Pubdate: Mon, 11 Nov 2002
Source: St. Petersburg Times (FL)
Copyright: 2002 St. Petersburg Times
Contact:  http://www.sptimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/419
Author: David Adams

PERU'S RISING COCA CULTIVATION WORRISOME

LIMA, Peru -- Barely three years after the United States declared victory 
in the war on drugs in Peru, the illegal crops are making a comeback.

While some U.S. officials say it's too early to sound the alarm bells, 
Peruvian and international experts are concerned by signs of increased 
cultivation of coca, the raw material of cocaine.

Colombian drug traffickers also have introduced poppy plants, used to make 
heroin, which have rarely been seen before in Peru.

"Production is definitely up," said Peru's Interior Minister Gino Costa. 
"We don't know exactly how much at this stage, but it's enough to worry us."

Even more troubling for counterdrug officials is the resurrection of the 
Maoist guerrilla group, Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path, whose presence 
has been detected in areas of new drug cultivation.

"That's a real danger," Costa said. "Drugs constitute a potential fuel for 
Shining Path."

Shining Path is only a shadow of its once violent and powerful presence in 
the slums and remote rural highlands of Peru. Today, the group numbers only 
a few hundred armed members. It fell into steep decline after the capture 
of leader Abimael Guzman in 1994. Guzman remains in a maximum security prison.

But U.S. military officials warn the group has made contact with guerrillas 
in neighboring Colombia, where the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of 
Colombia) partly finances its battle with government forces from the 
proceeds of drug trafficking.

"They (FARC) have been moving their military units in there," said Gen. 
Galen Jackman, director of operations at U.S. Southern Command, which 
covers Latin America from its Miami headquarters.

"The concern that everyone has is that FARC has been able to sustain 
themselves because of drugs and that the same pattern might establish 
itself in Peru."

U.S. officials say coca cultivation in Peru has been pegged at about 84,000 
acres for the past two years, down from record levels of 320,000 acres in 
the early 1990s, when Peru led the world in coca production. They say 
satellite photos of coca fields show new acreage planted last year was 
offset by eradication of existing fields. They add that Peru is expected to 
destroy 15,000 acres this year, taking care of new cultivation.

But Peruvian officials and United Nations counterdrug experts are less 
optimistic. Using satellite maps and ground assessment, they put coca 
production last year at about 114,000 acres. "We don't have figures for 
this year yet, but it's evident there's more coca," said Hans Jochen Wiese, 
a United Nations expert in Peru. Some estimates say production might have 
hit almost 150,000 acres.

Officials also say that while the increase in acreage might appear small, 
farmers have been able to double their yields through agricultural 
innovation, mainly by packing more plants into smaller plots. Experts say 
new technology allows farmers to plant 300,000 plants per acre, compared to 
150,000 plants before.

Officials also note that the price traffickers pay Peruvian peasants for 
their coca leaves has returned to the levels it reached during Peru's 
cocaine heyday, about $1.15 per pound. In the mid to late 1990s the price 
fell so low that peasants stopped planting coca.

Experts warn that as pressure is brought to bear in Colombia, where the 
United States is financing a $2-billion assault on coca crops with aerial 
spraying and newly trained counterdrug battalions, traffickers will 
inevitably move production elsewhere. Experts call it the "balloon effect," 
long considered a major thorn in the war on drugs.

The success of counterdrug operations in Peru in the mid 1990s, largely 
because of a policy of shooting down drug planes carrying the coca paste to 
laboratories in Colombia, prompted traffickers to switch coca cultivation 
to Colombia. As production plummeted in Peru, it began to rise just as 
dramatically across the border in southern Colombia, which boasts some 
420,000 acres of coca.

Eradication is in full swing in Colombia, as is increased military action 
against the FARC and rival paramilitary groups involved in the drug trade.

As a further sign of new activity in Peru, police recently made a number of 
large drug seizures and have destroyed cocaine processing laboratories. In 
June, police captured 1.76 tons of cocaine in the port of Chimbote, 250 
miles north of Lima, allegedly bound for Mexico.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens