It would make you happy — if it didn't make you sad — the news of the wonderful successes they are having in Colombia eliminating the coca crop.

The happiness was the late January news that in Colombia over 65,000 acres of an estimated 300,000 acres dedicated to growing coca had been sprayed.

Children play in a fumigated coca field at a Cofan Indian farm in Santa Rosa del Guamez, located in the southern state of Putumayo, on Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2001. (AP Photo/Ricardo Mazalan)

The sadness was inflicted by the picture on the front page of the New York Times of four young children running joyfully through a barren field of defoliated bushes that had been sprayed with a pesticide containing glyphosate a few weeks before. They were looking up at the camera as they ran with broad smiles on their young faces. None of them had yet gotten sick from the pesticide and probably none of them would.

American officials say that numerous tests on glyphosphate have demonstrated that the pesticide cannot cause harm to humans or animals. The fact that directions on the application of glyphosate products in the United States warn users not to use "this product in a way that will contact workers or other persons, either directly or through drift," is of no moment. The fact that the military says that the soldiers who do the spraying shower after each flight to cleanse themselves of any residue of herbicide, does not suggest that it is dangerous. The warning is like the warning on a cup of hot coffee advising the user that the coffee may be hot and can cause burns if spilled.

The health department of Putumayo is in the process of collecting testimony from farmers whose lands were sprayed. Nancy Snchez is supervising the effort as coordinator of the department's human rights section. She says that there have been complaints from those whose lands were sprayed "about intoxication, diarrhea, vomiting, skin rashes, red eyes, headaches. In the children, above all." She is quoted as saying, "there are ill effects on their skin."

The small children in the photo are unaware of this because when their picture was taken they had not experienced any of the ill effects described by Ms. Snchez. The ill effects she describes are probably attributable to other things, such as living in poverty in remote areas in that country.

Spraying from the air is not a precise art. According to the report accompanying the photo, farmers in the Valley of Guamuez in northwestern Putumayo said that legal crops like plantains and yucca were destroyed along with coca. According to Carlos Alberto Palacios, secretary of human development in the town of La Hormiga: "We believe people will go hungry. They've fumigated everything, fields and plantain rows and yucca and everything that people need to live on." Mr. Palacios said many farm families have abandoned their homes.

One feels a bit of sadness, not only for the children but for their parents, who have been uprooted from their homes. When one realizes, however, that it is all being done so that Europeans and Americans will have to pay more for their cocaine, one realizes that they being asked to make sacrifices for a worthwhile cause, even though they may not understand it.

The United States will spend about $1.6 billion to help out this crop eradication program. Helicopters furnished by the United States protect the aerial spray planes as they spray the pesticide over farmers' lands. There are 250 to 300 American soldiers on the ground in Colombia manning radar stations and training Colombian troops and roughly the same number of American civilian employees. Although Colombian guerrillas have said they are legitimate military targets, it is unlikely any of them will be killed or that their presence would draw us further into the conflict in Colombia. Colombia is not Vietnam.

Not everyone is convinced we are doing the right thing. In his confirmation hearing, Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense was asked about the $1.6 billion that has been committed. He responded saying that combating illicit drugs is "overwhelmingly a demand problem. If demand persists," he said, "it's going to get what it wants. If it isn't from Colombia, it's going to be from someplace else."

The someplace else of which Mr. Rumsfeld may have been thinking might be Ecuador. The New York Times has reported that cocaine processing labs recently have been found in Ecuador's Amazon region. In Manta at a military base a short distance from Colombia, construction workers are lengthening a runway and excavating ground for cavernous hangars to house U.S. E-3 AWACS surveillance planes. According to the Washington Post, smaller planes are already flying missions from the Ecuadoran air force base and they are piloted by U.S. Air Force crews, mechanics and security guards, among others. The AWACS jets will begin flying this summer and the number of American personnel in Ecuador will rise to about 400 over the next few months. That will, says the Post, make Manta the main hub for U.S. surveillance flights over the cocaine producing areas of Latin America.

The U.S. has a tradition of complete candor when it comes to discussing the dangers of Agent Orange or the exposure of troops to chemical agents during Operation Desert Storm. It has a history of notgetting drawn into conflicts into which it does not want to be drawn. As a result, we can have complete confidence in the assurances that glyphosphate is harmless and that our present commitment will not lead to further entanglement in Colombia, Ecuador or other potential problem areas in LatinAmerica.

Brauchli can be reached at crbrauchli@uswest.net

Copyright 2001 The Daily Camera

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