QUESTION 1 1. THE WORLD; Gang's toll stirs alarm in Colombia; The Urabenos group has displaced 19,000 people from one city, among other mayhem Author: Kraul, Chris Human Rights Watch on Thursday blamed the Urabenos criminal gang for helping cause one of Colombia's worst humanitarian crises in years: the forced displacement last year of 19,000 people from the city of Buenaventura. The displacements, representing 5% of the Pacific port city's population of 370,000, were only part of the mayhem perpetrated by the Urabenos gang members, who also engage in criminal activity such as targeting community leaders and rights activists for assassination, the rights group said. Colombian officials consider the gang the nation's biggest drug trafficker and say it is involved in extortion, as well as promoting a black market for stolen military weapons and carrying out killings. The diversity and scope of Colombia's most powerful gang illustrate the seriousness of the nation's organizedcrime problem, analysts say, even as the government claims to have dismantled dozens of similar groups in the last several years. "While authorities have captured many Urabenos members, they have not been able to curb the power of the group," said Max Schoening, the rights group's Colombia representative. President Juan Manuel Santos ordered a "special intervention" by armed forces in Buenaventura this month after police found several houses where the Urabenos and other gangs are thought to have taken victims for torture, killings and dismemberment. The Urabenos gang, which takes its name from the northwestern region of Uraba, controls a drug trafficking organization that handled a third to half of the 300 tons of cocaine shipped to the United States last year, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The gang is causing mayhem in Buenaventura in its fight against other gangs for control of the city, which is Colombia's largest Pacific port and a gateway for cocaine shipments to the U.S. Cocaine is hidden in freight containers placed aboard cargo ships and sent northward aboard smaller craft launched from the city's inlets and mangroves. The Buenaventura situation is especially alarming because the Colombian and U.S. governments have poured millions of dollars in aid into the city during the last decade to try to develop the port and give the mostly impoverished Afro-Colombian residents economic alternatives to crime. Maj. Gen. Ricardo Alberto Restrepo, commander of Colombia's anti-narcotics police, said in an interview that in addition to drugs, the gang also traffics in black market gasoline along the Venezuelan border, an activity that also enables it to launder drug profits. Extortion, illegal gold mining, kidnapping and for-hire killings round out the group's criminal portfolio, he said. Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, a Medellin-based think tank that tracks organized crime in Colombia, said the Urabenos' ascendance comes as "crimina ...