fighters for control of Putumayo and profits 
from its lucrative cocaine trade are at least 600 members of a right-wing 
paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC.

The FARC says it supports alternative development over forced aerial 
eradication, but it remains to be seen whether the guerrillas will go along 
with plans aimed at eliminating a main source of income.

A $1.3 billion U.S. aid package includes dozens of combat helicopters and 
U.S. special forces training for 3,000 Colombian army troops given the task 
of driving the armed groups from the coca fields.

The United States also is pledging more than $100 million for alternative 
development programs, but White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey said last 
week that such programs cannot succeed until Colombia's police and military 
"have established security on the ground."
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