The Economist Asia - 24.02.2018

The EconomistFebruary 24th 2018 35

1

J

UST one road connects Tumaco, the sec-

ond-busiestport on Colombia’sPacific

coast, to the rest of the country. Beyond

its verges are fields of coca bushes, many of

them cultivated by poor people. Yuley Al-

exandra Ruano’s crop grows behind a

beauty parlour she owns on a patch of

land she does not. It is fringed by yucca,

plantains and a rotting cacao tree. She and

her neighbours have signed up to the gov-

ernment’s “comprehensive programme

for illicit crop substitution” (PNIS), whose

aim is to replace the coca with a profitable

legal crop. But bureaucracy moves slowly.

Ms Ruano has yet to see new seeds or the

money promised by the government to

help with the switch.

From her salon in the department of

Nariño, she can see that the government is

pursuing with more energy the other part

of its anti-coca strategy, forced eradication.

Every day a Black Hawk helicopter passes,

bearing police to a jungle camp in Alto

Mira y Frontera (see map). Their mission is

to kill the bushes, by uprooting them or by

spraying them with herbicide. The govern-

ment wants to eradicate by force 65,000

hectares (160,000 acres) of coca this year.

The two approaches are supposed to

complement each other. The crop-substitu-

tion strategy is set out in a peace accord

that in 2016 ended more than 50 years of

war between the government and the

FARC, a leftist guerrilla group. It is part of a

cause they expected cash from the govern-

ment to switch to something else. Volun-

tary substitution isprogressing painfully

slowly. That is partly because the govern-

ment has not complemented it with a pro-

gramme to build roads rapidly and provide

services in coca-growing areas.

Some areas vacated by the FARChave

been taken over by the ELN, a smaller guer-

rilla group; drug gangs such as the “Gaitan-

ista Self-Defence Forces”, which has its ori-

gins in a right-wing paramilitary group;

and FARC members who rejected the

peace agreement. In January Colombia’s

president, Juan Manuel Santos, suspended

peace talks with the ELNafter a series of

bombings that killed seven policemen.

Armed groups also target small-scale

growers of coca who want to switch crops.

Last month in Caquetá, a southern depart-

ment, ex-members of the FARCforced six

officials of the UNOffice on Drugs and

Crime (UNODC) out of their cars and stole

theirGPSdevices and mobile phones. The

agency says the assault was an attempt to

stop crop-substitution in that area.

The jump in coca production brought

pressure from the United States. In Septem-

ber last year Donald Trump said he might

decertify Colombia as a partner in the fight

against drugs, putting in jeopardy some of

the $390m in American aid Colombia re-

ceives. In February this year he threatened

to cut aid to drug-exporting countries that

are “laughing” atthe United States. These

warnings stirred traumatic memories of

decertification in 1996 and 1997, when Co-

lombia seemed to be a failing state.

Many Colombians are nearly as wor-

ried about coca as Mr Trump. They judge

the success of the peace deal by the num-

ber of hectares given over to the crop, says

Hernando Zuleta, director of the Centre for

Studies on Security and Drugs at the Uni-

broader project to bring stability and better

living standards to swathes of the country-

side once controlled by the FARC, which

has now become a political party. The gov-

ernment says it reserves forced eradication

for industrial-scale plantations controlled

by large drug gangs, and for farmers who

refuse to participate in crop substitution.

But things are not going to plan. Coca

cultivation surged in anticipation of the

peace deal, from 96,000 hectares to

146,000 in 2016. Farmers planted more be-

Coca in Colombia

See it. Spray it. Sorted

TUMACO

Two anti-drug strategies are at war with each other

The Americas

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Bogotá

NARIÑO

CAQUETÁ

Tumaco

PACIFIC

OCEAN

Caribbean

Sea

COLOMBIA

VENEZUELA

PANAMA

ECUADOR

PERU

BRAZIL

Alto Mira

y Frontera

Source: UNODC 250 km

Coca-crop density

2016, hectares/km^2 0.1 1.0 2.0 4.0 8.0