By DAVID GONZALEZ
 
LÉOGÂNE, Haiti -- For Del Lydes, the drug planes that circle over the cornfields have become as common as the flies that buzz around his cows. They swoop down past the trees and roll to a stop along the two-lane road that slices through the fields. Then men with machine guns stash their cargo -- cocaine -- into cars.
"Around here it is a cocaine area," Mr. Lydes said. "A lot of people have moved. But others come at night to wait for the planes."

The "others" are his impoverished neighbors, who gather in hope of snatching a few bags of cocaine they can then sell for a fraction of the drug's street value in the United States. Recently gunmen kept a mob at bay while unloading the drugs, then abandoned the plane. The angry crowd tore it apart in a vain search for drugs.

"People think they are going to get rich from cocaine," Mr. Lydes said. "When they see a plane they gather around, but when the pilots see them they scare off the plane."

Unwittingly, these mobs have become perhaps Haiti's only front-line deterrent to the Colombian cocaine traffickers, who, ever adept at finding a weak spot in the Caribbean through which to funnel their drugs northward, have flocked to impoverished Haiti bringing cash, crime and corruption.

Haiti's inexperienced, understaffed and underpaid police force and courts have proved irresistible to smugglers who ferry cocaine aboard speedboats and small planes before hiding it in ships bound for Miami and Puerto Rico, or just trucking it into the neighboring Dominican Republic.

"My only broad-gauge assessment is that Haiti is a disaster," said Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, director of the United States anti-drug effort. "We've got weak to nonexistent democratic institutions, a police force that is on the verge of collapse from internal corruption and an eroding infrastructure that is creating a path of very little resistance. We are watching an alarming increase."

Since last October, United States Customs officials have confiscated almost 7,000 pounds of cocaine -- three times the total for the previous year -- in Haitian ships docked in the Miami River. American law enforcement officials estimate that about 67 tons, or 14 percent, of the cocaine that enters the United States now comes through Haiti.

In general, more than half of the cocaine headed for the United States flows through the Caribbean.

In recent years, American anti-drug agents have tried to focus more on Haiti, but have been hampered by a political paralysis that has left the country without a functioning legislature for the last year and therefore prevented passage of money-laundering laws. In addition, Haitian law enforcement officials say, the Americans are wary of sharing information.

Almost no drugs are confiscated in Haiti, which is woefully under-equipped to wage the war on narcotics. There is a three-year-old anti-drug police squad with just 25 members. Local authorities have no radar or helicopters to monitor Haiti's airspace and fewer than 10 boats to patrol the coastline. Some 250 police officers have been dismissed for drug-related crimes.

Evidence of the riches trafficking has brought can be seen in Belvil, a sprawling gated community of luxury homes that has boomed conspicuously in an otherwise desperate economy. New construction is everywhere, and new gas stations dot the Port-au-Prince area, some offering to wire money in $1,000 installments to Colombia.

In other parts of the country, the coasts are littered with the burned shells of speedboats and the roads with the wrecks of small planes that have skidded into steep embankments. No one knows how many make it through unscathed.

The Haitian police have seized some cocaine shipments in recent months, including 550 pounds inside a Belvil home. Local crowds have stolen parts of other shipments; in the town of Grand-Goâve in May, the police recovered only 323 pounds of a suspected 4,400-pound shipment. Among those who tried to steal drugs was the town's deputy mayor, who was shot dead by his bodyguard in a dispute over his share.

"I think the volume is progressively increasing," said Pierre Denizé, the director of the Haitian National Police. "The Colombians went from fast boats to more and more airdrops and clandestine landings. They have this world-renowned capacity to stay one step ahead of the repression."

Haitian law enforcement officials said that drug pilots had free run of the skies once the international airport and its radar closed in the early evening. Even when American surveillance planes spot a drug plane entering Haitian airspace, limited manpower and rough roads mean there is often little authorities can do to intercept it.

"We follow planes and boats into Haiti, but there is no endgame," said Raymond Kelly, the Customs Service commissioner.

"There is no entity on the ground that can respond quickly. We need help. They need help."

Even searching sitting targets can be daunting to the few inspectors assigned to outlying areas, like the busy port of Gonaïves.

"If you go to any harbor outside of Port-au-Prince and try to find a law enforcement person, it's like finding Waldo in those kid's books," said an American Embassy official. "Very few take the initiative to search the boats because they have no way out. Twice in the past year, the Haitian Coast Guard had to go to Gonaïves to take personnel off the pier because they were being threatened."

The Drug Enforcement Administration has eight agents stationed in Haiti, where they train the local anti-narcotics squad, which in the last 12 months has confiscated $4 million in drug profits that were being smuggled out of the country. The United States Coast Guard also has permission to patrol Haitian waters, and it is helping the Haitian government open several new ports, which would allow Haitian anti-drug officers to spread out from Port-au-Prince.

Haitian officials said they have asked banks to collect information on people depositing more than $10,000 in cash. But money-laundering laws that would allow closer investigations have been stalled in Parliament. Immigration authorities require visas for visitors from Colombia, and the airport police routinely question arriving Colombians and keep their passports until they leave.

Haitian law enforcement officials, for their part, complain that cooperation with the United States has been disappointing. "Given how much cocaine the United States says comes through here, you'd think they'd be as good at catching drug boats as they are with stopping refugee boats, which they excel at," said a high-ranking Haitian official. "They say this is a war, but is it?"

Several high-ranking Haitian law enforcement officials said they almost never got advance word about suspicious incoming planes.

"The United States sits where it sits and says we are not doing anything about this," Mr. Denizé, the police chief, said. "Hey, I'm willing. But I can't initiate the interception, or the radar, or the boats or the intelligence sharing. I can't go bust someone if I don't know who or where he is."

But American officials are worried that drug-related corruption has penetrated the police force and even the government. Earlier this year, the police inspector general was transferred to a diplomatic post when he investigated several police supervisors on suspicion of helping the drug smugglers.

There has also been constant talk that several recently elected senators of the Family Lavalas party, which is headed by former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, are involved in the drug trade. Party officials deny this charge, saying it is misinformation spread by political opponents to discredit the party.

"I would suspect there are officials who are involved," an American diplomat said. "We have some evidence of that. The question is how high it goes up. We have no corroboration of any kind suggesting that it is at the highest levels of government."

Some American officials admit that they are careful when sharing information with Haitian counterparts.

"The fact is we factor in corruption as part of our strategy when we are dealing with Haitian smuggling," a Customs official said.

General McCaffrey said that given the "collapsing" relationship with Haitian law enforcement agencies, the United States was focusing on the drugs after they leave Haiti and reach the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas.

"The ability of the noncorrupt Haitian law enforcement and customs authorities to combat this is diminishing rapidly," General McCaffrey said. "The political will to support them isn't there."