Phil Taylor's papers
|
BACK TO : WAR & CRISIS REPORTING
Into the Firing Line by Nik Gowing 
Into the Firing Line by Nik Gowing BBC World presenter Nik Gowing was invited to Colombia to deliver two seminars on reporting from conflict zones. As part of the British Council's conflict resolution programme, he was invited to see the reality of Colombia's internal strife. The remote town of Barranca has changed hands repeatedly between rebel forces and right wing paramilitaries. The plane stood alone on Barranca airstrip. There had been intense fighting several weeks earlier. How vulnerable were we? It was too late to ask or worry. In the terminal building we waited for the city's plainclothes, armed police escort to arrive. The paramilitaries are said to control Barranca and this was no time to question the level of caution. The guys with the dark glasses, guns, walkie-talkies and a 4x4 finally arrived. It was hard to imagine having a relaxing moment or drink with them, even here in their own town. 'What we are doing here is a risk,' Hans Reitzel, the UNDP co-ordinator tells me, 'but we have to try. There is nothing wrong with trial and error. Better that, than doing nothing'. The UNDP are trying to build bridges between the region's fractured communities who have been torn apart by the thirty year internal conflict. Barranca still seemed to sleep, but the market was waking. As we turned the sharp corner past the old colonial prison building, Hans described a certain new optimism despite continuing uncertainty. In the air conditioned restaurant of the Pipaton hotel overlooking the unusually empty Magdalena river, the remarkable Padre Francisco de Roux pulled a laptop from his shoulder bag to explain to me the scale and evidence of horrors, past and present. Two people had been murdered in the past 20 days because of their work representing the peasants, first the lawyer Alma Rosa Jaramillo, then Eduardo Estrada . The Padre's coloured electronic maps confirmed in even more detail how the fighting progressed, first in the Magdalena valley, then in Barranca itself. The padre had studied at the LSE with a Council award. He spoke marvellously precise English. He wanted to talk and be sure that I understood the reality of death and deprivation in Barranca. Theirs, he fears, is a forgotten conflict. 'War costs $15 million a month for this region alone. 500,000 are in poverty, earning $100 or less each month. With what we have we could have a lifestyle like Portugal. But most people are living the equivalent of African poverty'. The padre's mobile phone rings intermittently. He hears about the hidden tensions and fears that an outsider like me cannot even begin to see. Intimidation is rife. He tells of the people given two hours by the Paras (the so-called self-defence forces) to leave Barranca. Five days later one of the neighbourhood leaders for whom Padre de Roux acted as intermediary was dead. In Barranca, the new, if uncomfortable, stability is because the Paras control the whole town. But still, no one knows who to trust, and for how long. The presence of the ELN guerrillas across the Magdalena river remains 'very, very strong'. Hans's UNDP and the European Union are both working to make Barranca a 'peace laboratory'. There remains a phenomenally long way to go, but some building blocks are in place to create a new multiplier effect for investment and further confidence building. Padre de Roux puts the hopes into perspective. He recently travelled up a tributary of the Magdalena into coca country to monitor the efforts of the US-backed Plan Colombia to halt cocaine production. The region produces 10% of Colombia's illicit coca. 'I went to the area three months after fumigation,' he says 'and the farmers have doubled the area under coca growth. They have grown coca in areas that have not been fumigated!' Plan Colombia, he argues, is a massively expensive, but largely futile operation. With coffee prices plummeting the farmers need coca as their main cash crop more than ever. NGOs have tried to persuade the ELN and FARC guerrillas to abandon their 'revolution' and the Paramilitaries to halt their brutal, autocratic way of controlling power. But everything is on a knife-edge, with the maintenance of only a fragile stability. Yolanda Becerra, the impassioned director of OFP, the Organizacion Femenina Popular, reveals the terrifying human price for that stability: two hundred and ninety five killings this year, mutilated corpses, arms and legs chopped off, women tortured in gruesome ways. 'You cannot believe the barbarity'. Yolanda speaks at high speed as if fearing that someone will break up our meeting at any moment. She relates the evidence that she is a target for assassination. 'People are disappearing every day here, and there are no statistics for it. The local justice system is not interested. There is complicity between the police, civil authorities and the paramilitaries'. The newly installed police chief, Colonel Piñeda, who receives me in his spartan office at security headquarters, inevitably denies such accusations. He shows me what he says is his telephone hot line to Yolanda so that he can be immediately aware of any violation of human rights in Barranca. 'The institutions in Barranca are flourishing', he assures me. His police forces, not the Paramilitaries control the town, he insists. The guys with the dark glasses, guns and radios are sitting outside in their 4x4 waiting to carry out orders and return us safely to the airport. When I return to the UK, I hear that three IRA members have apparently been picked up in Bogota as they returned from a training visit to rebel country; worse still, Ramiro Carranza, the Head of the Aliens Office, and Deputy Director of the Colombian Security Department (DAS), has been kidnapped. Dr Carranza had sat in the front row of the audience at my speech and asked the first question. Everyone fears the worst. Nowhere and nothing in Colombia is safe from war. Nik Gowing. |