Colombia’s paramilitaries take up ‘private security’

Colombia’s paramilitaries take up ‘private security’
Andy Webb-Vidal in Bogotá
Published: May 26 2006 00:03 | Last updated: May 26 2006 00:03

Enrique Sánchez, a child psychologist at the Gabriel García Márquez junior school in Cazucá, a slum in the south of Bogotá, looks worried as a group of children disappear into the barrio’s labyrinth of alleyways on their way home.

Like other Colombians who will vote in Sunday’s presidential elections, he is pondering whether President Alvaro Uribe deserves to be re-elected for a second four-year term.

Official figures indicate that security has improved, thanks to Mr Uribe’s fight against insurgents from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, and his push to force the country’s many paramilitary outlaws to turn in their guns.

But in Cazucá, a slum of 250,000 people like so many that ring the city of 7m, Mr Sánchez says that, unlike the plush districts in the north of Bogotá, life is barely any safer. Only the characters have changed.

“Four years ago there were a lot of guerrilla militia around here but they were gradually seen off or killed by the paramilitaries,” Mr Sánchez says. “The main change under the Uribe government has been that this community has become completely dominated by the paramilitaries and their clones.”
(snip/...)

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/19a578ea-ec15-11da-b3e2-0000779e2340.html

On edit, adding photo:



Carlos Castaño, leader of Colombia's feared AUC paramilitary group, in a photo dated Feb. 20, 2001 (Photo: AFP).

Those slums were there long before Uribe was president and will most likely be there long after his death.

But the one difference since Uribe took office is that Colombians are able to travel from city to city through Colombia's mountain roads without getting kidnapped, killed or robbed by leftist rebels.

And that is the main reason he will most likely be reelected.

Paramilitaries as Proxies
Declassified evidence on the Colombian army's anti-guerrilla "allies"
by Michael Evans, director, Colombia documentation project

The question of the Colombian military's complicity with paramilitary atrocities will probably not be addressed by the National Commission on Reparation and Reconciliation, which convened last week to sort through the legal and compensatory issues involved in the deactivation of the country's right-wing militias. The law governing the demobilization process provides sweeping amnesty for most paramilitary members and requires little more than good faith and modest reparations payments from those guilty of more serious "crimes against humanity." The Justice and Peace Unit of the Attorney General's office-which operates alongside the commission-has only 60 days to prepare cases, and even those found guilty of serious charges can expect to serve relatively light sentences. The measure also does not compel paramilitary commanders to provide information about the operations and financing of their organizations-what President Álvaro Uribe calls "a balance between justice and peace."

Fortunately, recently declassified U.S. documents, including the first-hand accounts of senior Colombian army officers, are beginning to lift the veil of secrecy. Obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive, these records provide important new details about military involvement in paramilitary attacks and offer a unique and intimate perspective on the institutional pressures that encouraged a wide range of cooperation with paramilitary forces-from the tacit acquiescence of senior commanders to the direct participation of field officers and their troops.

One case sure to be examined by the commission concerns the infamous series of paramilitary massacres in and around the towns of La Gabarra and Tibú in the summer of 1999. Paramilitaries from the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) moved into the lucrative coca growing region in May 1999 to "cleanse" guerrilla influence from the area, killing some 150 people in more than a dozen attacks over that next three months. In most cases, local military forces simply did not react to the paramilitary incursions.

In the midst of this brutal offensive, the Colombian vice president's office "privately reported" to the U.S. embassy that Colombian army soldiers "had donned AUC armbands and participated directly" in one of the massacres. "The string of mass killings since May without security force response is appalling," U.S. Ambassador Curtis Kamman reported in a cable to Washington. "How did seven massacres occur without interference under the noses of several hundred security force members?"
(snip/...)

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB166/index.htm




Carlos Castaño
Giving Colombia's Paramilitaries What They Want
By JOANNE MARINER
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Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2005

When Alvaro Uribe campaigned for Colombia's presidency in 2002, he advocated a strong military response to the country's illegal armed groups. Many Colombians, frustrated by the outgoing Pastrana administration's largely fruitless talks with guerrilla negotiators, were persuaded by Uribe's more hard-line approach.

Yet Uribe's record, in the nearly three years since his election, has been characterized by a worrying indulgence toward violent groups. While the Uribe administration has indeed stepped up military action against Colombia's main guerrilla army, its most striking initiative has taken place at the negotiating table, not on the battlefield. There, rather than toughness, the government has shown an appalling willingness to accede to the other side's demands.

Since late 2002, senior government officials have been meeting with leaders of violent paramilitary groups to discuss the demobilization of paramilitary troops. These paramilitary leaders--who include some of Colombia's most notorious drug kingpins and most vicious murderers--are seeking to escape responsibility for their crimes. Their goals are to avoid extradition to the United States, minimize potential prison terms in Colombia, and retain as much of their illegally obtained wealth as possible.

To date, there is little reason to believe that they won't get what they want.

Massacres, Killings, Kidnappings and Negotiations

Colombia is a human rights disaster, in large part due to violent abuses committed by paramilitary groups. Some paramilitary leaders have more than a dozen outstanding arrest warrants against them in Colombia for massacres, killings, kidnappings and other crimes.
(snip/...)

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/mariner/20050216.html

They're just mercs!

Uribe has attempted to get complete amnesty for these monsters, after all the bloody massacres, as well. He's up to his eyeballs in his association with them going back decades.