Pubdate: Mon, 26 Nov 2001
Source: MSNBC (US Web)
Copyright: 2001 MSNBC
Contact:  http://msnbc.com/news/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/938
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

PEASANTS SLOW TO DESTROY PLAN COLOMBIA DRUG CROPS

BOGOTA, Colombia, Nov. 26 -- Just a few of the 35,000 peasant families from 
Colombia's cocaine heartland who promised to destroy drug crops in return 
for "Plan Colombia" aid have done so, a senior government official said.

But Gonzalo de Francisco, in charge of distributing aid under the 
multi-billion-dollar Plan Colombia in the steamy jungles of Putumayo in the 
country's lawless south, hopes that suspicious farmers will soon realize 
promised money is on its way and keep their side of the bargain.

Plan Colombia is a carrot-and-stick strategy promising poor farmers money 
to switch to other crops and threatening them with U.S.-backed military 
spray operations if they do not. But, a year into the plan in the key 
Putumayo region, only the stick part of the equation has so far made 
progress in reducing drug crops, de Francisco said.

"I am convinced that there have to be results in the next three months," de 
Francisco told a small number of foreign reporters. "Results in which the 
social (aid) element begins to hit the number of sown hectares."

Under the voluntary eradication pacts, farmers should have torn up their 
coca by mid-2002 at the earliest.

The struggle to reduce Colombia's drug crop is made more complicated by the 
country's 37-year-old war, and illegal armed groups have a strong presence 
in Putumayo. Both the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of 
Colombia, or FARC, and right-wing paramilitaries have admitted to taking 
drug money.

Although reliable data, based on time-consuming interpretation of satellite 
photographs, is still not available, de Francisco estimates that Putumayo 
currently has 125,000-138,000 acres (50,000-55,000 hectares) currently sown 
with coca leaf -- the raw material of cocaine. It is a little under half of 
total production in Colombia, which is the world's largest cocaine producer.

PUTUMAYO PEOPLE STILL DON'T TRUST GOVERNMENT

This is down from about 165,000 acres (66,000 hectares) before a massive 
spraying campaign began last December, but almost none of the reduction has 
been due to peasants pulling up their own crops.

"The main problem we have in the Putumayo is that, despite all we have 
done, we still haven't been able to get the community to fully trust us," 
said de Francisco.

In some cases, drug traffickers have prevented peasants from giving up 
coca, and have funded new plantations, he said.

About $50 million has been assigned to luring the peasants of Putumayo away 
from coca. Under pacts first signed a year ago, peasant families promise to 
pull up their crops in return for about $850, agricultural supplies, and 
advice on setting up a new, fully legal farm.

But government workers are finding it takes time to put farm plans into 
practice and aid is taking time to arrive.

After a long break, government planes started spraying operations in the 
Putumayo earlier in November. Targets include 25,000-38,000 acres 
(10,000-15,000 hectares) of freshly planted coca and 7,500 acres (5,000 
hectares) of coca belonging to peasants who did not sign pacts.

Some peasants in the area say that they signed pacts and were sprayed 
anyway. The campaign is set to continue for several weeks.

The government is also spending about $100 million on roads and other 
infrastructure to break the historical isolation of the jungle region on 
the border with Ecuador. Peasants say that without roads they cannot send 
legal crops to market.

Ironically, it was the Putumayo's remoteness which attracted many of the 
small farmers in the first place. The isolation and lack of government 
control made it a perfect place to plant drug crops when Colombia's cocaine 
boom began in the late 1970s and big time traffickers offered lucrative 
rewards to farmers from other parts of the country.
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