Pubdate: Thu, 23 Feb 2006
Source: Minnesota Daily (MN Edu)
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Copyright: 2006 Minnesota Daily
Author: Ron Frasier

International Policy

BOLIVIA'S CATCH-22 DRUG WAR

Bolivia is heavily dependent on U.S. aid and American trading rights. 
Ivo Morales, Bolivia's new president, is doing just what the United 
States expects of a democratically elected leader: Listen and respond 
to the needs of the Bolivian coca farmers who voted him into office. 
Morales pledged to end the hated U.S.-backed coca eradication program 
that destroys thousands of acres of coca and the livelihood of 
hundreds of Bolivian coca farmers each year. But to do so will lead 
Bolivia into a drug war trap, a Catch-22 set by none other than the 
United States. For hundreds of years Bolivians have made tea with 
coca leaves, chewed them to fend off fatigue and used coca for 
religious and medical purposes. Bolivian farmers legally can grow 
coca on 29,600 acres for these traditional uses. However, illegal 
coca crops headed for the cocaine market are grown on another 31,000 acres.

Morales is strongly committed to enforcing tough anti-cocaine laws 
and has said, "There will not be zero coca, but there will be zero 
cocaine" in Bolivia. He wants to end the political and social turmoil 
stirred up by the U.S.-backed search-and-destroy tactics used to 
eradicate coca, a traditional crop with strong symbolic meanings 
among the people.

Instead, he wants to use economic development, crop substitution and 
financial incentives to entice farmers to voluntarily stop growing 
coca beyond what is needed for traditional uses. Since 1997 the 
United States has spent about $2 on coca eradication and drug 
interdiction in Bolivia for every $1 spent on alternative employment 
of coca farmers.

Morales simply wants to reverse this spending trend and implement a 
coca management program that makes sense for Bolivian farmers, and 
one that offers farmers income alternatives, not economic ruin as has 
often been the case in the past. Here's the Catch-22: Bolivia, one of 
the poorest South American countries, is heavily dependent on U.S. 
aid and American trading rights. If Bolivia does not fully cooperate 
with the U.S.-led drug war, a 1986 act of the U.S. Congress calls for 
ending foreign aid to Bolivia and closing its access to U.S. markets.

How can Washington help Mr. Morales out of this box? One option is to 
replace the failed search-and-destroy strategy with a U.S.-style coca 
subsidy program run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The 
department would treat excess coca production as a land use problem 
and prescribe financial incentives and technical support.

The department's motto, "Why use force when Yankee greenbacks can do 
the job?" relies on an army of Washington check-writers to lure 
farmers away from the unwanted crops — Morales could easily endorse 
this. In the 1990s the United States paid Bolivian farmers as much as 
$1,000 for every acre of coca voluntarily abandoned, but the plan failed.

Subsidy payments were less than the farmers' coca crop incomes, and 
the government did not prevent farmers from taking the cash and 
planting a new coca crop elsewhere.

The department, with Morales' support, can overcome these problems.

The secret?

Pay the full value of the coca crop we are asking farmers to forego.

If Bolivia has 4,500 illegal coca farms averaging seven acres each 
and raising four crops per year, and if an acre produces $400 worth 
of coca per crop, the department would pay each farmer $11,200 a year 
to idle his land, or at least not to grow coca. This is more than 12 
times Bolivia's $900 per capita annual income, meaning these farmers 
can get rich — like American farmers — doing something we want them 
to do or, for that matter, doing nothing at all. Total subsidy 
payments would be about $50 million a year — a lot less than the $90 
million American taxpayers spent in Bolivia in 2005 for coca 
eradication, drug interdiction and alternative development programs. 
How about it, President Morales? Ronald Fraser writes for the DKT 
Liberty Project, a Washington-based civil liberties organization. 
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