Drug Trade Tyranny on Mexico's Border

Cartels Rule With Bribes And Murder

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 16, 2008; A01

TIJUANA -- The killers prowled through Loma Bonita in the pre-dawn chill.

In silence, they navigated a labyrinth of wood shacks at the crest of a dirt lane in the blighted Tijuana neighborhood, police say. They were looking for Margarito Salda¿a, an easygoing 43-year-old district police commander. They found a house full of sleeping people.

Neighbors quivered at the crack of AK-47 assault rifles blasting inside Salda¿a's tiny home. Rafael Garc¿a, an unemployed laborer who lives nearby, recalled thinking "it was a fireworks show," then sliding under his bed in fear.

In murdering not only Salda¿a, but also his wife, Sandra, and their 12-year-old daughter, Valeria, the Loma Bonita killers violated a rarely broken rule of Mexico's drug cartel underworld: Family should remain free from harm. The slayings capped five harrowing hours during which the assassins methodically hunted down and murdered two other police officers and mistakenly killed a 3-year-old boy and his mother.

The brutality of what unfolded here in the overnight hours of Jan. 14 and early Jan. 15 is a grim hallmark of a crisis that has cast a pall over the United States' southern neighbor. Events in three border cities over the past three months illustrate the military and financial power of Mexico's cartels and the extent of their reach into a society shaken by fear.

More than 20,000 Mexican troops and federal police are engaged in a multi-front war with the private armies of rival drug lords, a conflict that is being waged most fiercely along the 2,000-mile length of the U.S.-Mexico border. The proximity of the violence has drawn in the Bush administration, which has proposed a $500 million annual aid package to help President Felipe Calder¿n combat what a Government Accountability Office report estimates is Mexico's $23 billion a year drug trade.

A total of more than 4,800 Mexicans were slain in 2006 and 2007, making the murder rate in each of those years twice that of 2005. Law enforcement officials and journalists, politicians and peasants have been gunned down in the wave of violence, which includes mass executions, such as the five people whose bodies were found on a ranch outside Tijuana this month.

Like the increasing number of Mexicans heading over the border in fear, the violence itself is spilling into the United States, where a Border Patrol agent was recently killed while chasing suspected traffickers.

Drawing on firepower, savage intimidation and cash, the cartels have come to control key parts of the border, securing smuggling routes for 90 percent of the cocaine flowing into the United States, according to the State Department. At the same time, Mexican soldiers roam streets in armored personnel carriers, attack helicopters patrol the skies, and boats ply the coastal waters.

"The situation is deteriorating," Victor Clark, a Tijuana human rights activist and drug expert, said in an interview. "Drug traffickers are waging a terror campaign. The security of the nation is at stake."
Dominated by a Private Army

More than 1,900 miles southeast of Tijuana, the city of Reynosa stretches along the Rio Grande across from south Texas. This is Gulf cartel country, a region dominated by the cartel's private army, Los Zetas. Their arsenal befits a military brigade, exceeding those of some Mexican army units.

Led by Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, Los Zetas are a highly disciplined mercenary squad composed of former elite Mexican troops, including officers trained by the U.S. military before they deserted. The group has become an obsession of Calder¿n's administration, which has sent more than a thousand troops to Reynosa and neighboring cities.

Soldiers crowd the slender canal bridges that crisscross Reynosa, stopping drivers at random and staring across the cityscape with their fingers on the triggers of heavy weapons. The tense atmosphere has led to mistakes.

On Feb. 16, soldiers fatally shot Sergio Meza Varela, a 28-year-old with no apparent ties to the drug trade, when the car he was riding in didn't stop at a checkpoint. "You're scared to leave your house," Alejandra Salinas, Meza's cousin, said in an interview outside the family tire shop. "We're just in the way."

In Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and Nuevo Laredo, the growing Sinaloa cartel is fighting rivals over smuggling routes. But in Reynosa, police say, only Mexican soldiers threaten the Gulf cartel's control.

To prepare for battle, Los Zetas have stocked safe houses with antitank weapons, assault rifles, grenades and other heavy weapons, including some that Mexican law enforcement authorities believe once belonged to the U.S. Army.

"How can I fight them?" said Juan Jos¿ Mu¿iz Salinas, Reynosa's police chief. "It's impossible."

On Feb. 7, soldiers stormed the dusty "El Mezquito" ranch outside Miguel Aleman, west of Reynosa, and found one of the largest illegal arsenals in recent memory: 89 assault rifles, 83,355 rounds of ammunition, and plastic explosives capable of demolishing buildings. Two days later in nearby Nuevo Laredo, soldiers found a weapons cache that included eight military uniforms used as disguises.

The mounting evidence that cartels have infiltrated many border police forces has prompted drastic action.

In Reynosa, soldiers disarmed the entire police force in January, leaving them without weapons for 19 days while ballistics tests were conducted. Police officers, who make $625 a month, were also forced to provide voice samples for comparison with recordings of threats made over police radios, Mayor Oscar Luebbert Guti¿rrez said in an interview.

"It wasn't worth it," said Mu¿iz Salinas, the police chief. "They come after us, but it's other authorities that are really involved. Look at the state police, the federal police and the military."
The Enemy Is in the House

It was New Year's Day in Tijuana, the hilly city at the foot of America's busiest border crossing. City workers prepped for celebrations, but Jes¿s Alberto Rodr¿guez Meraz and Sa¿l Ovalle Guerrero, both veteran police officers, had other plans.

They were going to get rich.

The officers stole one ton of marijuana from the Arellano F¿lix drug cartel. But before they could sell the load they were kidnapped. Four days later their bodies were found, Tijuana's new police chief, Jes¿s Alberto Capella, said in an interview.

The killings barely registered in Mexico, lost in an avalanche of at least 30 police officer murders in the past three months and dozens more in the past year. Their case illuminates the pervasive police corruption created by drug money.

One of every two police officers murdered in Mexico today is directly involved with drug gangs, according to estimates by police officials, prosecutors and drug experts.

Capella, nicknamed "Tijuana Rambo" because he fought his way out of an assassination attempt shortly before taking office, estimates that 15 percent of the city's 2,300 police officers work for drug cartels, earning a monthly stipend as body guards, kidnappers or assassins. In Baja California alone, Mexican justice officials estimate that 30 percent of the local and federal police force is on a cartel payroll.

"We have the enemy in our house," Capella said.

The killings in Loma Bonita here were related to a police corruption case, Capella and other police officials said. A few days earlier, Tijuana police had killed an officer working as a bodyguard for a drug gang that tried to rob an armored car.

Cartel assassins, using police radios, vowed revenge. Within a week, Salda¿a, his family, and two other officers had been murdered.

Some of the killings have come with specific messages taunting Mexican authorities.

During one week in mid-February, six bodies were found with signs lashed to them that included information such as the phone number and address of the Mexican army office set up to receive tips about organized crime. According to analysts, such "narco-messages," some of which are carved into the bodies, are intended to keep residents from reporting tips.

The decline of the Arellano F¿lix cartel's dominance of Tijuana has had the unexpected effect of deepening police corruption.

After one brother was assassinated and two others were arrested, a war erupted because the cartel's new leadership -- including a sister, Enedina -- refused to share territory with the Sinaloa cartel, a police official said on condition of anonymity. Once loyal to the Arellano Felix cartel, some police officers switched sides.

"The police became armed wings of the warring cartels," the police official said.

At the same time, tighter border enforcement following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has made it harder for cartels to smuggle drugs into the United States. So the cartels developed a local market by giving out free samples of drugs, according to Clark, the Tijuana-based drug expert and human rights activist.

The estimated number of addicts in Tijuana doubled from 100,000 in 2004 to 200,000 in 2007, Clark said. The number of small stores or houses where drugs are sold increased fivefold -- to 20,000 outlets -- over that time. Each outlet pays protection money to police, so their proliferation meant more payoffs.

In response, authorities in Baja California and several other border states have begun giving police lie-detector tests. The questions range from the innocuous to queries such as "Have you ever worked with a drug trafficker?"

Rommel Moreno Manjarrez, Baja California's attorney general, said in an interview that out of every 1,000 officers tested, 700 fail.

"It's impossible for the narco to succeed without the help of the police," he said. "The success that the narco has been having is because of the police."
Transformed by Drug Money

About 20 minutes south of Tijuana, high-rise condominiums line the coast near Rosarito Beach. Once a sleepy hideaway for Hollywood stars, the town had over time exploded into a gaudy party magnet, drawing tourists to the beach and the studio where the movies "Titanic" and "Master and Commander" were filmed.

Rosarito's further transformation has been propelled by drug money and culture, turning the surfer's haven into a key transshipment point for cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines. City hall is now an armed encampment. Soldiers in armored personnel carriers guard the front entrance.

The new police chief, Jorge Eduardo Montero ¿lvarez, now occupies an office inside the cordon. His headquarters was rendered uninhabitable by a December attack.

Investigators believe Rosarito Beach police -- working on behalf of the drug gangs -- were behind the attack, which killed one of Montero ¿lvarez's bodyguards. Days later, Mexican soldiers disarmed the entire 149-officer Rosarito police force.

"I'm more afraid of the police than the narcos," said Jorge Luis Qui¿ones, a Rosarito Beach physician and businessman, reflecting a feeling that has built for years among many of the surrounding area's 150,000 residents.

In June 2006, three Rosarito Beach police officers were beheaded. For Hugo Torres Chabert, scion of the wealthy family that founded the famed Rosarito Beach Hotel, it was a grim wakeup call.

Convinced that almost every level of the city's government had become tainted with drug money, Torres Chabert ran for mayor and won. Soon after taking office last December, he fired 80 of the city's 500 employees. But he says he hasn't been able to press for arrests for lack of evidence.

"They were corrupt, but not stupid," he said.

To the children of Rosarito Beach, narco gunmen had already became local heroes because they drove the fanciest cars, wore the latest styles and acted like they owned the town. "Black commandos," the drug cartel hit men, began openly flashing their weapons, snorting cocaine and strutting through the beach town.

"It became impossible to avoid drug dealers -- your kids go to school with their kids," Aurelio Casta¿eda, a Rosarito Beach bar owner and merchants association official, said in an interview. "You'd go to a bathroom in a bar, and they'd be selling cocaine. They don't even try to hide it, and there was nothing you could do about it, nobody you could turn to."

Casta¿eda's once-busy bar, El Torito, is often empty. He says his business is down 80 percent since 2001, when Rosarito Beach's drug violence spiked, scaring off most surfers and other tourists.

Beyond the flash of the bars and hotels, Rosarito Beach is a warren of impoverished neighborhoods where developers, after paying off city officials, did not bother to install water lines or electrical connections. The dismal living conditions created fertile recruiting grounds for drug traffickers, who have found many willing to "mule" their product across the border for $500 a trip.

But great quantities of drugs stay in Rosarito and are sold at hundreds of convenience stores or private homes that thrive under police protection. Not long ago, a Baja California journalist began digging into the problem. The cartels found out and, in a series of phone calls, threatened to kill him.

It wasn't the first time. He'd had enough. Terrified, the journalist left the business.

"I was saying to myself, 'This is an important subject,' " the journalist said on condition of anonymity, fearing for his safety. "But I wasn't willing to lose my life over it."

Cartels Suspected In Mexico Killings

33 Bodies Found At Gang Sanctuary; 7 Die at Law Office

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 15, 2008; A08

MEXICO CITY, March 14 -- Mexican authorities announced Friday that a total of 33 bodies had been found in graves at a drug cartel safe house and that seven people were killed in a law office that has represented drug traffickers.

The law office shooting took place Thursday in Guadalajara, a prosperous industrial city in western Mexico that has experienced far less drug violence than many other parts of the country, authorities said. The victims appeared to be attorneys as well as low-level assistants, and some were found tied up and shot execution-style, a common technique of cartel hit men, authorities said.

The law firm, Rangel Garcia & Associates, has represented Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, the head of the Sinaloa cartel and widely considered Mexico's most powerful drug lord, according to a report in the Reforma newspaper. Guzman's cartel has attempted to expand across Mexico and is battling rivals in half a dozen states. The war among the cartels has left more than 5,000 people dead since January 2006.

News of the Guadalajara killings was quickly subsumed by word that 24 additional bodies were found at a house linked to the Juarez cartel in Ciudad Juarez, a violence-torn border city. Work crews have been digging behind the house since March 1, when nine bodies were found.

The Juarez cartel is reportedly trying to stop its Sinaloa rivals from seizing its smuggling routes.

There was immediate speculation that the discovery might be linked to the deaths of 400 women in Ciudad Juarez over the past 14 years, a development that has drawn international attention. But the attorney general's office said in a statement that only three of the victims were women.

Investigators said that the corpses were found in 14 graves and that the deaths were probably connected to drug gang violence. The bodies had been buried for about five years, the statement said, adding that an anonymous tip led to the site.

Drug Gang, Police Battle For 5 Hours In Tijuana

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 4, 2008; A13

MEXICO CITY, March 3 -- Mexican soldiers and federal police fought a five-hour gun battle with suspected drug gang hit men late Sunday and early Monday in a residential area of Tijuana. At least one of the heavily armed suspects was killed and two were injured, authorities said.

The confrontation was the latest in a series of street battles that have terrorized the border city, where rival drug cartels also turn their weapons on each other. In January, another residential neighborhood was paralyzed by a three-hour gun battle that prompted the evacuation of a preschool and ended with the discovery of six dead kidnapping victims inside a cartel safe house.

Monday's battle took place in Tijuana's La Mesa neighborhood, a troubled area where the police commander was killed in January, a spokesman for the Baja California public safety agency told reporters. Federal police and soldiers were conducting an operation to shut down a suspected cartel safe house. Local police, many of whom are suspected of helping cartels, did not take part.

Soldiers and police began exchanging gunfire with the suspects at about 10 p.m. Sunday and fought through the night. At least 200 soldiers cordoned off several blocks during the battle, authorities said. Horrified neighbors told local news media that they hid inside their homes until the shooting stopped at about 3 a.m.

In Tijuana, two powerful drug gangs -- the Arellano Felix cartel and the Sinaloa cartel -- have been fighting over control of smuggling routes. Mexican President Felipe Calderon has dispatched hundreds of troops and federal police to the city to confront the cartels.

In Monday's shootout, authorities appeared to make new use of a strategy initiated after Calderon took office, according to Jorge Chabat, a Mexico City-based drug expert. Rather than focusing primarily on nabbing kingpins, Chabat said in an interview, soldiers also are attacking the safe houses that serve as refuges for hit squads and are trying to disrupt street operations of smugglers.

"There's a bigger focus on gathering intelligence," Chabat said. "But the narcos are responding with violence, and we're going to probably see a lot more of these street fights because the narcos have big numbers of assassins on their side."

Chavez Warns of War With Colombia

By IAN JAMES
The Associated Press
Sunday, March 2, 2008; 3:47 PM

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Warning that Colombia could spark a war, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sent tanks and thousands of troops to the countries' border Sunday and ordered his government's embassy in Bogota closed.

The leftist leader warned Colombia's U.S.-allied government that Venezuela will not permit acts like Saturday's killing of top rebel leader Raul Reyes and 16 other Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrillas at a camp across the border in Ecuador.

"Mr. Defense Minister, move 10 battalions to the border with Colombia for me, immediately _ tank battalions, deploy the air force," Chavez said during his weekly TV and radio program. "We don't want war, but we aren't going to permit the U.S. empire, which is the master (of Colombia) ... to come to divide us."

He ordered the Venezuelan Embassy in Bogota closed and said all embassy personnel would be withdrawn. It pushes already tense relations between the South American neighbors to their lowest point yet, with potentially far-reach effects on billions of dollars in cross-border trade.

Though Chavez didn't say how many troops he was sending, a Venezuelan battalion traditionally has some 600 soldiers _ meaning some 6,000 could be headed to the border.

Chavez called the Colombian government "a terrorist state" as he sided with the leftist rebels it has battled for decades, saying its military "invaded Ecuador, flagrantly violated Ecuador's sovereignty."

Neither Colombia's foreign minister nor the country's military leadership would comment on Chavez's latest move when pressed by reporters for comment Sunday as they left a funeral service in Bogota for a Colombian soldier killed in Saturday's raid.

Speaking in Texas, U.S. National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said officials were monitoring the situation.

"This is an odd reaction by Venezuela to Colombia's efforts against the FARC, a terrorist organization that continues to hold Colombians, Americans and others hostage," Johndroe said.

Chavez said he had just spoken to Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa and that Ecuador was also sending troops to its border with Colombia. Chavez said his Ecuadorean ally told him that Uribe had lied and that the rebels were killed while asleep "in their pajamas."

"This is something very serious. This could be the start of a war in South America," Chavez said. He warned Colombian President Alvaro Uribe: "If it occurs to you to do this in Venezuela, President Uribe, I'll send some Sukhois" _ Russian warplanes recently bought by Venezuela.

He called Uribe "a criminal" accusing him of being a "lapdog" of Washington saying "Dracula's fangs (are) covered in blood."

The slaying of Reyes and 16 other guerrillas, Chavez said, "wasn't any combat. It was a cowardly murder, all of it coldly calculated."

"We pay tribute to a true revolutionary, who was Raul Reyes," Chavez said, recalling that he had met rebel in Brazil in 1995 and calling him a "good revolutionary."

"The Colombian government has become the Israel of Latin America," an agitated Chavez said, mentioning another country that he has criticized for its military strikes. "We aren't going to permit Colombia to become the Israel of these lands. ... Uribe, we aren't going to permit you."

"Someday Colombia will be freed from the hand of the (U.S.) empire," Chavez said. "We have to liberate Colombia," he added, saying Colombia's people will eventually do away with its government.

Chavez maintains warm relations with the Colombia's largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and has sought to play a role as mediator in the conflict despite his growing conflict with Colombia's government.

Colombia and Venezuela have been locked in a diplomatic crisis since November, when Uribe ended Chavez's official role negotiating a proposed hostages-for-prisoners swap.

Nevertheless, the FARC freed four hostages to Venezuelan officials last week, and they were reunited with their families in Caracas. It was the second unilateral release by the FARC this year.

Chavez has recently angered Uribe by urging world leaders to classify the leftist rebels as "insurgents" rather than "terrorists."

The FARC has proposed trading some 40 remaining high-value captives, including former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. defense contractors, for hundreds of imprisoned guerrillas.

In Ecuador, army Gen. Fabian Narvaez told The Associated Press that soldiers had found the bodies of 15 rebels and that soldiers planned to hand the bodies over to Ecuadorean officials, who will conduct forensic exams.

He said three Ecuadorean battalions have been stationed in the area in the country's northeastern jungle since Saturday, just a few miles from Colombian territory.

Colombian Forces Kill Senior Guerrilla Commander, Official Says

By SIMON ROMERO

CARACAS, Venezuela — Colombia’s Defense Ministry announced Saturday that security forces had killed a senior commander of the country’s largest guerrilla group in combat along the southern border with Ecuador.

The death of Raúl Reyes, one of the rebels’ highest-ranking commanders, was a severe blow for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which has been waging an insurgency against the government for the last four decades.

“This is the most important strike yet delivered against this terrorist group,” Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said to reporters at a news conference in Bogotá.

Mr. Reyes, the nom de guerre of Luis Édgar Devia, is the fourth senior member of the FARC killed in the past year. Last September, Colombia’s government celebrated the killing of Tomás Medina Caracas, a commander believed to control a large part of the FARC’s smuggling operations in eastern Colombia.

The United States, which provides Colombia with more than $600 million a year in military aid, was offering a $5 million reward for the capture of Mr. Reyes, 59, part of the FARC’s seven-member secretariat and believed to be a contender to succeed the group’s top commander, 77-year-old Manuel Marulanda.

Intelligence operations led security forces to an area in southern Putamayo Province where members of the FARC unit, the 48th Front, were camped Friday night, the Defense Ministry said in a statement. Shortly after midnight on Saturday, Colombia’s air force attacked the camp in a bombing raid.

FARC forces responded with fire from a camp on the Ecuadorian side of the border, the ministry said, killing one Colombian soldier. Colombia’s air attack killed 17 guerrillas, including Mr. Reyes and Guillermo Enrique Torres, a chief theoretician with the FARC, the military said.

Colombia’s government said the bodies of Mr. Reyes and Mr. Torres were recovered in Ecuadorian territory and brought to Colombia on Saturday. President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia informed his counterpart in Ecuador, President Rafael Correa, of the operation, Colombia’s Defense Ministry said.

The military said it conducted its air strike from the Colombian side of the border.

Mr. Reyes often served as a de facto spokesman for the FARC, receiving emissaries and journalists in the group’s jungle camps. He was among the most powerful members of the secretariat, defending the group’s use of abductions and extortion to finance its activities.

The FARC, which also finances itself through cocaine trafficking, is estimated to have as few as 6,000 to 8,000 combatants, down from 16,000 at the time of intense fighting in Colombia in 2001. Still, the FARC remains a major presence in some rural parts of the country.

The focus now turns to Mr. Marulanda, whose real name is Pedro Antonio Marín, who has been reported to be ill. A contender to succeed Mr. Marulanda is thought to be Jorge Briceño Suárez, a hardline commander known as “Mono Jojoy” in the eastern wing of the FARC.

The FARC is believed to hold some 700 captives, including more than 40 political hostages such as Ingrid Betancourt, a former presidential candidate. President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has helped negotiate the release of six of the FARC’s captives in recent weeks.

Jenny Carolina González contributed reporting from Bogotá, Colombia.

US: Afghan Opium Crop Hurts Democracy

By ANNE GEARAN
The Associated Press
Friday, February 29, 2008; 11:25 AM

WASHINGTON -- Record illegal drug production in Afghanistan supplies the Taliban insurgency with money and arms and the U.S.-backed government must take direct, prompt action against poppy growers, a State Department report said Friday.

Afghan farmers grew more poppies for opium in 2007 than ever before, the second year in a row of record production in the nation the United States invaded after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. The drug trade deters progress toward a stable, economically independent democracy, the report said.

"The counterinsurgency nexus is both real and growing," said Assistant Secretary David Johnson, the State Department's top drug enforcement officer.

The International Narcotics Control Strategy Report says the largest and best-known insurgent group _ the hard-line Taliban _ benefits with money and weapons while offering protection to growers and traffickers.

"Eliminating narcotics cultivation and trafficking in Afghanistan will require a long-term national and international commitment," the State Department said in the report, which added: "The Afghan government must take decisive action against poppy cultivation soon to turn back the drug threat before its further growth and consolidation make it even more difficult to defeat."

The report noted that Afghan President Hamid Karzai considered limited aerial spraying to eradicate opium poppies last year, but opted not to do it. Such action would have been extremely dangerous and highly unpopular.

Afghanistan grew 93 percent of the world's opium poppy last year, according to United Nations figures cited in Friday's report. The haul, worth an estimated $4 billion on the illegal world market, represented more than a third of Afghanistan's combined total gross domestic product, or GDP, of $11.5 billion.

Production was up 34 percent above 2006 levels and was nearly double the total for 2005.

Land under cultivation for poppies increased 17 percent in 2007 and good weather helped increase production on land already under cultivation, the report said.

Johnson welcomed some projections that say Afghan drug production will fall in 2008.

The report measures foreign drug production and efforts to fight it. The report does not examine drug production, interdiction or eradication in the United States.

British anti-drug effort a failure: Afghan official

Sun Sep 2, 2007 7:36AM EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - British efforts to combat opium production in southern Afghanistan have completely failed, Afghanistan's first vice-president said on Sunday, calling for tougher measures, including aerial spraying.

Ahmad Zia Masood said Britain and the United States had spent hundreds of millions of dollars to combat growing of opium poppies used to make heroin.

Yet United Nations' figures released last week showed opium production rose by 34 percent this year, he said.

"It is now clear that your policy in the south of our country has completely failed," he wrote in an article in Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

"In Helmand (in southern Afghanistan), where the British are based, poppies have spread like a cancer," he said. "The province now produces half of Afghanistan's opium."

The main reason the policy had failed was insecurity, he said. "Opium cultivation has continued due to the pressure exerted by the Taliban, who 'tax' every aspect of the poppy crop," he added.

Counter-narcotics policy has been "much too soft", Masood said. "The time has come for us to adopt a more forceful approach. We must switch from ground-based eradication to aerial spraying," he said.

Bringing development and jobs to Afghan people was important, but large sums spent on irrigation projects and road-building had simply made it easier for farmers to grow and transport opium, he said.

Another problem was that counter-narcotics operations were not in Afghan hands, he said. "Poppy cultivation is an Afghan problem and it needs an Afghan solution," he said.

Masood acknowledged there was deep-rooted corruption in Afghan state institutions engaged in combating narcotics and terrorism. "We must wipe out this plague," he said.

Afghanistan's opium crop has risen every year since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban government in 2001, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said on Monday.

Afghanistan produced 93 percent of the world's opium this year and the area of the country used to grow poppies rose by 17 percent, it said.

Asked about Masood's comments, Britain's Foreign Office said it had nothing to add to a statement released in response to the U.N. report last week.

That statement said the increase in opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan was a "real cause for concern" and the figures for Helmand "particularly disappointing".

But it said there were signs of progress. In parts of the north and centre, drug cultivation was coming down or stabilizing and the number of poppy-free provinces had increased from six to 13. "Ridding Afghanistan of this curse will take a generation, perhaps more," the Foreign Office said.

Prosperous Haven in Mexico Is Invaded by Drug Violence

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 4, 2007; A01

MONTERREY, Mexico -- Biti Rodriguez could have gone anywhere for her 10-year-old's birthday party. But Incredible Pizza, a mammoth restaurant and fun house tucked into the corner of a strip mall here, offered her something that suddenly has become a consuming obsession: safety.

She herded her daughter, Alejandra, and a dozen other giggling girls through two metal detectors one recent afternoon at this pizza parlor that promises "incredible security for your children," then dumped bags of presents on a table to be probed by a guard. It took a while to actually get inside, but Rodriguez didn't care. She thinks all the extra security is "super bien" -- super good.

Not so long ago, metal detectors at a pizza place would have been unimaginable in Monterrey, Mexico's third-largest metropolitan area, with more than 3.6 million residents. The city once seemed as if it could do no wrong -- two years ago it was named the safest city in Latin America by an international consulting group, it boasted the region's wealthiest residential neighborhood, and it was a strong competitor for the Major League Baseball franchise that became the Washington Nationals.

But in the past year, the drug violence raging across Mexico has landed hard in Monterrey, jarring residents who once felt immune to the shootouts so common in other big Mexican cities.

In the first six months of 2007, Monterrey registered 162 killings, nearly as many as were recorded in all of last year and about 50 more than in all of 2004. But it wasn't just the killings that shook up the Biti Rodriguezes of this city -- it was the brazenness of the killers.

A hit man walked calmly into the landmark Gran San Carlos restaurant, past rows of Monterrey's signature hanging roasted cabrito, or goat, and shot dead a man seated at a table beneath the stained-glass cupola. Gunmen launched volleys of bullets into a popular seafood restaurant at the height of the lunch rush, and police officers were mowed down in broad daylight.

The killings triggered tremors of fear. Newspapers now run daily tallies of slayings. A roadside hotel has advertised bulletproof rooms. Heavily armored cars have become a new status symbol, with corporate chieftains dishing out as much as $400,000 for Mercedes-Benz sedans that ward off not only bullets but also grenades. In the San Pedro Garza Garcia suburb, where hillside palaces rival the mansions of Beverly Hills, a new saying was born: "There are no Tuesdays without killings."

"I can't say Monterrey is the safest city in Mexico anymore -- that would be a lie," Jesús Marcos Giacomán, president of the 122-year-old Monterrey Chamber of Commerce and Tourism, said in an interview. "I can say we're going to make it the safest again."
An Economic Powerhouse

Monterrey wraps around the stunning, rocky peaks of the Sierra Madre, 130 miles southwest of McAllen, Tex. Gleaming towers form its skyline, and U.S.-style malls and upscale restaurants line its wide boulevards.

Known as the "Sultanate of the North" because of its popularity with Middle Eastern businessmen, Monterrey revved into an economic powerhouse after the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect in 1994. The world's largest cement maker is here, as well as Mexico's biggest beer producer and one of the world's largest glass manufacturers. Major American corporations operate huge plants.

For the past five years, Monterrey stayed mostly peaceful while the rival Sinaloa and Gulf drug cartels fought over territory in other cities near the border, such as Nuevo Laredo. But something more complicated has happened here in the past year, Aldo Fasci Zuazua, deputy attorney general of Nuevo Leon state, said in an interview at his Monterrey office.

For unknown reasons, the local drug lords who warehouse cocaine, methamphetamines and marijuana for the big cartels began fighting each other, Fasci said. Their bloody battles unnerved the national and transnational cartels that counted on Monterrey's small-time operators to funnel tons of drugs into the United States.

A business that had run smoothly for years was suddenly a mess, and the national cartels felt compelled to sweep into Monterrey to "restore order," Fasci said. In the vernacular of organized crime, that meant killing people.
Fear Takes Hold

By April, assassinations were so rampant that the U.S. Embassy issued a travel warning for Monterrey noting that "Mexican and foreign bystanders" had been killed in Mexico. The next month, the business magazine America Economia dropped Monterrey from the top of its list of best places to do business in Latin America, a blow for a city that reaped a bonanza of publicity in 1999 when Fortune magazine dubbed it Latin America's top business locale.

Within days of America Economia's piece, Mexican President Felipe Calderón dispatched federal troops to patrol Monterrey's streets, one in a series of military assaults against cartel strongholds across the country.

Monterrey's wealthy -- the city is said to be home to more than a dozen of Mexico's most powerful families -- were well prepared to withstand the violence in their streets. Top corporations began hiring armed security forces. Executives and their families now travel in protective bubbles ringed by bodyguards and live behind high walls fitted with motion sensors and cameras.

But Monterrey's middle class, the pride of a state that boasts that its annual per-capita income of $14,000 is twice the national average, became frantic. Biti Rodriguez cringed each night when she watched the news. In her neighborhood, parents stopped letting their kids walk to school. School administrators tightened rules about who could pick up children.

Authorities know that private schools accept drug dealers' money to educate their kids, but "there's nothing that the government can do about it," Fasci said.

Rodriguez felt compelled to do something she'd never done before: She started locking the doors of her suburban Monterrey home.
Underworld Infiltration

With hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into the pockets of drug traffickers, authorities here suspect that organized crime has diversified, investing in criminal enterprises such as kidnapping and the smuggling of illegal immigrants, as well as legitimate businesses such as real estate.

The underworld has infiltrated state and municipal governments and police forces, damaging confidence in public institutions even though about 400 law enforcement officers suspected of corruption have been taken off the streets. One councilman here estimated that as many 200,000 people in the state of Nuevo Leon -- 5 percent of the population -- may be involved directly or indirectly in the drug trade.

Local politicians, especially in the many municipalities that abut Monterrey, say they feel like targets. One recent afternoon, a municipal councilman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that he "feels threatened all the time" and that even the most minor decisions become complicating labyrinths that can paralyze local governments afraid of unknowingly angering drug lords.

To protect himself, he conducts extensive investigations, gaming out every possible scenario about the possible ripple effects of his votes. But those inquiries carry risks, too. "If you're asking all these questions," he said, "sometimes these narcos find out and get nervous."

Although he can afford to buy a car, he doesn't. He said driving the same car would make him easy to spot, so some days he grabs a taxi, other days he hops a bus. His route to the office varies from day to day -- it takes much longer, but he feels safer.

His municipality and others around Monterrey suffer from police shortages as officers quit rather than risk their lives at a time when several dozen officers have been killed. Authorities say police victims range from good cops who challenge the cartels to corrupt cops killed for favoring one cartel over another.

José Antonio Samaniego Hernández might have been one of those good cops, his family said in an interview. He survived one assassination attempt but was gunned down three months later while leaving the ramshackle home where he lived in a cramped bedroom with his wife, daughter and mother. Samaniego became a number that day -- execution victim No. 33 of 2007, according to the newspaper Milenio.

But to Anna Calderón Garcia, 15, he was the police officer down the street, the guy in the uniform who stopped to talk to all the kids. He was also one of half a dozen police officers she has known -- either as neighbors or because they spoke at her school -- who have been shot dead.

After never hearing a gunshot in her life, Calderón said, she has twice been startled by gunfire. One night while leaving a Wal-Mart, she and friends saw the bodies of two slain policemen lying in the parking lot.

"It changed my life forever," she said. "Now I'm always looking around me, wondering if I might get shot."

While most of the shooting victims in Monterrey have been alleged drug traffickers, innocent victims have also fallen, including a 42-year-old mother of five caught in the crossfire during a gun battle in December.

Kids in Calderón's class, like children in so many other places, once dreamed of being police officers, putting on uniforms, playing a glamorous real-life game of cops-and-robbers. Not anymore.

She lives three blocks from a funeral home and cups her ears when she hears sirens. Each time, she said, she whispers to herself: "Another dead one."

Mexican cartels outgun towns

Ill-prepared and often corrupt, rural and border city police and officials are the weakest link in the war on drugs.
By Héctor Tobar and Carlos Martínez
Times Staff Writers

July 9, 2007

NACO, MEXICO — The message came on police emergency radio: An army of drug traffickers with machine guns mounted on their pickup trucks was headed toward this town of 5,000 people on the Arizona-Mexico border.

Like a sheriff in a western, police chief and part-time schoolteacher Juan Bracamontes gritted his teeth and assembled his 15 officers, who had nothing better than old .38-caliber revolvers to face off against the enemy.

"Those who want to leave can leave," the chief said. "Those who want to stay and fight, line up behind me and we'll give it to them good."

One officer quit on the spot. The others deployed around the town, but not before taking off their uniforms and abandoning their patrol cars for unmarked vehicles.

In other Mexican towns, local authorities have not shown as much courage in the face of threats from cash-rich drug traffickers. Underarmed, under-prepared and often corrupt, small-town officials and police are the Achilles' heel of President Felipe Calderon's offensive against the nation's drug traffickers.

Calderon has made the battle to rein in Mexico's drug cartels the centerpiece of his presidency, committing large portions of the army and much of the federal police force to the effort.

The cartels have been fighting one another for control of smuggling routes to the United States. The resulting violence claimed more than 2,000 lives last year, and the killings this year have been on a pace to exceed that toll.

In the rural and border areas where smugglers operate, police frequently find themselves on the front line of the drug wars. Arresting a cartel operative might mean death. Even those who agree to protect one band of traffickers risk being attacked by rival gunmen.

Municipal officers account for 60% of the police force in Mexico, with state and federal police making up the rest. Mexican officials and analysts say city police and city officials receive a big share of the estimated $3 billion that drug traffickers pay in bribes each year.

Officials at Mexico's Public Safety Secretariat estimate that traffickers pay police an average monthly bribe of $500 to $600, roughly equal to a starting officer's monthly salary in towns such as Naco and neighboring Cananea.

"The training these officers receive is very precarious, as is their pay," said Raul Benitez, a professor at American University in Washington and a specialist in Mexican security issues. In many towns, Benitez said, the only requirement for becoming a police officer is being a friend of the mayor: The police force is a prime political plum.

These undertrained officers face an increasingly sophisticated enemy, as Mexico's drug cartels form small armies in which many of the "troops" have at least some military-style training.

Two days before the report of a "caravan of death" headed for Naco, as many as 50 armed men attacked Cananea. Five municipal officers were kidnapped and killed in the May 16 incident. Within hours, half of the 48-officer Cananea police force had turned in their guns and quit.

"We have no protection," several Cananea officers told reporters gathered around the town's police station. With allegations of links to traffickers swirling around the force, eight officers were fired, as was the police chief.

"On the one side organized crime is killing police officers, and on the other side the government is investigating and firing them," said Jose Arturo Yanez, a researcher at the Professional Police Training Institute in Mexico City. "No one is protecting them."

Security officials have resigned or been fired en masse in at least 18 states in nearly every region of Mexico.

Dozens have walked away from their jobs. A few have fled in the face of arrest warrants. Others, such as Orlando Valencia of Cananea, disappear from their offices.

Valencia was both the mayor's spokesman and the city emergency coordinator. In late May, he disappeared, and officials announced that they were seeking his arrest on suspicion of aiding drug traffickers in their escape after the attack on Cananea.

Even for those brave enough to serve in the country's most dangerous towns, discretion is usually the better part of valor. One high-ranking police official in a town in Zacatecas state explained the advice he gives his officers to keep them safe:

"I told them that if they see something suspicious, they should withdraw," said the official, who asked not to be named. "It doesn't matter what it is, just withdraw…. These people are well-armed and we just have the basics."

After an encounter with suspected cartel hit men, many officers in his town received telephone death threats. A good chunk of the force resigned.

"I don't know why they quit," the official said. "And you know what? I don't care."

The estimated 50 cartel hit men who descended on Cananea had attended a two-month camp to prepare for their assault, said Sonora state authorities, who interviewed the surviving hit men. The training was led by a former member of the Hermosillo city police department. And federal officials said at least four of the gunmen were army veterans.

The hit men were working on behalf of a drug-trade organization allied with a local trafficker, Francisco Hernandez Garcia, also known as "The Two Thousand."

The Two Thousand had agreements with local police chiefs to protect his shipments, according to news reports. Such agreements are called compromisos here, a Spanish word meaning commitments or obligations.

But the pacts were broken, setting off a series of violent incidents that climaxed with the raid on Cananea.

Home to 30,000 people, Cananea is famous for a 1906 miners' strike that helped spark the Mexican Revolution. Set amid the dun hills of the Sonoran Desert, it is a place where the daily routine of police work rarely involves anything more violent than a domestic dispute or drunken fight at a party.

All that changed early on the morning of May 16. Cananea police received word that a pair of officers had been attacked and beaten at a checkpoint outside town. Five officers were dispatched to assist them.

The five set off with shotguns and .223-caliber rifles recently provided by state authorities, though the bulletproof vests promised by the state had not yet arrived, officials said. When the officers reached the scene, they encountered four dozen cartel hit men: The officers surrendered without firing a shot; they were later tortured and executed.

The mayor summoned help. State and federal officers tracked the gunmen to a remote mountain settlement. In the ensuing gunfight, 15 suspected cartel hit men were killed.

"There hadn't been a battle like that here since the revolution," said Martin Ballesteros Rios, now Cananea's acting chief of police.

Gabriel Hurtado, the police chief at the time, was fired five days later; sources say he had abandoned his post. Although he faces no charges, there are rumors. He hasn't been seen in the town since he left, officials said.

Ballesteros Rios stepped in.

The acting chief says he isn't worried about what might happen to him, despite warnings from friends and relatives.

"My conscience is clean, because I don't have any compromisos with anyone," he said.

Thirty miles away in Naco, Mayor Jose Lorenzo Villegas has fired six police chiefs during his two terms in office. He fired Chief Roberto Tacho in January; weeks later, U.S. officials arrested the former lawman as he allegedly tried to smuggle about 60 pounds of marijuana into the United States.

Tacho and his brother Ramon were part of a small circle that until recently controlled the police in three neighboring towns — Naco, Cananea and Agua Prieta. Ramon Tacho, the police chief of Agua Prieta, was assassinated outside his office in February by suspected cartel hit men.

In Naco, a windblown town of squat buildings hugging the U.S. border, there is a growing sense that the community is being drawn into a larger conflict.

On the day the drug traffickers' army was reported to be headed their way, town residents responded as though war had broken out.

Businesses and schools shut down. City Hall was evacuated, and some officials fled to the United States.

U.S. Border Patrol agents with machine guns took up positions on the roof of the border-crossing station in Naco, Ariz., which overlooks the Mexican Naco's small downtown.

Mayor Villegas was in Hermosillo, Sonora's state capital, picking up new 9-millimeter pistols and AR-15 rifles issued to his police force.

"We lived some very ugly moments that day," the 34-year-old mayor said. "By phone, people were telling me I should declare a state of siege."

But the report of the "caravan of death" headed for Naco turned out to be a false alarm.

At the end of the day, after the crisis had passed, Villegas arrived in Naco with boxes of pistols and rifles.

"Look at this beautiful thing," Police Chief Bracamontes said, taking one of the new pistols from its holster. "And this one too," he said, raising a sleek, black AR-15 rifle that was propped up against the wall of his office.

Like most of the new weapons, it still hasn't been fired.

hector.tobar@latimes.com

--

Tobar reported from Naco and Martínez from Zacatecas.

Calderón's Offensive Against Drug Cartels

Use of Mexican Military Increasingly Criticized

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 8, 2007; A15

MEXICO CITY -- Every Monday morning, President Felipe Calderón settles in at the head of the table in the presidential library at Los Pinos, Mexico's fortresslike chief executive's compound.

Calderón presides over strategy sessions with the leaders of Mexico's army and navy, key players in the centerpiece initiative of his seven-month-old presidency: a military assault against drug cartels. No Mexican president in recent history has convened his security council with such regularity, but few of his modern-day predecessors have faced such a daunting security crisis.

Calderón is betting his presidency on a surge of Mexican troops -- one of the country's largest deployments of the military in a crime-fighting role -- to wage street-by-street battles with drug cartels that are blamed for more than 3,000 execution-style killings in the past year and a half. Sending more than 20,000 federal troops and police officers to nine Mexican states has made Calderón extremely popular; his latest approval ratings hit 65 percent.

But as the campaign drags into its eighth month and the death toll mounts, Calderón is facing a growing cadre of critics, including the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights representative in Mexico, who opposes the use of the military in policing. Calderón is also contending with foes in Mexico's Congress who want to strip him of the authority to dispatch troops without congressional approval. The Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights organization, has faulted him as quick to use the military but slow to reform Mexico's corrupt police.

All this is familiar territory for Calderón, a former congressman and energy secretary who appears comfortable in the role of political scrapper.

Pundits predicted he would struggle in office after collecting barely more than a third of the vote in last July's election and being forced into a two-month legal battle -- twice as long as the Bush-Gore electoral crisis in 2000 -- before being declared president by Mexico's Supreme Electoral Tribunal.

But Calderón has not only pounced on the drug violence. He also has pushed through a controversial reform of Mexico's corrupt and antiquated pension system, and he is gaining momentum for a massive fiscal initiative aimed at reducing the country's dependence on oil revenue.

"This seems to be his political destiny," wrote Ramón Alberto Garza, editor of the weekly Indigo. "To sail with the wind against him, a storm on the horizon, with a mutinous crew but to finish the journey safe in port."

Calderón inherited Mexico's drug problem, which was beginning to rival in scope and savagery the 1980s drug wars in Colombia. Drug lords, who make their riches trafficking in cocaine, but also methamphetamines and marijuana, were beheading rivals and killing police officers, municipal officials and journalists who got in their way. Some municipal governments and police forces were so infiltrated by organized crime that they essentially ceased to function as public service entities and became virtual arms of the cartels.
A War Over 'Plaza'

As far back as mid-July 2006, with the election outcome still in doubt, Calderón began laying the groundwork for the military campaign, Mexico's attorney general, Eduardo Medina Mora, said in an interview. With corruption raging throughout local governments and only 27,000 federal police officers available, Medina Mora said, the military seemed to be the only viable option.

"The size of the problem was large enough to understand that using the full federal deployment of police was not enough," Medina Mora said as a Beethoven piano sonata played in the background at his high-rise headquarters in Mexico City.

By the time Calderón took office in December, Mexico's two most powerful drug organizations -- the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels -- were deep into a war over "plaza," as Mexicans call drug territory. Carnage led the news almost every night. It was then that Calderón, a careful, wonkish public speaker not known for soaring rhetoric, started hitting verbal home runs.

"My hand won't tremble" in acting firmly to stop the crime that is holding Mexicans hostage, Calderón said repeatedly.

On Dec. 11, 10 days after taking office, Calderón launched the first of six military operations, sending more than 6,000 federal troops and police officers to his home state of Michoacan. The next day, a cousin of first lady Margarita Zavala was found murdered in the trunk of a car outside Mexico City -- a killing that some suspect was retribution by drug gangs. Undaunted, Calderón sent a force of 3,000 to Tijuana three weeks later.

The day after the Tijuana raid became a signal moment in Calderón's drug war. He donned a khaki hat and military uniform to review his troops in the city of Apatzingan, purportedly the first time in a century that a Mexican president had dressed in military attire. Columnists fretted that he would turn Mexico into a military state. Others mocked the hang of a baggy uniform on the diminutive, unathletic Calderón.

"He looked pathetic," Sen. Graco Ramírez -- a Calderón nemesis who is the son, grandson and brother of Mexican army generals -- sniffed during a recent interview at Mexico's legislative palace.

Ramírez is more than a fashion critic; he and other members of the Democratic Revolutionary Party are among the leaders of a push to declare the use of the military in drug raids unconstitutional. Medina Mora counters that under the Mexican constitution, the armed forces "have not only the power but the duty to preserve internal order."

Calderón dismissed the criticisms. In February, he announced a 45 percent pay increase for the army, a move that contrasted neatly with a decision to lower his own salary by 10 percent and abolish pensions for Mexican presidents.
Admirers in the U.S.

In the six months since he first appeared in a military uniform, Calderón has sent thousands of troops to the infamous drug zones of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua, known as the Golden Triangle, and to Acapulco, Veracruz and the states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon, home to Mexico's industrial capital, Monterrey. The soldiers operate roadblocks, cordon off urban areas for house-to-house searches and often engage heavily armed drug dealers in gun battles.

The troops have arrested more than 580 people, according to the government, though only one would qualify as a major figure. Since the military campaign began, 19 troops and 168 police officers have been killed; more than 1,080 civilian deaths have been recorded, though most of those were the result of infighting among cartels.

Analysts say it is too soon to tell whether the military operations will have a long-term effect. Execution-style killings have decreased somewhat in recent weeks, but some news reports attribute that to what they call a truce between warring cartels; Medina Mora credits the military and said there was no evidence of such a truce.

None of the deaths has resonated like five that occurred mistakenly June 2, when soldiers shot two unarmed women and three children at a roadblock in the northern state of Sonora. The killings set off fierce criticism in Mexico, but Calderón has kept to his military strategy.

The approach has won admirers in the United States, where law enforcement agencies have long pushed for Mexico to confront drug cartels more aggressively.

That positive reception comes at a potentially critical moment in U.S.-Mexico talks to dramatically increase American aid.

News accounts originally compared the Mexican initiative to the multibillion-dollar Plan Colombia, an extensive aid package designed to eradicate coca and erode support for Marxist rebels. Mexican diplomats scrambled to note that their proposal differed in one key way: It does not contemplate a U.S. military presence similar to the one in Colombia. Any hint that U.S. troops would operate in Mexico is wildly inflammatory here; people still bear historical wounds from the Mexican-American War of 1846-48.

María Eugenia Campos Galván, chairwoman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the lower house of Mexico's Congress, said in an interview that Mexican authorities have considered asking for as much as $1 billion. U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, is pushing for a major commitment of U.S. dollars.

"If we're smart, it'll be very high," Reyes said in an interview.

Mexican authorities say they've demonstrated cooperation by sharply increasing extraditions -- already in 2007 breaking Mexico's annual record with 63 extraditions in the first six months of the year. They are hoping the United States will reciprocate by paying for additional training and equipment, including technology that would allow for instant transfer of information between law enforcement officials on each side of the border. Calderón, in particular, is suggesting that the United States has an obligation to help with Mexico's law enforcement costs because of the extent of Americans' illegal drug use.

The talks have been complicated by sensitivities in the United States related to Mexico as Capitol Hill lawmakers were debating immigration proposals.

"When there was a school shooting over in Russia, I got e-mails saying, 'That's why we need a wall on the Mexican border,' " Reyes said. "Regardless of what we do, there are going to be those who try to politicize it."

Mexican authorities are well aware that political tensions could delay or scuttle proposals for more U.S. aid. For now, they are preparing for months, maybe years, of military battles with drug leaders without more help from the United States and for long Monday mornings in the presidential library.

Colombia's Low-Tech Coca Assault

Uprooting Bushes by Hand Preferred Over U.S.-Funded Aerial Spraying

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 7, 2007; A01

EL MIRADOR, Colombia -- The latest shift in Colombia's war on drugs is evident on a green hilltop in this town, as weather-beaten men in gray jumpsuits -- government-paid eradicators -- use hoes and muscle to rip out bushes of coca. Policemen carrying M-16 assault rifles and land-mine detectors stand sentry, while a radio operator listens in on the crackling conversation between two Marxist guerrilla units.

The operation here in the southern state of Caqueta is tedious, hard and dangerous, since destroying coca is a financial blow to the guerrillas, who draw much of their funding from the crop that is used to make cocaine. But Colombian officials say uprooting by hand is the future -- a strategy at odds with U.S. reliance on aerial fumigation.

Three years ago, almost all coca eradication efforts in Colombia were carried out through aerial spraying. By last year, however, more than 100,000 acres of the crop were destroyed by hand, accounting for almost 25 percent of the coca eradicated. The Defense Ministry said it is designing a plan to uproot 172,000 acres by hand this year.

"We are convinced of the advantages of manual eradication over spraying, and that's why we want to give more importance to manual eradication," Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said in an interview, echoing the views of other officials.

Aerial spraying by crop dusters was sold as a great elixir that would curtail Colombia's coca crop, delivering a lasting blow to the cocaine trade. But after seven years and more than $5 billion in funding from the United States, CIA monitoring of coca shows that this country has as much of the crop as it did in 2001, the first full year of aerial spraying under what is known as Plan Colombia.

U.S. officials say new mapping techniques have allowed them to survey more ground in Colombia than before, making such comparisons unfair. They say a sharp drop in violence during President Álvaro Uribe's five-year tenure shows that the program is undercutting funding for violent groups. And they say that other measurements -- more cocaine labs have been destroyed, and more than 500 drug traffickers have been extradited to the United States since 2002 -- prove that the cocaine trade has been hit hard.

"The cultivation number, as an isolated measure, can be leading some people to believe it's not working," John P. Walters, the White House drug policy chief, said by telephone from Washington. "A more difficult but more important number is how much they are able to produce. It looks like that's down."

Although U.S. officials have not publicly criticized manual eradication, they have repeatedly emphasized their commitment to aerial fumigation. Officials here in Colombia, meanwhile, from Vice President Francisco Santos to officers in the National Police, which carries out anti-drug operations, are publicly taking a stand that contradicts that of the Bush administration.

"We feel that we're on a stationary bicycle," said Santos the defense minister, referring to the results of the spraying program. "We've advanced very slowly. So we have to change our tactics."

The reasons for the shift are manifold:

Coca, once found primarily in Colombia's south, is now cultivated nationwide. Aerial spraying has prompted farmers to abandon large plots for smaller, more isolated ones in regions where legal crops are often grown next to coca. Crop dusters invariably hit the legitimate crops, too, angering farming communities. Fumigation has also hurt relations with neighboring Ecuador, which says the spray from planes is wafting into its territory and damaging farms.

In addition, U.S. and U.N. data show that Colombia, Bolivia and Peru together continue producing more than enough cocaine to meet world demand. Colombia is the only U.S. ally to fumigate drug crops on a large scale.

"The strategy doesn't work; fumigating doesn't eradicate," El Tiempo, the country's largest newspaper, said recently in an editorial. "Instead of clamoring for help on a program that seems more inappropriate every day, the government should take advantage of this moment to redirect and rethink its anti-drug collaboration with the United States. Fumigation should be suspended and only used in extraordinary cases."

In interviews, government officials say one of the chief benefits of manual eradication is that it destroys the entire coca bush, root and all. By contrast, farmers whose crops are sprayed often quickly cut them back to the root in order to regrow the bush. Farmers also cover coca leaves with substances that limit the effectiveness of the herbicide spray, glyphosate.

Santos, the defense minister, said it is possible that in coming years 75 percent of the coca removed will be eradicated manually.

Officials also said that with Colombia planning to spend more to build a state presence in lawless regions, it makes sense to eradicate on the ground, instead of from the air. "When you're in a plane, it's 140 knots and you're gone," said Col. José Ángel Mendoza, who commands police operations here in Caqueta state. "When you're on land, you're with the people."

Vice President Santos, though, said the idea is to develop a strategy in which coca farmers are eradicating in exchange for assistance cultivating legal crops. Without such alternatives, said John Walsh, senior associate for drug policy at the advocacy group Washington Office on Latin America, the gains achieved by manual eradication will be reversed with new plantings.

The involvement of coca farmers in eradication may not yield fast results, he said, but "it should mean more durable results and, just as importantly, could foster a positive relationship between communities and different levels of government."

The development of the new strategy comes as Democrats in the U.S. Congress, concerned about human rights in Colombia as well as the effectiveness of aerial fumigation, have cut aid to the country by 10 percent. The spraying program would be hit hard by a House plan to slash military funding to Colombia by $150 million, though the Senate may restore some of the funds when it votes this month.

Walters, the U.S. drug policy chief, said cutting aerial spraying would be shortsighted. He said the strategy has weakened the rebels, while helping to push thousands of paramilitary fighters into a government demobilization program. A classified study released by the White House said that profits from drug-related activities collected by the largest rebel group here -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC -- fell by a third between 2003 and 2005 and are now $60 million to $115 million a year.

For now, the Colombians are funding the manual eradication, though officials said they want the Bush administration to show greater flexibility with anti-drug funds.

It has not been easy, or cheap, particularly in lives lost. About 40 policemen and eradicators have been killed in the past year -- a fact that weighed heavily on the team working the coca fields in El Mirador.

"This is a guerrilla zone, so the danger is always there," said Anselmo Calderon, 39, one of the men who's been uprooting coca in El Mirador. "It's no secret the guerrillas sustain themselves with this, so we can become a military target."

The job takes time. Calderon and dozens of other men were assigned to clean one plot after another over eight consecutive weeks. Their work is dependent on a police unit, which ensures that muddy trails aren't mined or that booby traps haven't been planted deep under the coca bushes that are to be uprooted.

On a recent day, success was measured by the horizon, said one police officer, José Luis Merchan. He pointed out the other hilltops, all of them scraped clean of coca plants.

"What were coca fields have been turned into cattle pasture," he said. "But it gets harder all the time. People put the plots higher, in more mountainous areas, harder for the police."