Pubdate: Mon, 11 Jun 2001
Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU)
Copyright: 2001 The Gazette, a division of Southam Inc
Contact:  http://www.montrealgazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274
Author: Jeremy McDermott

DRUG TRADE FUELS COLOMBIAN WAR

CAQUETA, Colombia -- The coca farmer looked on with concern as the drug 
buyer tested the purity of the coca base. The guerrillas sitting at a table 
nearby did not look concerned or even interested. They were going to get 
paid either way.

With the fall of the drug cartels of Medellin and Cali, once the most 
powerful crime syndicates in the world, the drug trade went underground, 
and, according to the Colombian military and U.S. intelligence services, 
several organizations stepped in to fill the vacuum, most particularly the 
revolutionary movement FARC, an easy step for them as they control 40 per 
cent of Colombia and much of the areas where coca, the raw material for 
cocaine, is grown.

These accusations from the Colombian military, that the FARC is a drug 
cartel, were given further weight when Brazil's most powerful drug lord was 
captured in April. Luis Fernando Da Costa, alias "Freddy Seashore," after 
the coastal shantytown in Rio de Janeiro where he murdered his way to the 
top of the drug world, was arrested a long way from home: in the Colombian 
jungles of Vichada near the Brazilian border, with two bodyguards from 
FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

In his subsequent interrogation, he said he had been taking more than 20 
tons of cocaine every month from the FARC and paying it $10 million per 
month, although sometimes the payments were made in arms. And the military 
said they had seized documentary evidence of drugs for arms deals between 
the FARC and the Brazilian.

The Colombian and U.S. media jumped on the revelations as incontrovertible 
proof the FARC are the world's biggest drug cartel.

But it was not as simple as that - nothing is in Colombia.

"We have always been open as far as our relationship to drug trafficking is 
concerned," said Raul Reyes, the FARC's top spokesman and negotiator with 
the government in the peace process, now in its third year. "We tax all 
businesses that operate in our areas.

Drug trafficking is one of those businesses, so we charge it taxes, nothing 
more."

The army also admits the FARC charges taxes and has drawn up a list of 
charges that the guerrillas have on different stages of the drug trade. The 
FARC, which numbers about 18,000 fighters, is divided over 60 fronts, at 
least 39 of which have links with drugs.

The only way to really find out how involved the FARC is in drug 
trafficking was to wander through their territory and explore the three 
stages of cocaine production: the drug fields, the coca-base markets and 
the laboratories.

Jorge, 32, has 11 hectares of the hardy green coca bushes on his farm, 
hacked out of the jungle in the southern Caqueta province.

He can produce 12 kilos of coca base every 60 days. He has nothing to do 
with the FARC, although he lives about 2 kilometres from a camp and 
guerrillas pass by almost daily.

He pays them taxes for the drugs he produces, about $38 for every kilo of 
base, which goes into funding the local school, the village's medical 
clinic and the road-building program.

"I don't have much to do with the guerrillas. They have been here since 
before I was born," he said shrugging his shoulders. "The one good thing 
about them is that they set the price of coca at the market and the narcos 
(drug traffickers) have to pay the price or go elsewhere."

The market is every Saturday at the nearby village.

The buyers come by boat from different parts of the country.

They have to be registered with the guerrillas or else they cannot get into 
the area. The current price of coca base is 1.8 million pesos ($800). The 
dealers then pay the FARC a tax of 500,000 pesos ( $220) to take the base 
away. They are issued with a receipt. If they are stopped by a FARC patrol 
and are found with drugs and no receipt, the consequences are dire. Few 
dare risk it.

Kilo Worth $76,000 in Canada

There are also laboratories in FARC areas, but the ones visited were run by 
drug traffickers who paid the FARC a tax for operating in their area. They 
chose the guerrilla areas, even though it costs because security forces 
seldom dare to venture in and they can go about their work unmolested.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency definition of a drug trafficker is someone 
who exports drugs.

A kilo of cocaine can be bought in Colombia from between $4,500 and $7,600, 
depending on where it is purchased. That same kilo of cocaine is worth over 
$76,000 in Canada and almost $137,000 in Moscow. So it is the drug 
traffickers, those who actually ship the stuff, that make the real cash.

The FARC deny exporting cocaine.

Even the DEA says it has no evidence the FARC is responsible for smuggling 
shipments out of the country. The DEA is building cases against individual 
FARC members for drug trafficking, but does not believe they are acting 
with the blessing of the FARC command.

The Colombian army failed to provide proof the FARC was exporting. A FARC 
commander in the guerrilla safe haven explained why the FARC does not 
export drugs: "There is our ideological belief that drug trafficking is 
wrong. We believe drugs should be legalized," he said, sipping a strong 
Colombian coffee or "tinto." "What do we have to gain by exporting? We have 
already made our money before the drugs leave the country. If a shipment is 
seized, we lose nothing.

There is no point getting involved any farther up the chain."

Now if the FARC were exporting cocaine, why would Freddy Seashore have been 
caught in Colombia? Why would he have his own laboratories and drug fields 
in Colombia, as the Colombian army have admitted?

Surely he would just buy the finished product straight off the FARC, 
preferably from the safety of Rio?

There is no doubt the FARC's growth and continuing expansion is financed by 
drugs, and without drugs it might well have gone the way of Latin America's 
other great insurgent movements like Peru's Shining Path or Nicaragua's 
Sandinistas; disappeared or moved into mainstream political life.

Paramilitaries Profit, Too

There is no doubt drugs are the fuel that feeds the country's 37-year civil 
conflict.

Both the FARC and its right-wing paramilitary enemies earn hundreds of 
millions from the drug trade every year, which they use to buy weapons, 
entice more recruits and expand their territorial control. But there is no 
evidence the FARC is a drug cartel, for not only does it not export drugs, 
but seems not to even have its own drug fields and labs. If a drug field is 
fumigated by the Colombian security forces, or a laboratory destroyed by 
the anti-narcotics police, the FARC has lost nothing, just the prospect of 
less taxes.

Then again the drug fields are always replanted and the laboratories 
rebuilt in a different place.

For as long as drug traffickers can make more than $76,000 pure profit from 
every kilo of cocaine, the trade is going to continue, and flourish.

And that means the FARC will probably continue to flourish as well.
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MAP posted-by: Beth