War- displaced Colombians in drug gangs crossfire

Tumaco, Colombia, Nov. 21: In the port city of Tumaco, the bullets are still flying a year after a peace deal ended Colombia’s half- century civil war. The walls of houses are pocked by their impact, reminding those who once fled the conflict that there is still no respite from violence.

People who were displaced by fighting between the army and the leftist FARC rebels are once again caught in the crossfire, this time from drugs gangs carving out territory for lucrative cocaine smuggling routes along the Pacific coast. “They shot at our apartment. The baby was screaming in terror,” recalled Marcia Perea, 47.

Like other residents of her neighbourhood, known as Ciudad 2000, the grandmother ranted about the shootings that have spread panic across Tumaco, a city of 208,000 people devastated by unemployment. Most neighbours had fled here to seek shelter from clashes ◗ in other parts of the country that, over more than 50 years of fighting, left around seven million people displaced from their homes. Their shacks are built over the fetid waters of a swamp and connected by rickety wooden bridges.

“Tumaco is one of the ◗ epicentres of the conflict that continues in Colombia,” said Christian Visnes, director of the Norwegian Refugee Council ( NRC), which has been operating in Colombia since 1991. Situated on the border with Ecuador, this port city in the department of Narino sits atop one of the prize drug trafficking routes in the region, affording access for boats and submersibles to Central America and then north to the lucrative markets of US. The dense jungle and coastal mangrove swamps make any oversight by the government difficult, despite the announcement last month that it was deploying 9,000 troops and police to tracks down FARC dissidents and other groups.