Pubdate: Mon, 09 Jun 2003
Source: Hartford Courant (CT)
Copyright: 2003 The Hartford Courant
Contact:  http://www.ctnow.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/183
Author: T. Christian Miller

U.N. REPORTS COCA CROP SHRINKING

Colombian Farmers Raising Less, Although Effect On Market Unclear

EL TOPACIO, Colombia -- For the first time in at least a decade, the amount
of coca grown in Colombia is falling sharply, largely the result of an
aggressive, U.S.-backed aerial fumigation campaign.

Repeated spraying by crop dusters plus government programs to encourage
farmers to pull up coca plants have reduced Colombia's coca, the source of
cocaine, by 38 percent to 252,000 acres in the past three years, according
to a United Nations study released this year.

What's more, coca cultivation appears not to have simply moved elsewhere
from Colombia, for years the source of 90 percent of the cocaine on U.S.
streets, as it has in the past. While Bolivia and Peru have reported slight
increases, the rise has not been enough to offset the decline in Colombia.
The U.N. study found that throughout South America, the number of acres
devoted to coca dropped 22 percent in the past three years.

Although the program has not yet affected the street price of cocaine in the
United States and its final success remains unclear, fumigation is working,
according to interviews and visits conducted during a weeklong trip in the
region around this small coca-growing town.

"The fumigation has blasted everything," said Javier Yepes, a 40-year-old
coca farmer who was rushing to harvest his plants after spray planes wiped
out his neighbors' farm in a village in southern Colombia.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, elected last year on a promise to crack
down on the drug business and the leftist guerrillas it helps fund, has
pledged to continue fumigating until there are no coca bushes left in
Colombia. Within a year, many U.S. and Colombian officials expect that
Colombia will cease to be a major producer of cocaine.

U.S. officials are also publicly acknowledging what had long been private:
that the U.S. spraying operations has become a key weapon in Colombia's
40-year-old internal conflict, which pits the army and an illegal
paramilitary force against leftist rebels. The paramilitaries and the rebels
rely on the coca trade for financing.

"We're seeing a little bit of the money dry up," said Gen. James T. Hill, in
charge of U.S. military operations in Latin America, during a congressional
hearing last week. "The eradication effort is beginning to make some inroads
in their ability to fund themselves."

But the success of the State Department's $1.3-billion Plan Colombia, which
is intended to halve coca production here by 2005, has also ruined the lives
of thousands of people in southern Colombia, where migrants and dirt-poor
farmers seized on coca as a steady, if illegal, source of income.

Local farmers are suddenly caught in the cross-fire of a vicious and
unpredictable war between rebels and paramilitaries fighting over the
remains of the cocaine trade.

And tens of thousands have fled the region, a vast exodus of poor,
uneducated people looking for money to feed themselves in an economy in
which unemployment hovers at 15 percent.

"Yes, the spraying has been a success," said Jose Efren Villota, 48, a coca
farmer, as he surveyed the ruins of his once-profitable coca farm. "But it
has come at a high cost."

The idea behind Plan Colombia was simple: by cutting back on coca supply,
State Department narcotics experts hoped to drive up street prices so high
that addicts would cease using the drug and seek treatment.

Instead, the price in the United States remains steady at anywhere between
$20 and $200 per gram, depending on location and market conditions,
according to recent congressional testimony from Drug Enforcement
Administration officials.

Critics of the plan say that cutting into cocaine production is simply
forcing nimble drug traffickers to adjust. Users who cannot find cocaine are
choosing other drugs, like ecstasy, to satisfy their tastes, reducing demand
and thereby keeping the price stable. Coke dealers have switched to selling
cheaper, easier-to-smuggle drugs, such as methamphetamine.

"We have been forcing the drug economy to evolve," said Sanho Tree, a
researcher at the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies who has been
sharply critical of the war on drugs.

The effect of the program in Colombia - on farmers trying to make a living
and on the country's internal conflict - are more clear-cut.

Together, the guerrillas and paramilitaries are estimated to make between
$150 and $300 million a year from the coca trade, U.S. officials estimate.
Both groups acknowledge "taxing" coca production about $100 per kilogram, or
about 10 percent of the price at the local level. Both also have been
accused of processing and trafficking in the drug themselves.

But they are now retreating in the face of a U.S.-backed offensive by the
Colombian military, at least partly due to economic difficulties, according
to military experts, State Department officials and interviews with
paramilitaries.

Guerrilla deserters have told military officials that they face shortages of
ammunition and even food. Paramilitaries are now at war among themselves.
Some are trying to remain in the coca business while others are trying to
get out of it.

"It's no mystery how we make our money: we charge a tax on the coca grown"
here, said Alvaro, a paramilitary commander in El Tigre, a coca-growing town
in the province of Putumayo, as his heavily armed men nervously patrolled a
road near the site of a recent battle with guerrillas. "Of course [the
spraying] has affected us."
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