JANUARY 8, BOGOTÁ:

An internally displaced family. Colombia, June 2000. Photo © Joanne Mariner/Human Rights Watch

Bogotá is a relatively calm island surrounded by war. If you stay just in the center and northern quarter of the city, you would never suspect that the rest of the country is tearing itself apart. Billboards advertise cell phones and Ralph Lauren clothing, apartments are blue with the light of televisions, couples walk and kiss. Yet the fancy restaurants are empty, the museums large echo chambers. It's as if everyone were awaiting a great storm. There is expectation in the air, and fear. "They kill you first and ask questions later," one international aid worker told me the following night. "They" is purposefully vague. Perhaps the uniformed and armed men are paramilitaries or guerrillas; perhaps they are paramilitaries pretending to be guerrillas or vice versa. Or they may be criminals using fear to rob and murder.