Colombia’s fast-growing paramilitary forces have been characterized by human-rights groups as merciless killers. Widely documented civilian massacres and summary executions in the nation’s many lawless regions have earned the main paramilitary organization a spot on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist groups.
For Colombian President-elect Alvaro Uribe, dealing with the paramilitaries may be one of the most delicate and critical jobs of his 4-year term, analysts say.
A shadow already is hanging over Uribe’s recent landslide election victory because of the quiet nod of support for him from rightist paramilitary groups, which have mushroomed over the past several years to include more than 10,000 fighters.
“I think Washington officials are very concerned about these groups–both Democrats and Republicans,” said Michael Shifter, vice president for policy at Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank.
“If Washington is to get any deeper involved in Colombia, [it] will need assurances that Uribe is dealing effectively with this issue,” he added. “There is a sense that the paramilitaries are a sort of a Frankenstein that has been created because of the conflict in Colombia.”
Uribe, a former provincial governor who has vowed to launch a tough offensive in his country’s 38-year civil war, has said he does not support paramilitary groups.
Many human-rights activists are not convinced.
Paramilitaries, armed bands that got their start with funding from wealthy landowners, are a potent force in Colombia. The government says the groups are illegal, but some Colombians believe the paramilitaries are necessary to fight leftist rebels who government security forces have been too under-funded and understaffed to combat effectively.
Forces pitted in civil war
The civil war pits the paramilitary and state security forces against insurgent groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and the National Liberation Army, or ELN. With more than 17,000 members, the FARC is the largest of the rebel groups and is on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations.
About 3,500 people die annually in the tangle of competing armies, mostly civilians slain in rebel attacks and in massacres by paramilitaries.
One of the main tests of Uribe’s effectiveness–particularly regarding his ability to court support from the United States and other countries–will be the difficult balancing act of being tough on the paramilitaries and the rebels.
Shutting down the paramilitaries will not be easy, especially because Uribe’s actions during his political career reflect the mood of many Colombians who hate the brutality of the armed bands but are slow to support a crackdown.
The task will be all the more difficult because paramilitaries sometimes work with the tacit support of members of the national security force. One of their main jobs, critics say, is to act as enforcers, doing the dirty work government security forces cannot do, such as intimidating and even executing civilians accused of having rebel ties.
The paramilitaries, like the rebels, fund their activities primarily with money from the drug trade by extorting coca farmers and cocaine traffickers. Wealthy landowners and businessmen also support them.
Since 2000, the United States has poured nearly $2 billion into fighting Colombia’s complicated drug war.
Doing the dirty work
“The Colombian state has long had serious links with paramilitary groups,” said Natalia Lopez Ortiz, an attorney who advises the United Nations on human-rights issues in the South American country.
“The paramilitary forces are growing and growing and they are doing a dirty war of killing civilians every day,” she said. “Where they are in large numbers, there is no law of the state. They are the law.”
Many government officials dispute the idea that their security forces support paramilitaries, calling documented cases of collusion isolated.
But human-rights groups express fear the situation may get worse under Uribe. They point to his tenure as the provincial governor of Antioquia, during which he helped create more than 60 armed citizen groups charged with reporting on alleged criminal activities.
Some were infiltrated by paramilitary forces and accused by human-rights organizations of carrying out assassinations. Most of the groups have been disbanded.
One of Uribe’s main initiatives is the recruitment of 1 million civilians to report illegal activities to law-enforcement agencies, but functioning under “much tighter controls,” said Rafael Pardo, a former defense minister who has been advising Uribe on security issues.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson rejected the effort in a recent report.
“The international community must repudiate any attempt to draw the civilian population into the conflict or any other expression of support for violence,” Robinson said.
Some Colombians support the idea of paramilitaries.
See no other choice
“The basic concept of the paramilitaries is good,” said Nestor Rodriguez, a Bogota native. “The state does not give people security so the paramilitaries provide a service.”
Alfredo Rangel, a military analyst in Bogota, said: “Some believe the paramilitaries are the solution to the inability of the state to confront the rebels. I think the vast majority of people are pessimistic about their effectiveness in the war, but many people see no choice.”
Many experts say the government must build up its defense forces to fight both the paramilitaries and rebels–one idea already promoted by Uribe.
Rangel said that tiny Ecuador and Chile, one of South America’s most stable countries, have higher military spending than Colombia as a percentage of gross domestic product.
During the campaign, Uribe said he would double the number of combat-ready troops and police. He was elected on a hard-line platform that followed years of failed peace efforts with the rebels.
To be successful, analysts say the new president, who takes office in August, also must raise taxes to support his proposed $1 billion military buildup and to crack down on loopholes that allow Colombia’s elite to dodge mandatory military service.
As the state’s defense forces have lagged behind, the main paramilitary umbrella group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, has more than doubled in number in the past four years.
Paramilitary violence also has risen, causing to 1,560 deaths in 2000 from 400 deaths in 1998, according to government figures.
Some analysts fear the paramilitaries may perceive Uribe’s election victory as a mandate to wreak havoc in various regions.
Human-rights activists reported that paramilitary groups warned rural voters days before the May 26 election that they would deliver one dead body for every vote cast for any presidential candidate other than Uribe.
“They said they would look at the polling sites and count the votes for candidates other than Uribe and there would be a casket for every vote,” attorney Lopez Ortiz said.
