FARC–EP had between 7,000 and 10,000 fighters, organized into 70 fronts spread throughout the country. From 1996 to 1998 they inflicted a series of strikes on the Colombian Army, including a three-day offensive in Mitú (Vaupés department), taking a large number of soldiers prisoner. On 23 September 1994, the FARC kidnapped American agricultural scientist Thomas Hargrove and held him captive for 11 months. After his release, Hargrove wrote a book about his ordeal which inspired the 2000 film Proof of Life starring Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe. Over this period in Colombia, the cultivation of different drugs expanded and there were widespread coca farmers' marches. These marches brought to a halt several major arteries in southern Colombia. Government officials said that FARC-EP had forced the protesters to participate. According to social anthropologist María Clemencia Ramírez, the relationship between the guerrillas and the marches was ambivalent: FARC-EP promoted the 1996 protests as part of their participatory democracy policies yet also exercised authoritarianism, which led to tensions and negotiations with peasant leaders, but the cocalero movement brought proposals on behalf of the coca growers and defended its own interests. French sociologist Alain Labrousse, who has conducted extensive research on the illicit narcotics industry in Latin America and Central Asia, has noted similarities in the reliance on the drug trade by both the FARC-EP and the Taliban. In his thesis, Labrousse asserts that the FARC-EP leadership, like that of the Taliban, explicitly bans the use of drugs by its membership and within the local population, but vigorously advocates for legalization of drug trafficking as a tool to finance its military objectives. In both cases, the insurgency groups manage to garner significant political support of farmers who serve to benefit from the illicit drug trade, prompting grassroots mobilization, political activism, and agitation to demand legalization by the government. Pastrana presidency (1998–2002) In March 1999 members of a local FARC contingent killed three USA-based indigenous rights activists, who were working with the U'Wa people to build a school for U'Wa children, and were fighting against encroachment of U'Wa territory by multinational oil corporations. The killings were questioned by many and condemned by many others, and led the United States to increase pressure on the Pastrana administration to crack down on FARC guerrillas. 1998–2002 peace process With the hope of negotiating a peace settlement, on 7 November 1998, President Andrés Pastrana granted FARC-EP a safe haven