President Evo Morales expelled the U.S. ambassador and the Drug Enforcement Administration late last year, charging they conspired and spied against his socialist government, although Washington said the allegations are unfounded.
Bolivia is the world's third largest cocaine producer after Colombia and Peru. Coca leaf, the raw material for cocaine, is revered by Bolivia's indigenous groups and protected by law,
Experts say there are signs that the country may struggle against drug smugglers without the DEA, which had supplied Bolivian police with intelligence for 35 years.
"In a way the withdrawal of the DEA has affected our work," the director of the anti-narcotics police, Colonel Oscar Nina, told Reuters. "They provided fast, direct access to a certain kind of information."
Nina said that in the first two months of 2009, his force seized three times more cocaine than in the same period last year and that they are "redoubling efforts."
But he also conceded that it is not clear whether the record seizures of 29 tonnes of cocaine last year, roughly 20 percent more than in 2007, were a result of the Bolivian police becoming more effective or an increase in production.
Morales, who once farmed coca, insists that things have improved since the Americans left. "Without the DEA, the fight against drug trafficking has improved ... I don't regret asking the DEA to leave," he said in a recent speech at a police academy in La Paz.
Cristina Albertin, head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Bolivia, said the forced exit of the DEA comes at a tricky time because drug traffickers are better organized and have learned to produce more cocaine faster.
"It's good that the government is seizing a lot ... but they have to investigate who's behind that, investigate the drug cartels, and we don't see that happening," she told Reuters.
"What we've seen in the past years is that drug trafficking has spread in Bolivia ... the processing of coca into drugs is taking place all over the country."
Mobile Labs
In the past, Bolivian cocaine makers produced the drug outdoors with rudimentary methods. Now they have "mobile labs" and use chemicals similar to those employed by Colombian cocaine producers, enabling them to make cocaine in small spaces and easily avoid detection.
Meanwhile, violence in the remote Pando region, near the border with Brazil, is increasing as cartels battle over control of export routes. The U.S. State Department says dozens of traffickers were killed in the turf battles last year.
"This type of violence was previously rare in Bolivia. Violence in (Pando's capital) Cobija has forced many to flee across the border to Brazil, a trend that is likely to continue into 2009," it said in a report released in late February.
Nina said about 15 people were murdered in Pando in the first half of last year, and that officials suspect ruthless Colombian and Mexican cartels could be behind the violence.
On top of its role as a producer, landlocked Bolivia is increasingly becoming a transit country for cocaine as smugglers move shipments from Peru to Brazil. Nina estimates that around 20 percent of the cocaine seized in Bolivia last year came from Peru.
