Colombia peace deal hit by new wave of violence from drug gangs

‘Paramilitaries and other guerrilla groups are vying for control of a cocaine trade that has hit record levels’

THE guerrillas killed his brother on Christmas Day in 2000.

“That day they were going to kill me, too, but I escaped,” recalled Alberto Achito, one of thousands of local indigenous people caught up in fighting between Farc and paramilitary groups for control of the remote jungle region on Colombia’s Pacific coast.

Now, Mr Achito, the mayor of Jurado, says that after years of waning conflict, a new wave of violence has be- gun. While the country’s historic peace accord is celebrated around the world, paramilitaries and other guerrilla groups are flooding into the territories left by Farc – the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – as they vie for control of a cocaine trade that has soared to record levels.

Coca cultivation has more than doubled in the past three years even as President Juan Manuel Santos has been hammering out the deal that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in October.

One factor in the rise is the peace deal itself. The government scaled back its much-protested aerial spraying to aid negotiations, and ended it entirely in 2015 after studies showing that the herbicide used is likely carcinogenic.

Some observers also say Farc has encouraged coca farmers to grow more of the plant with a view to increasing compensation claims after agreeing to cultivate alternative crops.

“It’s a double win,” Ana Paula Zacarias, the EU ambassador in Colombia, told The Daily Telegraph. Many say the array of armed crime gangs not in- cluded in the peace deal will simply take over Farc’s share of the trade.

Ms Zacarias noted that in several areas, there was now “a new resurgence of conflict, because these armed groups are coming and threatening the populations ... These are really major major challenges for the government (and) for Farc.”

The department of Chocó, which includes Mr Achito’s municipality of Jurado, has been one of the worst affected.

Accessible only by plane and boat, its vast expanse of rainforest and isolated beaches have made it the most hotly contested battleground for the production and trafficking of cocaine.

For decades, extreme poverty and the almost complete absence of the state have left many with little option but to work in pesca blanca (white fishing), racing offshore to retrieve packages thrown overboard by traffickers avoiding patrols.

Farc guerrillas themselves, committed to disarming by May 31, say Colombia has little hope of ending the drug trade. Alex Gomez, 25, said they were happy to have come out of the conflict.

But he told The Telegraph: “If one group just takes over after another, it is never going to end. And where there is drug trafficking, there will always be war.”