Drug war moves to rainforest
By ANDREW SELSKY
Associated Press writer Saturday, March 12, 2005
OVER THE JUNGLES OF WESTERN COLOMBIA -- The newest battle in Colombia's drug war is being fought in one of the largest tracts of virgin rainforest in the Americas, an expanse of stunning beauty where crystalline rivers weave around mountains hugged by a blanket of trees.
Harried by eradication campaigns elsewhere, drug gangs have been moving into the remote region, bringing in millions of seedlings for coca -- the bush used to make cocaine -- to be planted by peasants who are felling patches of trees.
U.S. crop-dusters, which helped wipe out more than a quarter-million acres of coca last year in other parts of Colombia, have begun fumigating the new fields in their costly cat-and-mouse struggle with traffickers.
Associated Press writer Saturday, March 12, 2005
OVER THE JUNGLES OF WESTERN COLOMBIA -- The newest battle in Colombia's drug war is being fought in one of the largest tracts of virgin rainforest in the Americas, an expanse of stunning beauty where crystalline rivers weave around mountains hugged by a blanket of trees.
Harried by eradication campaigns elsewhere, drug gangs have been moving into the remote region, bringing in millions of seedlings for coca -- the bush used to make cocaine -- to be planted by peasants who are felling patches of trees.
U.S. crop-dusters, which helped wipe out more than a quarter-million acres of coca last year in other parts of Colombia, have begun fumigating the new fields in their costly cat-and-mouse struggle with traffickers.
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