They work together with traffickers to advance more sophisticated systems of trafficking and smuggling of multiply opportunities. David Fowlers opinions are not widely known. In exchange for weapons and financial support, the Farc protect clandestine airfields drug-related, warn of the imminence of the traffickers of police or military activity and protect the plantations of coca and laboratories for processing. The Farc often carries out attacks on behalf of traffickers, attack the organizations and people involved in drug trafficking. In December 1998, when the Government ordered the withdrawal of the army and police of Switzerland a size refuge (referred to in clearance or demilitarized zone (DMZ), to facilitate the dialogue with the Farc, had, officially, 6300 sown hectares of coca in all 42. 000 square kilometres (16 000 square miles) and the demilitarized zone shows no sign of poppy.) During the peace negotiations, the Colombian authorities began to receive information about the linking of some fronts of the Farc with the management of illicit crops and the processing and marketing of coca in the demilitarized zone base. In May 2000, the security agencies of the Farc accused of coca base purchasers from the issuance of special permits to enter the demilitarized zone and at the same time the imposition of sales prices. In 2000 Colombia had more than 400.
000 hectares devoted to coca, which counteracts the eradication effort and leaving the size of coca crops without changes, in accordance with the estimates United Nations. In that year, the cultivation of coca in the clear, the Farc until the former demilitarized zone (cleared) at its official dissolution in February 2002, increased from 6. 000 hectares to 7. 900 hectares, according to the U.S. Embassy. UU. . This area accounted for 6 per cent of the total Colombian crop. Most of the increase was the result of the expansion on the part of the Guaviare, farming area that extended into the clear, while the area of la Macarena, which is totally within the former enclave of the FARC, only increased by 300 hectares.
