Peru Supplants Colombia As Top Coca Producer: UN

Peru has become the world's largest producer of coca, the plant used to make cocaine, knocking longtime leader Colombia into second place, a new UN report said Thursday.

Peru has become the world's largest producer of coca, the plant used to make cocaine, knocking longtime leader Colombia into second place, a new UN report said Thursday.

The 2011 UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report says Peru has 61,200 hectares (150,000 acres) of coca cultivated in 2010, two percent more than in the previous year, when there were some 59,900 hectares planted, according to the report.

Colombia meanwhile saw a significant reduction in the amount of land cultivated with coca plants, from 68,000 hectares to 57,000.

The bad news confirms a report issued by the Lima government itself in 2009, which found that Peru overtook Colombia as the world's top producer of coca leaf in 2009.

"Coca cultivation has been expanding for a decade, as successive governments have not appeared to have decided to curb it," said drugs and security expert Ruben Vargas.

The latest UN report does not mention a figure of Peru's cocaine production, but on Thursday the country's drug czar, Romulo Pizarro, told AFP that the estimate for 2010 is 330 tonnes, close to the estimated 350 tonnes produced by Colombia.

But the official said Peru had seized just 30 tonnes of cocaine in 2010, compared with 100 tonnes in Colombia.

In economic terms, the coca and cocaine trade is worth between $2 billion and $2.5 billion, according to Pizarro.

Peruvian troops have been struggling to contain production in the country's eastern valleys, where 4,000 soldiers and police have been tracking hundreds of so-called "narco-terrorists" connected to the Shining Path insurgency group.

They have struggled to police areas outside of major cities however, as the drug traffickers have found refuge in the thick tropical jungles and steep hills, said military chief of staff, General Luis Howell.

Meanwhile, score-settling and murders have risen on a small scale in Pacific port cities, which transport most of Peru's cocaine, provoking alarm in the media over the influence of Mexican and Colombian cartels.

Outgoing President Alan Garcia complained last year about the small amount of anti-drug aid Peru received from the United States compared to Colombia.

"I once told President Obama: 'it's your fault because you've put all the money into Colombia,'" Garcia said, referring to the Plan Colombia, a $6 billion anti-drug effort in place since 2000.

Others have said an all-out war on the drug would only make matters worse.

Hugo Cabieses, an economist and advisor to President-elect Ollanta Humala, said the key is to "not see trafficking as a security problem, as a war. This gets in the way of thinking about a comprehensive policy."

Humala has said he favors a policy of "damage control" and will create a central authority to coordinate strategy against drugs, which is now the province of the defense, interior and financial authorities.

But that has raised eyebrows among Humala's political opponents because of the well-known links between his leftwing nationalist party and the coca growers. The plant is legal for traditional chewing.

Humala must also weigh any decision to step up military force against traffickers with the possible consequences.

In Mexico a massive military crackdown on organized crime has unfolded against an escalation in cartel violence since late 2006 in which some 37,000 people have been killed.

"One may ask why there is not much drug-related violence in Peru. It's very simple: because we have never confronted the drug trafficking... It's very easy to be a trafficker in Peru," Vargas said.

"When we really face up to the trafficking, the seizures will increase, and we will see the response from organized crime."

- By Agence France-Presse

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