Pubdate: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 Source: Austin American-Statesman (TX) Copyright: 2001 Austin American-Statesman Contact: P. O. Box 670 Austin, Texas 78767 Fax: 512-445-3679 Website: http://www.austin360.com/statesman/editions/today/ Author: Mike Williams, American-Statesman International Staff AS DRUG WAR TAKES ITS TOLL, COLOMBIA SEEKS MORE U.S. AID LA CONCORDIA, Colombia -- School wasn't in session the day the crop-dusters bolted out of the morning sky. But the coca the United States is paying Colombia more than $1 billion to wipe out grows right up to the edge of the schoolyard. It surrounds the homes and fills a large field behind the church. It lines the roads and blankets the rolling hills as far as the eye can see. The hillsides -- and the school's soccer field -- are dead brown now, a stark contrast to the vivid greens of the nearby tropical forest. "The effects of the fumigation here have been catastrophic," said Miriam Teresa Rodriguez, a teacher at La Concordia's 150-student primary school. "The spraying killed the coca, but it killed the food crops, too." As President Andres Pastrana meets in Washington today with President Bush, his ambitious program to break the back of the Colombian cocaine trade -- and deprive leftist rebels of drug income -- has kicked into high gear. U.S. and Colombian officials are proclaiming the program's first punch, a massive aerial fumigation assault, a success so far, with more than 70,000 acres of coca destroyed. After securing a $1.3 billion commitment last year from the Clinton administration, Pastrana will ask Bush for trade preferences aimed at kick-starting Colombia's faltering economy. Supporters say economic development could help improve conditions in Colombia and provide a healthy alternative to coca crops and drug trafficking. Pastrana's program, called Plan Colombia, has won strong support in Congress, where backers believe it will slow the flow of cocaine into the United States while choking off a lucrative resource for Colombia's leftist rebels, who earn millions taxing coca farmers and drug traffickers. But Plan Colombia has plenty of critics, too. The European Parliament has raised concerns over the environmental effects of the spraying, as well as the messy record of human rights violations by Colombia's military and right-wing paramilitary groups, which reportedly work closely with the army. And others worry that the United States might be stumbling into a deeper involvement in Colombia's nasty 37-year-old civil war. U.S. contractors helping the aerial spraying missions have already come under rebel fire during fumigation flights. Critics also fear the conflict over the drug trade will spread to Colombia's neighbors, creating regional instability. Colombia supplies 80 percent to 90 percent of the world's cocaine, with much of the raw ingredient -- coca -- grown in a jungle-covered swath of territory along its southern border. In the past two years, a few hundred U.S. military advisers have trained two special anti-narcotics battalions of Colombia's military, and are now supplying satellite maps to target fields for fumigation. A shipment of U.S. Blackhawk helicopters scheduled to arrive this year will provide more security for the small fumigation planes, which have been harried by ground fire. But Plan Colombia's strongest critics come from within Colombia itself, especially the province of Putumayo. Fumigation has destroyed the rural economy, local leaders say, while the government has so far failed to deliver significant emergency aid or extensive alternative development programs. "Two months after the fumigation, the national government has done nothing to help the peasants," said Alfonso Martinez, former mayor of La Hormiga, a small commercial hub in the Guamuez River valley near La Concordia. "The peasants grow coca because there is no other way to make a living. Now they have nothing to eat because the spraying has destroyed their food crops as well as their coca." La Hormiga officials have taken 800 complaints from peasants since the spraying began in late December. Along with food crops, the fumigation has been blamed for the deaths of cattle, pigs, chicken and fish. They also claim it has sickened children and adults with skin rashes and lung problems. Rigoberto Rosero, a peasant whose 5 acres of coca border the La Concordia school, said he has been trying to get out of the coca business, raising other crops and pooling resources with neighbors to grow guinea pigs, which are sold for food here. "Everything was killed," he said. "My bananas, sugar cane, corn and 80 guinea pigs," he said. "My son has been ill with asthma and skin rashes, and I've spent the money I saved for a new house on his medical treatment. I've been trying to raise other crops, and I would've signed up to cut down my own coca, but they never gave me the chance." Colombian officials insist local governments were given the chance to sign up for voluntary eradication programs that would have exempted them from fumigation. An example is Puerto Asis, about 30 miles from La Hormiga, where there has been no spraying because hundreds of peasants promised to cut down their coca in exchange for about $1,000 each. Officials also say the herbicide being used -- Roundup -- isn't harmful to humans, although labels on the product in the United States warn against user contact. They also insist the planes target "industrial crops" -- plantations raised under contract to the rebels. "What was fumigated was where there were zones of industrial crops," said Gonzalo de Francisco, head of Plan Colombia's social programs. "These people are angry because their coca was destroyed. Maybe some of them thought they would never be sprayed." Francisco admitted some food crops have been destroyed, but said the peasants can seek reimbursement through the official complaint system. He said that if aid has been slow to reach the villages, it's because the effort is so massive. "We're setting up a social program that is unprecedented in Colombia," he said. "But we really believe it will solve the problem." That confidence isn't shared in coca country. Luis Carlos Gonzalez is head of a tribe of Cofan Indians who live near La Concordia. The group says it raised only a small patch of coca, but watched in disbelief as herbicide sprayed on nearby fields spread over their chicken barn and fish pond, both financed by the Colombian government. "We had 180 chickens and 1,400 fish die," Gonzalez said. "It's a crazy government that could do this. We're all living off bananas and fish caught from the river now. Let the government come here so we can tell them we aren't cockroaches to be fumigated." - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens