Pubdate: Thu, 06 Dec 2001
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2001 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175

THOUSANDS DISPLACED BY DRUG WAR

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Thousands of people have been uprooted by a 
U.S.-backed aerial offensive to wipe out drug crops, but fears of a massive 
refugee crisis have not materialized, a top U.N. refugee official said 
Wednesday.

"The fumigation has not displaced the numbers of people expected," Leila 
Lima, of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told a gathering of 
reporters in Bogota.

Lima said the number of displaced people could increase, however, if 
Washington's drug war intensifies as planned next year.

When the aerial spraying campaign began a year ago in southern Putumayo 
province, Colombia's cocaine heartland bordering Ecuador, officials here 
and in Washington said they were bracing for an exodus of tens of thousands 
of people.

Peasant coca farmers and migrant farmhands who pick the plant used to make 
cocaine were expected to flee in large numbers across the border or to 
other Colombian regions as their livelihoods were destroyed.

According to Lima, estimates show as many as 15,000 people fled the remote 
state since late last year. But, she said, about 12,000 of them left only 
briefly, and not because of fumigation, but in flight from a prolonged 
guerrilla blockade.

The blockade was launched by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of 
Colombia, or FARC, purportedly to protest the aerial offensive, part of a 
$1.3 billion U.S. aid package. The rebel group and a rival right-wing 
paramilitary militia active in Putumayo finance themselves through taxes 
and a protection racket on the cocaine trade.

Washington is providing troop training, intelligence, helicopters and 
fumigation aircraft to help Colombia destroy coca plantations and 
clandestine jungle drug laboratories in the area. The so-called "push in to 
southern Colombia" is expected to intensify this year with the arrival of 
more aircraft from the United States.
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MAP posted-by: Beth