Pubdate: Sun, 16 Apr 2000
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2000 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071
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Author: Steven Dudley, Special to The Washington Post

CULTIVATING NEW ALLIES IN COCAINE WAR

PUERTO ASIS, Colombia - This remote area in southwest Colombia is the 
testing ground for a U.S.-backed plan to persuade small farmers to grow 
legitimate crops instead of coca, the raw material for U.S.-bound cocaine, 
and to spray the traffickers' large coca plantations with herbicides to cut 
off the destructive flow.

No one could be more enthusiastic about the idea of crop substitution than 
Eder Sanchez, who heads the most powerful farmers union here in the 
province of Putumayo. But at the same time, no one is more aware of the 
dangers the government's plan raises.

Sanchez said he could coordinate the province's traditional farmers so they 
"voluntarily and manually" eradicate their coca fields and use government 
subsidies to raise cattle, grow Amazonian fruits and cultivate rice, yucca 
and plantains instead. In three years, Sanchez proclaimed in an interview, 
most of Puerto Asis's small-scale coca crops could be gone and the 
government would not even need to fumigate areas where farmers live.

But in soft tones in his small three-room house along one of the dirt roads 
that run through Puerto Asis, Sanchez also admitted he is afraid that his 
project could get him and other small farmers in trouble with those who 
benefit from the region's coca production, and that the government would 
not be able to protect them. "The minute one of us gets killed, we're all 
going to have to leave," he said without changing his expression.

Sanchez embodies the hopes and fears of the government for its 
coca-eradication project in Putumayo, a remote Colombian province 300 miles 
southwest of the capital, Bogota, near the border with Ecuador. Lying 
between Colombia's Pacific coast and the Amazon Basin, Putumayo is about 
the size and shape of New Hampshire, with a population of just 330,000 
people. But its dense jungles, dry flatlands and vast network of rivers are 
also home to almost half of Colombia's 250,000 acres of coca fields and 
hundreds of laboratories that are used to process and ship the cocaine abroad.

Much of the cocaine is consumed in the United States. Last week, worried 
lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives pushed through an emergency 
aid package of $1.6 billion, most of which goes toward training two special 
anti-narcotics battalions and providing helicopters and intelligence 
equipment for the "Push Into Southern Colombia." If the emergency 
appropriations bill passes in the Senate later this month, the money will 
become part of President Andres Pastrana's $7.5 billion Plan Colombia - a 
three-year project to fight drugs and shore up the country's ailing 
economy, starting here.

More than 1,500 left-wing rebels from the country's largest guerrilla 
group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and 500 
right-wing paramilitaries are fighting for control over the drug trade in 
the province. Both groups use a tax on local coca growers and large 
traffickers to finance their war, and any disruption in production is met 
with harsh reprisals.

"The rebels said they didn't like this process," Sanchez said, referring to 
the plan to eradicate coca fields. "What needed to be done, they said, was 
to gear up for the coming war."

As outlined in its ambitious proposal, the Colombian government will pursue 
a two-pronged strategy in Putumayo, combining military and social programs. 
A Joint Southern Task Force that includes 15,000 army troops, police, 
sailors and air force personnel will focus on destroying laboratories in 
guerrilla-controlled territory and driving the FARC out of the region. 
Other units will provide support for police airplanes that will fumigate 
the industrial-size coca fields run by traffickers with migrant labor in 
different parts of the province.

During the first two years, Putumayo will also get an estimated $70 million 
in economic aid. Some of this money will go toward the 10,000 refugees who 
the government expects will flee when fumigation begins in the next few 
months. Authorities say most of these refugees will be coca pickers from 
the big plantations that the government says produce most of the cash crop 
in Putumayo.

The rest of the coca is produced by the small farmers Sanchez represents. 
They make up almost half of Putumayo's residents and could be a knot of 
resistance to the government's plan - or the measure of its success. They 
grow other crops like corn, yucca and rice. And they fear the attempts to 
fumigate the coca also will kill the rest of their crops, as they did 
during a similar effort in the mid-1990s.

The government says it will concentrate on the large fields owned by 
traffickers and abstain from fumigating small farmers' plots.

"The most important thing about the plan is that we will not fumigate 
without having a social plan that is implemented at the same time or prior 
to the fumigation," said Fernando Medellin from his office in Bogota, where 
he heads the government's National Solidarity Network that is working with 
Sanchez on the Putumayo project.

But the locals remain skeptical. Puerto Asis authorities and residents 
alike said the fumigation has already begun in areas just outside the city 
and they knew nothing about a "no-fumigation zone" Medellin said he 
proposed to Plan Colombia's coordinators in Bogota.

In the background are the rebels and paramilitaries. Both groups have 
reportedly begun forcibly recruiting children as young as 13 for the war 
they expect to explode in the province once the Joint Southern Task Force 
begins its offensive. Father Luis Alfonso Gomez, who works regularly 
outside Puerto Asis, said he found some villages empty when he visited 
recently because the FARC took everyone to the jungle for a one-week 
training session.

"The people come to me and say, 'You remember that kid? Yeah, he's gone,' " 
the priest said. "I got two kids here in the parish that came to me and 
said, 'Father, can you take us in because they're dragging the others away.' "

While the FARC controls the countryside, the paramilitaries control many 
urban centers in Putumayo, including Puerto Asis. The city's district 
attorney, German Martinez, said the paramilitaries also are targeting small 
farmers they claim collaborate with the guerrillas.
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