Eradicating illegal crops not enough

Inter Press Service
25 October 1999
By Yadira Ferrer
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BOGOTA-Colombian authorities destroyed more coca bushes-the source of illegal cocaine-in the years 1995-1998 than any other country in Latin America but illegal cultivation of the coca plant leaped by 222 percent, according to official figures.

Such gloomy statistics exposed Colombia's erratic anti-drug policies-shaped by pressure from abroad - which emphasized production and failed to target the commercial end of the trade, according to analysts.

Accion Andina, an organization that groups narco-traffic researchers from various South American countries, said that coca leaf farming in Colombia mushroomed from 45,550 hectares in 1995 to 101,200 hectares in 1998 - despite the fact that the government destroyed more crops than any other country during that time.

The significant jump was confirmed by the director of the anti-narcotic police, Col. Leonardo Gallego, who said that in the departments of Cauca in western Colombia, Narino in the south, and Norte de Santander in the northeast, the number of illegal crops grew by 100 percent.

Gallego noted that the region with the largest coca expansion-Putamayo in southern Colombia-went from 12,000 hectares in 1997 to some 35,000 today, an increase of nearly 300 percent.

In 1998, the anti-drug police cleared nearly 45,000 hectares of coca plantations, with another 38,000 destroyed so far this year.

Ricardo Vargas, a researcher with Accion Andina in Colombia, said that the increase in illegal crops was the result of an ill- advised strategy that "does not target drug trafficking revenues (or) the masterminds behind the business."

Vargas said that the demand for coca leaves during the last four years held steady at between 270,000 and 300,000 tons and, the only thing that had changed were the areas where the plant was grown.

The most significant event behind this change occurred in 1994 with the dismantling of the Cali cartel, which had concentrated its coca plantations in the zone of Huallaga in Peru.

The break-up of the big Colombian drug rings culminated in the arrest of the heads of the Cali cartel, the brothers Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, between 1995 and 1997.

In December 1993, the Medallin cartel was smashed in a police operation that ended with the death of its leader, Pablo Escobar, and the arrests of its principal members.

The removal from the scene of those two organizations, which controlled 80 percent of the cocaine trade in the United States, sparked a re-shuffling of the drug trafficking hierarchy, which is largely propelled by those at the top, said Vargas.

The researcher noted that, with the Huallaga region suddenly without any buyers, "the price (of one kilogram of cocaine base) fell and production ground to a halt."

Throughout Colombia, "a process of 'democratization' of drug trafficking was consolidated" by small gangs that took over the business-and still control it today, Vargas said.

He argued that fumigating coca crops would not solve the problem of narco-trafficking, since the plantations "do not need any infrastructure to produce a premium product" and traffickers can always pick up and move wherever it is easiest to recruit producers.

He added that the reorganization of the drug cartels "explains the growth of areas under illegal cultivation in Colombia, during the exact same years when there was the most fumigation," displacing Peru as the main producer of coca leaves.

"The government can spray all the poison it wants," the expert said, "but the real engines of the drug trade are profits and the demand for top quality cocaine." Drug production, therefore, "will just keep relocating to places with the most favorable conditions for coca growing," he said.

Accion Andina believed there was a possibility that coca production will migrate from Colombia over the next few years, perhaps to the southern Amazon region, as international prices for the drug increase.

Some analysts say that the theory of the "narco-guerrilla," promoted by the head of the United States Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, is diverting attention toward insurgent groups and allowing the real drug traffickers to operate without interference.

The experts say that drug kingpins are "having a field day" with the soaring narcotics prices on the world market. A kilogram of cocaine base has gone from 400 dollars two years ago to 800 to 1,000 dollars today.

This year, McCaffrey requested an increase in U.S. military aid to Colombia, arguing that the guerrillas have taken over the role of the vanquished drug cartels. He also supported the creation of a special "anti-narcoguerrilla" army unit that began operating in southeastern Colombia in August.

Political analysts noted that Washington had devoted the majority of its funding - some 500 million dollars a year - to stamp out narcotics cultivation, while the drug traffickers who control 88 percent of the trade had simply rebuilt their operations in secret.

Coca crops now spilled over into San Vicente del Caguan, a zone demilitarized by the government since December as part of the peace talks with the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), as well as to Murillo and Puerto Guzman in the east, and Cauca in the southwest.

The displacement of plantations in the Amazon also involves Peru, Bolivia and Brazil, which have great potential to develop new production facilities, says Accion Andina. vThe expansion of illicit crops was also explained, in part, by the deteriorating economic situation in Colombia where nearly 20 percent of the adult population is unemployed - some two million people without a job.

William Perez and Luis Londono, agronomy professors at the state-run National University, indicated that 300,000 families -- more than one million indigenous people, settlers, peasants and marginal urban dwellers-earn a living directly from the illegal plantations.

Various studies say there are some 150,000 hectares of "itinerant" crops-mostly coca, but also marijuana and poppy plants -- which affect 420 of the 1,002 municipalities of the country and have entailed the destruction of between two and five million hectares of forest.