COLOMBIA'S DESERT WAR

The Aerial Assault On Cocaine Funded By The US Is Wiping Out
Everything - Apart From Coca Plants

The counter-drugs strategy of the United States is clearly failing.
UN figures cited in the Guardian this week show that the cultivation
of coca, the plant from which cocaine is derived, has surged in the
Andes. The most dramatic rise has been in Colombia, the only country
in the region that allows the use of pesticides to eradicate coca
leaf - a policy promoted and funded by the US.

I recently received a disturbing email from southern Colombia warning
that the fragile Amazonian soil could "soon be turned to desert".
They were the words of a Catholic priest, so I rang a church worker
whose parish lies deep in the Amazonian state of Caqueta. Military
planes targeting coca farms, funded by the US, had been spraying
mists of pesticides over food crops, grazing animals and even areas
where children were playing, she said: locals were complaining of
breathing problems and rashes; "strips of skin" have been peeling off
cows, and chickens have died; and maize, yucca, plantain and cacao
crops have wilted and shrivelled. "We fear there will soon be a very
serious food shortage in the region," she said. The local parish has
issued an urgent appeal.

The US has been funding the spraying campaign for more than two
decades, but 70% of the world's coca leaf is grown in Colombia.
Glyphosate is the most frequently used pesticide; its biggest selling
commercial formulation is Roundup, made by Monsanto. The company
acknowledges that contact with glyphosate may cause mild eye or skin
irritation. But independent studies have suggested a far greater
range of symptoms, including facial numbness and swelling, rapid
heart rate, raised blood pressure, chest pains, nausea and congestion.

In Colombia, glyphosate is mixed with other chemicals, and because
the exact composition has not been made public it has been impossible
to test its toxicity. One addition, a surfactant, makes the corrosive
liquid stick to the surface - leaf or skin - on which it is sprayed.
The pesticide is used at higher concentrations than stipulated in the
US, and is sprayed from above the recommended height of 10 metres.
Farm workers in the US are advised to keep clear of weedkillers, yet
in Colombia aerial spraying takes place with no warning, showering
humans and animals with chemicals.

All Colombia's neighbours - Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela and
Brazil - oppose the "fumigation" policy. The Andean and European
parliaments have called for its suspension, as have numerous
environmentalists, scientists and politicians in Colombia. But
spraying has intensified since the launch in 2000 of Plan Colombia,
the US-funded counter-narcotics strategy.

It was in that year that I first went to meet coca growers in
Caqueta. One woman told me a familiar story. Sara's parents were
landless, and had travelled south to set up a farm. In this remote
region, with no paved roads, they found that coca was the only crop
from which they could make a living.

Sara showed me the weather-beaten wooden press she uses to grind the
coca leaves. Peasants here turn the coca leaves into a paste, which
is then sold on to a middleman who takes it to a jungle laboratory to
refine it into cocaine.

Sara also grows maize, yucca, sugar cane and tropical fruit, but
these products don't make much money. It would take days to transport
them along rivers or dirt paths to the nearest big market. In
contrast, coca paste is easy to transport and, crucially, always in
demand. But the peasants here are not rich. They receive just 0.1% of
the final street price of cocaine.

The US focuses on one element of the trafficking chain, the
poverty-stricken peasant. But the policy is not even effective. When
their land is poisoned, peasants migrate and start growing coca
again. They have no alternative. Spraying simply displaces the
problem. Despite decades of spraying, coca cultivation in Colombia
has grown by 500% since the 1980s, according to US state department
figures. US politicians heralded a drop in cultivation after the
launch of Plan Colombia, but the area of land covered by coca crops
is now larger than when the plan was launched. Perhaps the clearest
indication that the policy is failing is the falling price of
cocaine, suggesting more, not less, of the drug is entering the US market.

Back in Caqueta, the church worker described how pesticides have run
into rivers and streams, killing fish. Locals wait days before they
dare drink the water. One of the most fragile ecosystems in the world
"is being poisoned".

. Grace Livingstone's book America's Backyard: the US and Latin
America from the Monroe Doctrine to the War on Terror is published this month