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Latin America: Five Killed, Six Wounded, Six Missing in Attack on Colombian Soldiers, Coca Eradicators

Submitted by Phillip Smith on (Issue #596)
Consequences of Prohibition
Drug Trade Funding Terrorists
Drug War Issues
Andean Drug War
Coca
Eradication
Politics & Advocacy
Politics Outside US

Three Colombian soldiers and two civilian members of a coca eradication squad were killed Monday when the boat in which they were riding came under rifle and grenade attack. Six more were wounded and six others were still missing Wednesday evening. The attack occurred in western Choco state, where leftist FARC guerrillas and rightist paramilitaries are both active.

coca eradication (courtesy sf.indymedia.org)
Early reports from the scene quoted witnesses blaming members of the FARC's 34th Front, with a local ombudsman telling Radio Caracol the group had been attacked on its way to eradicate coca fields. But another local official told the Associated Press that drug gangs and rightist paramilitaries also operate in the area.

In the past three months, eradication teams have destroyed nearly half of the estimated 1,500 hectares of coca plants in the area. But as Monday's incident demonstrates, those efforts are not always appreciated. At least 26 of the 6,000 eradication workers employed by the Colombian government have been killed in the last three years.

Manual eradication of coca is far outweighed by aerial eradication using herbicide. But despite spraying or uprooting hundreds of thousands of acres of coca plants each year, Colombia remains the world's largest coca and cocaine producer. According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime 2009 World Drug Report, last year Colombia produced 81,000 hectares of coca, down from 2007's 99,000 hectares. Colombian coca production was at 80,000 hectares in 1997, then ballooned to 163,000 hectares in 2000, before declining and reaching an apparent plateau at around 80,000 hectares since mid-decade.

News Brief

This work by StoptheDrugWar.org is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Comments

Anonymous (not verified)

Gotta love it when they shoot back... but only 26 out of 6000 hav been killed in 3 yrs?

If not for the helicoptes doing the having lifting/eradicating more would needlessly die - I wonder how many growers have been killed or incarcerated in the u.s. drug war abroad?

People still dying over this when the solution is so simple... that's uncle scam for you... the fukking wanker!

Fri, 07/31/2009 - 6:05pm Permalink
Anonymous (not verified)

Who do they think they are fooling, Do they really believe this is the answer? Even if they do eradicate coca in Colombia someone else will pick up the slack.

Eradication of marijuana was tried in Mexico and look at the results today. Check out the eradication of opium in Afghanistan and remember they don't hide in the jungles to grow.

Mon, 08/03/2009 - 4:03pm Permalink
Anonymous (not verified)

Eradication is a lie and a fraud so that Colombian Army and Government steal USA Plan Colombia money no matter the dead, the wounded, and the mining field victims. Coca is a herb and so grows stronger each time. Coca farmers have found the way to have herbicide phosphates fertilize the soil.
Eradication figures would only tend to be real if Colombian Army stayed permanently watching over each "eradicated hectare", which does not happen.
¿Do you know that each hectare requires 3-4 flight fumigation passes? ¿Do you know that Colombian Government reports each pass as an independent hectare eradicated? Make numbers. ¿Where does Plan Colombia money go? Answer: to generate more violence and corruption. Very wise politics.

Fri, 08/07/2009 - 8:57pm Permalink
Anonymous (not verified)

Plan Colombia, much like the violence being conducted on the citizens of the "supplier" nation, is funded by The Demand that is American money - which, my view, makes our country both supplier and demander of this ongoing struggle that treats the destitute coca farmer being decimated of his culture like an unimportant side joke; the US common citizen is affected, too. There is, after all, quite a bit of crime going on here in the US - white collar all the way down to street thug. This problem is way out of hand.

Mon, 08/17/2009 - 3:00am Permalink

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