Pubdate: Wed, 23 Nov 1999 Source: International Herald-Tribune Copyright: International Herald Tribune 1999 Contact: http://www.iht.com/ Author: Larry Rohter, New York Times Service Note: The same article appeared in the New York Times on Sat, 20 Nov 1999, see http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n1258/a09.html. This version received a better editing job (the NY Times editor apparently changed "opium poppies" to "heroin poppies"). IN COLOMBIA, COCAINE TRADE THRIVES Despite Eradication Efforts, Cultivation Surged 25% in 1998 MAGUARE, Colombia -- Under U.S. pressure, for most of this decade the Colombian government has been sending planes to spray herbicides on the fields of coca that flourish in areas like this. With a new, more cooperative government in power in Bogota, last year was a banner year for that joint effort, with a record 135,000 acres sprayed. But 1998 also turned out to be a record year for cocaine production in Colombia. By official estimate, land devoted to the cultivation of coca, the plant that provides the raw material for cocaine, surged more than 25 percent and is now three times greater than in 1994. Colombia has passed Peru and Bolivia to become both the largest grower and processor of coca in the world. All told, at least 72,000 hectares (180,000 acres) are now given over to coca cultivation, according to a survey made public by Colombia's Anti-Narcotics Police in September. An additional 5,600 hectares are used for growing opium poppies, from which heroin is made, another illicit crop that is booming despite the U.S.-financed spraying campaign. Such crops were grown in only 10 of Colombia's 33 provinces five years ago, but are now cultivated in 21, the survey estimated. The reasons for this continuing surge are many. U.S. officials say the success of air interdiction efforts in Peru and Bolivia has forced traffickers to shift cultivation here. The surge has also coincided with an intensification of Colombia's decades old war against leftist guerrillas. The rebels earn money by selling protection to the growers, who are then free to cultivate still more crops without fear of interdiction. Colombia acknowledges that more than three-quarters of all coca cultivation is concentrated here in the provinces of Caqueta and neighboring Putumayo, both strongholds of the country's largest rebel force, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The group operates at will across much of southern Colombia. At the same time, U.S. and Colombian officials have gradually come to realize that simple economic logic has propelled the explosion of coca production as much as the ebb and flow of the civil war. Since the collapse of the Cali and Medellin cartels -- the two groups that dominated the cocaine trade until their leaders were arrested or killed in the mid-1990s -- trafficking groups too small to be regarded as cartels have proliferated. In striving to build supply networks of their own, they have provided credit to peasant farmers. "You've got a much more decentralized situation with a lot more actors, well over 100, and that has increased demand," said Bruce Bagley, a University of Miami professor who is a leading academic expert on the drug trade. "They don't have the capital or the equipment to fly coca in from Peru or Bolivia." Colombian trafficking groups have also been experimenting with more potent varieties of coca, said Colonel Jose Leonardo Gallego, chief of the Anti-Narcotics Police, in an interview conducted during a flight over this rebeldominated region. With the help of agronomists hired for the purpose, they have imported a type of coca native to Peru and grafted it onto the weaker species traditionally grown here to create a powerful hybrid. "Now you have a variety that can be harvested six to eight times a year," Mr. Bagley said. "So along with the expanded area under cultivation, you get much greater productivity per plant and a higher alkaloid content, which means much less cost in refining and a bigger bang for your buck." Furthermore, while the United States and Colombia may agree on the extent of the coca problem, they often diverge on solutions. The Colombian government has long had doubts about spraying campaigns and prefers to focus on crop substitution, but because the United States insists on spraying -- and is willing to pick up the costs -- that approach has been emphasized. "To me, fumigation makes no sense," said Armando Borrero, a former national security adviser to the Colombian government, expressing a view often heard in official circles in Bogota. "It only forces the migration of cultivation. " Heroin Suspect Sent to U.S. A suspected heroin trafficker was bundled aboard a U.S. plane in Bogota on Sunday and became the first Colombian to be sent to the United States to stand trial since 1991 after the Colombian Congress lifted a ban on the practice in 1997, authorities said, Reuters reported. Jaime Orlando Lara, arrested in Bogota a year ago, was taken by helicopter from his jail cell to the police airport on the outskirts of the capital. A New York federal court has requested his extradition on charges of smuggling heroin into the United States. Agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration arrived in Bogota on Saturday as President Andres Pastrana and members of his cabinet met and rejected last-minute appeals by Mr. Lara's lawyers. - --- MAP posted-by: Eric Ernst