Two Years After Colombia’s Peace Accord, the Historic Pact is in Jeopardy by Anthony Faiola – Washington Post
Nearly two years after a historic peace accord ended Latin America’s longest-running insurgency and garnered a Nobel Prize, an old scourge is again spreading across the rural valleys and jungle towns of Colombia’s northeast - guerrilla warfare…
Here in the Catatumbo region - a rugged terrain dotted with streams, oil fields and palm plantations - guerrilla groups have been fighting for three months to take over a former domain of FARC, the Marxist force disbanded under the peace deal. The violence has generated the largest wave of displaced people since 2007, according to the United Nation’s refugee agency.
Fighting is intensifying as the cultivation of the coca leaf, the building block of cocaine, has soared to record highs, topping even levels seen when the FARC ruled large swaths of the region. Since March, more than 9,000 people have been at least temporarily forced to flee their homes. During the same period, according to a leading human rights group, dozens of people have been kidnapped, assassinated, or wounded - either by land mines or by armed forces operating in the region, which include the Colombian military…