Article: Colombia to Begin Coca Elimination Program in Putumayo Region

01 November 2000

Colombia to Begin Coca Elimination Program in Putumayo Region

U.S. official reviews situation in Colombia

By Eric Green
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- In December, Colombia will launch a program to eradicate the coca plant in the guerrilla-dominated Putumayo region, says Brad Hittle, drug-source country support branch chief for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP).

Speaking November 1 at a forum on the situation in Colombia, sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Hittle said anti-government forces are expected to offer armed resistance to the coca eradication effort in Putumayo. The eradication will be carried out with support from three Colombian counter-drug battalions -- one of which has already been "fully trained," along with two others that will have been trained by U.S. advisors by the time the program begins, he said.

Training for those Colombian units, Hittle said, includes a grounding in basic military tactics and instruction on respect for human rights.

The United States, Hittle emphasized, will only fund military aid to those Colombian units which are free from "credible charges of significant human rights abuse." This restriction reflects both Clinton Administration policy and U.S. law, he said, adding that the U.S. embassy in Bogota will "carefully" monitor allegations of human rights abuses.

If credible charges arise, they will be investigated, and funding will be withheld until the investigation has determined culpability. "So it's a fairly strict standard for human rights protection," Hittle said.

He suggested that one measure of the success of "Plan Colombia," Bogota's broad strategy for restoring the rule of law, will be the degree to which coca eradication efforts triumph.

"We can measure that by technical means and through assistance from the government of Colombia," Hittle said. The spraying of coca employs a very effective herbicide called glyphosate, which he said is also used in the United States and in Colombia for weed control. The "good news" about the herbicide, he said, is that it does not harm the soil. But the paradox, Hittle added, is that because glyphosate doesn't harm the soil, farmers can return two weeks after spraying and once more begin growing coca.

"We'll know the plan is working if we see that spraying is successful and we also see that there is limited or no replanting," Hittle said. He indicated that in Bolivia and Peru, for example, it eventually became unprofitable for farmers to return to the coca business because they could not rely on getting their product out to market.

"The price of coca went down to such a point, especially in Bolivia, that after spraying, farmers didn't normally go back and replant coca. Instead, they planted other kinds of crops," Hittle said. "That's the same sort of opportunity that Plan Colombia is intended to give small farmers in the coca-growing regions of Colombia."

Hittle warned that this approach has inherent dangers because the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the left-wing guerrilla group waging an insurgency against the government, has already announced that those farmers who cooperate with the Colombian government on alternative crop development will become targets of violence.

"So it takes a fair amount of courage, not to mention some Colombian government-provided security in the area, before a farmer is willing to sign up" for the program, he said.

On another point, Hittle emphasized that the cocaine consumption problem is not one that just affects the United States and Colombia. He said that while the United States is probably the largest single consumer of cocaine, at between 200 tons and 300 tons a year, Europe and Latin America are also consuming about 150 tons of the drug per year.

"Cocaine abuse is a real problem in places where it didn't used to exist, such as in Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Mexico City and Caracas, while cocaine use in Europe is higher than ever before," he said. "Those trends, unfortunately, are continuing to rise. If you want a dire prediction, Europe is looking at the same rate [of cocaine use] that the U.S. was looking at about 20 years ago."

On a positive note, Hittle said the United States has done a "reasonably good job" of reducing domestic demand for cocaine, with the number of regular users declining by about one-third over the last several decades.

"So we're doing all right on demand reduction," Hittle said. "The trouble is, the rest of the world isn't doing all right in that category." While the United States and the Andean countries have done a "reasonably good job of reducing the potential for [coca] production in Peru and Bolivia -- by about 66 percent in Peru, and 53 percent in Bolivia since 1995 -- we're doing a terrible job of helping Colombia control its coca production," he said.

Overall, he estimated, total cocaine production has dropped about 18 percent worldwide since 1995. But if the trends in Colombia continue -- with a 140 percent increase in that same period -- "we're looking at probably by the end of this year or certainly next year a net increase from 1995," Hittle said. "That's the concern, that's why the United States is working so closely with Colombia on the drug front."