Peru's Cocaine Trail Our World

coca plantations in the Amazon jungle to the young European mules

who try to smuggle cocaine to Europe.

Carew's anti`drug squad attacked illegal cocaine production in the

Amazonian jungle. `` per. They blow craters along the area used by drug

traffickers. It's noisy and dramatic but isn't effective. Increasing

numbers of desperate Europeans are prepared to take the risk of

smuggling cocaine out of Peru. You lose your family, you lose friends,

you lose your life. And thousands of desperate people in Peru depend on

cocaine production to survive. The Peruvian government is spending

millions of dollars on eradication. But is this the way to tackle the

problem? This is not a military problem. We need to talk in

economic, social terms. This valley in the Amazon jungle,

where every clearing is devoted to the growth of the coca plant. Peru

now grows more cocoa leaf than any country in the world, producing

hundreds of tons of cocaine is every year for export. `` coca leaf. The

anti` drugs police squad arrived as part of the eradication programme.

They start pulling the routes from the rich soil. It's a hard plant,

which my left to grow, produces for crops a year. It provides work and

money for the locals here, where there is little else.

The coca workers have fled by now, so why do the eradicate his need

guns? The team moved on to a makeshift

factory, hidden in the thick jungle. Equipped with all the ingredients

for cocaine production. The maceration hits are filled with dry

coca leaves, water, and petrol and crushed by foot to make coca paste.

Finally, they add acetone and sulphuric acid to obtain cocaine

chloride, the cocaine in white paper form, ready for export.

Alongside the noxious ingredients, there is evidence of a hastily

abandoned camp, suggesting there were 14 locals working in dangerous

and uncomfortable conditions. Nonetheless, they can earn more here

than they would get from farming any other crop but they won't be coming

back. The drug is transported overland to

the rigours, where it is loaded onto boats and taken to a network of

illegal airstrips, built along the banks of the rivers, like the one

here on the right point `` to the rivers. Light aircraft, which can

carry up to 400 kilos of cocaine at a time, comes from neighbouring

Libya to collect it. `` Bolivia The pilots who landed the plane is

here at night are said to earn millions of dollars. But the team

are now prepared to blow craters along the runway to prevent them

from using this one again, for now. It's noisy and dramatic but is it

effective? For everyone narco airstrip honour as they call it

here, that is destroyed by the Peruvian police, there are dozens

more in the area which remained operational and the drug teams will

be back here to repair it. It will take on the a few weeks to do that

and for the airstrip to be put into use.

The anti`drug squad are attacking a fraction of the problem. Such is the

strength of the drug barons in the country that there are areas where

coca is grown in Peru but the squad can't even enter. `` where the

squad. There is no doubt about the commitment and bravery of these men

but they are not stopping the flow of campaign `` cocaine out of the

region. Several times a day, scheduled flights from the coca

growing areas in the North land 500 kilometres to the south end the

country's capital, Lima. A passenger disembarked at the domestic terminal

and checks in for an international flight to Madrid. The dogs are on

patrol tonight. Four kilos of cocaine are found in

the passenger's case. It is clear that it had been packed by experts.

The 25 `year`old Spaniard is arrested.

He says he was recruited in Amsterdam and had been promised

$13,000 if he got through. The drug would have sold for 50

times that amount on the streets of Madrid. It was a moment of madness,

he tells me. I had lost my job and needed the money but I now face

years in jail. The police he admit that 90% of the

drug mules leaving Peru get away with it. The odds are good at, if

you get caught, there's the of up to 15 years in jail. Many desperate

Europeans are taking the risk. With 50% unemployment among the young in

some areas of Spain, Spaniards topped the list of Europeans who

were arrested at Lima airport last year.

Visiting day at this present in Lima, where the majority of

prisoners are being held for a drug`related crime. `` this prison.

Conditions are tough, especially for foreigners who don't have family to

bring them food, medicine and even clean water.

Two British girls, Michaella Connolly and Melissa Reid, are among

the present resident population. They were arrested at Lima airport

in August carrying 11 kilos of cocaine. They are currently in one

of the worst prisons in Carew, according to another drug mule `` in

Peru. It's very cramped. You can not bear

to breed there. Really. You feel like a rat in an age. `` air to

breathe. Nicole is a hairdresser from Germany, who is currently

living in a convent in Lima and helping with charitable work. She

served her prison term but can't go back home because she can't afford

to pay the outstanding fine demanded by the courts. Her life went wrong,

she says, after she had a nervous breakdown in Germany and fell badly

into debt. Before I had problems with money in my country. So, I

wanted to earn money fast and easily. How much were you going to

earn for it? 10,000 euros for normally two kilos. I had three

kilos on my body but I didn't know that. I had a swimming suit for

waterskiing and inside it was all over with drugs, packs of cocaine.

He touched me and, yes... Felt something? Yes, of course. Then she

brings me to a rest in the airport. He tests and glue stick and it was

cocaine. I said, yes. I have cocaine. `` blue stick. Nicole's

smother `` smuggling method was so amateurish that it could be she was

set up. Another mule has also served his prison term. But with no means

of supporting himself, that alone buying to get back home, he has been

living rough on the beach. Thinking back to the policeman who arrested

him, he believed he was definitely set up. He took out a list and said

this lady is travelling at such and such a time, it was a list of four

people. He said every single one of them will be carrying drugs. So,

they know beforehand who is and who isn't a suspect. I was a small fish.

They were waiting for me. And I know this from many people who have been

caught for Marko trafficking. They let the small fish get caught on

papers. `` narco. So that the guy who has a large amount of drugs gets

through. He claims he fell into the trap because he was desperate. His

wife had died and he needed money to educate his daughter when he was

approached by a drug trafficker. He approached by a drug trafficker He

said, with money. No problem. You can go on a working holiday. One

week, you will be back, you will have no more problems. They were

going to pay me $10,000, US. I thought, well, what have I got to

lose? He got four years in jail followed by a year living rough. In

followed by a year living rough In which time, he says, he's learned a

lot about how the drug barons dominate this country. Everything is

an inside job. They have got people in the police, they have got people

at the airports, they have got people in organised crime. All of

them are on the payroll. Drugs is the economy of this country.

Construction and corruption are everywhere in Peru today, and people

here tell you that two activities are intertwined. The building

industry is just one of the businesses used by the drug barons

to launder money with impunity. You don't get the violence in the

streets of Lima compared with the cities of Colombia or Mexico. I

asked the man who used to be in charge of the anti` drugs programme

here, why. We solved the thing is not with lead, but with silver. In

Colombia maybe things are sorted another way, but in Peru we do

business, the police do business, prosecutors do business, the police

do business and politicians as well. If you are rich enough in order to

avoid prison, it can be possible. And the corruption here reaches to

the very top, according to one of the rue's most senior judges.

TRANSLATION: `` the rue `` Pero. The government would argue that this

is what they're doing. High`profile eradication programmes which

journalists are invited to fill. Their critics say that tackling the

problem of drugs in Peru, like a military operation, is not working.

One of the few things that we have learned in the last 30 years is that

this can't be understood as a war. Ricardo was fired from his job as

the country's drugs chief because he claims the government don't want to

hear what he has to say. Besides the farm, a kilo of pure cocaine costs

$800. When that same kilo arrives in Lima it costs $2500, $3000. When

that same kilo arrives, let's say to London, it would cost ?25,000. And

if you understand that that kilo will convert immediately... You

would have ?50,000. We need to talk in economic, social terms. For those

that have been excluded from the drugs business... It is the way of

being part of the globalised economy in the world. The town of

constitutionally on in the cocoa growing area. A road and bridge were

built here when the idea was to make this town in the middle of the

Amazonian jungle the capital of the rue. But the idea didn't catch on.

Instead the drug Mafias poured across the bridge and made this

their capital. `` the rue. At night the booming town has the full

complement of nightclubs and bars expected of a drug fuelled economy.

Their clients are the men who grow the coca leaf, manufacture cocaine,

and build The Jungle airstrips. No wonder the girls tell you business

is good. But Carlos an ecologist and poet,

remembers the nostalgia in the paradise he found when he moved here

30 years ago before the drug barons. A memory reflected in his

poetry. He took me to the cemetery and

lamented over the number of recent dead.

The deaths, he says, are due to locals fighting for their share of

the drugs business. Where local people are excluded from

the drugs business, you hear only complaints. Matilda Ramires, a small

farmer living on the outskirts of the town, was forced by the

eradication programme to give up growing the coca leaf.

No wonder so many farmers who have their plants torn out moved to the

areas where the eradicate his can't reach them in order to plant the

cocoa leaf again. `` had. Those who argue that eradication isn't working

say cocaine production can only be tackled by helping the small farmer

to not grow cocoa. The military style eradication operation gets

four times as much money as that given to farmers to develop

alternative crops. I think we should think about paying

directly to them for every single gram of cocaine that is not produced

by them. A kind of health preventive tax that should be paid by European

countries, and that will significantly improve the likelihood

of thousands of people that are now involved in this economy. We need to

give them their prices for their cocoa, their coffee, and any other

legal product that is done in this difficult area. In the absence of

such an agreement between the rue and the drug consuming nations of

Europe, the drugs trade looks set to continue and even flourish. ``

Peru. More foreign mules are entering the country and the unlucky

ones will end up in prison. The two British girls, Melissa Reid and

Michaela Connelly, had been in jail for four months now awaiting trial.

After their latest court appearance, their lawyer said they might be

offered a reduced term if they give the police information about those

who send them here. Nicole, the former drug mule, advises them not

to `` sent. This is a very dangerous business. He can kill me in the

jail. So I never say the names. I never say anything. I say it is my

fault. I have not to tell this and all the girls have to do this, it is

very dangerous to say the name. And your sentence doesn't go less when

you say something, it is a lie. You lose your family, you lose friends,

you lose your life. You lose all. And the men and women sending you

hear are not interested in you `` here. Don't do it. This was my first

time and my last time. That amount of money can't buy your freedom. I

of money can't buy your freedom I have lost five years of my life here

in Peru. It is now my fourth Christmas here. When I come now,

Christmas here. When I come now yes, I want to be with my family.

But I cannot say what day I can go home.

Nicole and Gavin may not have benefited from the drugs business.

But too many people in and outside the country now depend on the cocoa

leaf of Peru for there to be much prospect of an end to the trade in

cocaine. Even a senior police officer here has admitted that

trying to stop cocaine production with helicopters and explosives is