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. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth