COLOMBIA'S WAR-DISPLACED

Get Little International Attention

TURBO, Colombia (AP) - It's been three years since 4,200 villagers from
hamlets along the Cacarica River near Colombia's border with Panama became
exiles in their own land. Fleeing threats from right-wing paramilitary
gunmen, the villagers picked up quickly - abandoning livestock and fields
of yams, yucca and plantains.

They crammed into wooden boats and crossed the choppy Gulf of Uraba,
arriving in this grimy port, where they remain holed up in shelters and an
abandoned basketball arena - living symbols of one of the globe's silent
crises.

"We've been here for three years now, and the people are bored. The
children are getting sick," said Eugenio Denis, 36, a father of six.

Tired of waiting on peace talks, many have decided to go home, even though
rebels and paramilitary groups are still battling over the region - a major
corridor for arms and drug smuggling.

The first group is heading back Monday, the third anniversary of the day
they were forced to leave Cacarica.

Nearly two million Colombians have fled their homes at one time or another
over the past 15 years to avoid escalating guerrilla violence and
"scorched-earth" paramilitary campaigns.

Last year, 288,000 people became refugees, a private monitoring group, the
Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement, reported last week.

Yet despite a forced uprooting larger than the refugee exodus from Kosovo,
government officials, activists and UN refugee experts say the world has
largely ignored Colombia's humanitarian emergency. The World Food Program
recently said its appeal last year for $9 million US to aid displaced
Colombians yielded nothing from international donors.

The refugee problem could be worsened by a $1.6 billion aid package the
U.S. Congress is considering to finance an intensified anti-drug campaign
in Colombia. U.S. and Colombian officials are making plans to aid 10,000
peasants who probably would be uprooted by a military drive into southern
regions that grow coca, the source of cocaine.

In Bogota, some displaced people have made desperate publicity-seeking
measures, including the boisterous takeover Tuesday of the government's
refugee agency and a two-month-old sit-in at the International Red Cross's
offices.

Earlier this month, the assistant UN high commissioner for refugees, Soren
Jessen-Peterson of Denmark, visited refugees in Turbo and nearby Rio Sucio
and urged them to be patient.

He said their neglect was symptomatic of a global failure to respond when
people flee within their own countries instead of crossing borders. Such
people are known bureaucratically as "internally displaced people" - not
refugees.

"The causes are the same; the results are the same; and the solutions are
the same. But there's no international structure to deal with them,"
Peterson said.

Refugee experts say the scant attention paid to Colombia is due partly to a
unique pattern of violence and flight.

Eighty per cent of Colombia's war displaced flee in small family units, not
the mass movements that make international news. Many move in with friends
or relatives in cities and eventually find work. Most are expelled not by
the military, but by guerrillas or paramilitary groups.

"It's such a complex situation. You can't paint it easily," said Hiram Ruiz
of the U.S. Committee for Refugees.

Due to continued violence, refugee advocates estimate an additional 250,000
people could flee this year, and peace talks currently under way with
rebels could take years to conclude.

The refugees in Turbo have had enough and plan to return to their fertile
lands this year.

"We lived well there, deliciously," said Consolacion Palmeque, a mother of
two stirring coffee over a sweet-smelling wood fire. "Every fifteen days
there was a dance. We lived without fear."