Peace brings coca boom
A new United Nations report says coca production in Colombia has surged to levels not seen in two decades, complicating the country’s efforts to make its vast, lawless countryside more secure following a peace deal with leftist rebels.
The report confirms United States government findings from March that production is skyrocketing. The culprits are varied, and include President Juan Manuel Santos’s decision in 2015 to stop aerial spraying of coca fields with herbicides because of health concerns, and unintended incentives created by the peace deal for farmers to grow coca.
The amount of land where coca was cultivated last year jumped 52 per cent to 146,000 hectares, the UN said. Potential cocaine production rose 34 per cent to around 866 tonnes.
While the bumper harvest is worrisome, the UN said conditions for a sustained eradication campaign had improved dramatically thanks to last year’s peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The rebels had long funded their insurgency by levying taxes on drugs produced and transported in areas they dominate, but as part of the accord to end their halfcentury war against the state, they have committed to helping the government persuade farmers to voluntarily eradicate their coca crops.
However, the agreement has also provided a perverse incentive for farmers to grow coca. Those growing it will be awarded subsidies if they agree to renounce coca and grow products like potatoes and fruit instead.
Cocaine production began increasing in 2014, after the government and FARC announced a new drug strategy that would go on to be ratified in the final peace accord, and has steadily risen every year since.
‘‘The report shows a complex outlook, with data that indicates a worrisome situation but also a scenario that looks propitious for a sustainable solution,’’ said Bo Mathiasen, the UN drug agency’s representative in Colombia.
In the long term, there are doubts about whether the government can really assert itself in long-neglected territories. Early evidence suggests that criminal gangs are seeking to fill the void left by some 7000 withdrawing FARC rebels.
In recognition of those risks, and increased pressure by the Trump administration to curb the flow of drugs to the US, Colombia is also stepping up its forced eradication programme.
So far this year, Colombian police and army eradication crews have destroyed by hand some 21,000ha of coca – almost half of this year’s goal.
Seizures of cocaine also rose 49 per cent to 378 tonnes last year.
Another key finding of the report is that cocaine production is increasingly becoming concentrated in a few lawless areas of the countryside, allowing authorities to focus more sharply their eradication efforts.