Pubdate: Fri, 08 Aug 2003
Source: The Week Online with DRCNet (US Web)
Contact:  http://www.stopthedrugwar.org/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2514
Author: Phillip S. Smith, Editor
Note: Phil Smith and The Week Online will be on vacation next week. We will 
return with issue #300 on Friday, August 22.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Bolivia

BOLIVIA'S MORALES SEEKS HONEST ENFORCEMENT AGAINST TRAFFICKERS, NOT REPRESSION

Using a five-ton cocaine seizure as a pretext, the Bolivian government
this week announced an escalation of its longstanding coca eradication
campaign. Aided and abetted with funding from the US State Dept.,
embattled President Sanchez de Lozada and his ministers revealed that
the much-reviled Special Task Force Against the Drug Traffic (FELCN,
in its Spanish acronym) will open eight new anti-drug posts in the
Andean country's coca producing zones. The government will also
increase the number of troops in the task force and step up its
intelligence-gathering operations in the coca regions, officials told
Bolivia Press.

The move against coca cultivation comes as Bolivia is under increasing
pressure from Washington to block a resurgence of coca in Bolivia now
that the US is claiming increasing success in eradicating coca in
Colombia. Drug czar John Walters last week pointedly told Bolivia and
neighboring Peru they had to try harder to eradicate the leaf viewed
as sacred by millions. But it also comes as the Sanchez de Lozada
government confronts a militant and increasingly impatient cocalero
(coca grower) movement led by Evo Morales and his political party, the
Movement Toward Socialism. Morales came within 45,000 votes of winning
the presidency last year, and his party is the largest bloc in parliament.

The immediate spark for the announcement was Operation Moonlight, a
drug trafficking enforcement effort that last week resulted in the
seizure of five tons of cocaine destined for Spain via Argentina.
Minister of Governance Yerko Kukoc used the occasion to attack
Morales, who is demanding increased cultivation in the Chapare region.
"The coca that is being produced in the Chapare is being used to
produce this cocaine," said Kukoc. "This isn't a lie, nor an invention
of the government or the FELCN or anyone else. To Evo Morales we have
to say: Thus is the coca of the Chapare; yes, it serves to produce
cocaine."

But Kukoc's attack was undercut by his own henchman, Luis Caballero,
head of the FELCN, who told El Tiempo that since Bolivian eradication
got underway a few years ago, Bolivia had changed from being a major
producer to being a country through which Peruvian cocaine transited
on its way to market. It was also undercut by the US State Department,
which, while it acknowledged that Bolivia does produce some coca
destined for the black market, it is also a transit country for
Peruvian cocaine. "The traffic routes indicate that the Peruvian
cocaine base enters Bolivia through the Lake Titicaca region, through
the departments of La Paz, Beni, and/or Pando. There are indications
that part of the Peruvian cocaine base that transits Bolivia has as
its final destination Europe, Mexico, and/or the United States," said
the State Department.

Still, the Bolivian government has warned that it will be "more
drastic" in enforcing Law 1008, the hated coca law. In a Monday press
conference, Minister of Peasant Affairs Arturo Liebers told reporters
that to prevent the formation of drug trafficking organizations, the
government would aggressively eradicate "excess and illegal" coca in
Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. "We are seeing the record figure of more
than five tons of cocaine that was seized in Santa Cruz in Operation
Moonlight by the FELCN," said Liebers. "It was produced by excess or
illegal coca that promotes the drug traffic," he asserted.

President Sanchez de Lozada, for his part, told reporters Monday that
eradication efforts, along with measures for the control of legal
coca, would take place even in the zones of traditional production,
such as the Yungas of La Paz. "The peasant seeks to have a little coca
because it is one more crop," he said. "Every peasant, French,
American, has cows, chickens, corn because they don't want to place
all their eggs in one basket," he added, seeking to demonstrate
concern for the plight of peasants impoverished by eradication
policies. "Obviously, there is a lot of excess coca and we have to
continue the fight against illegal cultivation and establish
mechanisms of control over legal coca, including in the Yungas. We
have to eradicate the excess and illegal coca, but on the other had,
we have to provide work, jobs. I will go to the Chapare in Septemer
with a US delegation to see if we can convert it into an economic zone
where there is manufacturing," he added.

That wasn't winning over cocalero leader and Movement Toward Socialism
deputy Jorge Ledesma, who told El Tiempo, "for every hectare they
eradicate, we will plant three."

Cocalero mainman Evo Morales took a more diplomatic tack. "As
cocaleros, we have planned a real and effective alliance against the
drug traffic and that will not succeed if it continues as now, when
some anti-drug units cover up and others aid in this illicit
activity," Morales said, adroitly pointing the finger of blame back at
law enforcement.

Still, said Morales, while he saluted honest drug trafficking
enforcement, it should not be part of a strategy designed by the
government and the US Embassy to "justify a great repression in the
Yungas and the Chapare." Putting more soldiers and more forts in the
coca growing areas won't solve the problem, Morales added. "The
announcement that they will create more anti-drug barracks is not
going to solve this problem. The authorities are mistaken if they think so." 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake