Eradication causes shifts in coca trade; output not affected

LA HORMIGA, Colombia -- The cocaine trade that brought prosperity to this remote frontier town is proving as tough to wipe out as the hardy coca bush that produces the drug.

In the year and a half since the United States began funneling $1.7 billion to Plan Colombia, an anti-drug offensive, the program has succeeded in shifting some of the business out of La Hormiga, once the center of the country's cocaine heartland. And traffickers still working here have been forced deeper underground.

But the blitz has not stemmed the flow of drugs to the United States. The White House estimates the number of acres planted in coca has actually increased since the program began.

State Department officials say that it's too soon to judge Plan Colombia and insist that in the next year or so they will turn the tide on drug production here.

Crop-dusting planes, protected by U.S.-supplied helicopters and U.S.-trained troops, have sprayed the coca fields around La Hormiga with herbicide twice since the U.S. aid began, and the region will be sprayed again this month, President Andres Pastrana has announced. The troops have also targeted labs that convert coca into cocaine and have raided the traffickers who move the drugs out of the region and out of the country.

'Maintain the family'

Mariela, a 32-year-old mother of three, still tends her family's coca fields a few miles outside La Hormiga, even though they were sprayed.

The hardest-hit field is now choked with weeds. The coca plants all withered and died a few days after the chemicals rained down. But several plots escaped the worst. There, plants have re-sprouted, spindly and anemic, but still producing the valuable leaves.

"With this little bit, we'll maintain the family," she said. "But if they fumigate again, the plants won't recover. I don't know what we'll do." Maiela and other poor farmers say no other crop can earn enough to provide for their families.

In a raised wooden shelter, the family lab is stocked with the gasoline necessary to turn coca leaves into paste, the first step in making cocaine. Outside, the sun beats down on children running through the coca field that the family has carved out of the jungle.

Mariela's neighbors cleared more jungle after the fumigations and planted more coca. The plants are now waist-high and almost ready to harvest.

But fearing more aerial spraying, many coca growers have left. A shopkeeper in La Hormiga who sells pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer estimated 70 percent of his business had disappeared since the spraying started and people began leaving town.

U.S. price the same

Despite the spraying in parts of southern Colombia, the country's total coca crop actually increased last year by 82,992 acres, according to the White House. The Colombian government disputes that estimate, claiming the number of coca acreage has declined slightly.

In the United States, the price of cocaine -- almost all of which is produced in Colombia -- hasn't changed, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says, indicating no change in supply.

"There is nothing they can point to in terms of actually fighting drugs," said Adam Isacson at the Center for International Policy, an advocacy group in Washington. "All they can point to is increased fumigations and more raids on drug labs."

When Plan Colombia was in the planning stages, Randy Beers, the State Department's top counter-drug official, said coca production was expected to level off by the end of 2001, followed by a "dramatic reduction" a year later.

Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota agree the results are slower in coming, but insist the program is going to work once all the planned U.S. equipment arrives and spraying can be conducted across the entire country.

Plan Colombia is intended to slow the flow of drugs from Colombia, and remove a source of revenue for leftist rebels and their right-wing paramilitary foes, both of whom "tax" cocaine production.

The Bush administration is now asking Congress to shift the priority for U.S. aid away from a strict drug fight and toward helping Colombia's military battle the rebels and paramilitaries. Both are on the State Department's list of international terrorist groups, and since Sept. 11, Washington has put increased emphasis on defeating them.

For the U.S.-trained Colombian soldiers, the first year of Plan Colombia -- 2001 -- was easy. That was before the processing labs were moved deeper into the jungle and the traffickers found new ways to move their product out of the country, rank-and-file soldiers say.

On a recent Sunday, an army unit manned a roadblock in Puerto Asis, a river port four hours from La Hormiga. The post was near a dock which the soldiers suspect is used by traffickers to move cocaine. They patted down men, prodded motorcycle seats and peered inside purses.

In the past, they have found cocaine stuffed inside squash and hidden in diapers. But they acknowledge a lot gets past them. "I'd say that maybe 90 or 95 percent gets through," said 2nd Lt. Ivan Munoz.

His commander, Col. Dario Diaz, insists the amount being produced in this region has declined since Plan Colombia started.

But he also figures many of the growers and processors have simply moved. He predicts they will soon move into Colombia's part of the Amazon, and begin cutting down virgin jungle to plant coca.

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On the Net

U.S. Embassy: usembassy.state.gov/colombia/wwwsmane.shtml

Colombian government page on Plan Colombia: www.plancolombia.gov.co/ingles/index.asp

Center for International Policy page on Plan Colombia: www.ciponline.org/colombia/aidprop.htm