Collateral damage: the U.S. war on drugs keeps Latin America's poor farmers tethered to the trade.

In the past year, stepped-up U.S. pressure in Bolivia and Peru to wipe out coca--the leafy Andean bush that can be processed into cocaine--has met increasingly violent protests.

And no wonder. Small farmers' dependence on coca revenue has never been greater. More than half of Peru's 26 million live on less than US$2 a day. About 70% of Bolivia's 8.3 million lives in poverty. In some rugged areas, coca is the only crop that can flourish.

In both countries, violence between coca growers and government forces has become a regular feature of political life. Cocaleros are by far the greatest political threat to Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. Resentful voters have flocked to pro-coca parties, which now control about a third of Bolivia's Congress. In Peru, the growers have organized numerous strikes, blocking public buildings and highways in a challenge to President Alejandro Toledo, who has promised to wipe out 22,000 hectares of coca--47% of the country's total estimated crop--by the end of his term in 2006.

Bolivian Congressman Evo Morales, the cocalero leader who came within 43,000 votes of winning the popular vote for president in 2002, warns that if a solution isn't found, there will be "permanent confrontation, and coca will become synonymous with militarization, synonymous with war."

Unfortunately, the U.S. zero-coca policy is fueling that war. Washington continues to condition increased aid for alternative development on meeting eradication targets, leaving Bolivia and Peru vulnerable to more social unrest. That is a crucial mistake.

Obviously, the conflict is not just about drugs. It's the economy, estupido. Free-market, reforms have yet to alleviate poverty or create enough jobs. The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, meanwhile, says the eradication program costs rural communities in Bolivia $200 million annually. "We are against drug trafficking," Marisela Guillen, secretary-general of Peru's 3,000-member Agricultural Producers' Association of the Apurimac-Ene River Valleys, recently told the BBC. "We just want to survive."

Coca farmers are not interested in getting high. They want to feed their families. That's why, no matter how many times they watch police destroy their crops, these poverty-stricken farmers will replant.

The continuing battle has forced Peruvian and Bolivian politicians to back off. Toledo dropped police presence in some coca-growing areas and has slowed eradication programs. Sanchez de Lozada has promised to allow farmers to grow small crops of the plant outside the traditional growing areas controlled by the government, after domestic narcotics police wiped out 70% of the nation's illicit coca fields in an effort that stretched from 1995 to 2001. Washington is steamed.

New priorities. Alternative crops such as oranges, cotton, pineapple, bananas, rubber and palm oil just can't compete with coca. Cocaleros can earn up to $6 a kilo--five times what they earn on a kilo of coffee. Much of the scant funds for alternative crops get soaked up in red tape and corruption, leaving little for farmers. In Peru, cocaleros demanded the withdrawal of several nongovernmental organizations working in alternative development, claiming most resources stay with the NGOs.

Some alternative crops, meanwhile, are subject to tariffs and trade restrictions in Europe and the United States. In November, for example, the European Union is expected to begin levying tariffs on Colombian flowers and fruit.

The United States must allow these poor Andean countries to undergo a gradual eradication program while introducing alternative crops with tariff-free status, adequate infrastructure to get products to market and subsidies not to grow coca. If the U.S. can spend billions of dollars each year to pay American farmers not to grow certain crops, they can spend millions to keep Andean peasants from working for the drug trade.

Unless Andean peasants receive the same return from alternative crops, they will not give up coca, at least not without a fight. Offer Andean farmers a real alternative and they will happily get out of the coca game.

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