In Colombia, paramilitary groups still spreading terror
The new gangs, like rebels and drug traffickers, force people from their homes and farms, taking an enormous human toll. Displacement is accelerating in the southwest state of Nariño.
Reporting from Tumaco, Colombia — The Colombian government insists that paramilitary gangs are extinct. Try telling that to Antonio Domingo, a poor Afro-Colombian who was rousted from his home in the dead of night in August and told to leave town or be killed.
Antonio, 30, who declined to give his last name for fear of reprisal, said armed and uniformed fighters who identified themselves as members of a paramilitary force called the Black Eagles gave residents minutes to leave San Jose, their Pacific coast hamlet.
"We had furniture, chickens, yucca and plantains, but lost it all," said Antonio, interviewed at a camp for displaced people outside this port town in the southwestern state of Nariño. "They killed a friend of mine in front of us for no reason, maybe to make a point."
Antonio, his wife and infant son are part of an alarming upsurge this year of displaced people in Colombia. According to CODHES, a human rights group based in Bogota, the capital, 270,675 additional internal refugees were documented in the first half of this year, 41% more than during the same period last year.
The wave of uprooted humanity is matched by a parallel surge in the number of fighters, according to a study released last week by the New Rainbow Coalition, a peace group also based in Bogota. More than 100 new gangs have been formed, including as many as 10,000 fighters, and have a presence in one out of five Colombian counties, mostly rural ones.
Paramilitary groups proliferated in the 1980s and 1990s as defensive forces financed by farmers and cattlemen to battle leftist guerrillas. Many of the fighters turned to crime, seizing land and trafficking in drugs, before laying down their arms in a government-brokered demobilization completed in 2006.
The reemerging armed gangs are wreaking havoc in Nariño state. They are vying with guerrillas and drug traffickers for control of a zone that boasts ideal coca growing conditions as well as a labyrinthine coastline offering hundreds of concealed, mangrove-studded inlets from which to ship drugs to U.S. markets.
The new paramilitary groups, like the rebels and traffickers, often force people such as Antonio from their homes and farms to take possession of land as war booty and to clear the area of potential enemy sympathizers. With an estimated 3 million people having been displaced, Colombia is second only to Sudan in the number of its internal refugees.
