Your presence is very important because of your own mission. Third, there is the Colombian military. The paramilitaries and the Colombian armed forces are two distinguishable organizations, but often work in collusion. We heard many testimonies of military-paramilitary complicity. The main victims of the war are the campesinos who are forced from their homes and their land by the armed actors.
Most estimates place the number of internally displaced people in Colombia at over one million.
Add to this entrenched conflict the production and marketing of drugs, the trade which funds both guerrilla and paramilitary activities. Violence and common crime tied to the drug trade are rampant and on the rise. The counternarcotics battalions will forcibly displace innumerable people in their counterinsurgency sweeps. Subsequent aerial spraying of the region will contaminate the land and water to the point of making present or future agricultural production impossible. Combined, these tactics will force thousands from their land and their homes.