U.S. Is Stepping Up Drive to Destroy Coca
in Colombia
By Juan Forero- New York Times
September 4, 2002
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"What keeps them from going back to
growing coca is the spray plane, and only the spray plane,"
said an official at the American Embassy who works on the antidrug
programs. "The coca fields are enormous and there are a lot
of different owners, and you just have to rub it all out. That
is the only way you are going to make this work."
The goal, American officials say, is to kill
up to 300,000 acres of coca this year, 30 percent more than was
sprayed last year. With more crop dusters arriving, — American
officials say the fleet will increase from 12 to 22 by next spring
— the State Department hopes to double the acreage sprayed
next year, killing so much coca that replanting cannot keep up.
But despite the rosy predictions, drug policy
analysts and some lawmakers in Washington warn that the intensified
program could just cause coca planting to spread to a wider area.
That phenomenon has already taken hold after a decade of American-backed
spraying.
"Fumigation has an effect, but we would
argue it's an effect of displacement," said Klaus Nyholm,
who oversees the United Nations Drug Control Program's office
in Colombia. "The next question is where will the coca go
from here?"
Indeed, though the United States has spent
$1.7 billion since 1999 in Colombia to stamp out drugs, the amount
of coca in Colombia has increased 25 percent from 2000 to 2001,
according to American estimates based on images from satellites
and projections by analysts.
United Nations figures actually show a small
decrease in coca cultivation in that period, a discrepancy due
to the different satellite-based methods used to ascertain the
size of plantations. But the United Nations also says that coca
plantings large enough to be measured were found in 22 of Colombia's
32 provinces in 2001, up from 12 provinces in 1999.
Reports this year by the General Accounting
Office, the research arm of the United States Congress, and the
State Department have concluded that American-financed efforts
to wean farmers off coca by offering them benefits had also failed.
In many cases the Colombian government failed
to deliver the benefits promised to farmers, while many farmers
who pledged to eradicate their coca simply did not comply.
"After nearly $2 billion, our policy
in Colombia has accomplished little," said Senator Patrick
J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the foreign
operations subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee and who
has criticized American policy toward Colombia.
Community leaders here say aerial spraying
has further impoverished people who turned to coca because it
was the only viable moneymaking option. Farmers also say the spraying
has caused a scarcity of food, since their legal crops, planted
alongside coca, also die in spraying operations.
Furthermore, though the United States contends
that the herbicide used here is safe, warning labels on the product
caution against using it near people and say it can cause vomiting
and other ailments.
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