Plan Colombia and Beyond

Party	Political tendency	Candidate heading the party’s Senate list	Main positions
Alas Equipo Colombia (“Wings Colombia Team”)	A pro-Uribe party in the government’s coalition. It is a fusion of Alas, a faction of the Liberal Party, with Equipo Colombia, a faction of the Conservative Party. It claims to be independent and centrist.	Álvaro Araújo Castro	Support for re-election and for the “Justice and Peace” law with the AUC. Support for Uribe’s “Democratic Security” policy. Proposes the country’s federalization. Support for the free-trade agreement with the United States. Against the de-penalization of abortion or the legal recognition of gay couples. Questioned for ties to paramilitaries in Cesar and Sucre, and for clientelistic behavior with the current government. Its internal democratic procedures are very precarious, with decisions in the hands of a few regional leaders.
Alianza Social Indígena (Indigenous Social Alliance)	A party originating within the process of ethnic minorities’ campaign for seats reserved for them. It has lately encouraged participation of campesino and afro-Colombian communities, as well as social organizations.	Jesús Piñacue, Eulalia Yagari	Opposition to immediate reelection. Does not support the free-trade agreement with the United States. Does not support Uribe’s “Democratic Security” policy, as it considers it to be against indigenous and campesino communities. Against the “Justice and Peace” law because it generates impunity. Supports recognition of gay couples and the de-penalization of abortion in special cases. Its internal democratic procedures are “regular.”
Autoridades Indígenas de Colombia (Colombian Indigenous Authorities)	A party originating within the process of ethnic minorities’ demands for representation.	Lorenzo Almendra, Ramiro Estancio	Against the Uribe government’s “Democratic Security” policy and the inequalities inherent in immediate re-election. Against the free-trade agreement with the United States. Does not support the “Justice and Peace” law, viewing it as going against the rights to truth and reparations. Against abortion in any circumstance. Supports gay rights. Its internal democratic procedures rely on traditional customs.
Radical Change (Cambio Radical)	An openly pro-Uribe party representing a breakaway faction of the Liberal Party.	Germán Vargas Lleras	Supports “Democratic Security” and Uribe’s re-election. Supports the free trade agreement with reservations. Supports the “Justice and Peace” law but with some criticisms. Rejects the de-penalization of abortion and rights for gay couples. Its internal democratic procedures are very weak.
Colombia Democrática (Democratic Colombia)	An eminently pro-Uribe party, configured around President Uribe.	Mario Uribe Escobar	Promotes President Uribe’s re-election. Supports “Democratic Security” and the free-trade agreement with the United States. Totally supports the “Justice and Peace” law and negotiations with the AUC. Supports abortion in special cases. Not in agreement with rights for gay couples. Has no internal democratic system; decisions are made by the party’s chief, Mario Uribe, and mainly influenced by President Uribe’s government.
Colombia Viva (Colombia Alive)	Pro-Uribe party created by the union of legislators from the Caribbean coast and, currently, protestant evangelical groups.	Jorge Enrique Gómez Montealegre	Supports President Uribe’s re-election and his “Democratic Security” policy. Supports the free-trade agreement. Supports the “Justice and Peace” law and the AUC process. Does not support the de-penalization of abortion and considers gays to be their enemies. The party has been criticized for accepting candidates expelled from other parties for ties to paramilitaries. Has a weak system of internal democratic procedures and its organizational positions are exclusionary.
Convergencia Ciudadana (Citizen Convergence)	Party created by former M-19 members and labor unions. At first, it was meant to be in opposition to traditional parties. Today, it is allied with several former military officers and has declared itself to be pro-Uribe.	Gabriel Acosta Bendek	Supports President Uribe’s re-election. Supports the free-trade agreement. Supports the “Justice and Peace” law and negotiations with the AUC. Supports abortion in special cases and the rights of gay couples. It has been criticized for clientelistic practices, and for accepting candidates expelled from other parties for ties to paramilitaries. Its system of internal democratic procedures is disorganized; its relations are more electoral than political.
Partido de la U (“U” Party)	A party created around the figure of President Uribe. It is one of several parties that claim to be “the” party of Uribe.	Gina María Parody	Supports President Uribe’s re-election. Totally supports all of the Uribe government’s policies. The majority of its members say that they do not support the rights of gay couples. With regard to abortion, they have no clear position, and they consider the “Justice and Peace” law to be a contribution to peace. Its system of internal democratic procedures is incipient, and decisions are generally left up to its chief, Juan Manuel Santos, according to the government’s indications.
Partido Dejen Jugar al Moreno (“Let Moreno Play” Party)	A party configured as a project of Senator Moreno de Caro. An unconditional ally of the Uribe government.	Carlos Moreno de Caro	A force behind President Uribe’s re-election and an author of the “Justice and Peace” law. Supports the free-trade agreement. Has no position on either abortion or the rights of gay couples. The party has been criticized for accepting candidates expelled from other parties for ties to paramilitaries. It has no system of internal democratic procedures, as it is a personal project of Sen. Moreno de Caro.
Movimiento Independiente de Renovación Absoluta (MIRA) (Independent Movement for Absolute Renovation)	Began as a political organization of the International Church of Christ (Iglesia de Jesucristo Internacional). The churches of “Dios Ministerial de Jesucristo,” which have been opened in various cities in Colombia, are the backbone of its political structure. Its policy is to make no alliances with other parties or movements.	Alexandra Moreno Piraquive	Critical of the immediate re-election of the president. Does not agree with the proposed free-trade agreement with the United States. Supports the “Justice and Peace” law but with reservations due to its generation of impunity. Not in agreement with abortion under any circumstance, and openly opposes gay rights. Does not have a system of internal democratic procedures, it makes unilateral decisions and excludes sexual minorities from participating.
Conservatismo Independiente (Independent Conservatism)	Originated as a dissident faction of the Conservative party configured around the thought of Álvaro Gómez Hurtado [a powerful right-wing politician assassinated over a decade ago]. Declared to be in opposition to the Uribe government.	Hugo Artundaga Salas	Critical of the immediate re-election of the president and of the free-trade negotiations with the United States. Supports the “Justice and Peace” law and privileges dialogue with illegal armed groups. Rejects abortion and the granting of rights to gay couples. Its system of internal democratic procedures is very weak.
Partido Conservador Colombiano (Conservative Party)	One of Colombia’s traditional parties. Its origins are found in the centralization movement originating in the independence era, and promoted by Simón Bolívar after the second war of independence. It consolidated through relations between large landowners and the Catholic church hierarchy. It has been a main participant in presidential elections, with several of its members elected president during its history. Today it is absent from the presidential race and has become a party unconditionally allied to President Álvaro Uribe.	Ivan Díaz Mateus	Supports the president’s immediate re-election. Totally supports the free-trade agreement with the United States and the “Justice and Peace” law. In total disagreement with the de-penalization of abortion regardless of motive. Rejects the legalization of the rights of gay couples. Has an internal, regional system of democratic participation for the integration of its leaders.
Partido Liberal (Liberal Party)	The party that has historically confronted the conservatives. Originated in the federalist currents during the independence period and consolidated from a base among artisans and merchants during the 19th century. A principal participant in the country’s political history. Today, after a strong division, it has officially declared itself to be in frank opposition to President Uribe.	Cecilia López Montaño	Opponents of the president’s immediate re-election, the party punished with expulsion those members who disagreed with this position. Opposed to the contents of the free-trade agreement and to its signature and approval, and opposed to the “Justice and Peace” law and the AUC negotiations. Officially supports the rights of gay couples and the de-penalization of abortion in special cases, though some of its members disagree. It has developed a system of internal democratic procedures that reserves spaces for women, young people and ethnic minorities, not just in party leadership but on the ballot.
Polo Democrático Alternativo (Alternative Democratic Pole)	This party originated in 2002 with the convergence of different independent parties and movements on Colombia’s “democratic left.” Among these were Alternativa Política Colectiva (APC) and the Frente Social, which initially presented Luis Eduardo Garzón’s 2002 presidential candidacy. Afterward [in 2003], he was formally elected mayor of Bogotá as the PDI [Polo Democrático Independiente] candidate. In its consolidation process it has managed to unite with many important movements, such as “Visionarios,” ANAPO, Vía Alterna, unions, NGOs, indigenous sectors, regional movements, sexual minorities’ movements, and the congressional bloc of Alternativa Democrática, with which it united to form the Polo Democrático Alternativo. This is its first congressional election as a political party. It officially opposes the political principles of Alvaro Uribe’s government.	Gustavo Petro Urrego	Strong opponents of the immediate re-election of the president. Critics of the “Justice and Peace” law and the AUC negotiations. It has denounced AUC relations with various political and business sectors in Colombia, especially pro-Uribe sectors. It opposes a free-trade agreement with the United States and proposes Latin American integration as an alternative. It approves of the de-penalization of abortion and rights for gay couples. It has developed a democratization process within its structures to give space to women, young people, regions, and ethnic and sexual minorities, as well as the institutionalization of spaces for collective decision-making. However, for important decisions it has been criticized for the strong influence wielded by its members who are in the Congress.
Movimiento Político Comunal y Comunitario (Communal and Community-based Political Movement)	A party originated from the confederation of Juntas de Acción Comunal (JAC), quasi-official community or neighborhood advisory bodies present throughout Colombia. It organized as a party after the 1991 constitution’s enactment, and was formally recognized in 1997. Though a communal initiative, only 10 percent of the JACs are active in this movement.	Salvador Rincón Santos	Opposed to the immediate re-election of the president. Rejects the free-trade agreement with the United States. Does not accept the “Justice and Peace” law or the negotiations with the AUC, due to the victims’ weak position in the process. With regard to de-penalization of abortion and the rights of gay couples, it has no positions. Its system of internal democratic procedures is clouded by the dominance of electoral alliances.
Por el País que Soñamos (For the Country We Dream Of)	The political grouping of former Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa, who decided not to run as a Liberal Party presidential candidate this year. Instead, Peñalosa first briefly ran for president against Uribe, then quit and now heads the Senate candidate list for this political movement, which declares itself to be 100 percent pro-Uribe.	Enrique Peñalosa Londoño	Supports the president’s immediate re-election and the “Justice and Peace” law. Supports the implementation of the free-trade agreement with the United States. Supports the de-penalization of abortion in special cases and is ambiguous about the rights of gay couples. Does not have a system of internal democratic procedures and decisions are made by Enrique Peñalosa himself.
Visionarios con Antanas (Visionaries with Antanas)	The political project of former Bogotá Mayor Antanas Mockus, who is running for president as the candidate of the Alianza Social Indígena (which has its own lists of congressional candidates), and brings his own list of senate candidates called “Visionarios con Antanas” because most members of the Visionario political movement have joined the Polo Democrático. The candidate list is made up intellectuals and technocrats known for their personal qualities, but with low political profiles and poor name recognition.	Salomón Kalmanovitz	Critics of immediate re-election, as they consider it to harm the separation of powers. Rejects the “Justice and Peace” law because they believe it will lead to large abuses. Supports the free-trade agreement with the United States, but with reservations. Agrees with the de-penalization of abortion in general, and supports non-discrimination against gays. Its internal democratic processes are very fragile. Decisions are made by its director, Antanas Mockus, and even though he is tied to the Alianza Social Indígena, the Senate list has no indigenous presence or popular-sector candidates. It is an eminently technocratic effort.
Movimiento Compromiso Cívico Cristiano con la Comunidad (C4) (Christian Civic Commitment to the Community (C4) Movement)	A Christian project of Senator Jimmy Chamorro, a Protestant / Evangelical leader who belongs to a Christian church founded by his father.	Jimmy Chamorro	Opposes the immediate re-election of the president. Rejects the free-trade agreement with the United States and has affirmed that it will vote against it. Opposes the “Justice and Peace” law because it will generate impunity. Rejects the de-penalization of abortion and does not recognize the rights of gay couples. Its system of internal democratic procedures is precarious, as decisions are taken unilaterally by its director, and the movement is limited to those who hold its brand of Christian beliefs.

Posted by isacson at 6:45 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 28, 2006

Losing interest in a "manageable" conflict?

According to a poll reported on Semana magazine’s website, the armed conflict is no longer Colombians’ chief concern. Instead, respondents said they were more worried about poverty, inequality and corruption.

The “Survey of Everyday Perceptions of the Conflict” taken by the University of the Andes and the Indepaz think-tank polled 2,000 people in twenty-one cities and towns, including large capitals and the urban centers of otherwise rural counties.

This could be good news. It could mean that Colombia’s political mood is becoming less warlike and more open to addressing the conflict’s underlying causes: poverty, rural underdevelopment, impunity, state weakness and the absence of the rule of law.

According to Semana:

The actions that Colombians, both urban and rural, consider to be the highest priority for attaining peace are not the obvious ones. They believe that neither military action nor peace negotiations should be the main tools. On the contrary, they prioritize increasing employment and reducing poverty, combating corruption and giving opportunities to young people. In the countryside, the need to help displaced people is felt more strongly. Negotiation with the guerrillas occupies tenth place among fifteen options.

President Uribe has said on repeated occasions that the conflict (or, in his formulation, “terrorism stimulated by drugs”) is the main cause of Colombia’s poverty. The poll seems to indicate that most Colombians now think the opposite, that addressing poverty is the best way to end the conflict. (Despite this disagreement, 60 percent of respondents said they would vote for Uribe.) This means that momentum for a military solution is subsiding.

Looked at another way, though, the poll’s results could be bad news. Reduced public concern about the conflict could also mean reduced public interest in the reforms and sacrifices necessary to end the conflict. Angelika Rettberg, a University of the Andes political scientist cited in the Semana article, worries that the survey could indicate that Colombians have taken some levels of violence for granted, and have developed a “modus vivendi” for dealing with it. “That modus vivendi, which could be a necessary survival tool, could also be one of the main barriers standing in the way of a stable peace,” she told Semana.

This is a very important point. Colombia, which has seen the majority of its political violence during the last sixty years take place in remote rural areas where few people live, has been through this before. It happens something like this:

1. Rural political violence worsens to the point where it begins to affect urban elites and middle classes. Demands that something be done about the violence come to dominate the national political debate.
   
   
2. A policy is adopted that seeks to address the conflict’s manifestations, usually through military force, without requiring meaningful reform or deep sacrifice. Examples include the “National Front” that ended the violence of the ‘50s; the “Public Security Statute” of the Turbay government in the late 1970s; peace accords with smaller guerrilla groups and the rewriting of the constitution in the early 1990s; and the Uribe government’s “Democratic Security” strategy.
   
   
3. This policy does achieve some modest initial success, bringing levels of violence down to where they had been a few years earlier, to the point where urban elites no longer feel the impact and the economy recovers. While reduced on a national scale, the violence continues to rage in rural areas, armed groups’ structures remain fundamentally intact, and the conflict’s causes (state absence, poverty, corruption etc.) continue to fester.
   
   
4. The country sees fewer and fewer results from the flawed policy that achieved the modest initial reduction in violence. However, with violence at more “manageable” levels, urban elites and middle classes lose interest in the costly search for solutions to the conflict and turn to other issues. Any momentum for fundamental reform or sacrifice is lost.
   
   
5. After a few years of neglect and distraction, progress is reversed. Armed groups recover and increase in size and strength, often by finding a new source of income. Return to step (1).

Colombia appears to have entered step (4). Plan Colombia and “Democratic Security” have reached the limits of what an additional few hundred million dollars per year of military spending can achieve. The Uribe government’s security strategy is showing fewer results against guerrilla and paramilitary violence, and Plan Colombia has had only slight effects on overall Colombian drug production. And now the UniAndes/INDEPAZ poll shows that Colombians are viewing the conflict as a less urgent matter.

Is Colombia’s ruling class once more falling under the spell of “manageability”? If it remains possible to drive from Bogotá to Cartagena without being kidnapped, will interest in ending the fighting – whether through force or negotiations – disappear? With Colombia’s stock-market index at record levels, will people in Bogotá and Medellín care about what happens in Putumayo or Arauca? If coca-growing stays at around 100,000 hectares, will there be less demand to make Colombia’s rural sector economically viable? If the paramilitaries successfully hide their growing power behind their “demobilization” process, will we see an end to efforts to stop their infiltration of the state? If the New York Times can now recommend that tourists visit Bogotá or Colombia’s coffee region, will there be fewer calls to establish a basic government presence in neglected zones?

One poll does not mean that complacency has set in. And of course, increased concern about poverty and impunity is good news if it means that Colombians are really willing to undergo the sacrifices that addressing those problems would entail.

However, any sign that the unresolved conflict is becoming less of a concern has to be seen as troubling. Colombia has been here before. A return to step (5), a renewed worsening of the violence, could be in the offing – probably during Álvaro Uribe’s likely second term.

Posted by isacson at 1:32 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

February 20, 2006

León Valencia: the limitations of “democratic security”

One of a group of less-radical guerrillas who left the ELN in 1994, León Valencia is now one of the most insightful analysts of Colombia’s conflict and politics. He has been on a roll lately: his latest columns, which appear in El Tiempo and other Colombian papers, have been particularly useful to those of us trying to comprehend the rather confused current moment in Colombia. Whether discussing the security situation, critiquing the paramilitary talks, or calling for unity on Colombia’s non-violent left (as in the latest Actualidad Colombiana), Valencia’s writings have been adding new information to the debate.

Here is a translation of his column in yesterday’s El Tiempo, which is probably the best answer I’ve seen in a while to the oft-asked question, “Is Uribe beating the FARC?” (The short answer is “no.”)

La Macarena and the limitations of “democratic security”

It was the end of December. The FARC dealt the security forces the strongest blow they had suffered during the Uribe government so far. Twenty-nine soldiers died and several were wounded in Vista Hermosa, in the La Macarena Mountains. The president reacted by ordering an offensive of manual coca eradication and military-police occupation of the zone. The FARC responded with a campaign of small attacks, including two that left 12 police dead. Now, the president wants to take the offensive farther, and has ordered bombings in some areas to support the land troops.

These two months have seen a debate about the effectiveness of the government’s strategy in La Macarena, and of the consequences it will have on the “democratic security” policy.

When the FARC’s first attack took place, Alfredo Rangel [of the Security and Democracy Foundation, a Bogotá think tank] hastily said that it owed to an error, with the army unfortunately letting its guard down. Someone who writes under a pseudonym in El Espectador, acting as an expert in military and security issues, introduced a more detailed discussion, affirming that these were the normal costs of sustained operations in the enemy’s strongholds. He said that it is the FARC who must be very concerned, because they are being forced to fight in their own territory, because they had allowed themselves to be brought that far by the government’s military offensive.

In fact, journalist Jineth Bedoya, in an on-the-ground report, told in El Tiempo how, a few days before the December attack, the troops who were ambushed were on maximum alert. They knew in great detail that the FARC were lying in wait. They had seen guerrillas snooping about, they had suffered the presence of landmines, they had caught a whiff of the smell left by stealthy troops passing by in the middle of the jungle. Their guard was not down.

The simple fact is, the FARC have many things in their favor in La Macarena. Their numbers, the surprise factor, better knowledge of the terrain, the support of the coca-growing population. This is the painful reality of war.

That brings us to the current debate about the conditions in which Colombia’s war is being fought. There are two commonly mistaken assumptions about the FARC: political analysts and military strategists frequently view them as a classic guerrilla group whose principal art is the tactical offensive; they also insist that they do not have any support in the population. Perhaps this vision of the FARC explains the accumulated failures in confronting them.

The FARC’s art is defense. This is not common in the history of guerrillas. Generally, the smaller force grows by persistently attacking its enemy. Attacking and attacking in the counterpart’s weakest places. Tiring them out. Biting and fleeing. This has been the common language of most guerrillas that fought in the twentieth century. A scholar some time ago called it “the war of the flea.”

The FARC’s logic has been different. To wait and wait. Only rarely does it go out to seek the enemy. Very rarely does it conceive of large expansion plans. It risks little. It does its utmost to avoid decisive confrontations. Its history has been defensive. It grows while on the defensive. It expands almost because it is forced to, when it is forced to move away from its territory under enemy pressure.

It must not be forgotten that this guerrilla group was born amid the offensive that President Guillermo León Valencia carried out in 1964 against groups of campesinos who had taken refuge in Pato, Riochiquito and Guayabero. To express his disagreement with the National Front and with the guerrilla disarmament of the 1950s, Manuel Marulanda Vélez organized some campesino colonies along the border of Huila and Tolima departments. They grew crops and lived with their weapons at rest, but their eyes open.

The guerrilla mobilization began with the attack on these zones. Many years later, amid a cease-fire entered into with President Belisario Betancur [in the mid-1980s], the FARC calmed down for several years. They were by then a force dispersed throughout all the country, but they concentrated their command in the famous “Casa Verde” in La Uribe (Meta department).

The cease-fire did not lead to peace, and before long [in 1990] the FARC were attacked again. Its commanders retreated to the south, but left its forces sown throughout zones from which it could reach all the way to Bogotá. The defense minister at the time, Rafael Pardo, had said that the guerrillas would be defeated within 18 months, and he had to eat these words and suffer more than a few troubles due to the FARC’s constant harassments and attacks.

The FARC’s most successful defense was that of the Llanos del Yarí [in eastern Caquetá department] between 1996 and 1998. President Samper went after them with operations “Destructor 1” and “Destructor 2.” The FARC took this opportunity to hand him 16 consecutive defeats. It was during this time that they destroyed specialized units, killed hundreds of soldiers without compassion, and captured many more.

Everyone in Colombia knows these things. I recall them only to illustrate with some examples the idea that the FARC utilizes the other side’s offensives to beat them and to grow.

The FARC defend themselves well. But in addition, they concern themselves with maintaining the population’s support. Their most loyal allies have been the colonos [the word refers to poor farmers, usually displaced within the last generation or so, who have settled into remote, ungoverned areas to try to make a living]. But during the 1970s and 1980s they sought to arrive in the cities and to conquer the middle levels, the social organizations, public opinion. Hand-in-hand with the Communist Party they dared to participate in the formation of the Patriotic Union, a party that, before being exterminated, carved out an important political space in the country and in the Congress.

Attacked at “Casa Verde,” beaten back in their attempt to conquer the cities through political action, up to their necks in narcotrafficking, pestered and besieged by paramilitary forces, and committing the error of pressuring and attacking the civilian population, the FARC had to unite with coca-growing campesinos and the country’s marginal sectors. They became a force on society’s periphery, with no possibility of leading large political actions, but with an immense potential for violence.

Some of the government’s critics close their eyes before the successes of its “democratic security” policy, but other opinion-makers fail to notice the difficulties within President Uribe’s strategy.

The 100,000-person increase in the security forces during these three and a half years was not in vain. Nor was the increase in defense spending up to 5 percent of gross domestic product. Nor was the persistence of U.S. military aid with its more than 600 thousand [he must mean 600 million] dollars per year, and the growing presence of troops and officials in Colombia.

Murders have decreased significantly, and so have kidnappings, disappearances, attacks on unionists and opposition leaders. There is more territorial control. And, above all, there is a greater feeling of security and confidence. In the confrontation with the FARC there have been some very clear victories. Emptied of guerrillas were Medellín’s Comuna 13 neighborhood and key sites in Cundinamarca department, their rearguard was penetrated by “Plan Patriota,” some mid-level leaders were captured, and it is not too bold to say that their number of combatants has been reduced by about 30 per cent.

But it also must be said that the FARC’s basic structures are intact, that its central command has not suffered significant blows. And most worryingly: the last year has shown signs of a counteroffensive. At first, the FARC has attacked the periphery of its strongholds in Nariño, Cauca, Huila, Putumayo or zones far from its critical areas, such as Arauca, Urabá, Chocó. Lately, they have carried out actions in the heart of their own rearguard.

The fact is, when the government’s offensive advances toward the remotest parts of the countryside and the armed forces’ lines stretch very far, their forces lose volume and consistency. The further the forces deploy into the territory, the fewer troops can be stationed in each area. The FARC wait for these moments and concentrate their forces to attack. This is what happened in La Macarena. In the days after the attack, they have dedicated themselves to maintaining their victory, avoiding frontal combat and resorting only to harassment of the troops. The eradication campaign and the thousands of troops moved to the zone to fight the guerrillas have had to confront these combat methods.

To the FARC’s art of defending itself must be added the Colombian government’s inability to offer anything more than a military offensive, to carry out a social inclusion project, to follow a grand strategy of removing these regions and their millions of residents from marginality and illegality. In past years, the coca-growing campesinos of La Macarena insisted on voluntary eradication programs in exchange for development projects to open new possibilities for life for the region. They got no response, and now, before an exported eradication model accompanied by military force and bombings, they feel attacked by their government and, in some way, in solidarity with the FARC. These two things [the FARC’s defensive nature and the government’s lack of a non-military strategy] constitute the great limitations of the “democratic security” policy. The FARC thrives on these limitations.

Posted by isacson at 12:54 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 16, 2006

In their own words

Though you wouldn’t know it if you only read English-language media, there is a lot going on in Colombia at the moment. Here is an overview, in the form of quotes from participants and analysts. All of them are from the month of February, most from the past week.

President Uribe is in Washington this week. The main purpose of his visit is to personally manage free-trade talks with the U.S. government, which are in their latter stages. Many Colombians fear that the country’s already battered rural sector will be overwhelmed by a flood of heavily subsidized U.S. produce.

• “What we don’t want is peasant groups to return to the drugs trade. A free trade deal must not kill alternative development.” Andrés Pastrana, Colombia’s ambassador to the United States.
• “I hope that [Uribe’s presence] allows them more flexibility, especially in agriculture.” – U.S. Trade Negotiator Rob Portman.
• “In a year in which polls show the Democrats gaining seats in Congress, Colombia has zero possibility of winning concessions [in trade talks]. … The Colombian government has resigned itself to trying to rescue the drowned man’s hat. That’s why Uribe is going to Washington.” – Polo Democrático Alternativo Senator and presidential candidate Antonio Navarro, in his Cambio magazine column.

The Bush administration submitted its foreign aid request to Congress, along with the rest of the 2007 budget, on February 6. The State Department made public its 682-page “Congressional Budget Justification” for foreign aid on Monday. In the request, Colombia is one of only a few Latin American countries that won’t see an aid decrease in 2007. The text of the request does hint that aid to Colombia may begin to decrease before very long.

• “Thanks to increased Colombian participation in aviation activities, in FY [Fiscal Year] 2005 the number of U.S. contractor pilots and mechanics was reduced by over 100. FY 2005 was also the first year since 2000 without a significant increase in the number of U.S.-supported helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft in Colombia, thus easing the need for new U.S. training programs.” – the Congressional Budget Justification document.
• “Who is satisfied [by the aid request]? We are seeking a way to maintain this aid, which is aid that recognizes shared responsibility in the struggle against drugs, and that Colombia deserves.” – President Uribe, in Washington yesterday.

The Bogotá office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights released a strongly worded report Monday reviewing Colombia’s human rights situation in 2005.

• “The Office in Colombia observed an increase in allegations of actions attributed to members of the security forces, particularly the army. This was especially true in the Department of Antioquia, as well as in Chocó, Norte de Santander, and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region. Most of these executions have been presented by the authorities as deaths of guerrillas in combat, with alterations made to the crime scene. Many were unduly investigated by the Military Criminal Justice System. Cases were recorded in which the commanders themselves had allegedly supported the act of dressing the victims in guerrilla garments to cover up facts and simulate a combat.
  …
  Cases were denounced of coordinated actions in which the victims were allegedly handed over by paramilitaries, subsequently executed by members of the military, and then presented as members of armed groups killed in combat, particularly in the metropolitan area of Medellín (Antioquia). Another modality was observed in allegations regarding victims executed by paramilitaries and presented by members of the army as killed in combat, in Putumayo and in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.”

Only a few thousand paramilitaries remain to be “demobilized,” whatever that means in a context where paramilitary power is at its all-time height, and increasing. Many more paramilitary fighters than expected are showing up for the latest demobilization ceremonies, and less weapons than expected are being turned over.

• “The government told us four years ago there were 12,000 paramilitaries. By the end of all this there will be 30,000 demobilized. Where did they come from?” – Sergio Jaramillo of Bogotá’s Ideas for Peace Foundation.
• “It should be emphasized that the demobilizations do not seem to have led to a decrease in the influence or control of the paramilitary groups in their respective geographical areas. Instead, using parallel strategies involving pressure and threats, they have been consolidated and, in certain cases, strengthened in the economic, social and political fields.” The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ report on Colombia in 2005, released Monday.
• “In all, the 21,300 AUC members who have demobilized in groups have turned in 10,041 long arms (which includes shotguns, grenade launchers and machine guns as well as rifles).” – El Tiempo editorial, February 7.

Authorities last week arrested Enilse López, a.k.a. “La Gata” (The Cat), on charges of laundering assets. “La Gata,” who controls the “numbers game” (lottery) on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, was thought untouchable due to her close ties to paramilitaries and drug traffickers, and her generous contributions to corrupt local officials.

• I have supported senators and also presidents. When Dr. Uribe came to Magangué [the impoverished, paramilitary-run southern Bolívar town where “La Gata” occupies a large mansion], I received him there and I asked my people to vote for him.” – “La Gata,” interviewed by Cambio magazine, cited in Miami’s Nuevo Herald.
  
  Last Friday, President Uribe admitted that “La Gata” contributed 100 million pesos (about US$40,000) to his 2002 campaign.

Two openly pro-paramilitary legislators, Rocío Arias and Eleonora Pineda, were ejected from “Colombia Democrática,” one of the mainstream pro-Uribe parties participating in the March congressional elections. Though the State Department denies it, a broad consensus in Colombia believes that Arias and Pineda’s departure was forced by the U.S. government. The U.S. embassy in Colombia is believed to have threatened to revoke the visa of Mario Uribe, the cousin and close political ally of President Uribe who heads “Colombia Democrática,” unless he did something about the presence of paramilitary-tied candidates in his party. Arias and Pineda were immediately accepted as the candidates of smaller parties.

• “I demand Ambassador William Wood’s resignation. … I ask President Uribe to respect Colombians’ national sovereignty and dignity.” – Rocío Arias.
• “Pineda and Arias may be paracas, but they are Colombians and we cannot allow the Americans to believe that this is their backyard. We now see how supposed acts of honesty [by political leaders like Mario Uribe] end up being examples of submission.” – Liberal Party senatorial candidate Piedad Córdoba. Sen. Córdoba, who is way to the left of most Liberals, was once briefly kidnapped by the paramilitaries, and bitterly opposes the Uribe govrnment’s negotiations with the AUC, is an unlikely supporter of Arias and Pineda.
• “Me, a paramilitary? But paramilitarism is over in Colombia. The only group left is that of Martín Llanos [a paramilitary bloc in eastern Colombia not participating in talks], in which I have no influence, but in the rest of the country paramilitarism doesn’t exist. And it’s not me saying that, but our president, Álvaro Uribe.” – Sen. Luis Alberto Gil, whose “Convergencia Ciudadana” party immediately accepted Eleonora Pineda as a candidate, denying frequent allegations that he has ties to paramilitary groups.

Ramón Isaza, a paramilitary leader since 1978 and the dominant warlord in Antioquia’s far east, “demobilized” his men last week. Isaza was one of the more reluctant paramilitary leaders participating in talks with the Uribe government.

• “[When he carried out a 1996 massacre of 17 people in La Esperanza, Antioquia, Isaza’s late son Omar] was working with General [Alfonso] Manosalva and Major [David] Hernández. They sent my son and eight other guys.” – Ramón Isaza, speaking on the day of his demobilization ceremony.
• “Isaza’s mudslinging against these military officers can only be viewed as a veiled threat against the President, making clear that Isaza knows things about that period in Antioqua which, if revealed, could be uncomfortable for the President.” – a “retired officer who worked with General Monsalva at that time,” cited in Cambio magazine. Many Colombians viewed Isaza’s words as a subtle threat against Álvaro Uribe, who was governor of Antioqua at the time of the massacre and worked very closely with Gen. Manosalva, who headed the army’s Medellín-based 4^th Brigade.

Talks in Cuba between the Colombian government and the ELN guerrillas, which were to resume in Cuba in late January, have yet to convene. The fast-approaching elections are a likely reason for the foot-dragging.

• “The two sides have still not built enough trust to enter into the fundamental issues that the situation requires. … Due to the ongoing electoral campaign, nobody is risking taking the initiative, and these meetings [between the ELN and civil-society leaders, in Havana] are a way to sustain this process as we await the electoral results.” – Moritz Akerman, one of the designated “civil society guarantors” of the ELN-government talks. 

Relations with Ecuador went through a rough patch, after the Ecuadorian government complained about a Colombian military incursion in Ecuador’s airspace and territory, and Colombia’s apology was less than heartfelt.

• “[Ecuador must] stop accommodating these bandits, stop accommodating these terrorists. … These terrorists cross into Ecuador, they hide there, against the will of the Ecuadorian government.” – President Uribe, February 8. Uribe used the verb contemplar which, in his home region of Antioquia, means “to consent to” or “to accommodate.” Ecuador responded by calling its ambassador home for “consultations.”
• “The Colombian government and its armed forces should do something about, and not ‘accommodate,’ its own citizens who carry out illegal activities in its own territory, in zones where, unfortunately, the Colombian security forces do not exercise effective control.” – Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Francisco Carrión.
• “I would say that since Plan Colombia, the number of refugees [into Ecuador] has increased. Colombia says it has decreased, but the reality is otherwise. The problem continues.” – Philippe Lavanchy, director of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ Americas Bureau, speaking in Quito on Februrary 8.

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February 9, 2006

Hernán Giraldo gets away with it

In 2001, Newsweek reporter Joe Contreras spent some time in the Caribbean port of Barranquilla, Colombia’s fourth-largest city. There, he reported on Hernán Giraldo, the drug-trafficking paramilitary leader who was perhaps the most powerful figure in the city, the nearby port of Santa Marta, and in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region to their south.

In the foothills of the snowcapped Sierra Nevadas in northeastern Colombia, the Kogi Indians whisper his name in fear. Along the docks of the Caribbean port city of Santa Marta, gangsters speak with awe of his 400-man private army. But everyone knows that when it comes to Hernan Giraldo Serna, it's usually best not to know too much. The gangsters quietly recall, for instance, that in 1999 Giraldo ordered the brutal murders of four construction workers, whose bodies were then cut to bits with a chain saw. Their offense? They had built a special basement to store his multimillion-dollar cache of cocaine, and they knew where it was.

Colombian intelligence sources at the time told Contreras that “Giraldo alone is head of a burgeoning drug syndicate that accounts for $1.2 billion in annual shipments to the United States and Europe. That puts him among the country's top five cocaine traffickers.”

In 2000, Contreras reported, Giraldo even took out a contract on the lives of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents.

It was on the evening of Feb. 18, 2000, that the DEA office in Barranquilla heard that a ruthless right-wing paramilitary chieftain named Hernan Giraldo had put out a $500,000 contract on the U.S. special agents assigned to investigate the top drug lords of northern Colombia.

On October 9, 2001, Semana magazine reports, Giraldo ordered the murder of three Colombian anti-narcotics police agents who were working closely with the DEA. The crime even drove a wedge between Giraldo and the rest of the AUC, at the time led by Carlos Castaño, who sent hundreds of men to Giraldo’s zone to pressure him to turn over the trigger-pullers. The resulting violence claimed dozens of lives, but Giraldo and the AUC soon reconciled. He has since been accused of ordering the February 2004 murder of Marta Lucía Hernández, the ranger in charge of Tayrona National Park, from whose shores Giraldo is believed to control the dozens of go-fast boats taking cocaine northward.

And now, Hernán Giraldo is getting away with it.

Hernán Giraldo turns in his weapon.

Six days ago, Giraldo and 1,166 men from his “Tayrona Resistance Bloc” handed in 366 weapons, making them one of the latest groups to do so as the AUC scrambles to meet a February 15 deadline for its full “demobilization.” As a beneficiary of the “Justice and Peace Law” that Colombia’s Congress passed last year to govern such demobilizations, Giraldo can look forward to spending up to 6 ½ years in a special prison, after which he will be a free man.

Giraldo must also declare all of his illegally obtained assets so that the government may return them to their owners or sell them for reparations to victims. Citing Colombian intelligence sources, Newsweek reported in 2001 that Giraldo “owns dozens of homes and farms, a fish-exporting business and a posh hotel.” Will these properties, whether stolen or purchased with drug money, end up being returned to the Colombian government?

And what does the U.S. government make of Hernán Giraldo’s happy ending? Is it galling to see its closest ally in Latin America give a slap on the wrist to someone who conspired to kill DEA agents? How are they dealing with the slim possibility that Giraldo’s extradition order will be honored? Will this – along with the impunity being granted to other notorious drug traffickers – affect relations with Álvaro Uribe? If hard-line U.S. drug warriors remain silent about this, doesn’t this shred their credibility? Where is the official outrage from Washington?

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January 24, 2006

"Swift-boating" the paramilitaries' critics

Colombia’s paramilitary groups appear to be increasing their power, even as they “demobilize.” One key path to greater power has been Colombia’s electoral process. Through a few bribes and a lot of threats, the AUC’s bosses are guaranteeing that candidates allied to them win governorships, mayor’s offices and seats in the Congress.

After Colombia’s last congressional elections, in March 2002, AUC leader Salvatore Mancuso famously declared that the paramilitaries controlled about 30 percent of the legislature. That may have been an exaggeration at the time, but 30 percent or more could be a real possibility as the March 2006 congressional elections approach.

With some exceptions (such as the remarkably outspoken Antioquia congresswoman Rocío Arias), paramilitary-allied candidates claim in public that they oppose paramilitarism, and usually seek office as members of mainstream political parties. But they campaign with the open support of the paramilitary groups that kill opponents, run drugs and dominate politics in their home regions. In many cases, due to threats against would-be rivals, these candidates find themselves running unopposed. In the paramilitary-dominated Caribbean coast department of Magdalena, for instance, mayoral candidates for the October 2003 municipal elections ran unopposed in 14 of the province’s 30 towns, according to El Tiempo.

For months, candidates opposed to President Uribe had been denouncing the presence of known paramilitary allies among pro-Uribe parties’ lists of candidates, but they had failed to get an official response from the government. In December, U.S. Ambassador William Wood added his voice, expressing public concern that “corrupt electoral practices may occur in the elections of 2006, notably by paramilitaries.” Instead of government action to investigate these concerns, Wood’s words only earned him a rare rebuke from President Uribe to stop “meddling” in Colombia’s affairs.

The issue of paramilitarization of the legislative election campaign didn’t begin to blossom into a full-blown scandal until about two weeks ago. Here is what happened.

Week of January 9: President Uribe attended a meeting in the heavily paramilitarized department of Córdoba, where local political leaders were to appoint a new governor to replace one forced out by corruption charges. During the meeting, two Córdoba senators, both running for re-election, got into a heated argument. In Uribe’s presence, both accused each other of having entered into “political pacts” with Córdoba-based AUC leader Salvatore Mancuso. Within a few days, Uribe ordered the attorney-general to investigate both politicians’ links to the AUC.

That week Gina Parody, a popular Bogotá congresswoman who supports Uribe but disagrees with the paramilitary negotiation process, declined invitations to run as the candidate of one of the two largest pro-Uribe political blocs (“Partido U,” coordinated by former Treasury Minister Juan Manuel Santos, and the oddly named “Cambio Radical,” headed by prominent Senator Germán Vargas Lleras, the grandson of a former president). Parody’s reason for turning them down: Both parties’ candidate lists included people “with paramilitary links.”

She named two senators running for re-election as candidates of “La U”: Dieb Maloof and Habib Merheg. Maloof, from Magdalena department, is believed to be an associate of “Jorge 40” (Rodrigo Tovar Pupo), the chief of the AUC’s powerful Northern Bloc. Merheg, from the tiny coffee-growing department of Risaralda, has been accused of paramilitary ties since 2003, according to El Tiempo. Both senators were elected in 2002 as candidates of “Colombia Viva,” a right-wing party widely seen as paramilitary-linked.

January 11: Perennial Liberal Party presidential candidate Horacio Serpa, in a speech announcing his candidacy, said that Álvaro Uribe “is caught in a web of rich people, bad policies and paramilitarism. … Today, the power of the paramilitaries is greater than that of the government” in many regions. Uribe’s interior minister, Sabas Pretelt, replied that “it is a barbarity to say that the country is paramilitarized.”

January 13: In public remarks, opposition Liberal Party chief, former President and former OAS Secretary-General César Gaviria said, “I don’t understand the reason why the President doesn’t reject the support of paramilitarism, doesn’t reject more clearly and firmly the mafias that have been encroaching on many regional governments. This worries me.”

January 16: The official tone appeared to change, as Uribe ordered the attorney-general’s office to investigate the “dubious and sizable financing of some congressional campaigns.” Interior Minister Pretelt explained, “There are outlawed groups that think they can do what they want, and they want to be the owners of the provinces, using money and coercion, but they won't succeed.” He added that paramilitary leaders found to be involved in campaigns will lose the lenient treatment that the “Justice and Peace” law would give them, and will be sent to jail.

January 18: “La U” and “Cambio Radical” expelled a total of five candidates from their lists for suspected paramilitary ties. The Liberal Party expelled one more.

That same day, though, the Uribistas began to play very dirty. In a move reminiscent of the sleazy “Swift Boat Veterans” ads that so damaged John Kerry in the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, they spread a false rumor making a ridiculous charge. The target was Sen. Rafael Pardo, a former defense minister who is now vying for the Liberal Party presidential nomination. Pardo left the Liberals in 2002 to support Uribe’s initial candidacy. He split from the Uribistas and rejoined the Liberals in 2004. The reason for the split: Pardo, like Parody, was a leading critic of the paramilitary talks, the “Justice and Peace” law, and creeping paramilitarization in general. (Unlike Parody, Pardo abandoned the ranks of Uribe’s supporters).

Juan Manuel Santos, the head of “La U,” started the attack by asserting publicly that, according to intelligence reports, Pardo has secretly made a pact with the FARC guerrillas to oppose Uribe, for instance by encouraging voters to abstain. The charge is silly on its face: Pardo is likely on the guerrillas’ most-hated-persons list. He is an establishment politician who became defense minister in 1991, shortly after Colombia’s military ended a round of peace talks by bombing the FARC’s “Casa Verde” headquarters. It shocked many last week to see allies of the government seeking to link Pardo to the guerrillas, a tactic usually reserved for union organizers and human-rights defenders.

Now, a proper “swift boat” strategy would require the candidate himself to distance himself from the “unrelated” supporters making the false charges. But President Uribe did not do that. Instead, the Palacio de Nariño (Colombia’s “White House”) put out a statement promising that “the government will make known to the attorney-general’s office the information it has received indicating that Dr. Rafael Pardo has proposed to the FARC a political action against the President of the Republic.” 

January 19: As the political furor worsened, Sen. Pardo put out a statement of its own, asking, among other things:

Señor Candidato Uribe:
- Is Dr. Santos acting on your orders?
- Are slander and the diffusion of false rumors tactics that you are promoting within your campaign?
- Why does a political leader who supports reelection have access to supposed government intelligence information?
- As head of state, have you instructed the intelligence agencies to pursue the opposition’s leadership?

The communiqué adds,

The country doesn’t really gain anything when some people are expelled from one of the Uribista movements for supposed paramilitary ties, only to be accepted minutes later as the congressional candidates of another Uribista movement. The fundamental issue is the one that I have mentioned: there is a paramilitary political project that seeks access to power through intimidation, and that is what we have to confront.

In Pardo’s case, the “swift boat” strategy appears to have backfired. The Uribe government failed to come up with the proof promised in its January 18 statement, and instead issued an apology to Sen. Pardo. If anything, Uribe’s ploy may have helped boost Pardo’s flagging campaign for the Liberal Party nomination: the senator had only been polling at about 2 or 3 percent.

But the problem of paramilitary infiltration persists. “I think that the list [of expelled candidates] is going to grow like a snowball [rolling downhill],” pro-Uribe political analyst Fernando Cepeda told the Associated Press. “This is a bomb that exploded at the right time, and it should help to clean up Colombian democracy.”

But expulsion of candidates from larger parties doesn’t mean that those candidates are abandoning their campaigns, and in fact they may still win as candidates of smaller parties, with help from the paramilitaries.

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether the Colombian government actually plans to take the bold step of revoking “Justice and Peace” law benefits from paramilitary leaders who get openly involved in politics. One such leader would likely be “Jorge 40” of the AUC’s Northern Bloc, who held a December 5 meeting with political leaders in Curumaní, Cesar department (where, a few days later, the Northern Bloc would go on to massacre at least seven people). The meeting was reportedly an exercise in choosing congressional candidates and developing an electoral strategy. Will the Colombian government seriously pursue “Jorge 40,” who has been one of the least cooperative participants in the paramilitary talks, and who is under indictment in the United States for drug trafficking?

Don’t count on it, as long as those who dare to denounce paramilitarism’s advance find themselves either the target of nationalist bluster (like Ambassador Wood) or the target of ridiculous swift-boat-style rumor-mongering (like Sen. Pardo). When charges this serious are met with attacks, the international community must sit up and take note of the kind of government it is dealing with in Bogotá.

Posted by isacson at 6:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 13, 2006

The rise of Colombia's "democratic left"

President Uribe continues to ride high in the polls in advance of the March legislative and May presidential elections. However, many observers wonder whether we can expect a surprise from Colombia’s “democratic left” – the term often used to describe left-of-center parties and candidates working within the constitutional system.

Left-leaning third-party candidates did surprisingly well the last time Colombia held elections, in October 2003, when – despite high approval ratings for Uribe, their polar political opposite – they captured several key governorships and mayor’s offices, including Bogotá.

For now at least, very few expect a third-party leftist to unseat Uribe. But it is possible that a left-wing presidential candidate could perform much better than expected, and that leftist parties could do quite well in the congressional elections. They even stand a chance of unseating the Liberal Party as the principal opposition bloc, essentially moving from third-party to “second-party” status.

This is so for two reasons:

• The pendulum of Colombian popular opinion has begun to swing away from the “mano dura” and a single-minded focus on security. While Colombia’s war continues to rage and appears to have intensified in 2005, the majority of Colombians who live in cities and near main roads are still feeling safer thanks to Uribe’s security policies. As a result, though, poll respondents are (a) more concerned about economic issues like unemployment and poverty than with security; and (b) more open to the possibility of renewed negotiations with guerrillas. Both of those trends favor the “democratic left” and other less right-wing candidates.
  
  
• Colombia’s traditionally fractious left has achieved an unprecedented degree of unity. When not being brutally repressed, political aspirants on Colombia’s left have generally been dispersed among many parties and tendencies. They had been divided for many reasons: ideological disagreements (some are much more radical than others); origins (intellectuals versus working-class, for instance); degrees of pragmatism (willingness to work with the right and “traditional” politicians when necessary); and simple personal ambitions and personality clashes.
  
  Until very recently, most – but certainly not all – had coalesced into two groupings. The Polo Democrático Independiente or PDI, a legally constituted party formed in 2003 at the initiative of the current mayor of Bogotá, Luis Eduardo Garzón, included nine members of Colombia’s Congress, including two former members of the M-19 guerrilla group. The Alternativa Democrática or AD was a coalition of smaller parties, generally more radical or Marxist in orientation, but ironically with no former guerrillas among its candidates and officeholders.
  
  At the end of November, after nine months of difficult negotiations, these two tendencies managed to unite as a new party, the Polo Democrático Alternativo or PDA. It is significant that they chose to go beyond merely backing the same candidate as a loose coalition, and instead formed an entirely new party.

Here are ten figures on Colombia’s democratic left from whom we are likely to hear much more over the next four years, as they lead the opposition to Uribe and become Colombia’s most vocal proponents of peace negotiations, human rights, social programs and alternative security strategies. We can expect these and other left-of-center candidates to be among the country’s top vote-getters in the March legislative elections, in part because of the left’s popularity in urban areas (just as Democrats perform better in U.S. cities) in a country that is 70 percent urban. Nonetheless, they will still likely be a minority, often overshadowed by the right – including the extreme, paramilitary-tied right. But 2006 could be a good year for them, and 2010 could be a great year.

1. Antonio Navarro Wolff. The Polo Democrático Independiente chose Navarro as its presidential candidate at its nominating convention last June. He is generally expected to be the candidate of the new Polo Democrático Alternativo, which will choose its candidate through a ballot measure during the March legislative elections. Navarro is one of the best-known figures in Colombian politics. He was the number-two leader of the M-19 guerrilla movement that demobilized in 1990 after successful peace negotiations with the Colombian government. After M-19 leader Carlos Pizarro was assassinated that same year, Navarro ran for president as the M-19 candidate and got 700,000 votes – at the time, a record for a leftist candidate – and he was named Minister of Health in the government of the victorious candidate, César Gaviria. A coalition including the M-19 made a strong showing in elections for the assembly that rewrote Colombia’s constitution in 1991; Navarro was one of the assembly’s three co-chairs. Navarro went on to be a well-regarded mayor of his home city of Pasto, then a senator; he was the second-highest vote-getter in the 2002 legislative elections (Colombia elects its senators on a national basis, not by department or region).

Though a former guerrilla, Navarro is not a radical; he has moved steadily toward the center over the years. “Though it makes many of my allies’ hair stand on end, I am of the center-left,” Navarro recently explained to an interviewer. While a critic of free trade and current drug policy, he supports both extradition (of criminals, not armed-group members) and aggressive military action against guerrillas – though he insists that this must go hand-in-hand with a comprehensive rural development strategy. While more ideological members of the democratic left consider him to be too accepting of “politics as usual,” Navarro has often served as a key mediator between the PDI/PDA’s centrist and far-left members.

Navarro has had difficulty getting his poll numbers out of the single digits, however. His standing has been affected by raw memories of the M-19’s tragic attempt to take over Colombia’s Palace of Justice in 1985, which Uribe has deftly exploited, and by a recently published book by a deceased journalist with ties to the Cali cartel, which claims that Navarro received money from narcotraffickers (the candidate vehemently denies this charge).

2. Luis Eduardo Garzón. Before being elected mayor of Bogotá in late 2003, Garzón was the head of the CUT, Colombia’s largest labor union, and a third-party presidential candidate in 2002. He had a difficult first year in office, facing problems of rising crime and the difficulty of governing when starting from scratch with a small political organization. He has since recovered his high approval ratings, and is now one of the most popular public figures in Colombia, widely believed to be a viable candidate for the 2010 presidential elections. (He is not running for any office this year, but the Bogotá mayorship is generally considered the last stepping-stone before the presidency.) Garzón has governed as a centrist, and has feuded quite openly with more ideological members of the PDI/PDA on Bogotá’s city council.

3. Carlos Gaviria. A former president of Colombia’s Constitutional Court, Gaviria was elected to the Senate in 2002 as a candidate of the Alternativa Democrática coalition. He was the AD candidate for the presidency, but Antonio Navarro, not Gaviria, is expected to be the candidate of the new PDA. Even before the leftist parties unified, Gaviria had nobly signaled his willingness to drop his candidacy in the name of unity, writing that “the consolidation of a democratic left force would be a historic event, and to have helped it happen would be my greatest political satisfaction.” Gaviria is viewed as an intellectual, well to the left of Navarro and Garzón on most issues, and is widely admired among Colombia’s intelligentsia. But intellectuals rarely win elections, and Gaviria is considered neither a gifted political organizer nor a dynamic public speaker.

4. Gustavo Petro. Considered the leader of the radical wing of the former PDI, Petro is a popular congressman from Bogotá – the top vote-getter in the lower house – and a former member of the M-19 guerrilla movement. He often makes headlines by publicly denouncing corruption and human-rights abuse – especially paramilitary infiltration of institutions – often by hosting congressional debates and hearings. When Colombia’s Caracol radio station asked members of Colombia’s Congress last year to name the colleague whom they considered to be the chamber’s “most outstanding,” Petro won overwhelmingly. This year, he is running for the Senate and is expected to win easily. An enthusiastic admirer of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Petro has quarreled with more moderate members of the PDI/PDA, particularly Bogotá rival Luis Eduardo Garzón.

5. Jorge Enrique Robledo. Like Gaviria, Senator Robledo is considered a radical politician with a more academic or intellectual background. He is the most prominent officeholder from the Independent Revolutionary Workers’ Movement (MOIR), a decades-old non-violent Marxist-oriented party that participated in the Alternativa Democrática coalition. Robledo has been an outspoken opponent of free trade and globalization, and has also actively sought to stop the U.S.-funded practice of spraying aerial herbicides in coca-growing areas. He was a reluctant, but crucially important, participant in the democratic-left parties’ unification negotiations.

6. Wilson Borja. A congressman from Bogotá and a longtime labor leader, Borja is rarely seen without his trademark suit, tie and fedora. He was a member of the Patriotic Union party (started by the FARC during a 1980s peace process, then wiped out by a campaign of right-wing violence) and the Communist Party before becoming a key figure in the Alternativa Democrática. He is active in Bogotá politics; like Petro, he is sometimes at odds with Mayor Garzón. In December 2000 Borja – then a union leader – was the target of an assassination attempt in Bogota, in which his car was hit by 56 bullets and Borja was severely wounded. The attack was carried out by several military and police agents and paramilitaries; few have been found guilty or punished.

7. Daniel García-Peña. If you’ve ever attended a conference about Colombia held in the United States, there is a decent chance that you’ve seen García-Peña who, with his unaccented English and very clear analysis, is in high demand as a panelist. As vice-president of the old PDI, he has been a key ally of Luis Eduardo Garzón and a vocal advocate of unifying and expanding the democratic left. García-Peña was a government peace negotiator during President Ernesto Samper’s administration, he founded and directed the NGO Planeta Paz, and is now one of the “civil society guarantors” of the ongoing talks with the ELN guerrillas. And he is also running for Congress from Bogotá.

8. Parmenio Cuéllar. Cuéllar served for a year as Minister of Justice in the administration of President Andrés Pastrana, then was elected governor of Nariño department, where he remains a very influential political figure. Though not a member of the PDI, AD or PDA, he “leads a bloc of leaders in the south of the country” which, according to El Tiempo, is negotiating the possibility of integrating into the PDA.

9. Gloria Flórez. The PDA’s list of officeholders and candidates is heavily male-dominated; in fact, Colombia’s best-known female progressives – figures like Piedad Córdoba, Cecilia López or María Isabel Urrutia – have not joined the PDA; the first two, in fact, remain on the left wing of Colombia’s Liberal Party. An exception is Gloria Flórez, a longtime human rights activist who founded and heads the influential human-rights group MINGA and was a member of the PDI’s governing board. Though Flórez is not running for office this year, Colombia’s most-circulated news magazine, Semana, named her one of the most influential women in Colombian history. “Her colleagues consider her to be one of the [PDI] movement’s most trustworthy members. And she is surely one of the leaders with the brightest future on the country’s left.”

10. María Emma Mejía. A key figure in the Liberal Party’s social-democratic wing – including a term as foreign minister in the Samper administration – Mejía is in intense negotiations with the PDA leadership as she considers switching parties. If she joins the party, a condition may be that she heads the party’s list of candidates on the ballot for elections to the Senate. If Mejía, whose government experience gives her broad name-recognition, defects to the PDA, it will be considered a major coup for the party and a strengthening of its centrist credentials. However, it may not sit well with party activists from farther left on the political spectrum or from labor, campesino or popular-sector backgrounds. Mejía, after all, is a well-connected elite politician who served in governments that strictly followed orthodox “Washington Consensus” economic policies. However, Gustavo Petro, widely considered a leader of the PDI/PDA radical wing, insists that he would be happy to have Mejía join the partsy: “I invited María Emma to join the Polo on two occasions. I don’t understand where people get the idea that I’m against her.”

This list leaves out a few other key figures. Angelino Garzón, the governor of Valle del Cauca department (which includes the cities of Cali and Buenaventura) is a PDA member and a strong advocate of renewed negotiations with guerrillas. Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo, a doctor and popular politician who served twice as governor of Tolima, ran unsuccessfully for the PDI’s presidential nomination in June; he is considered to be to the left of Navarro. Samuel Moreno, a senator who held the PDI’s rotating presidency last year, is considered an ally of mayor Garzón and also lost the presidential nomination in June. Jaime Dussán is a center-left senator from a union background. Floro Tunubalá, a former governor of Cauca and the first indigenous governor in Colombian history, is not a member of any national party but is being actively courted by the PDA.

A recent analysis in the Colombian newsmagazine Cambio explained well the opportunities and challenges that face Colombia’s democratic left in 2006.

The Conservative Party has no candidate and is supporting Álvaro Uribe. The Liberals are incapable of renewing themselves since Horacio Serpa (the losing Liberal Party candidate in 1998 and 2002) seems to be able to win their nominating convention. As a result the PDI and AD – or rather, the new PDA – has the responsibility to become the true electoral alternative. In order to do so, their leaders have to define a left-leaning platform that neither smells like the old Marxist orthodoxy nor falls into the trap of populism, but that is able to attract a significant portion of working-class voters.

And of course, once they’ve done that, the leaders of the democratic left have to stay alive – which hasn’t always been possible for non-violent leftists in Colombia. However, if political space for elected leftists remains open – if a violent backlash can be avoided even after a possible strong showing in the March elections – it will be a very positive sign about the strength of Colombian democracy. It will mean that, in the words of Daniel García-Peña,

Less than twenty years after the genocide against the Patriotic Union, the development and growth of the PDA implies that a new political map is being drawn, and that Colombian democracy is evolving – despite the paramilitarization of vast regions of the country.

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December 20, 2005

Why can't you afford this book?

If you want to buy a copy of British investigative journalist Simon Strong’s out-of-print 1995 book about Pablo Escobar, you had better start saving up now.

As Gerardo Reyes reported in Sunday’s El Nuevo Herald, used copies of Whitewash: Pablo Escobar and the Cocaine Wars are going for $599.50 on Amazon.com. In a posting to Amazon’s page for the book, the author notes that the price had reached $937.10 earlier this month. (At Barnes and Noble, you can get it from a third-party seller for a mere $286.65. Alibris offers used copies at prices ranging from $271.95 to $1,989.90!)

Why so much for a book that, while well-received at the time, was not enough of a blockbuster for its publisher, MacMillan, to print more than 5,000 copies? Strong told Reyes that the online booksellers “have simply told me that is a question of supply and demand.”

“Flattering at it appears, I find it hard to believe this is the whole story,” Strong writes on Amazon.com. “For all I know, somebody whose name appears in the book dislikes the fact and has decided to put out a buy order!!”

That’s a good guess, but who is buying up all existing copies? I wish I had a copy of Strong’s book, so that I could see who in Colombia might be so keenly interested in keeping it out of my hands.

Reyes offers a hint in his article (my translation).

One of the book’s most controversial episodes identifies the current president, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, who at the time was a senator, as “a young Liberal from Medellín, … accused of drug-related corruption as well as of collaborating politically with Escobar in the launch of what would become a successful political career.”

Strong dedicates a pair of pages in the book to a harsh exchange he had with Uribe during an interview at a Bogotá hotel in March 1994.

According to his narrative, Uribe reacted with visible anger to the reporter’s questions about his tenure as director of Colombia’s Civil Aeronautics agency [Colombia’s FAA, during the early 1980s] and his political support for Senator William Vélez, one of Escobar’s allies.

“This short-statured man jumped from his chair, furious, crossed the room between the waiters who were preparing for lunch, climbed the stairs, and did not stop until he was amid his bodyguards…” the reporter writes.

From there, wrote Strong, Uribe yelled several times, with rage, “I am honest.”

“I had not made any suggestion to the contrary,” Strong explained.

Following some other questions, the author adds, Uribe became even angrier, and with his hands jabbing at the reporter’s face demanded that he take back what he was saying.

At that point, Strong decided to suspend the interview.

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December 13, 2005

Funding an ELN cease-fire

It is good news, of course, that representatives of the ELN guerrillas and the Colombian government will sit down in Havana later this week to discuss peace negotiations. But it will take a good deal of flexibility for these “exploratory dialogues” to avoid suffering the fate of earlier attempts to get talks going with Colombia’s second-largest guerrilla group. Most of all, keeping the talks alight will require President Uribe to make some politically risky decisions in the middle of a re-election campaign.

The big decision to watch for – the one that will bring the most contentious debate within Colombia – is whether President Uribe will agree to the guerrillas’ likely demand for financial support during an eventual cease-fire. The idea of writing checks to guerrillas who want to overthrow you, even before a peace agreement has been signed, may seem preposterous on the surface – sort of like paying protection money to keep a cease-fire going – but in the case of the ELN it actually makes sense.

The ELN gets very little money from drug trafficking (though, as indicated in an earlier posting, that may be starting to change). As a result, the group funds much of its costs through acts of aggression against Colombia’s civilian population, particularly extortion and kidnapping for ransom. If the ELN were to declare a cease-fire including a halt to kidnapping and extortion, most of its revenue would dry up.

“Since the ELN has refused and will continue to refuse to involve itself in narcotrafficking,” top ELN leader Antonio García told a guerrilla magazine in April, “we cannot suspend our retentions and taxation [guerrilla terms for kidnapping and extortion], because we need to finance our social and political activities and the sustainment of our men.” Unlike the AUC paramilitaries, whose heavy reliance on narcotrafficking has helped sustain them through three years of a partially observed cease-fire, the ELN views a total cease-fire as tantamount to bankruptcy. Indeed, the ELN has never in its history declared a cease-fire (other than occasional Christmas holiday truces).

If President Uribe is to coax the ELN into a bilateral cease-fire, then, he is going to have to address the guerrilla group’s economic concerns. This issue has set back attempts to negotiate with the ELN in the recent past. A round of talks in Cuba with the outgoing Pastrana government fell apart in May 2002 after the guerrillas demanded that the government provide a $40 million stipend during a six-month cease-fire period. While this was likely just an opening offer – sort of like a tourist bargaining on a souvenir in a market – it was, for Pastrana and his lame-duck negotiating team, a political impossibility.

In April of this year, a round of contacts between the Colombian government and the ELN, mediated by the Mexican government, fell apart over the same issue. This time, the ELN refused to sign a cease-fire that prohibited kidnapping, again out of concerns for its income stream. (The discussions became stuck on this point, and the ELN withdrew completely after Mexico voted to condemn Cuba’s human rights record at the annual UN Human Rights Commission hearings.)

ELN leaders must have known in April that the Uribe government could not accept a cease-fire agreement that condoned the practice of kidnapping. Their request was no doubt an effort to pressure the Uribe government to consider financing the guerrillas during an eventual cease-fire. In July, President Uribe signaled, in an interview with a Spanish newspaper, that he would be willing to take this controversial step. “If they accept a complete halt to hostilities, the government has no problem in seeking funds to sustain the members of the ELN in a peace process as long as they do not commit crimes,” Uribe told El Pais. “It is the first time I say that in public.”

Let’s hope that, with elections only five months away, President Uribe has not changed his mind. Funding the ELN during a cease-fire will be politically difficult - once the topic comes up, we can expect to see a firestorm of criticism on Colombia’s right wing, including many members of Uribe’s traditional support base.

It is critical that this criticism be ignored and overruled: a few million dollars per month is a bargain if it buys a real cease-fire and a negotiation process that ends a decades-long insurgency. Besides, to require the ELN to cease fire without financing is to send a perverse message. The subtext will be that in order to insure itself against a failed negotiation, an armed group must rely on other illegal means of support during the truce period – especially drug-dealing.

Let’s hope that donor nations are ready to step in and help with the guerrillas’ financial support during the cease-fire period, thus taking some of the political heat off of Uribe. The PATRIOT Act would likely make it illegal for the United States to provide such support; as with much else in Latin America these days, other countries will have to take the lead.

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December 6, 2005

A good congressman, forced to quit

In his mid-30s, Pedro Arenas is one of the youngest members of Colombia’s Congress. He doesn’t belong to any party, though he usually votes with the Polo Democrático and other left-of-center parties. He represents the department of Guaviare which, though only 170 miles south of Bogotá (closer than New York is to Washington), is an isolated, neglected, impoverished zone overrun with coca, guerrillas, and paramilitaries. Guaviare is a key battleground for “Plan Patriota,” the U.S.-backed military offensive that has been taking place in southern Colombia for two years now.

I’ve known Pedro Arenas since the late 1990s, when he was the head of the Guaviare Youth Movement. (We came to know Pedro that long ago because, years before Plan Colombia came along, Guaviare was an important place to monitor the impact of U.S. policy. During the 1990s, it was the center of U.S.-supported herbicide fumigation, and most spray planes were based at the narcotics-police facility in the departmental capital, San José. Today, however, after ten years of heavy spraying, Guaviare is still one of Colombia’s principal coca-growing departments.) Pedro impressed me as a leader very committed to the community in which he was born and raised, known and respected for helping to organize a very dispersed, poor and threatened population through energetic advocacy, face-to-face contact, and creative use of community radio.

I was very pleased when Pedro was elected to Colombia’s Congress as one of Guaviare’s two representatives, in 2002. Of course, as a backbencher without a party and with no interest in corrupt dealmaking, he has had difficulty getting his point of view reflected in legislation. However, he has won disproportionate media attention, and appears to be popular in Guaviare, because he is outspoken and clearly does his homework. Pedro is what we in Washington would call a “policy wonk,” reading voraciously and constantly proposing new ideas. He even has his own blog. (He may also be the only Colombian I’ve met outside Washington who can name the chairmen of the Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittees of both houses of the U.S. Congress.) Pedro was our guest in Washington for a conference we hosted in October, where he gave a terrific presentation.

When he was here, Pedro told us he had been receiving threats from the paramilitaries, who had said that they would kill him if he ran for re-election in March 2006. I was very disturbed last Wednesday, then, to see him forced to announce that he was withdrawing his candidacy. “Due to the lack of security guarantees in Guaviare,” he told reporters, “I have decided that unless the government provides me with the security conditions necessary to carry out a campaign, I will not present my name for the House of Representatives.”

“Since October 2, I have been in this situation [of imminent threat], which is known to the president, the defense minister, and the interior minister. The president himself ordered that I be included in the [Interior Ministry’s] special protection program, but to date that order has not been followed.”

Pedro started receiving threats soon after taking his turn at the microphone on October 1, when President Uribe paid a visit to San José del Guaviare for one of his nationally televised town-hall meetings. Along with Guaviare’s bishop, Pedro publicly denounced the paramilitaries’ attacks on community leaders, their constant extortion of the population and the lack of government response. In a post to the Colombia Journal website, Mario Murillo recorded what Pedro told the president:

“If you have a pig, they charge you $5,000 pesos (about two dollars), if you have a few chickens, 2,000 pesos each. They charge you a tax on just about everything,” Arenas told the president in the nationally broadcast event. Referring to the president’s policy of “Democratic Security,” Arenas informed the president that it has not arrived in the region “because the paramilitaries control the town, have infiltrated local institutions, and make the people live in constant subordination.”

While his words made him popular among citizens of Guaviare – Pedro said people stopped on the street and applauded him later that day – it made things much more complicated for him. President Uribe publicly responded to Pedro’s words by ordering the authorities to crack down on the paramilitaries’ Guaviare Bloc, and in particular to arrest its leader.

One day later, Pedro started getting threats from that leader, Pedro Oliverio Guerrero Castillo, who goes by the alias “Cuchillo,” or “Knife” – a name that, according to a recent profile in the Colombian magazine Cromos, refers to his preference for stabbing his victims.

Cuchillo’s group, which dominates town centers in Guaviare and southern Meta departments, is not participating in talks with the government. It splintered from the powerful “Centaurs Bloc,” whose reach extended from Colombia’s eastern plains all the way to Bogotá, and which formally demobilized in early September. A paramilitary member since the late 1980s, the 37-year-old Cuchillo had been the right-hand-man of the Centaurs’ chief, Miguel Arroyave, who was participating in demobilization talks with the Colombian government. Cuchillo, however, had other plans: he played a leading role in the September 2004 ambush in which Arroyave was killed by his own men.

The Guaviare Bloc did not demobilize and is one of few paramilitary groups not participating in talks. Its members demand “tax” payments from nearly everyone who does business in Guaviare’s town centers, and are heavily involved in the drug trade. According to Cromos, “it is even rumored that [Cuchillo] has made deals with ‘Negro Acacio,’ the high-ranking FARC leader [of the 16^th Front in Arauca and Vichada], to move drugs out of the region.”

Nonetheless, the local authorities have done very little to confront Cuchillo and his men. Plan Patriota has registered few if any combats with paramilitaries in Guaviare. Cuchillo’s men are the dominant force in San José del Guaviare, even though the town hosts an army base that has played an important role in the offensive. Pedro Arenas gives some credit to the local police for trying to arrest paramilitaries, but worries that the local branch of the attorney-general’s office (Fiscalía) may be compromised. “We are disappointed with the Fiscalía because this year the police have captured nearly 50 paramilitaries, and the Fiscalía has freed them almost immediately,” he said last week.

Pedro has moved his family out of Guaviare, and now travels everywhere with bodyguards. Cuchillo is still at large. He may not be in Congress a few months from now, and the paramilitaries’ candidate will likely sit in his seat, but Pedro will remain quite active. He hopes to expand his work as president of the Movimiento Comunal, the national network of Community Action Groups (Juntas de Acción Comunal), local elected advisory boards established by law in thousands of villages and urban neighborhoods.

Two days after Pedro suspended his campaign, President Uribe told naval officers at a promotion ceremony, “Our security policy is democratic because it exists to give equal protection to both the campesino and the agri-businessman, both the unionized worker and the big industrialist.” In practice, however, this protection doesn’t even seem to be available to independent congressmen in zones with a strong military presence.

Pedro is quick to point out, though, that the government is also failing to confront Guaviare’s guerrillas, despite the department’s inclusion in the “Plan Patriota” theater of operations. This failure became evident to all last Monday, when the FARC kidnapped twenty-two people at a roadblock they brazenly established just three miles from the San José del Guaviare military base, the headquarters of the Joaquín París Battalion of the Colombian Army’s Seventh Brigade. The FARC released fourteen of their captives; military leaders at first claimed that the fourteen had been rescued, but this was revealed (by Pedro Arenas, among others) to be a complete falsehood. The military’s embarrassing conduct – both in allowing the nearby roadblock and in lying about what happened – earned a strong reprimand from President Uribe.

On Thursday El Tiempo, Colombia’s most-circulated newspaper, wrote an editorial about the kidnapping incident, asserting that “it makes evident the shortcomings in the army’s ability to secure free mobility in a region that the paramilitaries abandoned and that, according to the government, has been effectively re-taken by the military.”

Pedro Arenas sent to us this response to the editorial. Here is an English translation, which is worth a read. It vividly illustrates what is wrong with the current security approach in places like Guaviare.

To the El Tiempo editorial board:

I am Pedro Arenas García, congressional representative for Guaviare. It was I who made this news known nationally last Monday because, even though the mass kidnapping happened at 9:00 AM, even after 3:00 PM nothing more was known about what happened. I am pleased that you have called attention to the kidnappings in Guaviare and the attitude of the security forces. I want to present a few observations so that you may take them into account, although your editorial of course cannot be corrected now.

First: Along the road between San José del Guaviare and El Retorno, several months ago, there were soldiers at the points where it crosses the trochas [rutted, almost impassable dirt roads] the guerrillas had previously used. In recent months, though, the soldiers are no longer seen at these important sites. At Buenos Aires (where the kidnapping happened) the guerrillas have been appearing regularly during the last month, including 15 days ago when they briefly set up a roadblock. The inhabitants of nearby villages told the authorities on several occasions that the guerrillas were calling them to meetings and extorting them. Nothing was done to prevent this. [Note: even though local citizens freely provided this information and got no response, President Uribe on Thursday blamed the military’s failure in Guaviare on a lack of informants.]

2. I myself informed police authorities by telephone twenty days ago that the guerrillas were in those villages, and that they forced farmers in the zone to attend a meeting in Puerto Flórez (where the kidnappers and their victims boarded boats), where they extorted money from them for every head of cattle. It appears that the police informed the [army’s Joaquín] París Battalion, and that they informed the 7^th Mobile Brigade, but none covered that zone. Either they didn’t find the information to be credible, or they failed to coordinate, or intelligence wasn’t gathered.

3. According to the (very credible) information I have, those who carried out the roadblock were not just 4 guerrillas but “almost 20” acting under the orders of someone named Willington. The roadblock lasted for more than half an hour. They had time to stop traffic, to burn a truck that carried precursor chemicals (not food), to block the road with a tanker truck, and to select the kidnap victims. Meanwhile, another group set up a roadblock in Guacamayas near the dirt road by which they escaped. There, with few words and in front of children, they killed a youth who, the local residents said, was carrying coca paste. Later they went to Puerto Flórez, where they abandoned the cars and boarded boats to Caño Mosco, two hours downriver, stopped at a house and had lunch, chose the group of people who are still kidnapped and let the rest go. When the freed group returned to Puerto Flórez and the army found them, it was almost 4:00 PM. There was neither combat nor military pressure. The reaction was very slow.

4. That region has not been abandoned by the paramilitaries, they are still there. Nor have there been demobilizations of paramilitaries, and it is not known whether Guaviare’s paramilitaries have had any contacts with the office of the [government’s] peace commissioner. In the zone of the kidnapping the “paras” have collected an extortion payment for each cow, and at that part of the road they would extort all public transport. What happened is that due to the local population’s complaints about these abuses, the “paras” had suspended their extortive activities for “three months,” according to various local merchants. The “paras” have not been pursued effectively, and in many cases they even sleep in the city [of San José del Guaviare]. The attorney-general’s office (Fiscalía) doesn’t function either.

5. The security forces continue to have problems of coordination and determination of jurisdictions. It is still not clearly known who is in charge of guarding the road and up to which kilometer-marker, and with so many units present the result is a confusion that nobody understands. All of Plan Patriota in Guaviare is focused on the department’s south, while the guerrillas move throughout the department’s east and west. The Plan pursues the guerrillas’ leaders and leaves unguarded the zones and roads where the guerrillas affect the population.

6. General Fracica [until very recently the commander of Joint Task Force Omega carrying out Plan Patriota in southern Colombia], a serious man, was bid farewell in a ceremony one day earlier in El Retorno, 20 kilometers from the site of the kidnapping. I don’t believe that someone like him would suffer from triumphalism. He would have no reason to, since the illegal armed groups still rule in Guaviare. While the security forces did establish themselves in the department’s four municipalities, their presence has not guaranteed full security: the “paras” rule in the town centers, along the cattle road that follows the right bank of the Guaviare River, and in southern Meta; the FARC rule in all other rural zones. The civilian population is left in the middle of this “sandwich.”

7. The kidnap victims are flesh-and-blood people just like any city-dweller. Among them are two civil-engineering contractors hired by the governor’s office, one of them the son of a fervent admirer of the president’s policies, who worked on his campaign, and who is the husband of a member of San José’s mayor’s cabinet. The rest are merchants from El Retorno. People who have lived in that region for many years. People who are well known locally. We all demand that the FARC respect their lives and liberate them immediately.

8. This is not an isolated incident, not just because of what you write but also because the guerrillas, for months now, have been burning tractor-trailers, trucks, taxis, microbuses, and public-works machinery belonging to the governor’s office, while frightening campesinos on the main roads, almost always at the same sites, few kilometers from the San José town center. All that is in addition to the dramatic situation of those of us who, through the political process, dare to denounce the corruption and lack of governance that exist there. It is not possible to participate freely in politics.

In Guaviare, we are living through something that has never happened to us before: the torture of those who must obey orders from two conflicting groups, to work for them, to follow their rules under penalty of being displaced or killed, while the security forces fail to prevent it, or do not react on time or later try to hide their errors so that the citizens do not demand accountability, and so that the president does not come to scold them or fire their commanders.

With all respect, Pedro Arenas
Representative to the Congress
President of the movimiento comunal

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December 1, 2005

Backsliding on security?

During its first 2 ½ years or so in office, officials of Álvaro Uribe’s government – including the president, of course – defended their hard-line security policies with a barrage of statistics indicating a sharp decline in violence: fewer murders, fewer kidnappings, fewer guerrilla and paramilitary attacks on both civilian and military targets.

This year, however, the barrage of “good news” violence statistics has died down. Officials have not been reciting numbers as frequently, because the record has become troublingly mixed.

The news is not getting better. For some rather worrisome findings about the current direction of Colombia’s conflict, consult the latest report from a new Bogotá think-tank, the Conflict Analysis Resource Center (CERAC). Two of the group’s researchers – Jorge Restrepo of Colombia’s Javeriana University and Michael Spagat of the University of London – have led an effort to compile a violence database, which now has 21,000 entries through June 2005.

For a while, Restrepo’s and Spagat’s data had been corroborating government figures showing a rather miraculous across-the board drop in violence since Uribe took office in 2002, with civilians becoming much safer and the military recovering the initiative. Their newest report, though, appears to show a significant slowdown in the Colombian government’s momentum as of mid-2005.

The most alarming finding is a very sharp rise in paramilitary attacks and killings in 2005, reversing the drop in paramilitary activity that followed the AUC’s declared cease-fire at the end of 2002. Just look at this graph:

The researchers find that the rise is not limited to groups that haven’t declared a cease-fire.

The takeoff in paramilitary activity is happening in many different places. We find a reactivation of paramilitary attacks and killings in 2005 in the Montes de María, in the south of Atlántico, in the east of Antioquia, in the west of Cundinamarca, in the Magdalena Medio region, in Meta, in Arauca and in the savannahs of Córdoba. This cannot be attributed to the few paramilitary groups that are not negotiating disarmament and demobilization with the government. On the contrary, this corresponds mostly with those areas where the negotiating groups are located.

Such a sharp rise in what are, in fact, cease-fire violations is more bad news for the AUC negotiation process, which is already becoming the closest thing Uribe has to a political Achilles’ heel as he launches his re-election campaign. (It will be interesting to see whether the highly questioned OAS verification mission documents a similar jump in paramilitary cease-fire violations.) The increase in paramilitary murders is not due to massacres; most of the incidents in the CERAC database are extrajudicial killings of one or two people at a time.

Led by the surge in paramilitary attacks, overall killings of civilians have increased sharply this year after declining during Uribe’s first two years. As a result, “civilian killings in the first half of 2005 are only about 10% below the rate in the last year before Uribe took power.”

The CERAC researchers note that “the guerrillas are not behind the increase in killings of civilians.” Disturbingly, they find that “there was an increase in government killings of civilians in the first half of 2005. This trend, although from a very low level, is worrisome, and the government needs to study in detail where these are occurring and why.”

A few other notable findings of the study (not even close to an exhaustive list – we again recommend visiting the CERAC site and looking over their findings):

• “The number of clashes between the government and the guerrillas is very high, although it has been falling from its peak of 2003.” However, there has been “a shift toward big-casualty events in 2005.”
• “The guerrillas are fighting less with the paramilitaries than they were a few years ago. In fact, the paramilitaries essentially ceased to be an anti-insurgent clashing force in the conflict beginning around 2002.”
• “This government has actually been fighting with the paramilitaries more than previous ones have.”

It’s hard to know what to conclude from these findings, some of which – especially the spike in paramilitary murders – are quite surprising. However, as we see the gains of 2002-2004 level off – or even begin to reverse – the new data may be showing us that Uribe’s “Democratic Security” policy, as implemented, may have reached its limits.

A strategy that so overwhelmingly favors the military dimension of governance, relying heavily on tactics like offensives, informants and roundups of suspects, can only achieve so much. Unless it begins to address the weakness of Colombia’s civilian government in conflictive zones, and to punish abuses when they occur, we may be seeing Democratic Security “hitting the wall,” reaching the extent of what it can do to decrease violence.

 

Quote of the week:

“In revolutionary processes like subversive warfare, there are always ‘self-eliminations.’ This doesn’t mean that one commits suicide, but that there are people in the rear who have particular ideological instructions to shoot their own comrades in the back, in order to exacerbate the population’s anger and to create a political rallying point.”

- Gen. Marcelo Antezana, the head of Bolivia’s army, arguing yesterday that most of the sixty people killed during October 2003 protests were murdered not by the security forces, but by fellow protesters seeking to turn people against the military.

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Good ELN analysis

Last Sunday’s edition of the Colombian newsweekly Semana had a lengthy (1,900-word) and very informative analysis of the prospects for new talks with the ELN guerrillas. “Last week’s announcement that the [ELN’s] Central Command might meet with Álvaro Uribe’s government … appears to be the most important advance this government has made toward rapprochement with the guerrillas,” Semana contends.

The article offers the best current overview we’ve seen of the ELN’s current capabilities and possible interest in pursuing dialogues with the Uribe government. Here are some excerpts (just 1,000 words) translated into English.

On the ELN’s current military capabilities:

• The ELN has never been a war machine. Its most prominent armed actions have been sabotage and kidnapping, rather than direct confrontation with the security forces. Even so, one combat per day takes place with this group, according to the Defense Ministry. The majority are initiated by the security forces. In the last two years, this guerrilla group has suffered considerable blows to its most important fronts. In Antioquia, Operation Marcial, which took place two years ago, practically annihilated the Carlos Alirio Buitrago front that operated along the Medellín-Bogotá highway, and whose principal activity was kidnapping. From a high of 300 men, today the authorities calculate that the front now has 40.
• Despite their relative weakness, this is not a group that will be easy to dominate at the negotiating table. The ELN has been compared to the phoenix bird, repeatedly reborn from its own ashes. Despite the blows it has received, the desertions and the captures, the number of ELN combatants remains stable, according to the Defense Ministry’s statistics. It currently has approximately 3,500 members in arms. According to intelligence sources, while its financial situation does not at all resemble past bonanzas, its income from kidnapping, extortion, and its initial forays into narcotrafficking has been enough to survive, though not enough to fight a war.
• Mass desertions have been another factor of weakness. Months ago, an entire column of the Héroes de Anorí front, which operates in northern Antioquia, turned themselves in to the army. Ramiro Ruiz, “Edward,” the head of this group, said at the time that “what the Coce [Central Command] is doing in the Serranía de San Lucas [the ELN’s longtime rearguard zone, a gold-mining region in southern Bolívar department] is resisting and defending themselves with what little accumulated military and political power it has left. But the fronts are in retreat, isolated and hungry.” … Luciano (name changed) is a leathery ex-guerrilla who commanded a column in Santander. “We had no money. I told them that the only way to sustain this war was by getting involved in coca, like the FARC, but they didn’t want to.”

On the ELN and the drug trade:

• While it is widely held that the ELN has not involved itself in the narcotrafficking business, recent cases demonstrate that at least some fronts have indeed done so. It has happened for quite some time in Norte de Santander and Arauca [both in northeastern Colombia]. In Arauca, for example, 38 cocaine-processing laboratories tied to the Domingo Laín Front were found two years ago. Coca cultivations also explain the guerrilla group’s growth in southern Chocó, the coffee-growing heartland [Eje Cafetero], and in Nariño, along the border with Ecuador. For such a federalized guerrilla group, it is only a matter of time for narcotrafficking to extend to all of its fronts.
• However, kidnapping is still its main source of financing. … This is why whenever a cease-fire is spoken of, the ELN either seeks to exclude kidnapping, or tacitly asks that its structures be financed while the truce is in place.

On the ELN’s relations with the FARC:

• Juan Carlos Garzón, an analyst at the Security and Democracy Foundation, asserts that in many regions the ELN depends militarily on the FARC. That is the case in Nariño, Putumayo and Valle del Cauca [in southwestern Colombia]. It is well known that the [February 2005] attack on the Iscuandé base, on the Pacific coast, was a combined action between both forces, and the recent attack on a paramilitary encampment in the Cañón de Garrapatas, in Valle del Cauca, was also carried out jointly.
• While the ELN acts together with the FARC in some regions, it would not be easy for them to end up completely unified. “They are like oil and water,” says one military intelligence analyst.

On the ELN and human rights:

• But what has most weakened the ELN are its moral paradoxes. Though it has been seen as a less “hard” guerrilla group than the FARC, in practice it acts like the boy who cried wolf. In September they turned over the bones of Ancízar López, the political “patriarch” of the city of Armenia, who had died in captivity some time earlier. That same week they killed two priests on a road in Norte de Santander, an act for which they publicly apologized. But they made no commitment to cease carrying out such arbitrary acts. All this without mentioning that the ELN is the Colombian armed group that most frequently uses landmines.

On prospects for talks:

• The ELN will not grow militarily, will keep on behaving like a guerrilla group that launches small attacks and hostilities, and – as defined by the sixth plenary meeting of its commanders – will make a priority of “a broad national accord with diverse political and social forces to unite the fatherland against uribista war-mongering and re-election.” This would seem to indicate that the ELN, which has sailed between two currents – those of lead [as in bullets, or violence] and politics – have decided to choose the latter. They are interested in the elections, though it is not very clear how they would participate in them.
• It is known that behind the many letters which have been exchanged during the past few months, there have been serious offers from two European countries. One of these could be the site of the meeting [between government and guerrilla leaders], and eventually the details of financing a cease-fire could be agreed.
• However, the government has to act tactfully, and must not confuse this negotiation with the AUC talks. That pragmatic model of disarmament without political reforms, taking place behind the backs of public opinion, will not work. The ELN is in no hurry. If it has survived three years of the uribista offensive, it can survive more. It will neither abandon its demand that civil society be present at the table, nor will it cease to discuss a political agenda.

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November 22, 2005

"Not in our territories," say Chocó leaders

The Colombian human-rights group CODHES has posted to its website four remarkable letters from a November 10-14 gathering of indigenous and afro-Colombian leaders in Colombia’s poorest province. The 7^th Assembly of the Chocó Inter-Ethnic Solidarity Forum gathered 300 leaders of indigenous reserves and afro-Colombian communities in Quibdó, the capital of the northwestern department of Chocó, to discuss solutions to the numerous common problems and threats that their communities face.

Chocó, the only Colombian department (province) with coasts on two oceans, covers a vast area stretching from Panama along the Pacific halfway to Ecuador. It is one of the most bio-diverse regions in the world, with enormous freshwater resources. It is also a very strategic region, offering armed groups many corridors for getting drugs out and arms into the country, extensive natural resources, and the potential for an Atlantic-Pacific shipping route to rival the Panama Canal. Despite all of that, Chocó’s largely afro-Colombian and indigenous population is one of Colombia’s most neglected, ignored by the central government and largely forced to fend for itself amid a lack of infrastructure and basic services – including security.

Due to its strategic importance and the government’s absence, Chocó – especially the Atrato River leading to the Caribbean and the banana-producing Urabá region near Panama – is one of Colombia’s most violent departments. Clashes between guerrillas and paramilitaries are common (such as the horrific battle that killed 120 civilians in Bojayá in May 2002), and the security forces have either been absent or accused of collaborating with local paramilitaries.

The Chocó community leaders who met in Quibdó ten days ago are justifiably angry about their department’s worsening violence, poverty and neglect. At the end of their recent meeting, they made public four strongly worded letters: one to the Colombian government, one to the AUC paramilitaries, and one each to the FARC and ELN guerrillas. The letters make clear that none of the four has come close to winning the population’s “hearts and minds.” To the contrary: to all three illegal armed groups, their message is: “we do not want you in our territories.” To the government, they say, “we need you in our territories, but in a much different way.”

Too often, Colombian authorities shrug off critical statements like these, claiming (usually mistakenly) that they are the result of manipulations by guerrillas. The Chocó leaders, however, reserve some of their strongest criticisms for the guerrillas. This cry for help should not be so readily dismissed. It demands a response.

Here are some excerpts from the letters:

To the paramilitaries, especially the Élmer Cárdenas Bloc, which dominates much of Chocó and is not participating in negotiations, the communities ask:

That demobilization and reintegration not take place on their lands, and that it really do away with paramilitary structures, a result that still is not certain.

• We support the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration into civilian life of irregular armed actors, within a framework of respect for truth, justice, reparations and non-repetition. But in honor of our autonomy, we demand that this concentration and demobilization process not take place in our territories. More importantly, we demand that reinsertion not become a mechanism for the expropriation of our ancestral lands. Meanwhile, we express our concern that behind this reinsertion there may arise new forms of paramilitary structures in the region.

  To stop appropriating land for vast plantations of African Palm (an exotic species introduced to produce palm oil).

• We reject the monoculture of African Palm, which endangers our collective land titles, affects the fragility of our ecosystem, damages our agrarian culture, affects traditional cultivations, creates an enclave economy, worsens the existing nutrition crisis, and brings with it a long process of capital accumulation that only benefits large investors, to the detriment of our own communities (making us peones of our own misfortune). African Palm crops, far from being an alternative for prosperity, represent a component of a counter-insurgency strategy that worsens the conflict in the department of Chocó.
• We do not support the “development proposal” of the “Élmer Cárdenas Bloc” called PASO, because, after invading our territory and killing and displacing our people, they intend to impose a model that does not respond to our culture or our concept of ethno-development or our “life plans.”

To the FARC:

• We reject the FARC’s intrusion into our Community Councils and Indigenous Councils (Cabildos), which compromises our autonomy and our cultural identity; impedes the free exercise of our daily activities; serves as a pretext for the absence of the social investments that the state should make; impedes the application of internal rules and regulations; and affects our own security. You threaten and stigmatize our people with unfounded accusations that cannot be contradicted, and you create a cloak of suspicion over those who travel to and from rural zones to municipal capitals (county seats), alleging that they are Army informants. For all of these reasons, we reiterate that you must not be present either in black communities or in indigenous reserves.

To the ELN, which is barely present in the region, the communities “reiterate that you must not be present either in black communities or in indigenous reserves.”

To the government of Álvaro Uribe, the communities ask:

To recognize the communal property model that has been the traditional form of property among afro-Colombian and some indigenous communities.

• Since the 1991 Constitution the ancestral right to possess our territories has been recognized, and Law 70 of 1993 guarantees the granting of collective land titles to Community Councils and reaffirms these lands’ inalienable character.
• The expropriation of 10,162 hectares of collectively titled land in Jiguamiadó and Curvaradó is a form of denying the existence of private property and violating these constitutional and legal measures. In addition, it is an aggression against the black communities of the department of Chocó.

  To break links that continue to exist between the military and paramilitary groups in Chocó.

• We remind the president of the serious denunciations made since 2004 by the Inter-Ethnic Forum and the Dioceses of Quibdó, Istmina-Tadó and Apartadó about the collaboration between paramilitary groups and security forces that persists in the region.

  To take a very different approach to the coca planted in the region, which reflects the government’s failure to protect its citizens.

• Since 2003, we have warned about coca cultivation in the department, the result of armed pressure, but the state has done nothing to prevent this situation. As a consequence, we cannot accept that indigenous and black communities be held responsible for crops that were imposed through violence, and we reject using this as a pretext for expropriating our territories.

  To use the security forces to protect people.

• A serious humanitarian and human-rights crisis persists in the region, manifesting itself through displaced or confined communities, or communities that cannot return to their territories. We understand that security is not a merely military problem, and that it is associated with social investment. However, the government has offered a precarious and insufficient response to its duty to attend to and protect the population, which worsens the humanitarian and social crisis in the region.

All of the letters end with the following call, with which we emphatically agree:

• We insist on a Humanitarian Accord in the department of Chocó that helps to overcome the serious humanitarian and human-rights crisis and clears the way for a negotiated, political solution to the armed conflict. The social and ethnic organizations in the territory feel that war is not the path and arms are not the solution, and we demand all parties involved in this conflict (the U.S. and Colombian governments, paramilitaries and guerrillas) to stop the confrontation, to begin serious peace talks, and to respect the civilian population.

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October 29, 2005

The demobilization "time bomb"

On October 13, armed men kidnapped Hernando Cadavid from his flower farm in Ríonegro, Antioquia, not far from Medellín’s airport. Nine days later, Cadavid’s body was found, and seven men were arrested for the crime.

This sounds like the sort of thing that happens all too often in Colombia: yet another botched kidnapping ending in tragedy. But Cadavid’s murder deserves special attention for at least two reasons. First, Cadavid has a powerful neighbor – his farm is “three blocks” from one belonging to President Uribe, according to Colombia’s daily El Tiempo – so one would expect him to be living in one of the safest places in the entire country.

Second, it was soon discovered that those responsible for the crime were all ex-paramilitaries, members of the “Heroes of Granada” paramilitary bloc, which was headed by “Don Berna” – Diego Fernando Murillo – a longtime drug figure-turned paramilitary leader who, though currently residing in the Itagüí jail near Medellín, remains one of the most powerful people in Colombia. Over 2,000 members of the “Heroes of Granada” turned in weapons at a ceremony in early August, but – as with nearly all other AUC blocs that have turned in weapons – their demobilization and reintegration have since been troubled, improvised, uncoordinated and poorly funded.

Those accused of Cadavid’s kidnapping and murder are among many members of the “Heroes of Granada” who may be slipping through the cracks. The vast majority of the bloc’s members remain unemployed and see few opportunities. Some may be re-joining the paramilitaries; a former deputy of “Don Berna” named “René” is known to be recruiting in the zone where the “Heroes of Granada” formerly operated. Others may be freelancing, engaging in crimes ranging from theft and drug-dealing to attempted kidnappings like that of President Uribe’s neighbor.

Columnist León Valencia, a former ELN guerrilla, told El Tiempo that the Cadavid case is “a clear demonstration that the reinsertion process is out of control, even in a zone where the demobilized supposedly continue to maintain ties to their old structures.” This assessment applies to the whole country. In the past three years, about 11,000 paramilitaries have “demobilized” and 8,000 low-ranking guerrillas and paramilitaries have deserted, while another 11,000 or so paramilitaries are to turn themselves in by sometime next year. That adds up to roughly 30,000 people – nearly all of them young, nearly all of them unemployed, and nearly all of them skilled in the use of weapons and little else.

It has become a cliché in the local media to refer to this cohort as a “time bomb” about to explode in Colombian society. This is an apt metaphor. The demobilization and reintegration of 30,000 ex-fighters will require of the Colombian government a demobilization and reintegration effort of historically ambitious proportions. Unless this effort benefits from generous resourcing and almost superhuman energy and diligence, Colombia is likely to suffer from a wave of violence at the hands of frustrated, unemployed ex-paramilitaries – whether they become common criminals, members of expanding organized-crime mafias, or members of re-formed paramilitary groups.

So far, overwhelming evidence indicates that no superhuman effort is underway. Much to the contrary, the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) efforts of the Colombian government – particularly those of the central government – are far too small, too slow, and too unplanned.

Colombia’s media have done a decent job of documenting the DDR programs’ serious problems. On September 20, El Tiempo devoted much of a Sunday issue to this topic. The paper sent reporters to seven regions where demobilizations had taken place months earlier, to find out how the disarmaments had proceeded and what had become of the former paramiltaries in the zone.

The news was mostly grim. Here are a few highlights from that series.

• Only 65 percent of demobilizing paramilitaries have turned in any weapons. As of September, of 10,383 demobilized paramilitaries, only 6,636 had been armed at the moment of demobilization. Of these 6,636 weapons, thirty percent were unusable or in poor condition, according to the Inter-Institutional Anti-Terrorist Analysis Group (GIAT) of the OAS. The 3,747 unarmed paramilitaries claimed that their work had to do with intelligence and policy. The greatest discrepancy between the number of demobilized and the number of weapons handed in occurred when Don Berna’s “Heroes of Granada” demobilized 2,033 combatants in August, while turning in only 1,120 weapons.
  
  It is quite possible that the paramilitaries have chosen to hide their best weapons. (Indeed, authorities have discovered hidden arms caches belonging to the “Heroes of Granada,” Mojana, and “Liberators of the South” blocs.) Another explanation may be that many of the demobilizing individuals were not paramilitaries at all, but common criminals who were “recruited” at the last minute to swell the paramilitary ranks at demobilization ceremonies.
  
  
• Demobilized paramilitaries and guerrillas are being paid generously for information. Colombia’s Defense Ministry reports that it paid 9.24 billion pesos (about US$4.2 million) to 1,419 demobilized combatants (roughly US$3,000 each) between January 2003 and July 2005, in exchange for additional military equipment or useful information. Many have served as “guides,” accompanying the security forces on operations and helping them to find arms caches or encampments, or to identify suspected armed-group members.
  
  This is a situation that other demobilizations – such as those in Central America in the 1990s – did not face, since they occurred after the conflict was over. Many have expressed concern about using former combatants as elements in a conflict that they have sought to escape. Former government peace commissioner Daniel García-Peña, who heads the non-governmental group Planeta Paz, told El Tiempo, “The idea of ‘reinsertion’ is based on the premise of taking people out of the war and establishing them in the civilian population. What we are doing is a perversion of this idea – instead of removing them we are getting them to change sides.”
  
  
• Nearly one of every 100 demobilized combatants is already dead. One of the worst cases is the Catatumbo Bloc, which demobilized in December. Throughout Colombia, as of September, 177 out of roughly 19,000 demobilized paramilitaries and guerrillas had died, most of them murdered. Twenty-four of the dead are members of the AUC’s Catatumbo Bloc, which demobilized 1,425 members last December: within nine months, one out of every 59 of the bloc’s members was lost.
  
  This demobilization – one of the largest, in a highly conflictive, strategic, coca-rich area along the Venezuelan border, which the paramilitaries had taken from the guerrillas with much bloodshed in 1999-2000 – would have been difficult under any circumstances. But the Catatumbo experience has been particularly disappointing. In the nearby city of Cúcuta, the “Reference Center” designed to serve ex-paramilitaries went through three directors in nine months. The center’s current director told El Tiempo that “the reinserted combatants are paying the consequences for a process that had no prior planning and which was not effectively linked to the region’s economic base.” As of September, the Catatumbo effort included only one productive project, employing only a few dozen ex-combatants.
  
  The security situation in Catatumbo remains extremely precarious. Active paramilitaries are present in Cúcuta; while they claim to be protecting the demobilized combatants, they are in fact believed to be recruiting for the “Black Eagles” and the “Red Eagles,” two new paramilitary units which have recently appeared in the region. Meanwhile, El Tiempo claims that the FARC’s 33^rd Front has taken advantage of the demobilizations by re-taking control of most of La Gabarra and Tibú, two of Catatumbo’s most notorious coca battlegrounds. The paramilitaries, however, still maintain control of the main narco-trafficking route through the region into Venezuela.
  
  
• The influence of large-scale narcotraffickers in and around Cali has made the “Calima Bloc” demobilization particularly disastrous. Since they demobilized in December, members of this bloc – responsible, among other crimes, for the horrific 2001 Alto Naya massacre – have suffered an even higher death rate than the Catatumbo Bloc. Thirty-six out of 553 members – one in fifteen – were killed in nine months.
  
  The bloc’s leadership had promised that 800 of its members would report for demobilization, but 243 did not show up. “30 percent did not appear, and it is very likely that they are with the narcos,” a “high-level functionary” of the Colombian government’s ombudsman’s office told El Tiempo. Indeed, the department of Valle del Cauca, where the Calima Bloc operated, is afflicted by a heavy presence of large-scale drug traffickers, particularly the remnants of the North Valle cartel, whose leaders’ internal disputes have claimed thousands of lives in the past few years.
  
  The Calima Bloc demobilization is a shambles. The ombudsman’s office claims to know the current location of only twenty-seven of its members, while El Tiempo reports that the guerrillas are taking advantage of the bloc’s absence by increasing their presence in rural Valle del Cauca.
  
  
• The government of Medellín, not the national government, has paid nearly all the cost of the first demobilization. In November 2003, Don Berna’s Medellín-based Cacique Nutibara Bloc (BCN) was the first to turn in its weapons, in a nationally televised ceremony. Once the cameras left, however, the central government failed to follow through. The Medellín city government was left holding the bag, with 868 ex-paramilitaries – many of them in fact gang members and street criminals rounded up at the last minute to pose as demobilizing BCN fighters – essentially in its custody.
  
  Medellín mayor Sergio Fajardo and his Secretary of Government Alonso Sálazar, an expert on youth gangs and crime, decided to use the city’s budget to reintegrate these individuals. Though they recognized that many were not in fact ex-paramilitaries, they took advantage of an opportunity to rehabilitate individuals who were likely to continue contributing to violence and criminality in Medellín. El Tiempo reports that the Medellín city government has since spent almost 8.9 billion pesos per year (US$4 million, about $4,500 per ex-BCN member) on reintegration efforts.
  
  Two years later, the ex-BCN members have made the most progress in terms of education and employment, and Medellín’s murder rate has dropped precipitously. The news isn’t all good, though: 27 of the 868 demobilized – one in 32 – had died in the first 22 months after the demobilization. Ex-BCN members meanwhile have achieved disproportionate political clout, winning control of neighborhood advisory councils and fielding candidates for the March 2006 legislative elections, while maintaining a close relationship with their former commander, Don Berna.
  
  
• Nationally, the bill for demobilization and reintegration will be very high. Colombia’s Defense Ministry estimates that the cost of demobilizing the paramilitaries will run between 20 and 25 billion pesos (roughly US$9 million to US$11 million). Their subsequent reintegration into society will carry a far higher price tag. For its (rather flawed) efforts as of September, Colombia’s Interior Ministry claims to have spent 200 billion pesos (about US$90 million) and expects to spend double that amount (US$180 million) in 2006. It expects three-quarters to come from the Colombian government’s budget, and the remaining 25 percent from international donors. Given a general lack of donor enthusiasm due to the lenient “Justice and Peace” law governing the paramilitary demobilizations, this US$45 million donation goal for 2006 might not be easy to attain.

These difficult facts hardly even scratch the surface of what is already proving to be a tremendously complicated and expensive demobilization and reintegration process. Cost, scale, logistics and security all pose enormous challenges, as do questions like seizure of paramilitaries’ stolen assets, reparations to victims, and the need to verify that paramilitary networks are truly being dismantled.

In order to address these challenges, the Colombian government must seize the initiative to a degree we have not seen before. If the Bogotá government makes evident, through actions and investments, that it is serious about the DDR process, donor nations will start writing checks. If, however, the process continues to be improvised and poorly funded – if the many disturbing problems in the El Tiempo series continue to be well documented – then not only will few foreign governments want to devote resources, but episodes like the murder of Hernando Cadavid will become even more frequent.

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October 21, 2005

The sincerest form of flattery

As the re-election campaign nears, Álvaro Uribe's image-makers appear to be taking some cues from the north:

President Bush visits "ground zero" in New York, September 14, 2001.	President Uribe visits the site of a Bogotá car bomb that targeted Sen. Germán Vargas Lleras, October 11, 2005.

Let's just be thankful that Colombia's navy has no aircraft carriers on which to hang "Misión Cumplida" banners.

(Yes, this is a poor-quality blog entry after a long absence. We're still catching up after hosting several visitors from Colombia for a week; the last of our group left Washington yesterday morning. We will be back in business by Monday.)

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September 26, 2005

A job nobody wants

Whenever a government nominates a “czar” to take on a problem, it’s pretty safe to assume that problem won’t be solved.

Whether Reagan’s drug czar, Nixon’s energy czar, or Clinton’s AIDS czar (and probably Bush’s intelligence czar), the experience has been quite similar. Faced with calls to do something about a problem, a president nominates someone who, working from the president’s office, is charged with coordinating the slow-moving, often competing bureaucracies that have roles in fighting the problem. The “czar,” however, is not given authority over those agencies’ budgets, nor is he or she empowered to hire and fire key officials outside of his or her (usually small and underfunded) office. As the problem festers, the “czar” is reduced to being a figure who gives speeches and testimony, while his office publishes an endless stream of seldom-read reports and policy statements claiming progress.

A classic example is the Uribe government’s “corruption czar”. The last czar (czarina?), María Margarita Zuleta, resigned her position more than two weeks ago after just over a year and a half on the job, and now nobody seems to want to replace her. President Uribe has offered the post to both former Auditor-General Clara López Obregón and former Bogotá mayor’s office chief of staff Soraya Montoya, and both have turned him down.

Both claimed that they were too busy working on upcoming political campaigns to take the job. For her part, Zuleta resigned claiming that she had achieved the main thing she had set out to do: to draft a proposed government-wide anticorruption policy. However, after resigning in late 2003, Zuleta’s predecessor, Germán Cardona, offered a more compelling reason why nobody wants the job: the “czar,” he said, lacks “teeth” and should be abolished. ‘

The Presidential Program for the Fight Against Corruption is a small entity in the vice-president’s office. It has no power over key agencies with anti-corruption responsibilities, like the attorney-general’s office, the inspector-general’s office, or the Comptroller (none of which are part of the executive branch in Colombia). It has a budget of less than US$1 million per year. Its role and functions are poorly defined. As a result, said Cardona, the program is a place “where many speeches are made but few goals are scored.”

This is unfortunate because a truly empowered corruption czar would be one of the busiest officials in the entire Colombian government. Rampant, unpunished corruption is one of the greatest challenges Colombia faces. The government’s Comptroller (Contraloría) estimates that corrupt activity drains 14 trillion pesos per year from Colombia’s economy (over US$6 billion, or more than 5 percent of GDP). The last report of Transparencia por Colombia, the local chapter of Transparency International, found a sharp drop in its “Index of Integrity of Public Institutions” between 2003 and 2004, indicating that public perceptions of corruption are worsening.

Challenges like that require more than just a “czar” to give the impression that the government is serious about the problem. Corruption will continue to be a severe drain on Colombia’s government and economy as long as the corrupt continue to enjoy impunity. An investigative and prosecutorial effort that sends some of these thieves to jail would do much more to reduce corruption than another reshuffling of the bureaucracy or another declaration of anti-corruption policy. And we mean jail, not suspension from duty or administrative punishment. And we mean powerful thieves – people in positions of legislative, executive, military or economic power – not just “small fish.”

The corruption czars who have left after short tenures, and the would-be candidates who don’t want the job, have left or turned down a position that would be unnecessary if the Colombian government were showing the political will necessary to fight corruption. Instead, the figure of a “czar” has ended up being a substitute for that political will.

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September 23, 2005

The New Political Class

Here is a translation of María Jimena Duzán's column in Monday's El Tiempo, which provides an excellent early warning, in a few paragraphs, of the imminent rise of a bloc of politicians representing the interests of paramilitaries and drug traffickers.

It is an important reminder that, while the Colombian government celebrates the "demobilization" of paramilitaries and the Bush administration defends the so-called "Justice and Peace" law, the power of paramilitary groups is actually increasing right now in Colombia.

The New Political Class

By María Jimena Duzán
El Tiempo (September 19, 2005)

“The unnamable.” That is the term used today to describe the ominous shadow that ex-President Salinas de Gortari has cast over Mexican politics. From the fringes, he keeps trying to influence events, despite having left the way he did: accused of corruption and of having allowed the rise of a new political class closely linked to narcotrafficking and Mafioso practices. Why do I bring this up? Because after seeing the lists of congressional candidates that the pro-Uribe movements have presented for the next legislative elections [in March], one gets the impression that here in Colombia, we have our own “unnamables.”

To understand what I’m referring to, it’s not necessary to be a political scientist. It is enough to have read the “Teléfono Rosa” [gossip/society column] in yesterday’s edition of El Tiempo, which tells us that a group of VIPs from the Caribbean coast region, among them “several congresspeople,” had gone to visit [powerful Northern Bloc paramilitary commander] “Jorge 40,” who may have told them that he wants to involve himself in politics. (Note that this “para” chief hasn’t even demobilized yet.) And who are these VIPs and congresspeople whose names did not get published? Exactly that: they are part of “the unnamables.”

And who, in broad terms, are the unnamables? They are nothing more and nothing less than a new, emerging political class representing the narco-para-politics that are so in vogue right now in local and regional power circles. They are quietly going all over the country carrying out an underground political campaign, imposing their candidates. Yet complaints of this activity do not seem to reach the ears of “The Irreplaceable,” a term that today evokes, without needing to name him, the figure of our president Uribe Vélez.

Their presence is so strong that in some regions, the names of the senators and representatives who will win the next elections are already well known, and among those who feel that they have already lost, there is still hope that Minister [of Interior and Justice] Sabas [Pretelt de la Vega] will dare to make a public statement against the unnamables.

Meanwhile in the Congress, everyone knows their names, but nobody is able to take off their masks or even to single them out, for fear of becoming victims of their methods of persuasion, which don’t exactly resemble those of the Sisters of Charity. On the contrary, for quite some time, and on account of the “Justice and Peace” law and out of a general haste to reconcile with the paramilitaries, these “unnamables” have managed to locate themselves strategically on the various pro-Uribe candidate lists – on those of [prominent legislators] Germán Vargas, Mario Uribe, Juan Manuel Santos, Álvaro Araújo, Luis Alfredo Ramos, Carlos Holguín Sardi and [Carlos] Moreno de Caro – without having passed through any screening. In part, that has been possible because they have arrived on these lists duly “cleaned up,” so that – it can almost be assured – they will be the first to pass any ethical examination that might be imposed on them. This has reached such an extent that, as we have been seeing, many of them – in an act of sharpest cynicism – have given themselves the luxury of criticizing Eleonora Pineda and Rocío Arias [two congresspeople who have openly expressed admiration for paramilitary leaders], for considering that their sincerity regarding the interests they represent – that is, the paramilitaries –to be too crass.

Instead, the “unnamables” don’t allow themselves to be known. They go unnoticed. They don’t take pictures with “Don Berna” or declare themselves to be the number-one fans of Mancuso or “Macaco.” They, the “unnamables,” are the Rasputins of a narco-paramilitary power that is keeping its structures completely intact, despite the innumerable demobilizations and the much-celebrated Justice and Peace Law.

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September 2, 2005

Beware of leaders spouting statistics

Here is part of President Bush’s defense of the federal government’s feeble initial response to Hurricane Katrina, in what The New York Times editorial page called “one of the worst speeches of his life”:

The Department of Transportation has provided more than 400 trucks to move 1,000 truckloads containing 5.4 million Meals Ready to Eat -- or MREs, 13.4 million liters of water, 10,400 tarps, 3.4 million pounds of ice, 144 generators, 20 containers of pre-positioned disaster supplies, 135,000 blankets and 11,000 cots.

Does this sound at all familiar to Colombia-watchers?

Here’s one of many examples from Colombian President Álvaro Uribe’s standard speechmaking, in this case a defense of his government’s social and economic policies, given in mid-April in the town of Toribío, Cauca, which was being besieged by FARC guerrillas.

You know that in this government we have increased by nearly 5 million the number of people covered by the state’s subsidized health program. In this government we have increased the number of spaces for public-school students (cupos escolares) by 1.1 million. In this government the SENA [National Learning Service, which offers vocational training] has gone from attending to 1 million Colombians per year to, in this year, over 3 million, and we hope to attend to 4 million next year.

In both cases, we see an attempt to mask a lack of results by offering a barrage of vague but impressive-sounding statistics.

We know that, on Wednesday, tens of thousands of Gulf Coast residents were being left to fend for themselves amid looting and rising floodwaters while the federal government – whose military was nowhere near using its enormous search-and-rescue, medevac, transportation and order-keeping capabilities – dithered. We know that the poorest Colombians – especially those in neglected rural areas where illegal armed groups are strong – have seen little or no increase in government services.

We don’t know whether the statistics our leaders are reciting are at all meaningful. Are 13.4 million liters of water and 11,000 cots anywhere near enough? Did the government have the logistical capacity to deliver these goods to those who needed them immediately, or are they still sitting in warehouses? Was it possible to deliver any of this aid to New Orleans when the law and order situation had clearly gotten out of hand?

Is the increase in people covered by Colombia’s health system accompanied by a similar increase in doctors and hospitals? Is the increase in spaces for students accompanied by a similar increase in teachers and schools? Did being “attended to” by the SENA lead many of these millions of people to get gainful employment using those skills?

When our leaders give us numbers instead of results, we need to ask more questions.

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August 29, 2005

"Justice and Peace" for Chengue

If you’re still not angry yet about the incredibly lenient deal that Colombia’s paramilitaries are getting from the so-called “Justice and Peace” law passed two months ago, read the following story about the aftermath of the 2001 Chengue massacre, published eight days ago in Colombia’s most-circulated newsmagazine, Semana. (For more about this massacre, read Scott Wilson’s chilling coverage of it in the Washington Post shortly after it happened.) Every member of the U.S. Congress should be required to read this article before they vote on any request to aid the paramilitary process.

Actually, this article is required reading even if you are already angry about the “Justice and Peace” law. As you read it, keep in mind that massacres nearly on this scale are still commonplace in Colombia. Just last week in Puerto Valdivia, Antioquia – about 150 miles south of Chengue – the FARC’s 36^th Front killed fourteen coca growers, shooting them at pointblank range. The guerrillas who planned and executed that crime must be pleased to know that, thanks to the current law, after some future peace process they need only spend a maximum of eight years – minus time spent negotiating – in comfortable jails. And that punishment won’t increase, no matter how many more massacres they carry out between now and then.

Here’s a translation of the article. Emphases are ours.

8/21/2005

Semana (Colombia)

The law of the fraud

It was 3:00 on the morning of January 17, 2001 when the residents of Chengue heard the noise of people rushing around. Eighty members of the AUC had entered the small village nestled in the Montes de María in Sucre. Kicking in doors, they removed the men from each house and gathered them in the plaza. Margarita Romero, who was 15 years old at the time, heard the noise and looked out her window. She immediately understood that the paras had come to keep the promise that had been heard so many times as a rumor: they came to put an end to the town.

Terrified, she sat and awaited her turn. Minutes later, two men entered her house and brought her to the plaza. There, 23 men of Chengue were lying face-down on the ground. They were the husbands, brothers, fathers of more than 50 women, all gathered before them. One by one the paramilitaries called them, made them walk to a street behind the plaza, supposedly to verify their names on a computer. But the silence of the night revealed what was happening. “The machete could hardly be heard,” said Margarita. Each man went to the execution site. They killed them with “la mona,” a club made to break stones. One clean blow was enough. There were no shots.

When dawn broke, the paramilitaries had almost finished their labors. They confined the women and set fire to everything they could. 25 houses in all. “Even that of don Evelio López, which was the prettiest, with a little lamp outside. They killed one of his sons, who was mentally disabled,” said one of the women.

The paramilitaries left with no trouble, taking the road to Macayepo, Chinulito, toward the El Palmar farm in San Onofre, where this horrendous crime was planned. Chengue died on that day.

Today, four years and five months later, of the 327 houses in that corregimiento [township] of Ovejas municipality, only ruins remain, and of the 120 families – almost all of them somehow related – only seven returned, because they could no longer stand the indigent conditions they were forced to endure in Sincelejo [the departmental capital] or Cartagena. The abandoned houses, the farms overrun with weeds, and a desolate road are the vestiges of a town that had dreamed of prosperity. “Every afternoon, when I sit with the guys in the corridor, I think of when Chengue was Chengue. When they had horseraces, when the bands came to play music. I remember each and every person that died,” says Margarita.

The paramilitaries who perpetrated the massacre laid down their arms last month. The majority are in their homes, with no legal charges against them. Only nine are in Santa Fe de Ralito awaiting implementation of the Justice and Peace Law, the legal framework for judging those who committed atrocities like the Chengue massacre.

The challenges that confront the government as it puts this controversial law into practice are immense. The Chengue case is a paradigmatic example of what truth, justice and reparation must mean for all of this crime’s victims.

The judicial truth

Days after the massacre, on February 9, Elkin Valdiris Tirado, a 19-year-old paramilitary who participated in the massacre, felt overwhelmed by the phantoms of death and turned himself in to the authorities. His story laid the groundwork for the subsequent investigation. Valdiris testified that the massacre had been planned by Rodrigo Peluffo, “Cadena,” a man born in Macayepo, a town neighboring Chengue, known to everyone there. “He would come to buy avocados. He was a butcher,” said Juan Carlos, a farmer who also escaped the massacre. Valdiris said the group that did the killing was headed by a woman: Íngrid Guerra Soler, known as “Beatriz.” The massacre – according to his testimony – was made possible by the complicity of members of the Navy. Valdiris accused Sergeant Euclides Rafael Bossa of having received money from “Cadena,” in exchange for weapons and munitions.

In the Chengue case file, which consists of 7,500 bound volumes, it has been established that “Cadena” ordered the massacre and that Carlos Castaño, at the time the AUC’s chief, was one of the intellectual authors. However, many questions still persist: Why was this massacre committed? Who were the other intellectual authors and accomplices? Which members of the AUC participated? How did they manage to pass so easily through the Police and Navy roadblocks? Were the armed forces complicit?

The unsworn confession that “Cadena” will give to investigators from the Justice and Peace Unit [of the Attorney-General’s office] in the coming months should clear up these questions. While the paramilitaries who committed serious crimes are not legally obligated to confess to all of their deeds, the quantity of evidence in this case makes it unlikely that “Cadena” will deny his participation in the Chengue massacre.

After this unsworn confession, the prosecutors have 36 hours to decide whether to open an investigation – something that, in the case of Chengue, will be unnecessary because a case has already been opened. Beginning at that moment, a special group of prosecutors will have 60 days to investigate the case and accuse “Cadena.”

As the attorney-general, Mario Iguarán, told Semana, the Attorney-General’s office is already building a database of all cases against the paramilitaries, in order to access this information when needed. However, given that the office of the High Commissioner for Peace [the government’s negotiator] has not sent them the list of those who will be covered by the law, they are currently gathering information only about the most serious cases.

Nobody has any illusions that the prosecutors will learn anything new about this massacre during these two months. Over these past four years, its investigation has been frustrated by the murders of two prosecutors assigned to the case, and of two technicians from the Technical Investigations Unit [CTI, detectives from the Attorney-General’s office]. The two months will be merely a process of verifying what the accused have already confessed.

Upon the investigation’s completion, an expedited trial will begin, at which victims may attend to supply information and evidence. This hearing for conciliation with victims could make the biggest difference, at least in terms of knowing the truth, but unless a large institutional effort is made, it is bound to fail.

For example, under the circumstances it is almost impossible for Chengue’s victims to participate in the process. Their whereabouts are mostly unknown: not even the seven families who now live in Chengue know where their neighbors are, because the massacre was so brutal that entire families disintegrated.

No effort to teach about the law has begun in that region. “As far as one understands, it is a way to defend them,” one of Chengue’s victims, who had learned of the law on television, said to Semana. And it is possible that even if they do learn about the law, many of these victims, who have devoted their energy to extensive declarations that never lead to justice being done, doubt that this time their “truth” will have much influence on the process. The distrust of the state is total. With bitterness, a resident of Chengue says: “While they throw us in jail, they take good care of those who did the massacre.” The reference is to three victims of Chengue who had returned, and last year were arrested by the Navy, judged and convicted of rebellion – unfairly, they argue. But the swiftness of justice in that case must be recognized.

There is also skepticism that the paramilitaries are really dismantling their criminal structures. In addition, they distrust the armed forces. “We don’t feel protected. When the Marines pass through here, nobody leaves their houses to work. They have stolen our hens and turkeys,” said one of the women of Chengue. If the law’s implementation is really going to depend on the victims’ participation, and especially if the investigations are to be carried out in the zone where the crimes where committed and where today the demobilized paramilitaries are hanging around, the government will have to guarantee better protection [for victims who wish to provide evidence]. It is still uncertain where the money to do that will come from.

Justice

The few residents left in Chengue look at each other and smile when the Semana reporters talk to them of justice. One by one, those implicated in the massacre have been exonerated. Of the nine investigated, only three still face charges: “Cadena,” Carlos Castaño and Úber Enrique Banquez, alias “Juancho.” “Beatriz” and the Navy Sergeants Rubén Darío Rojas and Euclides Bossa were absolved. The only person convicted is Valdiris, who received a reduced sentence of 45 months and 24 days for his cooperation.

Supposing that the Justice and Peace Unit of the Attorney-General’s office convicts “Cadena” for the Chengue massacre, he will get a maximum of eight years’ confinement. If he accepts having also committed the El Salado, Macayepo and Pichilín massacres, of which he is also accused, he will receive only the maximum penalty of eight years, since the law says they cannot accumulate as they do in the United States. And he will get credit for the time he spends in Ralito. According to an intelligence report, “Cadena” lives today with his family in the corregimiento of El Caramelo, “and constantly receives visits from Sucre politicians, residents and close collaborators.”

The country already knows this. But if “Cadena” eventually decides to name accomplices in his unsworn confession, it is still unclear whether they will be tried under the Justice and Peace law. Semana had a list of questions delivered to the paramilitary chief in order to know his position on the Chengue massacre and the Justice and Peace law, but at the close of this edition he had not answered it.

Nor is it known how it can be guaranteed that the other 80 paramilitaries who participated in the massacre will be tried. Last month, when the group to which “Cadena” belonged (the so-called “Heroes of Montes de María”) demobilized, only nine members – including chiefs “Cadena,” “Juancho” and Diego Vecino – were determined to face charges for unpardonable crimes, and went to Ralito to await the law’s implementation. Or that is what is believed. When Semana called to request an interview with the latter, the response received was that Vecino wasn’t in the zone.

It was also impossible to get a response on this issue from the high commissioner for peace, Luis Carlos Restrepo, even though Semana sought him for eight days.

It is possible that other members of the bloc that committed the Chengue massacre have also perpetrated unpardonable crimes, but that they have nonetheless preferred to return to their homes, trusting in the system being too inefficient ever to arrest them. To gather in Ralito is today an option that the paramilitaries choose in order to protect themselves from arrest, not a requirement demanded by the government, as the country has been led to believe.

If the armed forces’ complicity in the massacre – denounced by many of the victims – is proved, what will happen to them? The police, for example, were never investigated. But assuming that, for example, the unsworn confession of “Cadena” or “Juancho” implicates some police agents, these could end up paying sentences three or four times longer than those of the paramilitary chiefs. They would not be able to benefit from the Justice and Peace law, which only covers paramilitaries and guerrillas. Something similar to what might happen to General [Jaime] Uscátegui for the Mapiripán massacre. While the paramilitaries who killed 47 people could receive the benefits of the “alternative penalty,” the general, who is being tried for omission of responsibility, could receive more than 30 years in jail. Something similar will happen to the politicians, government employees and sponsors who, based on the paramilitary chiefs’ confessions, could end up being investigated by the regular criminal-justice system.

It is difficult to accept that men like those responsible for Chengue, who are accused of hundreds of deaths with extreme cruelty (the Attorney-General’s office has found the bodies of their victims cut into pieces), will receive at most eight years in jail in an “austere and secure establishment,” as the law says, which could well be the farms where they currently live. But the government’s bet is that public opinion will accept this in exchange for generous reparations to victims and a genuine dismantlement of their criminal structure. Nonetheless, it is still not known how reparations will function, and no dismantlement has been seen. According to the authorities, the paramilitaries’ businesses in Sincelejo are still booming, and the politicians elected thanks to their armed pressure are still governing.

Reparations

The law guarantees the victims the right to complete reparation. On paper. In practice, the challenge is daunting. After the massacre, Chengue disappeared. The 120 families who lived there, plus those in neighboring corregimientos, fled toward Sincelejo, Cartagena and Ovejas. There, the International Committee of the Red Cross gave them emergency aid for three months. To those who requested it, the Social Solidarity Network [of the Colombian government] gave them support for six months. Afterward, they were abandoned. Many old people began to die of sadness. “My mother couldn’t bear life in Sincelejo and the pain of her brother having been killed,” says Omaira. “In total, 32 of the displaced have died since the massacre,” adds Ramiro, another resident, who decided to return to Chengue due to the hunger his family suffered in Sincelejo. Others have had worse luck. Isbelia returned two years ago, and a week later an armed group came to her farm and shot her husband, leaving him near death. They had to displace themselves a second time.

The town of Chengue was never rebuilt. It is a monument to terror. Everything there recalls the night that changed its history forever. The presence of the government seems like a bad joke. Two years ago, those who returned managed to have a teacher assigned for the town’s 25 children. This year the teacher failed the Education Ministry’s quality test, and the post remained vacant for four months. In July, two residents of Chengue went to Ovejas to ask that a new teacher be named and, instead of getting a response, they were detained for several hours and interrogated by the police, due to the mere suspicion that falls on those who come from Chengue, which is still under guerrilla influence. That is why, when they are asked what they have received as reparation during the past few years, they reply, “the stigma.”

Will it be different this time? Everything depends on the Reparations Commission created by the law, which still has not had regulations written to govern it. There are many doubts. To establish something that sounds as simple as the number of victims to receive reparations will be a very difficult task. 1,300 people lived in Chengue. Do they all qualify for reparations? Should the relatives of the 23 people who died – who possibly didn’t even live in Chengue – also get reparations? Supposing that each victim gets a million pesos [US$400] (a fraction of the eight million that demobilized paramilitaries are receiving), merely the individual reparations in Chengue will cost more than 1.3 billion pesos [US$520,000]. But if it is done well, it will cost much more. The law requires complete reparations, which implies psychological assistance, rebuilding of the town, symbolic events and a guarantee that it will never happen again.

From where will the money come to comply with the law’s promises? It is supposed that the Reparations Fund will be fed by the goods that the paramilitaries turn over, plus international donations and the government’s budget. As a matter of common sense, the millionaire paramilitary chiefs have few properties in their own names, and have no incentive to turn in assets, especially when the law doesn’t penalize them for hiding properties. The most that they can hope for is that they return the lands that they shamelessly stole from the victims. The money from narcotrafficking, extortion and legal businesses, many created to launder illicit money, is very difficult to detect. The Fund will have to sustain itself from the existing national budget or from international donations, which will be difficult to obtain because there is a great deal of skepticism about the law.

Demobilized paramilitaries have had better luck. Despite the problems of the Reinsertion Program, they have a year’s minimum salary guaranteed, eight million pesos for a productive project, there are reference centers offering training, psychological treatment, affiliation with the social security system and legal advice. In addition, there are agricultural mega-projects supported by private businessmen to guarantee them a job. All of which is good, because it is the only way to keep them from returning to war.

But it is morally inconceivable that while the victimizers have better opportunities for the future, their victims have nothing assured. They expect so little of the government that the only thing they ask as reparations is that “the government leaves us alone,” as one of them said to Semana.

The debate about whether or not the law is the most appropriate is now closed. What is crucial is that its implementation guarantees that it will bring Justice and Peace. This demands an institutional, budgetary and political-will effort which, although the law passed two months ago already, still has not gotten underway. If the government and the judicial system do not take on this issue as a priority, the cost – in terms of human suffering and in money through lawsuits against the government – will be incalculable.

Posted by isacson at 11:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 15, 2005

Plan Patriota, as seen from the south

It’s been about 20 months now since the Colombian Army, with lots of U.S. support, launched “Plan Patriota,” a major military offensive in a longtime FARC guerrilla stronghold in southern Colombia. Supported by U.S. logistics, planning and intelligence personnel, Colombian troops continue to fight in a broad swath of heavily jungled territory in the departments of Caquetá, Guaviare, Meta, and Vaupés (and perhaps others).

In part due to the remoteness of the zones where it has been happening, it has been difficult to judge whether Plan Patriota is succeeding or failing, and what impact it has had on the area’s civilian population. Colombia’s main newspaper, El Tiempo, has visited the zone periodically, offering valuable glimpses of what is going on – particularly a series that appeared in early May.

A new, and pessimistic, vision comes from a column published in Sunday’s El Tiempo. Its author is Alirio Calderón, a former mayor of Puerto Rico, Caquetá, a town in the midst of the “Plan Patriota” zone (and near the former FARC demilitarized zone). In late May, FARC members burst into a Puerto Rico restaurant and massacred several town council members.

Calderón argues that the Colombian troops in the Plan Patriota zone have had a rough time in unfamiliar terrain, and that they made a big mistake by treating the local population as potential enemies and coca-growing criminals. The column is worth a close read. Here is a translation.

El Tiempo – August 14, 2005

Plan Patriota, as seen from the south

Alirio Calderón

Among the most important components of “Democratic Security,” the current government’s banner policy, is Plan Patriota. The Plan has sent 17,000 men to the jungles of the country’s south. This is an area where the FARC Secretariat has long resided with few difficulties, and where it has maintained its armed structures unscathed, along with hundreds of kidnap victims whose return the nation demands with a tone of desperation.

But the intelligent and well-intentioned Plan Patriota strategy began in error, since the Amazonian ecosystem has peculiarities that make it unique from other regions: its topography, its humidity, its heavy rainfall, its tropical diseases, its coca-based economy and the total absence of the state. All of this makes Colombia’s Amazon basin a complex and dangerous place.

The first mistake was to bring combatants from different regions (the Caribbean coast, Antioquia, the central Andes) to fight against guerrillas who were acclimated to, or born in, this tropical region. This led to 30 percent of the troops being forced to leave the zone with illnesses (malaria, leishmaniasis, etc.), in addition to those killed or wounded in combat, as well as the natural demoralization of human beings subjected to such difficult and unfamiliar conditions. This, without a doubt, meant that from the beginning the Army lost at least 40 percent of its operational capacity.

In the second place, there was a failure to take advantage of the most important potential support the troops had: the civilian population, who were tired of the unjust and despotic treatment they had received from the guerrillas’ mid-level commanders. The guerrilla chiefs, infected by a mafioso attitude, would kill any citizen on the mere suspicion of wrongdoing, without regard to his support for the revolutionary cause.

The Army absurdly squandered this asset by operating under the false premise that whoever lives in a region under guerrilla influence must be a guerrilla ally. Abuses became a constant characteristic of the military operation. Just one ombudsman’s office, that of Cartagena del Chairá municipality, has registered more than 145 violations committed by members of the security forces. That doesn’t even count the famous mass arrest of 130 of its residents, of whom not one today remains in jail.

Finally, a serious mistake was committed by trying to fight guerrillas and cocaleros at the same time, because they are not the same thing. A cocalero is generally a campesino who has a family, and who has completely different dreams and aspirations than a guerrilla does. Of course his role in the coca business is also absolutely different from that of a guerrilla. But the chosen tactic [of across-the-board confrontation] ended up building a bridge between the two.

The right thing would have been to lead an attractive program of manual substitution of illicit crops. This would have avoided, in the first place, the massive exodus of the zone’s residents, something that will simply move the problem to some other zone.

In the second place, it would have permitted a friendly winning of the population’s hearts. It is absolutely certain that fewer bullets would have been fired, the costs would have been much lower, the list of dead and wounded men would have been much smaller, and important military blows would have been struck.

What the country must clearly understand is that Plan Patriota is a military operation just like so many others that have been carried out against the guerrillas in Colombia (Marquetalia, Casa Verde, etc.). While it is part of the Democratic Security policy, its success or failure will not determine the success or failure of the whole policy.

For the good of the Colombian state’s legitimacy and institutionalization, Democratic Security must contemplate many more elements that can make it into a permanent state policy with a satisfactory development and operation, with fewer glaring errors.

Posted by isacson at 10:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 1, 2005

Putumayo, 5 years into Plan Colombia

When Plan Colombia began five years ago, it got underway in the department of Putumayo in Colombia’s far south. At the time, Putumayo had about half of Colombia’s coca, and was a guerrilla stronghold with a rapidly growing paramilitary presence. A big portion of the 2000 package of U.S. aid for Plan Colombia went to something the Clinton administration called “the push into southern Colombia”: the creation of new military units, construction on military bases and expansion of fumigation in and around Putumayo. By 2001, as a report we published that spring affirmed, Putumayo was “Plan Colombia’s Ground Zero.”

In April 2004, when I last visited Putumayo, things were calmer than they had been in years. The amount of coca being grown had decreased. The governor and the mayors of several towns, who had been elected at the end of the previous year, came from a progressive, social-movement background. Thanks to an increased military and police presence in towns and along main roads, you didn’t see uniformed paramilitaries in the town centers (though I saw some on the outskirts) and the guerrillas had been pushed back into the rural hinterland. You could even drive at night, which had been unthinkable.

Things were far from perfect, or even good. The paramilitaries still had a tight grip on most town centers, and the guerrillas still operated freely in the countryside, making travel between the two very risky. Everyone I spoke to insisted that there was more coca than official estimates indicated. Many speculated that the guerrillas’ relative inactivity was their own choice, a “tactical retreat,” not the result of Plan Colombia or President Uribe’s “Democratic Security” policy.

On July 13, 2000, President Clinton signed into law the U.S. aid package for Plan Colombia. As if to commemorate the fifth anniversary, the FARC have launched a large-scale offensive in Putumayo that vividly shows, to everyone’s dismay and alarm, how little Plan Colombia has really achieved.

Here is what has happened so far (I am currently writing without Internet access, so this information is 2 days out of date). On July 20, the guerrillas bombed electrical pylons, shutting off power to Mocoa, the capital; Puerto Asís, the largest city; and several other major towns in what had been Putumayo’s coca heartland and population center. On July 23, they destroyed the Villalobos bridge, on the only road that connects Putumayo with the rest of the country to the north.

The FARC then declared an armed stoppage (paro armado), prohibiting Putumayo’s 300,000 residents from traveling by road and burning the vehicles of those who attempt to do so. The Colombian military has so far been unable to break the stoppage, and transportation is at a total standstill.

Much fighting is taking place around Puerto Asís, the department’s largest city and commercial center (the town center’s population is about 40,000 or more). Puerto Asís is not a rural hamlet with one main street and a general store, it is a big town: many buildings are 3-4 stories tall, it hosts hotels, clothing boutiques, discos and supermarkets. But the town is currently cut off from the rest of the country, without electricity or fuel. Residents are hearing bombs and gunfire.

Meanwhile, the guerrillas have stepped up bombings of infrastructure: bridges, electrical towers, and especially the oil pipeline that runs through the zone. Combat is occurring between guerrillas and the security forces in several sites, with rural residents caught in the crossfire or unable to leave their homes. Others have managed to flee, with 500 displaced people arriving in the town center of Orito, 200 in Mocoa, and a large flow believed to be crossing the border into Ecuador. The colonel in charge of the Colombian Army’s 27^th Brigade has asked to be relieved of his command.

The FARC carried out a similar armed stoppage between September and December of 2000, when Plan Colombia was just getting started. At that time, the Colombian military airlifted food and other supplies into the Puerto Asís airport. The airlifts have begun again, this time on a larger scale.

Though the FARC offensive roughly coincides with the fifth anniversary of U.S. aid to Plan Colombia, that is probably just a coincidence. The attacks are more likely the FARC’s response to Plan Patriota, the year-and-a-half-old, U.S.-supported military offensive taking place in a vast zone, about 150 miles to the north and east of Puerto Asís, that was undisputed FARC territory for decades.

Unable to operate unhindered in that zone (parts of the departments of Caquetá, Guaviare, Meta, and Vaupés), the FARC is believed to be beefing up its presence to the south and west, in Putumayo and neighboring departments of Nariño and Cauca. These three departments make up Colombia’s southwest corner; by dominating them, the guerrillas can control routes to the Pacific and into Ecuador and Peru. The frequency, scale and brutality of guerrilla attacks in these departments have increased sharply since February. Examples include the February bombing of a barracks in Iscuandé, Nariño; the repeated FARC attacks on Cauca indigenous communities like Toribío, Jambaló, and Tacueyó since April; and attacks on military targets in Santa Ana, La Tagua, and Teteyé, Putumayo. The Colombian military, occupied with Plan Patriota to the north, has been unable to respond to the increased guerrilla activity in and around Putumayo.

It is outrageous that so much investment in Plan Colombia has failed to improve security even in the very department where Plan Colombia began. Associated Press reporter Andrew Selsky, who has traveled to Putumayo periodically since 2000, put it well in a story dated July 29: “U.S. officials who began aerial fumigation of cocaine-producing crops in this isolated state almost five years ago believed then that the ‘outlawed groups’ that control cocaine production – leftist rebels and their right-wing paramilitary foes – would be long gone by now. The theory was that with the coca fields killed by herbicide, the gunmen would leave.”

That did not happen. There may be less coca, but there is not less poverty, and there is not less violence.

The immediate priority in Putumayo is to weaken the armed stoppage, get aid to isolated towns, and help civilians to escape the fighting. After that, though, the U.S. and Colombian governments must take a good look at the strategy that has failed so miserably in Putumayo.

The July armed stoppage shows that Plan Colombia – especially its “push into southern Colombia” – was unable to affect the FARC’s military capacity in Putumayo. Plan Patriota – the large offensive just to the north – has not stopped the FARC from increasing its attacks elsewhere in the country. What do the two offensives have in common? Both have taken place in zones that the Colombian government has abandoned, leaving citizens to fend for themselves. Both are little more than temporary – if sizable – increases in the presence of one part of the Colombian government: the military and the police. Eventually, the soldiers move on to somewhere else; when they do, they leave little behind.

The lesson of Putumayo should be that temporary surges in military activity, however ambitious, will not bring meaningful results on their own. If the Colombian government is serious about governing zones like Putumayo, the military action is only a small part of what is needed. Protected by the security forces, government representatives – from teachers to cops to agricultural extensionists – must be present in places like rural Putumayo, in regular contact with the locals and providing badly needed services. If the civilian part of the government is there and has the trust of the population, “armed stoppages” and other guerrilla actions will not take the government by surprise. In fact, they will be unlikely to prosper.

This seems rather obvious. But it hasn’t been tried in Colombia. Instead, the same mistake keeps getting repeated. The U.S. contribution is a shining example. Eighty percent of U.S. aid to Colombia since 2000 has gone just to the military and police. And this may change little, if at all, in 2006. This is very bad news for the residents of places like Putumayo.

Posted by isacson at 8:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 27, 2005

FARC hostages: the hard part is still far off

It’s been hard to figure out President Uribe’s strategy for freeing the fifty-nine hostages whom the FARC has been cruelly holding, for several years now, to pressure for a prisoner exchange. At times, Uribe bares his teeth, ordering the military to attempt armed rescues, refusing to negotiate with “terrorists” unless a cease-fire is declared, or insisting on negotiating only by e-mail. At other times, Uribe softens his bargaining position, making offers to release 50 FARC prisoners in advance, suggesting that negotiations occur at a foreign embassy in Bogotá, and even releasing 23 low-ranking guerrilla prisoners last December as “a show of good faith.”

Whether Uribe is playing an elaborate game of chess or merely improvising, two things are certain. His efforts haven’t succeeded in freeing any hostages. And – until yesterday, perhaps – none of his offers has accepted the FARC’s main pre-condition for talks: a demilitarized zone.

The FARC seeks the Colombian military’s exit from an area where talks are to take place, on the pretext that guerrilla leaders need guarantees of safety. More specifically, last fall the FARC asked for a temporary military pullout from two counties, Florida and Pradera in the southeastern corner of Valle del Cauca department, near Cali.

To agree to such a demilitarized zone carries a high political cost for Uribe. The military, which finds it humiliating to pull out of an area where the government is supposed to be sovereign, will complain loudly. Other observers will recall the bitter experience of Uribe’s predecessor, Andrés Pastrana, who demilitarized five counties between 1998 and 2002 for a peace process that failed. (Of course, Uribe has already done something like this: the “location zone” in Santa Fe de Ralito, where talks are taking place with paramilitaries, is a demilitarized zone. In his defense, Uribe can respond that Ralito is a far smaller zone than the FARC got, and that he granted it only after the paramilitaries declared a cease-fire. Declared, if not honored.)

Uribe had firmly refused the FARC request to demilitarize Florida and Pradera, or any other square inch of Colombian territory. Yesterday, though, it appeared that Uribe was giving in, at least partially, to this FARC pre-condition.

Peace negotiator Luis Carlos Restrepo said that President Uribe – using powers granted in a little-noticed section (chapter 11) of the controversial “Justice and Peace Law” [PDF format] – had instructed him to meet with the FARC immediately, wherever they want, and at the date and time they want, to talk about a prisoner exchange. When asked whether he had a demilitarized zone in mind, Restrepo answered in a roundabout way: “Call it what you want to call it, a security site, a mutual-confidence site, a meeting site. What is important is that it fulfills the function of giving them enough trust to sit and converse with the government about the issue of a humanitarian exchange.”

The FARC have been clear about what “gives them enough trust”: a temporary military pullout, ideally from Florida and Pradera. Though this is a very tough pill for the government to swallow, it does reflect the expressed will of most of the hostages’ relatives, and it is a less-bad option than an armed rescue attempt, as the FARC has shown no reluctance to kill hostages when such attempts are made.

But even if this step is taken, the real hard part still lies ahead.

• It will be very difficult for Colombia’s government to accept a prisoner-exchange agreement that allows guerrillas freed from Colombian prisons to return to the conflict. (The government of France has offered to receive any guerrillas freed through an exchange.)
  
  
• The agreement must include guarantees that the FARC will never again take hostages to pressure for an exchange. These will be nearly impossible to enforce, however: if the guerrillas take new hostages, the past few years have shown that there is little that the Colombian government can do about it.
  
  
• Both sides will have to take the difficult step of removing from the table some related, and emotionally charged, issues. For instance, there will be strong pressures to get a FARC guarantee not to kidnap for any reason, including ransom. The guerrillas, however, are unlikely to give up this brutal but lucrative practice just to free a few dozen prisoners. For its part, the FARC will demand, as it has done already, that “Simón Trinidad” and “Sonia” – two mid-level guerrilla leaders extradited to the United States on drug charges – be among the prisoners to be freed. There is zero likelihood that the Bush administration – which “does not negotiate with terrorists” – will give in to this demand, even if it means sacrificing the three U.S. citizens in FARC custody. If talks to free the fifty-nine hostages are to succeed, then, these larger, deal-breaking issues will have to be put off.
  
  
• The negotiations must not end with a prisoner exchange. The dialogue created through these talks should be seen as a first step toward more fluid communication, confidence-building, and movement toward more substantive negotiations.
  

Given all this, can "humanitarian exchange" talks work? Yes, but it won’t be at all easy. Satisfying these requirements is absolutely necessary if negotiations are to free the fifty-nine hostages without rewarding the FARC for their actions. But it will be an extremely difficult needle to thread.

Posted by isacson at 5:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 19, 2005

Notes from the "jihad": 4 unacceptable "Justice and Peace" scenarios

Colombian Vice-President Francisco Santos and Foreign Minister Carolina Barco are in Washington right now, trying to win U.S. support for the paramilitary demobilization process despite last month’s passage of an extremely lenient law for dealing with former AUC leaders (the so-called “Justice and Peace” law).

Santos is clearly frustrated by the reception he’s getting here. On his way out of a meeting with the State Department yesterday afternoon, he told reporters that he blames the non-governmental organizations (like us) who have been opposing U.S. support for the process since the law was passed. “No doubt led by José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch, they are on a crusade that seems jihadist to us, an obtuse and misguided attitude, and we will say that to them tomorrow when we meet with them.”

I don’t know which charge I find more insulting: the idea that we are on some sort of ideological “holy war,” or the notion that we are being led by Human Rights Watch!

The meeting Santos mentions – which takes place in a couple of hours – should be interesting. In order to prepare, we’ve been closely studying the new “Justice and Peace” law and the many criticisms that have been leveled against it. We drafted this response (PDF format) to a letter the Colombian government had sent last week to the U.S. Congress (PDF format).

We’re not on a jihad, Mr. Vice-President. Nor, for that matter, are the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the OAS Inter-American Human Rights Commission. Our opposition to U.S. support for the paramilitary process is based on rational thought, not ideology.

This brief thought experiment should help explain why we feel our view is eminently reasonable. Walk through these four hypothetical scenarios, all of which could easily play out several times as the “Justice and Peace” law is implemented.

Scenario 1. Let’s say I’m fourth-in-command of the AUC’s “Héroes de Dóndequiera” Bloc. Over the years, I’ve ordered and participated in several massacres and extrajudicial killings. I have several cattle ranches and African palm plantations that I’ve stolen by displacing their former occupants, and I keep them in others’ names.

1. When I demobilize, I’m required to confess to what I did wrong. In the hope of getting the most minimal sentence – five years, minus up to 18 months spent negotiating, or 3 ½ years – and of being liable for the smallest amount of reparations, I leave out of my statement several massacres, killings, tortures, displacements, and illegally obtained assets.
   
   
2. Government prosecutors have only 36 hours to decide whether I should be charged for the crimes to which I confessed. The “Justice and Peace” law authorized a team of only 20 prosecutors, however, and they are incredibly overburdened. In 36 hours, they must decide whom to pursue among the 700 members of my paramilitary bloc that demobilized today. And they’re already busy with the cases of thousands more who demobilized in the past two months. My top leadership made a brilliant decision when they chose to accelerate the pace of demobilizations; while it played really well in the media, it also overwhelmed the small team of prosecutors, thus assuring that more of us would slip through the cracks.
   
   
3. I am to be charged for the crimes for which I confessed. Let’s say that – perhaps because I’m a high-ranking commander – the prosecutors claim that I might be responsible for several other cases of murders and stolen property. I have two choices:
   
   
   1. I can lie and say that I had forgotten to disclose these additional incidents when I confessed. The “Justice and Peace” law states that if I deliberately left these out of my original confession, my right to a light sentence is stripped away, and I must go into Colombia’s criminal justice system. But the prosecutors and investigators have no way of proving that my lack of disclosure was intentional; I left no written record of my intention to deceive, nor did I mention to anyone that I deliberately left anything out. The “Justice and Peace” law says that if I recognize that I committed the newly revealed crimes too, I can add them to my confession, and at worst a few months are added to my sentence. (Of course, any victims of those additional crimes can now sue me for reparations.)
      
      
   2. I can deny any responsibility for these additional crimes. If I do, my case is added to the already large caseload of one of the 20 prosecutors, who assigns it to one of 150 investigators (the amount authorized by the “Justice and Peace” law) who is already trying to look into the background of several other recently demobilized paramilitaries. Though they are working day and night, they can uncover little new information about their many assigned cases before the 60-day deadline mandated by the “Justice and Peace” law. In the past, Colombia has seen very, very few examples of human-rights investigations that are successfully concluded within only 60 days. I stand an excellent chance of avoiding being found responsible for these unconfessed crimes – though at any time, I may confess, say it was unintentional, and remain eligible for a lighter sentence.
      
      
4. The 60 days are up. I turn myself in to the authorities to begin serving my sentence. They give me six years, which is really 4 ½ years because I claim that I spent eighteen months in the zone where negotiations were taking place. (Even if I didn’t, they cannot prove that I wasn’t there.) I don’t go to a normal prison, but instead enjoy comfortable house arrest, along with many of my former companions, at a rural estate in a zone that the AUC has long controlled.
   
   
5. I still have most of my stolen lands, and I still haven’t been officially connected to many massacres and killings. I must give up the illegally obtained assets to which I confessed ownership, and these are used to pay reparations to victims of the crimes to which I confessed. I get to keep the rest.
   
   

Scenario 2. Let’s say I’m in charge of the Bloque de los Libertadores de Fulano. I command 300 men active in ten municipalities. My bloc controls the local drug trade, is guaranteed a share of all local-government contracts, and no local politician rules without my permission.

1. When I confess, neither I nor my men are required to reveal anything we know about our command, support and financing networks, or the structure of our organization. Although many members of Colombia’s Congress had sought to add this requirement to the “Justice and Peace” law, they were defeated by the pro-government majority.
   
   
2. As a result, my control over local politics and drug activity is undiminished. Though I no longer command an army of 300 heavily armed, camouflage-clad men headquartered in rural encampments, I still have dozens, if not hundreds, of hired killers a cell-phone call away. Even from the rural estate where I am serving my short sentence, I can do drug business and keep out competitors, guarantee that I get a percentage of government contracts, persuade unapproved political candidates not to run for office, intimidate union leaders and human rights defenders, and order “social cleansing” campaigns against street children, petty criminals, and drug addicts in slum areas.
   
   While there is no shortage of mayors, military officers and judges in the zone where my unit operated, I still maintain de facto control. My paramilitary unit has not been dismantled, it has just taken a new form.
   
   
3. What of the wealthy local landowners and businessmen who helped to found my paramilitary unit, and who willingly supported it? What of the military officers who aided and abetted my unit, even after 1989 when it was declared illegal? Neither I nor my men are required to mention them in our confession. They will not only go unpunished – they will go unnamed.
   

Scenario 3. Let’s say I was displaced after a massacre killed my wife and child. I left behind my 5 hectares of plantains and cattle pasture six years ago, and have been living on the outskirts of Cartagena ever since.

1. I know the name of the paramilitary comandante who ordered the operation that killed my family members, and who now controls my land. However, he has not confessed to the crime that took my family and land away. The prosecutors and investigators were unable to uncover anything new in just 60 days. And a third-party figurehead, believed to be close to the comandante, now occupies the land that was mine.
   
   
2. According to the “Justice and Peace” law, I have little or no means of securing reparations. Crimes for which nobody has admitted responsibility, or been found guilty, are not subject to reparations. I may never get my old land back.
   
   
3. Even if the comandante admitted to the massacre that led to my displacement, the “Justice and Peace” law does not make him liable for reparations unless I take the proactive step of suing for them. I am a powerless individual from the slums of Cartagena, and he is a powerful ex-comandante who is still believed to control the zone where I used to live. Though suing for reparations may anger the ex-comandante, the “Justice and Peace” law does not require the government to provide me with extra security measures. I would have to be quite brave to proceed with my petition for reparations.
   

Scenario 4. I was a prominent drug trafficker whose name had long appeared on the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of “Specially Designated Nationals.” In the hope of avoiding prosecution and extradition, I joined the AUC in 2002, paying millions for the right to call myself Comandante so-and-so and to be the titular commander of a 200-man bloc of fighters. In 2004, a Miami court indicts me on charges of shipping tons of cocaine to the United States.

1. During most of its transit through Colombia’s Congress, the “Justice and Peace” bill included a provision would have disqualified me and other paramilitary leaders who had dealt drugs before joining the AUC, thus forcing me to face Colombia’s criminal-justice system or even extradition to the United States. Luckily for me, this provision was quietly removed from the bill shortly before final approval. Either way, though, the AUC leadership would probably have stuck up for me, insisting that I had been a clandestine member of the group long before 2002.
   
   
2. The “Justice and Peace” law claims that, as a member of the paramilitaries, I have committed sedition, which is a “political crime.” Under Colombia’s constitution, political crimes are not subject to extradition.
   
   
3. My well-paid lawyers and I argue that my past narcotrafficking was fundraising for the paramilitary cause, and thus intimately connected to the political crime of paramilitarism (sedition). Since the “Justice and Peace” law does not define which crimes are subject to the lighter sentences, my drug-running is admitted as a “connected” crime, and applied toward my five-to-eight-year sentence.
   
   
4. Once I have served my light sentence at a rural estate within Colombia, I cannot be extradited to the United States for my past narcotrafficking – to do so would be double jeopardy (punishing me twice for the same crime).

It is our view that no people of good will can abide by results such as these, and no foreign government should support a process that makes these outcomes likely. Is that attitude “obtuse and misguided?” We certainly don’t think so, Mr. Vice-President.

Posted by isacson at 9:11 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

July 12, 2005

President Uribe's shady friend

On May 16^th, funeral wreaths arrived at the offices of three Colombian journalists known for their critical stance toward the Uribe government. They came with cards inviting the recipients to their own burials. One of the three, Daniel Coronell, received a separate floral arrangement bearing the names of his wife and six-year-old daughter.

Coronell directs Noticias Uno, an independent news program on Colombia’s Canal Uno cable network, and writes a weekly column for Semana magazine. Canal Uno also broadcasts the documentary show Contravía, hosted by Hollman Morris, who also received a funeral arrangement on May 16th. Contravía had produced two programs about the February 2006 massacre in the San José de Apartadó peace community, presenting much evidence that pointed to possible military responsibility for the massacre (view the programs as an .avi file in Spanish).

Coronell had begun to receive threats at the end of April. “Some anonymous coward called to say, amid horrible namecalling, that he would kill my daughter, my wife and me,” Coronell wrote in his column. “Since then he has called again with information about where we lived, my daily schedule and my family’s routine.”

Coronell received several other threats via e-mail, and colleagues received e-mails threatening him as well. They came from somebody identifying himself as “Zarovich” (the name of a prince of imperial Russia), from the e-mail address ojrana2000@yahoo.com (the Ojrana was the name of the czar’s secret police).

With help from technicians, Coronell tracked the e-mails back to their source. They came from a computer in the Bogotá mansion of Carlos Náder Simmonds, a former congressman and large landowner from the paramilitary-dominated department of Córdoba in northern Colombia. The 59-year-old former politician – who, according to Coronell, “is such a Russian history enthusiast that his son is named Dmitri” – admitted that the threats came from his computer, but denied that he had sent them.

Náder has a shady past. In 1983, while a member of Congress from Córdoba, he was arrested and later found guilty by a New York court of trying to sell cocaine to a DEA agent. He spent at least three years in a U.S. prison. He was close enough to Medellín Cartel chief Pablo Escobar that, in 1990, recordings of phone conversations surfaced in which Náder calls Escobar “brother” and “compadre,” they discuss threats against César Gaviria (then a presidential candidate) and the daily newspaper El Tiempo, and Náder expresses support for the 1989 assassination of popular presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán (“better dead than a son of a b***h”).

This has not kept Náder from being close to those in power in Colombia, including President Álvaro Uribe himself. Journalist Fernando Garavito – who left Colombia in 2002 after publishing allegations that Uribe has ties to Colombia’s criminal underworld – calls Náder “one of the links between the country’s rulers, the corrupt politicians and the capos of the drug trade.”

Náder has sought to defend himself from charges of threatening Coronell by pointing out that as many as 40 people, including President Uribe’s two sons, have used his computer while visiting his house in the recent past.

While neither Coronell nor Colombia’s Attorney-General, Luis Camilo Osorio, think that Tomás and Jerónimo Uribe – both teenagers – are suspects, the episode revealed uncomfortable details about Náder’s friendship with President Uribe. The two men have known each other since the mid-1970s, when both were young Liberal Party activists. “He is very nice, fun to be with, he has always been kind to me, with my sons, my sons have been fond of him,” President Uribe told Colombia’s RCN radio network in June.

According to Náder himself, President Uribe even celebrated the 2004 New Year together with the convicted former narco-trafficker in the town of Ríonegro, just outside Medellín. “It is difficult to understand why the President shares his family with someone who served a prison term in the United States for cocaine trafficking, without this being seen as a moral impediment,” notes El Espectador columnist Ramiro Bejarano.

The Lord of the Shadows, a very unauthorized biography of Uribe that Fernando Garavito co-wrote in 2002 with Newsweek reporter Joseph Contreras, points out that Náder cannot enter the United States because of his past drug conviction. “But his wife, Ana Trejos, who is a gringa, hosts the candidate [Uribe] and his family during their visits to Miami, and Náder himself is their host in a luxurious apartment that he bought in Madrid, thanks to the illegal multi-million-dollar commissions he gained by skimming funds from the construction of the Urrá dam [in Tierrralta, Córdoba, the same municipality as Santa Fé de Ralito, where paramilitary leaders are currently negotiating with the Colombian government]. Náder is a man of the dark side, who knows many episodes of Uribe’s past and who guards them closely in his memory to use them when he believes them to be useful for his own interests.”

Náder continues to insist that he did not send the threatening e-mails to Coronell. He called the journalist and told him “I have nothing against you, you seem all right to me, I don’t like your anti-Uribism but I respect it.” El Tiempo columnist (and brother of the former president) Daniel Samper is skeptical. “I had a chance to examine a list of the e-mails, and this argument doesn’t hold up, unless a battalion sleeps in Náder’s house. Some of the e-mails were sent at hours that seem too early for entertaining friends at home: 5:08 AM, 6:29 AM, 9:23 on a Sunday.”

Whether the former politician sent the messages or not, says Coronell, “Náder is not the only responsible party, but a link in a chain of threats against people who criticize the government.” If Coronell is correct, the atmosphere is likely to grow still more threatening in the runup to the May 2006 elections.

Álvaro Uribe is probably the big loser from this Náder episode, as his critics in Colombia get more mileage out of the argument that the President should be known by the company he keeps.

“I get the impression, not just from the Náder example but from those of several of the government’s ministers, functionaries, partners and interlocutors, that President Uribe enjoys being in poor company,” wrote Semana columnist Antonio Caballero, a leading Uribe critic. Added El Espectador columnist Felipe Zuleta, “Though the President gets angry when forced to answer about his past and his dangerous friendships, the point is that indications of mafia infiltration of the government’s highest levels matter more than rude words and threats.”

Posted by isacson at 2:43 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

July 4, 2005

No more Mr. Nice Ecuador

“Colombia’s relations with Ecuador are ‘Venezuelanizing,’” proclaimed Sunday’s edition of the Colombian newsmagazine Semana. This is an overstatement, but things have definitely changed in Quito since an uprising forced President Lucio Gutiérrez to resign and leave the country in April.

His replacement, former vice-president Alfredo Palacio, has taken a much more critical stance regarding U.S. policy toward the Andes.

Though he ran as a leftist-populist in 2002, Gutiérrez had angered Ecuador’s left by taking a highly compliant attitude toward the Bush administration. Palacio has been more willing to challenge the U.S. government.

He promised closer oversight of the Manta naval base, where U.S. military and contract personnel maintain a presence under a 10-year counter-narcotics agreement. (The Defense Department has changed the name it gave to the Manta base from “Forward Operating Location” (FOL) to “Cooperative Security Location” (CSL).) His government refused to exempt U.S. military personnel in Ecuador from the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction, thus sacrificing all non-drug military aid, under U.S. law, for the foreseeable future. The Palacio government has taken a stronger line on aerial herbicide spraying in Colombian coca-growing areas near the Ecuadorian border, alleging that it is causing damage in Ecuadorian territory. The Ecuadorians have increasingly criticized Plan Colombia, which Gutiérrez had supported. “Plan Colombia, which is coming to an end after five years, has not achieved its desired results, and the situation remains as it was before,” said Interior Minister Mauricio Gándara in mid-June.

Relations with Colombia flared up last week, after the FARC staged a massive attack on military units guarding oil wells in Teteyé, a town just across the San Miguel river from Ecuador in the municipality of Puerto Asís, Putumayo. About 300 FARC guerrillas killed nineteen Colombian soldiers, making June 25 the deadliest day of Álvaro Uribe’s term in office. This was the third large-scale attack on a Colombian military target in Putumayo since February. Though the other two attacks were ambushes instead of a planned strike like Teteyé, many observers asked, as an El Tiempo article read, “How far has the government’s security policy really gone in Putumayo, a department which had been one of the central objectives of Plan Colombia?”

Some Colombian observers pointed their fingers at their neighbor to the south, arguing that the guerrillas used Ecuadorian territory to launch the Teteyé attack, and that the guerrillas avoided the army’s counterattack by crossing back into Ecuador. The mayor of Puerto Asís, Jorge Coral, argued that the guerrillas always “commit crimes here and go to hide over there (in Ecuador).” Visiting the site of the attack, President Uribe added that the guerrillas “take advantage of the nearness of our brother country.”

Ecuador then escalated the war of words. Interior Minister Gándara speculated about the possibility of repatriating Colombian citizens in Ecuador illegally (a number that, by most estimates, exceeds 400,000 people). In an Ecuadorian radio interview late last week, Quito’s foreign minister, Antonio Parra, insisted that “there is a civil war” in Colombia – a position the Uribe government emphatically rejects – adding that Colombia “has abandoned its sovereign duties along its southern border,” and that Ecuador “is neither with Uribe nor with the FARC.” He added further, “We are not going to get involved in the problem. We are going to limit ourselves to defending our own sovereignty, and we ask Colombia to do the same on its side of the border.” For his part, President Palacio said that he would do everything possible to maintain order in Ecuador without getting involved “in anybody’s warmaking process.”

President Uribe warned Palacios to use more “verbal prudence,” and the Colombian Foreign Ministry responded with a communiqué warning Ecuador that “No government can be neutral before a terrorist aggression against a democracy.” Scandalized, Semana magazine wrote, “In as many words, [Minister] Parra declared himself neutral toward the internal conflict. Even Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, had been forced to rectify a similar declaration.”

The Ecuadorian point of view, of course, is different. Columnist Grace Jaramillo, writing in yesterday’s edition of Quito’s El Comercio, noted that “Álvaro Uribe’s government, instead of lowering tensions, insists on pressuring the Ecuadorian Government to make a decision, much in the style of George W. Bush: ‘You’re either with me or against me.’”

While Uribe and Palacio will both be at a coffee-producers’ meeting next week in Costa Rica, the only interaction between both countries’ officials so far was a rather unproductive meeting last Thursday between the heads of both countries armed forces (Colombian Gen. Carlos Alberto Ospina and Ecuadorian Vice-Admiral Manuel Zapater). While the Ecuadorians agreed to do what they could about armed-group activity on their side of the border, they refused to consider joint operations, which could involve Colombian troops on Ecuadorian soil and a much greater likelihood of combat between Ecuadorian troops and the FARC.

Though it only seems to be controversial now that Ecuador’s government has grown more critical, the FARC’s ability to operate on the Ecuadorian side of the two countries’ 400 mile-long border has long been common knowledge. Guerrillas, usually unarmed, have taken routine rest and relaxation in Ecuador for at least twenty years; border towns have an inordinate number of health clinics, pharmacies, grocers, bars and brothels catering largely to such “visiting Colombians.” According to Putumayo’s governor, Carlos Palacios, “For years, this entire border has been a corridor of FARC activity. They constantly go to Ecuador, that is where they do all of their logistics, their stockpiles of food, and where they have some encampments. In Ecuador the comandantes and low-ranking combatants are even getting health care.”

Analysts have long spoken of a “gentleman’s agreement” between the FARC and the Ecuadorian military: if the guerrillas do not harm Ecuadorians, the military will not fight them. Governor Palacios goes further: “Instead of permissiveness or complicity there is terror: the Ecuadorian Army is simply afraid of the FARC.”

Whether this is true or not, it is certain that combat is rare between Ecuador’s military and Colombian guerrillas (or paramilitaries, for that matter). Ecuador has another important reason for avoiding the ire of the guerrillas: its border zone, especially the province of Sucumbíos across the border from Putumayo, is Ecuador’s oil heartland, with numerous wells and a new pipeline going to the coast. To provoke the FARC into bombing Ecuadorian oil infrastructure would be to deal a strong blow to Ecuador’s economy.

The FARC have made clear that they will retaliate, as in a recent missive by Swedish journalist Dick Emanuelsson, who frequently interviews FARC leaders: “It could be that the war will cross the borders and the FARC will assist the first guerrilla presence [in Ecuador] if the Quito government takes part in Colombia’s internal war. It would be a historic error that could have fatal consequences for Ecuador.”

Meanwhile, Ecuadorian officials have a good point when they say that Colombia has not done enough to secure its side of the border. Speaking of his own department of Putumayo, Governor Palacios points out that “The guerrillas’ activity is strong, especially in rural areas because the urban areas are 90 percent controlled by the paramilitaries.” When asked what this leaves for the Colombian armed forces in Putumayo, Palacios responds, “If we compare the 18,000 men who are operating in Plan Patriota with the 2,500 that are today in the department to cover 25,000 square kilometers [about the size of Maryland] along the border with Ecuador and Peru, we can conclude that we don’t have the ability to respond today.”

Clearly, Ecuador has some strong incentives not to pick a fight with the FARC. And it has not done so, even though most U.S. military aid to Ecuador under Plan Colombia and the Andean Counterdrug Initiative has been aimed at strengthening the Ecuadorian armed forces’ presence at the northern border. Under Lucio Gutiérrez, this meant the opening of new military posts, lots of new vehicles and equipment, and the deployment of 8,000 troops and police to the border region (many of whom had been stationed at the Peruvian border since the brief 1995 Peru-Ecuador war). Nonetheless, this beefed-up presence doesn’t seem to have brought a major increase in Ecuadorian activity against Colombian armed groups.

Beyond possible “gentlemen’s agreements” or “fear” of the FARC, another reason is the lack of continuity in Ecuador’s own government and military. Ecuador has had six presidents in the last nine years and, complains Colombia’s Gen. Ospina, three armed-forces chiefs since he assumed command of Colombia’s military in late 2003. The change of presidents in April, though, is the one most strongly felt in Colombia. Though most Ecuadorians strongly disliked him, Lucio Gutiérrez was a favorite of the Uribe government, as he had deployed troops to the border and oversaw the capture of high-level FARC commander “Simón Trinidad” in Quito in January 2004.

The Uribe government and the United States will be campaigning hard, then, to keep Palacio from “going neutral” on them. It’s not clear, though, that they will have any influence. Ecuador’s new stand-offishness is largely the result of internal politics. Neither current U.S. policy toward the Andes nor Plan Colombia are popular with broad sectors of Ecuadorian society. They are especially disliked by Ecuador’s left and its well-organized indigenous movement, whose opposition to Lucio Gutiérrez was a strong factor in his removal. If he is to avoid that fate, Palacio, who comes from a center-left background anyway, will have to take those sectors into account, and this will mean keeping his distance from Plan Colombia and saying “no” to the United States more often.

Ecuador’s government is probably likely to choose its words more wisely in the future. Instead of “civil war,” its leaders are likely to say “internal conflict.” Instead of “neutrality,” they will speak of “avoiding military involvement.” The words will change. But the actions will not. For the foreseeable future, do not expect Ecuador to be an enthusiastic partner in President Uribe’s U.S.-supported hard-line military effort and fumigation campaigns in the border zone.

Posted by isacson at 7:26 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 24, 2005

The conscience of an uribista

Colombia’s Congress held its final debate Tuesday over the so-called “Justice and Peace” law to guide paramilitary demobilizations, a scandalously weak piece of legislation that ended up giving the AUC leadership most of what it wanted.

After it was over and the law passed, to universal condemnation from human-rights defenders, I actually found myself feeling sorry for Gina Parody.

That’s not easy. Ms. Parody, a vociferously pro-Uribe congresswoman from Bogotá, normally doesn’t inspire pity. A well-connected lawyer known for her elegant dress (don’t miss the glamour shots on her website), she was only twenty-eight when elected to the Congress in March 2002 as the second-highest vote-getter from Bogotá. A staunch supporter of President Uribe’s security initiatives, his failed 2003 reform referendum, and his efforts to get re-elected, Rep. Parody is the quintessential upper-class uribista.

With one major exception. She has strongly opposed the Uribe government’s disappointing insistence on giving paramilitary groups a lenient treatment at the negotiating table.

When President Uribe and his high commissioner for peace, Luis Carlos Restrepo, launched their negotiations with right-wing paramilitary groups two and a half years ago, they had to present legislation to Colombia’s Congress to determine what would happen to the groups’ members after they turn in their weapons. This forced the Congress to consider the difficult question of what to do with paramilitary leaders who stand accused of ordering mass murder and sending large quantities of drugs overseas, and who probably expect to keep most of their wealth, power, and criminal organizations intact.

Legislation that Restrepo introduced in August 2003 and April 2004 was roundly condemned for seeking to grant a virtual amnesty for crimes against humanity, while failing to provide the legal tools necessary to investigate crimes, to seize and redistribute stolen assets, to pay reparations, to guarantee the right to the truth, and to dismantle paramilitary networks.

Most of the Uribe supporters who control Colombia’s Congress nonetheless got behind the government’s weak proposals almost immediately. Gina Parody, however, was among a small but influential group of legislators who dissented, even if it meant defying the popular president.

Along with normally pro-Uribe legislators Sen. Rafael Pardo, Sen. Andrés González, and a few others, plus members of left-of-center parties, Parody was part of a coalition that drew up an alternative piece of legislation. Their bill would have done much more to investigate abuses, confiscate illegally obtained wealth, and take apart the command and support networks likely to remain in place even after negotiations conclude. As the alternative proposal with the best chance of passage, by early 2005 the Pardo-Parody et.al. bill had at least the tacit support of most human rights NGOs and many donor governments.

Parody has said she even believed that President Uribe supported the bill, and blames Luis Carlos Restrepo – who as “high commissioner for peace” is the Uribe government’s chief peace negotiator – for steering the government’s position toward conciliation of the AUC leadership. Restrepo rejected such charges as “attempts to tarnish the image of the commissioner.”

As the Pardo-Parody bill began to draw attention and support, Restrepo appeared to become obsessed with Parody and the bill’s other supporters, the main opponents of his effort to secure a peace agreement at any cost. A psychiatrist who once authored a pop-psych book called The Right to Tenderness, the peace negotiator’s recent behavior toward his critics has been neither peaceful nor tender.

In fact Restrepo, whose job is certainly stressful, has appeared at times to be coming unhinged – or, as El Tiempo’s editorial Thursday put it, “He sometimes resembles a psychiatrist in need of urgent help from a colleague.”

He has repeatedly badmouthed opponents – especially Pardo and Parody – in on-the-record interviews with the media, responding to conceptual arguments with personal attacks, accusations of disloyalty to president Uribe, even “treason.”

In February, after President Uribe sought to assuage donor nations by presenting a draft bill resembling the Pardo-Parody legislation, Restrepo submitted his resignation, citing “a political ambush against the government.” The resignation gambit worked, as Restrepo was steadily able to build a larger coalition of pro-Uribe legislators behind his weaker proposals.

In April, Restrepo told an interviewer that Sen. Pardo and Rep. Parody could no longer be considered Uribe’s supporters, even though the two have supported most of the president’s other initiatives. “If he thinks he can kick me out of the uribista bloc, it won’t be easy for him,” responded Parody at the time.

(Restrepo, meanwhile, is also the author of the highly controversial set of guidelines sent to international-community representatives in Colombia, discussed in our last posting.)

Restrepo’s hard line against those who oppose his legislative proposals contrasts sharply with his soft treatment of the paramilitary leadership. Not only has the peace commissioner sought a law that treats the right-wing warlords gently, recordings leaked last September reveal that he had assured them that extradition to the United States would be unlikely, and that he had endeavored to play down reports of cease-fire violations.

Ultimately, Restrepo’s proposed legislation – which was only slightly tougher than his failed 2003 and 2004 bills – won in the Congress, as he was able to line up enough votes to eliminate nearly all of the Pardo-Parody proposals. The high commissioner’s victory was not overwhelming, however: all votes were reasonably close, indicating that there is not a broad consensus behind the legislation that passed this week.

This brings us to Tuesday night, when Restrepo was present in the Congress to defend and promote the “Justice and Peace” law during its final debate. After Rep. Gustavo Petro (a former M-19 guerrilla who in fact edged out Parody to be Bogotá’s number-one vote-getter in 2002) accused President Uribe of seeking to protect a brother with alleged paramilitary ties, Parody rose to defend the President.

She then changed the subject, however, and began to explain her opposition to Restrepo’s bill. Parody began to list some of her reservations about the weak law nearing passage.

She never got to finish. Restrepo accused her of seeking “to tarnish the Peace Commissioner, fabricating hoaxes together with those in the opposition.” Legislators from the pro-Uribe bloc, egged on by Restrepo, began banging on their desks, whistling and shouting “get out,” among other, less-polite epithets. Pro-Uribe representative Armando Benedetti, together with several representatives who openly support the AUC (Rocío Arias, Eleonora Pineda, Jorge Luis Caballero) led the catcalls.

Parody was forced to abandon the lectern and leave the chamber. Members of leftist parties and the Liberal Party opposition left with her. The eighty-eight representatives who remained – barely enough for a quorum – then quickly voted and approved the bill.

The next day, El Tiempo published a photo of a flustered Parody back in her office moments after her retreat, staring blankly with a glass of water at her side. According to Inter-Press Service, she told reporters outside the chamber that the AUC’s friends in the Congress were not just the 35 percent whom the paramilitaries have claimed are under their control, but as many as 70 percent.

What an ugly spectacle: a herd of dominant-faction politicians, most of them old men, shouting down a thirty-one-year-old female colleague trying to defend a principled position. It is in even poorer taste when the herd is doing its bullying in support of a lenient deal for the AUC. If this is a taste of what is in store for the country as the negotiations approach conclusion and the 2006 elections draw near, Colombian democracy is about to enter a very dark period.

“I worry that if they kicked us out of the Congress chamber the way they did, what will happen to the candidates who oppose the ‘paras’ in many parts of the country?” Parody said on Wednesday. She has a good point.

At these moments, it’s always worth asking where the Bush administration stands. Is the U.S. government backing Parody and her colleagues’ honorable dissent, or has it cast its lot with her attackers, the raucous and ill-mannered defenders of Dr. Restrepo’s toothless law?

For the depressing answer, look no further than Thursday’s New York Times, in which Juan Forero reminds us, “The Bush administration and its representative in Colombia, Ambassador William Wood, have strongly supported the law and Uribe.”

Luckily, this doesn’t apply to the whole U.S. government. Skepticism remains high in the U.S. Congress, making it unlikely, at least for now, that significant U.S. funds will go to this deeply flawed process.

We can expect the passage of Dr. Restrepo’s law to increase that skepticism here in Washington. And so will Tuesday’s unseemly attempt to humiliate those who dared oppose it.

Posted by isacson at 2:53 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 21, 2005

Watch your language

(This posting combines dispatches from CIP Fellow Winifred Tate, who is in Colombia, and CIP Intern Marcela Guerrero.)

On June 8^th, the High Commissioner for Peace, Luis Carlos Restrepo, sent a directive [PDF format] to international humanitarian agencies and embassies establishing strict limits on what international agencies and diplomats are entitled to do, and what language they use to describe it.

The list reads like a Macondian effort by a beleaguered administration to impose the fiction that they maintain absolute control of the country. But it has serious consequences for the vitally important work of the United Nations, journalists and humanitarian agencies – local and international – supporting work for peace and human rights in Colombia.

First, the document prohibits any public servant or individual from establishing contact with illegal armed groups, making a single exception for the International Red Cross. Even though Restrepo assures that the press will not be subject to the new measures and that international organizations will be allowed to carry on with their programs, no exceptions are mentioned for journalists conducting interviews, other international humanitarian agencies involved in work in remote rural regions where illegal armed groups maintain almost total control, or the hundreds of people who are forced into contact with such groups in the course of their work on any given day.

Restrepo goes on to write that the government will not accept any projects intended to “commit the future action of the National government in terms of peace agreements with illegal armed groups.” This is a marked departure from President Uribe’s constant insistence that the international community offer financial support, but not critique, his current demobilization process with paramilitary groups.

The directive forbids the use of expressions like “armed actors,” “actors in the conflict” and “non-state actors.” Terms like “peace community,” “territory of peace,” or humanitarian zone” are also unacceptable. Instead of “civilian protection,” one must use “measures for self-protection of the civilian population.”

Restrepo once again attacks the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, saying that its model of non-violent resistance “generates confusion,” and that such peace and humanitarian projects cannot exclude, or question the action of, the armed forces and justice system. Ana Teresa Bernal, director of the Colombian NGO Redepaz, states that this document is mainly aimed against civil-society peace initiatives – currently more than 400 in the country. Bernal told Inter Press Service that, for the Uribe government, this document is an “integral part of the war”.

In addition, Peace Commissioner Restrepo insists that international agencies not plan “humanitarian” activities that imply contact with the armed groups. The goal of such a directive could not be more clear in a country where the main goal of international organizations is to help alleviate the humanitarian crisis. As stated by Diego Pérez, a consultant to Suippcol - a network of Swiss NGOs that work with grassroots groups in Colombia, “helping the conflict’s direct victims – among whom can be found not just civilians but combatants who have been wounded or put out of combat – is impossible to do without coming in contact with the parties to the conflict.”

The repeated warnings against contact with armed groups sound more like accusations against international organizations and other NGOs. Indeed, the government’s distrust for human rights and peace organizations has never been a secret. In particular, the reports and information published by these groups often disagree with official sources; hence the addition of a new directive which “recommends” that donors only support the formulation of projects with official “true facts.” In other words, as long as the information used by NGOs coincides with government figures, the project will have complied with the guidelines. Needless to say, this is an unreasonable request when, among other examples, the government only recognizes only half of the 700 persons who are displaced every day.

In a particularly Orwellian turn of phrase, High Commissioner for Peace states that “accepting the existence of the armed conflict implies negating the proper channels of democracy,” and in effect supports the illegal armed actors in their quest for power. Notwithstanding, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ representative in Colombia, Michael Frühling, recalled at a June 13 press conference that the term “armed conflict” is part of the basic agreement between the Colombian government and his office.

The guidelines specifically state that “any kind of activity that could imply any contact with armed groups is unacceptable to the national government,” so presumably any travel or development projects outside major cities in areas where armed-group roadblocks are common is out of the question. What is more, projects already in place led by the UN and other independent international organizations become questionable under the new parameters. According to Diego Pérez, this statement ignores existing G-24 donor-country declarations (London in 2003 and Cartagena in 2005) as well as the recommendations issued by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and declarations by the European Council of Ministers regarding aid to Colombia.

Restrepo does not simply address international support, however, but also rules out any possibility of regional peace dialogues without the president’s authorization. Thus, local projects – such as the Nasa indigenous group’s “Life Projects” in Northern Cauca, which must inevitably require some contact with armed groups due to their heavy presence in the region – as well as other development and peace programs where leaders have no choice but to speak with armed actors in order to save lives or to preserve their projects, would clearly lose ground. Even the role of the Catholic Church in any sort of peace effort has been expressly limited.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Carolina Barco admitted at a press conference that perhaps the High Commissioner for Peace was remiss in distributing this document to embassies and international agencies, suggesting instead that he should have discussed the concerns in private meetings. She did not address the content of the directive, however.

Luis Carlos Restrepo did come forward in its defense and reiterated that the statement’s purpose was to ensure that international cooperation “speaks the same language” as the national government. Restrepo called it a “technical” document that “defines concepts and criteria to be used in projects that include the government as a counterpart.” According to the peace commissioner, many requests for projects that arrive in his office involve the direct or indirect participation of armed groups. The argument goes that contact with armed groups endangers the organizations initiating such relationships, the people in the region and – most importantly – delegitimizes the government. However, if the number of programs that fit this profile is as high as Restrepo asserts, it is worth asking whether it is possible to plan projects without taking armed groups into consideration, or whether the criteria that define “involvement” of armed groups is too broad or imprecise.

Shortly after the document was made public, several Colombian NGOs released strong responses. However, the international community was reticent to offer a public reaction. Alfredo Witschi-Cestari, resident coordinator for the UN system in Colombia, stated to the press that he had no official declarations to give. Likewise, European embassies maintained silence, and of course the U.S. embassy had nothing to say.

Only UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) Colombia office director Roberto Meier expressed clear disagreement with the directives. Meier contended that the terminology in question has been in place for about 50 years, has been internationally approved, and that any attempts to change it should be addressed to the UN General Assembly. Meier states that the guidelines are “non-binding” as they have not been directed through the appropriate channels; however, he added that any attempt to enforce them may force UNHCR to pull out of the country.

Concludes CIP’s Winifred Tate, writing from Bogotá: “Reading this directive was particularly instructive having just returned from a five day trip through Putumayo, the southern state along the border with Ecuador currently under dispute between paramilitary groups and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC.

“I was lucky in my travels not to come into direct contact with illegal armed actors, but according to well-informed local sources, I ate lunch on several occasions with paramilitary commanders sitting near by table. During my trip, I met many dedicated local elected and appointed officials, as well as religious and community leaders, who would like nothing more than not to have to face daily contact with illegal armed groups in the course of their work. I’ll be writing more about my trip in the next week, but be warned: my account will include discussion of the ‘armed conflict,’ ‘armed actors’ and ‘non-state actors.’”

Posted by Winifred Tate at 1:21 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 4, 2005

Censuring the defense minister

In a bitter and disturbing session a week ago Thursday (May 26), the Colombian Congress debated whether to censure the minister of defense, Jorge Alberto Uribe, for failing to show up when requested to testify a few weeks earlier. Ironically, the debate was called off early – before the minister could even give his statement – because, as legislators steadily left the chamber over the course of the debate, the Congress did not have a quorum present.

Uribe (no relation to President Uribe), Colombia’s tenth defense minister in the fourteen years that civilians have occupied the position, has a difficult job. He is the head of a small civilian staff charged with overseeing more than 360,000 military and police, whose commanders have traditionally been fierce defenders of their privileges and resentful of civilian attempts to increase oversight or to guide the design of strategy and defense policy.

It is not easy to mediate between these officers’ demands and those of outsiders, including many members of the Congress, who want to see the Defense Ministry’s civilians confronting the high command on touchy issues like punishing human-rights abuse, weeding out corruption, and stopping waste and inefficiency. The most recent flare-up came in late April, when Minister Uribe was forced to resolve a debate among senior officers about whether to increase joint operations (a strong recommendation of U.S. advisors) by firing four top generals who opposed the prospect of placing Army personnel under Navy or Air Force command.

When the Congress requested that Minister Uribe report to testify about the controversial firings, he did not show up. The next step was last week’s censure hearing. If the legislators vote for censure, it is likely that Minister Uribe could be fired.

Most of the legislators who did attend last Thursday’s five-hour session were critical; critics came from both the right wing (such as Senator Jaime Canal, a retired general) and the left (including Wilson Borja, a former labor-union leader).

Many criticized the minister’s recent practice of donning a military uniform when addressing troops (Uribe, a lifelong businessman who never spent a day in military service, does not cut an imposing figure in camouflage fatigues). “It is degrading and sad to see you, Mr. Minister, costumed with our camouflage,” said Sen. Canal, the former general. Other critics lashed out against the minister’s criticisms of Venezuela’s recent arms purchases, which go against the Colombian government’s official position; against his failure to comply with 30 orders from the government internal-affairs body (the Procuraduría) to fire security-force personnel for disciplinary reasons; and of course for the firings of the four generals in April.

These criticisms in themselves hardly seem like grounds for firing Minister Uribe. What appeared to bother his congressional critics most was perhaps harder to express clearly: a feeling that Uribe, though nominally at the top of the Defense Ministry’s hierarchy, is incapable of saying “no” to the high command. Instead of standing up to the generals on questions of policy or budget, forcing them to swallow bitter medicine on occasion, the perception is that Uribe is too anxious to curry favor with them, and ends up acting as their advocate and defender more than as an enforcer of the civilian leadership’s priorities.

This means, of course, that the high command is very happy with Uribe in the defense minister’s position. So happy, in fact, that they took the very troubling step of accompanying Uribe to the censure debate. Flanking him like so many bodyguards were five generals whom one would normally expect, in a time of war, to have more useful ways to spend those five hours: Armed Forces Commander Gen. Carlos Alberto Ospina, Army Commander Gen. Reynaldo Castellanos, Air Force Commander Gen. Édgar Lésmez, Navy Commander Adm. Mauricio Soto, and Police Inspector-General Gen. Jaime Augusto Vera.

In a statement on the Defense Ministry’s website, Uribe expressed his pleasure that “of their own will, independently and to my surprise, all of the military and police commanders were there, accompanying not only a minister but someone who has also become their friend.”

Members of Colombia’s Congress and other observers were right to question the generals’ presence at the debate. Some accused Uribe of politicizing the armed forces by involving them in his effort to save his own job. A few brave congressmen lashed out at the officers for being present. Wilson Borja called for them to leave the chamber, as they had not been invited (they did not leave), and characterized their presence as purposefully “intimidating.” Sen. Héctor Helí Rojas called it “an undue pressure on the Congress.” This pressure may have worked; while most of the Congress was present at the beginning of the debate, they moved steadily toward the exits until a quorum no longer existed.

The whole episode was another blow to civilian control of the military, which – though military coups have been rare – has always been weak in Colombia. Humberto de la Calle, a conservative commentator for El Espectador, called the generals’ presence “ominous” in a column published last Sunday. “It smells like a political pronouncement, an undue pressure, a challenge to the Congress’s ability to carry out its constitutional role. … It is easy to perceive it as a simple act of political deliberation, something the Constitution prohibits the Armed Forces from doing.”

Postscript: The lack of a quorum forced the Congress to postpone the debate for a week. They were to meet again last Thursday, June 2. Minister Uribe had indicated that he might not be able to attend that day because he was to preside over the military academy’s promotion ceremony. I have been traveling since Thursday, and have had no Internet access. As a result, I am writing this without knowing what happened on June 2.

Posted by isacson at 3:15 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 1, 2005

The Challenge of Neutrality in Northern Cauca

(This is the first posting from the CIP Colombia Program's summer intern, Marcela Guerrero.)

The Paez indigenous community of northern Cauca department, in southwestern Colombia, is under fire from both the FARC and the government. While the former has continously attacked their principal towns since April 14, the latter accuses them of complicity with guerrillas and has begun a campaign of mass arrests. The 85,000-member community, known in its own language as the Nasa, is divided into 13 reservations and 2 civilian communities (individually or collectively owned lands not considered reservations) located in seven municipalities (counties) of northern Cauca (Jambaló, Toribío, Caloto, Santander de Quilichao, Buenos Aires, Corinto and Miranda). They elect their own leaders and have gained several mayoral posts in nearby towns. They govern according to “Life Projects” (Proyectos de Vida), which encompass development through participatory governance, agriculture and small enterprises. Their political and judicial procedures involve public assemblies and other participatory bodies. As northern Cauca has been a conflictive zone for decades, the community has sought to secure itself through a non-violent model rooted in centuries-old tradition: an “indigenous guard” of about 9,000 members (3,200 in northern Cauca), armed only with symbolic ceremonial staffs, that has successfully confronted armed groups’ harassment and incursions. This peaceful approach has brought national and international recognition to the Nasa and has won them the Equator Prize from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and two national peace prizes.

Indigenous people throughout Colombia have been particularly vulnerable to the conflict. Many of their leaders have been threatened and killed, their communities have been displaced and their declared position of neutrality has not been respected by either the government or armed groups. Nevertheless, the Nasa continue to demonstrate strong cohesion and resilience. Committed to a non-violent strategy, the Nasa have mobilized thousands of people to demonstrate against the conflict, human rights violations, free trade agreements with the U.S., and on September 7^th of last year, to confront the FARC and successfully rescue some of their leaders who had been kidnapped.

The latest events began to unfold on April 14 when several hundred guerrillas from the FARC’s 6th Front and Jacobo Arenas Column attacked Toribío, a Nasa town of about 3,500 people. The guerrillas indiscriminately rained homemade gas-cylinder bombs on the town, damaging the police station that the Uribe government had installed, but also destroying a hospital and dozens of houses. Fighting between the FARC and government forces displaced approximately 6,000 people. As fighting continued in and around Toribío, the FARC attacked the nearby town of Jambaló on April 21st, and more people were displaced.

These events worsened a strained relationship between the Nasa and the Uribe government. Uribe refuses to accept the group’s desire to exclude all armed actors, including government forces, from its communities. In 2003, the government – which has made a great effort to place at least a small police presence in all of Colombia’s 1,092 municipalities – installed a police station, surrounded by sandbags, right in the middle of the town’s population center despite residents’ strong protests that the town would attract attacks. As predicted, the FARC attacked and troops were sent in to reinforce the police; however, it took a couple of weeks to get the FARC out of the town centers of Toribío, Jambaló and Tacueyó. These are not only the longest confrontations in many years, since the FARC usually attacks and quickly retreats, but they show that the Uribe government – which has made a big show out of installing police in all municipalities – was not prepared to defend these police, and the towns in which they were stationed, in the event of a concerted guerrilla attack.Arriving by helicopter, President Uribe paid a brief visit to Toribío on April 15, in which he called the FARC “cowards,” pledged to keep the security forces in the town, and sought to rally community support for his strategy. On April 30, Uribe presided over a community council meeting in Santander de Quilichao (Cauca); however, his words were not well received and the meeting ended as indigenous leaders got up and left the room.

While finding themselves caught in the middle of FARC attacks, the Nasa are now also subject to government accusations that some community members collaborated with the FARC. On May 22, the director of the DAS (Colombia’s equivalent of the FBI), Hector Ortíz, told Medellín’s El Colombiano that “we will prove that there are indeed indigenous people involved with subversive groups as militants, informants and combatants.” These allegations followed earlier statements by Defense Minister Jorge Alberto Uribe, who affirmed that the attack in Toribío was facilitated by indigenous residents, and by Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo, who publicly questioned the neutraility of both the Nasa and the peace community of San José de Apartadó, which also seeks to exclude all armed actors.

A campaign of massive arrests ensued. On May 19, the indigenous leadership issued a statement denouncing an operation carried out by the “José Hilario López Batallion [of the Colombian army], the DAS, the Fiscalía [attorney-general’s office] and the police.” The statement indicates that on that day, DAS searched six indigenous leaders’ residences in nearby Caldono and claimed to have found explosives. The leaders insist that DAS agents planted the items themselves in order to incriminate local indigenous political leaders. Among the subjects of the house searches was Vicente Otero, a former mayor of Caldono and a leader in the Nasa communities’ nonbinding March-6^th referendum against a free trade agreement with the United States. Otero’s house was searched while he was away and only his 11 year old son and disabled brother were present. Documents and much personal information were removed.

Indigenous groups have admitted that after three decades of FARC presence it is inevitable that some members have developed relationships, though on the whole the guerrillas – whose rigid Marxism sees no role for indigenous identity – have very poor relations with the Nasa. The general perception, as expressed by the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), is that the government has indiscriminately labeled indigenous communities in this region as FARC sympathizers, an excuse it uses to settle political scores against community leaders who may disagree with its policies. Furthermore, although the government charges that some indigenous members are FARC sympathizers, the weekly magazine Semana asserts that the indigenous organization has in fact been the only real obstacle to FARC control of northern Cauca.

DAS regional director Hector Ortiz claims that while 200 arrests were announced the week before the searches, they were not exclusively directed toward the Nasa. This clarification comes after his vow to find indigenous collaborators was made widely public in the Colombian media, and the Nasa leadership began to sound the alarm both nationally and internationally.Meanwhile, the Colombian government has attempted to justify its actions by emphasizing the strong presence of FARC members in the region, as well as the widespread cultivation of coca and poppies (63% of Cauca municipalities according to government figures). However, Uribe’s open defiance of the Nasa people’s expressed will has strengthened the notion that Colombian indigenous groups are being targeted politically, due to their position of impartiality in the armed conflict as well as their success in challenging government policies through peaceful demonstrations and their “Life Projects”.

The Nasa population’s non-violent defense of their sovereignty against all armed groups has brought much domestic and internatinal attention. In an interview with Pacifica Radio’s “Democracy Now,” former Toribío mayor Ezequiel Vitonás recalled that a resistance movement is active in his town, as well as in the rest of Northern Cauca. Civil society has put forth a movement, he asserts, that dates back to 1971 – or even 1701, when reservations were formed and lands were given to communities to be administered according to their needs and customs.Mr. Vitonás is currently on a tour of the United States to raise awareness about what is happening in his community, hosted by the American Friends Service Committee. He requests that the U.S. government stop providing military aid for Colombia’s war, and instead fund development, humanitarian and governance efforts to help his people and other Colombians.His visit achieved some success in New York, where the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of Indigenous People, Rodolfo Stavenhagen reiterated his concern for the situation of indigenous people in Colombia. In a report issued last year, Mr. Stavenhagen acknowledged that conditions have deteriorated, going as far as to characterize the situation of indigenous people in Colombia as “ethnocide.” Mr. Vitonás and his companion Manuel Rozental believe this recognition is a step in the right direction. However, they are calling for international presence and pressure to raise widespread awareness about their issues. They hope to see an international delegation, led by the Special Rapporteur, visit Colombia and verify the current situation. In order to reach this goal, they call for better coordination among NGOs and for a legal framework to pressure the Colombian government to change its policies and ultimately to hold it accountable.

Posted by isacson at 10:36 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 31, 2005

Don Berna in custody

It was surprising to see top paramilitary leader Diego Fernando Murillo (“Don Berna” or “Adolfo Paz”) ejected from negotiations with the Colombian government, then arrested on charges of ordering a murder in violation of a much-ignored cease-fire. After at least twenty years as an outlaw, in which he became one of Colombia’s richest and most powerful figures, have Murillo’s legendary survival skills finally failed him? Or is this just another obstacle that he will easily overcome?

Since his name started to surface around 2002-2003, Don Berna has been one of the AUC’s most powerful and feared leaders, despite a lack of experience fighting guerrillas. Instead, his resume includes time spent as security chief for one of Pablo Escobar’s henchmen; as part of a Cali cartel-financed operation to kill Escobar; and as a leader of Medellín’s largest network of hitmen-for-hire. Though he has only considered himself a paramilitary for four or five years, he now controls about 2,000 to 4,000 fighters and dominates Medellín’s vast slums.

Don Berna is emblematic of the new AUC leadership that has taken the place of top 1990s leaders like Carlos Castaño. Like the many drug figures that have become paramilitary leaders in his wake, Don Berna embodies the traits required to survive and succeed in an environment where laws are rarely enforced and government authority is arbitrary and corruptible. Like Pablo Escobar before him, Murillo is utterly ruthless, likely responsible for dozens if not hundreds of murders (including, allegedly, the April 2004 attack that led to the disappearance of Carlos Castaño). He has a related talent for quickly ascending the ranks of criminal organizations and maintaining himself there.

Unlike Escobar, Don Berna has shown a remarkable ability simply to survive – despite an unclear, probably drug-related attack in the mid-1990s that gave him seventeen bullet wounds and cost him part of a leg. He has always been one step ahead, switching sides several times to secure a place in whatever group was ascendant in Colombia’s criminal underworld.

His deft survival skills led the 43-year-old warlord to reinvent himself as AUC Inspector-General Adolfo Paz, head of several recently created paramilitary blocs (Héroes de Granada, Pacífico, Libertadores del Sur, Tolová, Nutibara and Calima). To much fanfare, the Nutibara bloc demobilized 860 members in Medellín in November 2003, a process that has been heavily questioned ever since.

Medellín’s El Colombiano reports that “the blocs under his command, according to the Judicial Police (DIJIN), receive up to $500,000 per month to guard Diego Montoya Sánchez, alias Don Diego.” Montoya, a top figure in the North Valle drug cartel, shares a top spot on the FBI’s most-wanted fugitives list, right near Osama Bin Laden.

Nonetheless, Don Berna easily secured a seat in paramilitary negotiations with the Colombian government in the Santa Fe de Ralito demilitarized zone. There, he stood a very good chance of avoiding extradition to the United States (a New York court has indicted him for drug trafficking), and serving only a few years in jail – at most – for all of his previous crimes. In the few interviews he granted, he spoke of pursuing a political career after the talks end.

To say the least, then, it was unusual to see Don Berna suddenly become the subject of a large-scale police manhunt in and around the Ralito zone last Wednesday and Thursday, then do a long “perp walk” before Colombian television cameras in the custody of Police Chief Jorge Castro and government peace negotiator Luis Carlos Restrepo.

Don Berna stands accused of ordering the April 10 assassination of Orlando Benítez, a provincial legislator who had committed the offense of campaigning in Valencia, Córdoba, despite instructions from Don Berna’s Tolová bloc that he not do so. (Intimidating opposition candidates is a key means by which paramilitaries are installing allies in governorships, mayoralties, and even congressional seats throughout Colombia.)

Prosecutors issued a warrant for his arrest during the week of May 16. This order could not be added to the pile of pre-existing arrest warrants that have been suspended while negotiations proceed. This time, the crime in question was committed after December 2002, when Don Berna and other paramilitary leaders agreed to observe a cease-fire, which was the Uribe government’s main pre-condition for starting talks.

Such cease-fire violations have been alarmingly common. The Colombian government’s human-rights ombudsman counted 1,979 paramilitary abuses in 2004, including threats and displacement as well as murders. In one 21-month period, December 2002 through August 2004, the Colombian Commission of Jurists counted [PDF format] 1,899 paramilitary homicides in violation of the cease-fire.

The Uribe government decided, however, that this particular violation mattered. On May 25, the government declared Don Berna ineligible to continue as a peace negotiator and ordered his arrest. An ensuing manhunt involved 750 police, supported by helicopters and planes.

Don Berna at first responded with a show of power, as the paramilitary groups he controls forced all buses in Medellín to stop operating, snarling the city’s transit. He was apparently unwilling to go back to being a fugitive, however. By Friday, he had negotiated a deal with government authorities that led to his surrender.

So what happens now? Is the previously untouchable Don Berna, stripped of his status as a negotiator, going to stand trial and face decades in jail for all of his previous crimes, both violent and drug-related? Is the Uribe government finally going to get serious and hold paramilitary leaders accountable for their blocs’ many cease-fire violations? Is a move afoot to roll back the wave of narcotraffickers entering the paramilitaries to avoid jail or extradition?

Not likely. As details about Don Berna’s arrest emerge, it’s beginning to look like he got a good deal for himself.

Upon turning himself in, Don Berna agreed to declare himself “demobilized,” no longer a member of the AUC. This is a largely meaningless step because, like AUC leader Salvatore Mancuso before him, it absolves him only of the crime of “rebellion.” Judgment of his more serious crimes against humanity must await passage of the so-called “Justice and Peace” law still working its way through Colombia’s congress. (Mancuso, in a legal limbo of sorts, is currently residing alongside non-demobilized AUC leaders in Ralito.)

If he is covered by this law, Don Berna will benefit greatly from the bill currently under debate in the legislature. He would have to spend a maximum of eight years in prison, and likely much less due to “good behavior” and credit for time spent in Ralito. He would not be penalized for failing to confess all of his crimes or to turn in all ill-gotten assets. He would likely emerge from the process with his powerful criminal networks intact. If the law determines that paramilitarism is a “political crime,” as is likely, it will be very difficult to extradite him to the United States.

There is still a chance that the “demobilized” Don Berna – who, after all, was stripped of his negotiator status last Wednesday – will not in fact be covered by the lenient “Justice and Peace” law. The attorney-general’s office has a ten-day period to decide whether to call for his arrest for the Benítez murder. If it fails to do so, El Tiempo reports, “‘Don Berna’ or ‘Adolfo Paz’ could possibly return to the negotiating table with no problems.”

No matter what, Don Berna is likely to remain in some form of state custody for some time, even if he is found to be covered by the “Justice and Peace” law. Today the Colombian government will determine how he is to be imprisoned. President Uribe promised over the weekend that Don Berna’s jail will not be luxurious. “Forget about this prison being like La Catedral,” he said, referring to the well-appointed one-man prison that held Pablo Escobar for about a year and a half. “The site that will be chosen by the peace commissioner, the prison institute and the police will be under the total control of the security forces, including the prison guards, and it will be open to the oversight of national and international opinion, have no doubt.”

El Tiempo columnist María Jimena Duzán has some doubts:

What he failed to tell us is that not only will “Don Berna” not be going to a five-star jail, he won’t be going to any jail. And that this episode cannot be compared to La Catedral for the plain and simple reason that it is worse and more shameful. This time, there won’t even be any jail during the investigation phase, since the government has already accepted Don Berna’s demand to bring him to some place that nobody can identify, so that, from his own realm, he can more easily talk to investigators. … If the Justice and Peace law under congressional consideration is approved, the most likely outcome is that he won’t go to any jail, not even a five-star one. After a number of months and without having dismantled his organizations, perhaps after a period in an “agrarian colony,” one will be able to find him out on the street. Does anyone have any doubt about who is winning?

Over the next month or two, expect little attention to be paid to Don Berna’s case. Instead, news about the paramilitary talks is likely to be dominated by another wave of demobilizations.

According to his deal with the authorities, as Don Berna “demobilizes,” so will a few thousand paramilitaries in the blocs under his command. As in past months, these demobilizations will be taking place in a state of near-chaos, as overwhelmed government agencies find themselves incapable of separating authors of serious crimes against humanity from the mass of young, suddenly unemployed fighters on their doorsteps. Those turning themselves in will not be asked about the people who commanded, funded and supported them, and many – though perhaps no longer wearing camouflage uniforms every day – may in fact remain under Don Berna’s command. They will be inserted into a reintegration program that has so far dealt poorly with the thousands who have already demobilized.

Yet this high-profile removal of combatants from the conflict is likely to get a lot of favorable coverage, boost President Uribe’s approval ratings, and be cited by Bush administration officials trying to aid the process despite congressional skepticism [PDF format]. The Uribe government is already exuding optimism: the coming demobilizations, says peace negotiator Luis Carlos Restrepo, will begin “the final stage” of the paramilitary talks, leading to the full demobilization of the AUC by the end of 2005, as foreseen in the 2004 Santa Fe de Ralito accord. Restrepo insists that the past week’s Don Berna episode has in fact saved the process.

Amid the optimism that is likely to accompany the coming demobilizations, do keep an eye on what is happening with Don Berna. If he avoids punishment for breaking the cease-fire and ends up being covered by a too-lenient “Justice and Peace” law, his case will send a message about how strongly the government cares about cease-fire violations, the entry of narcotraffickers into the paramilitaries, and the importance of dismantling paramilitarism. The credibility of the process will suffer a fatal blow. And Don Berna, who always seems to survive by staying one step ahead, will have done it again.

Posted by isacson at 9:47 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 25, 2005

Funding for the OAS Verification Mission

U.S. funding for the Organization of American States’ Mission to Support the Peace Process in Colombia (MAPP-OAS, the OAS mission to verify negotiations with, and demobilization of, paramilitary groups) will be up for renewal in June. This deadline offers an important opportunity to redirect U.S. financial support to strengthen the mission’s verification work, which is critical to the national and international credibility of the paramilitary demobilization process.

To date, the OAS mission has been the most visible indicator of international community support for the process. On January 23, 2004, President Álvaro Uribe and OAS Secretary General César Gaviria (a former Colombian president) signed an agreement, later approved by the Permanent Council, defining an OAS mission to monitor the process. Despite a severe shortage of funds and staff, the OAS announced its intention to establish monitoring offices in the region where demobilizations were to occur.

The mission has received much of its funding from the Colombian government (almost US$1.2 million), although it also receives approximately one million dollars from the Dutch government, and the Swedish government has funded a staff member and provided some logistical support. As of January, USAID had provided US$585,000; additional funds are “in the pipeline.” All U.S. funds are restricted to verification and cannot be used for the permanent staff presence that is observing negotiations in Santa Fe de Ralito.

The mission’s unorthodox creation, its reliance on funding from the Colombian government, and its lack of staff have all generated credibility problems. International officials from UN, U.S. and European agencies recognize the mission’s importance while expressing frustration with its failure to fulfill its mandate. “The OAS is not up to [international] standards,” one senior official told me. “They don’t have the resources – they haven’t verified anything.”

In addition to observing the discussions, the mission is charged with verifying the process and the paramilitary ceasefire. Verification at both ends of the process – demobilizations and cease-fire violations – have been extremely limited.

In conjunction with an International Organization for Migration program funded by the United States, the OAS mission ensures that demobilizing individuals match their official identification cards. However, there is no effort made to verify that these individuals – who are eligible to demobilize if they appear on lists created by paramilitary commanders – are actually paramilitary fighters.

In the first and most extensively studied demobilization to date – that of 864 members of Cacique Nutibara Bloc in Medellin in November 2003 – the International Crisis Group and the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (itself an OAS body) both reported that many of the individuals participating in the process were petty criminals, not hard-core paramilitary fighters. Local human rights groups, religious leaders, and the Campaign to Stop Child Soldiers all report recruitment of small-town youth specifically to pose as paramilitaries in demobilization programs in order to swell the paramilitary ranks, ensure that experienced combat fighters remain in active units, and to benefit from government subsidies. While verifying paramilitary membership would undoubtedly be extremely difficult, for the OAS mission to claim that it is verifying participants’ identities gives a misleading impression of certainty over who exactly is demobilizing.

Similarly, cease-fire violations are extremely difficult to verify. Some analysts point out that illegal groups escalate violent attacks in an attempt to negotiate from a position of strength. Cease-fire violations can also be viewed as failures of political will to negotiate in good faith, or lack of centralized control. Violence away from the negotiating table has been used in the past as an argument in favor of ending talks, including the frustrated process with the FARC.

AUC leaders declared a “unilateral” cease fire in December 2002. Despite this, paramilitary incursions have continued, including massacres and assassinations, generating real questions about the viability of the process. During the first months of 2004, the conversations reached a crisis point because of increasing domestic and international criticism of cease fire violations. The Defensoria del Pueblo, a government agency, released a report documenting more than 300 violations of the cease fire. The Colombian Commission of Jurists, a noted human rights group, has collected a list [PDF format] of 1,899 homicides allegedly committed by paramilitary groups between December 2002 and August 2004.

According to a transcript released by Colombian newsweekly Semana in September, High Commissioner for Peace Luis Carlos Restrepo told the paramilitary leaders his team had downplayed complaints of murders in the Ralito zone: “Homicides are being committed that compromise those who are inside the zone. It’s a matter we’ve handled very carefully to avoid a public scandal that would harm us.” Observers, including former Colombian Commissioner for Peace Daniel García-Peñ a, have a noted a similar reluctance on the part of the OAS mission to criticize the paramilitaries and investigate paramilitary violence.

In its yearly report, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ office in Bogotá concurred that “paramilitary groups failed to respect the cessation of hostilities.”According to the State Department’s annual assessment of the human rights situation in Colombia, paramilitary violence has declined. The report notes, however, that “paramilitaries continued to commit numerous political killings,” and went on to note kidnapping, torture, extrajudicial executions, the forcible displacement of thousands of “innocent civilians,” and “military operations that endangered civilian lives,” as well as attacks against human rights workers and journalists and the use of child soldiers.

New kinds of human rights violations, apparently designed to allow perpetrators to escape the scrutiny of international reporting, have been on the rise. These include incidents of “multiple homicides,” designed to prevent the label of a massacre (defined as the killing of four or more individuals in a single incident and at the same location), killing people over a period of several days, scattering the bodies or dumping corpses in different locations. Similarly, the issue of forced displacement has emerged as a central international concern; according to the U.S. Committee for Refugees, Colombia has one of the largest populations of internally displaced people in the world. In part in response to international attention, some communities are now reporting the new phenomenon of “confinement,” where paramilitary forces are refusing to allow community members free passage or travel, thus preventing international assistance from reaching these communities while consolidating their political control. Verification of any ceasefire agreements must include these and other new forms of political violence.

Credible verification of who is participating in the process, and of violence committed by participants, is critical for the long-term viability of the process. The renewal of funding for the OAS mission should not be a rubber stamp that throws good money after bad. Any funding for the OAS verification mission should be contingent on a thorough and independent review of the mission, its accomplishments to date, and the criteria for establishing credibility in verifying the current cease-fire agreements in Colombia. If the OAS is unable to meet the current requirements of its mission statement, its mandate should be adjusted to reflect the mission’s lesser capacity.

Posted by Winifred Tate at 9:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 19, 2005

The Reference Center in Montería

(CIP's Colombia Program welcomes a new Senior Fellow to its staff, Winifred Tate. This is her first posting to "Plan Colombia and Beyond.")

In the past eighteen months, almost 5,000 people have participated in a series of collective paramilitary demobilizations. Despite this large number, plans for their reintegration remain alarmingly vague.

Members of the Norte Bloc await their demobilization.

The government promises legal identity documents, a two-year subsidy, and educational and employment opportunities to anyone participating in the process who does not face pending legal charges. Much of the international attention on paramilitary demobilization efforts has focused on judicial issues, and the lack of a legal framework to settle cases of serious human rights abusers. While these are obviously serious concerns, there has been little attention paid to monitoring the thousands of people who have already passed through the demobilization process.

Reintegration is the final phase of demobilization, and involves helping combatants (and their families) adapt to civilian life. Most reintegration programs involve some combination of economic assistance, job training and educational projects.

According to the High Commissioner for Peace, demobilized individuals are expected to travel back to their communities of origin. Programs to help these communities address the influx of demobilized individuals are still in the planning stage.

The High Commissioner for Peace has determined that each demobilized individual will receive a government stipend of 358,000 pesos a month (roughly US$155, slightly lower than Colombian minimum wage) for two years. They will also be eligible for subsidized classes through the SENA (the Servicio de Aprendizaje Nacional), a public technical training school offering classes ranging from basic construction to auto mechanics, and possibly future assistance with productive projects such as setting up small businesses. None of the private-sector employment projects have been implemented, however.

Benefits will be provided through Referral and Opportunity Centers (Centros de Referencia y Oportunidades, or "Reference Centers") set up in the communities where demobilized individuals live. Each Center has three or four people on staff who are responsible for dealing with hundreds, in some cases thousands, of demobilized individuals.

At the Montería Reference Center demobilized members of the Calima and Catatumbo Blocs wait in line to obtain legal identification cards.

To date, there is no way to track where demobilized individuals end up living, or what they end up doing. With USAID support, the International Organization for Migration has been developing a computerized monitoring system to monitor demobilized individuals and facilitate follow-up interventions, but the system is still in development and has yet to be fully implemented.

The Reference Center in Montería, capital of the paramilitary-dominated province of Córdoba, was opened on November 29. Charged with providing benefits and assistance to more than one thousand demobilized individuals, this center has four people on staff: the coordinator (a former businessman), an intake worker, a general assistant and messenger, and a psychologist.

When I visited the Center on January 17, the morning before the demobilization of the Norte Bloc, the Center was filled with angry, shouting demobilized men from the Catatumbo and Calima Blocs who had returned to their home communities in Montería. Because of problems during the demobilization phase, most had not received the proper identification paperwork and their benefits had been delayed. According to the men in the crowd, they had been told the previous week that the money would arrive before the end of the week, but now – on Monday morning – they wanted some answers.

The men gathered in a downstairs meeting room, and shouted demands at the Center’s coordinator. “You get paid on time,” one man shouted, “the government always sends your salary, you have money to pay expenses for your family, you have money to put food on the table.” Others contrasted their treatment while in the paramilitaries with their current conditions. “We got paid all the time, on time, before,” several exclaimed. “We had doctors to take care of us, and always got paid, not this red tape (papeleo), now we get nothing but problems.” Their discontent quickly translated into threats to return to fighting with the paramilitaries. “If things go on like this, and the government no doesn’t fulfill their promises, we’ll go back to the paramilitaries again,” several shouted. “Why would we stay here?”

The Montería Reference Center coordinator works the phones.

The coordinator calmed the crowd with promises that representatives from the SENA’s education programs would be there shortly. He later explained that he was not surprised by the crowd’s anger. “All the complaints are a normal reaction,” he said. “Given the people involved, it is not unusual that some would be discontented with the subsidy. There have been errors on all sides, we should have been more organized, and they need to understand that there will be issues in the process, issues that will be resolved.”

Because of the high percentage of members from Urabá and the northern Antioquia and Córdoba region (where the AUC was founded), towns in this area – including Montería – will receive a disproportionately high number of demobilized individuals. Hundreds of members of the Catatumbo Bloc and the Calima Bloc have returned to Montería, and the majority of the 936 members of the Norte Bloc will remain in town. During a visit to the Reference Center, several expressed concern about the town’s ability to absorb so many unemployed men. “The reasons we left, unemployment and no opportunities, have not changed,” said one demobilized former member of the Catatumbo Bloc.

One demobilized member of the Catatumbo Bloc described his history in the paramilitaries. He first got involved through his brother. With only a fifth grade education and three young children, he made between Col $600,000 (US $254) and Col $700,000 (US $296) per month in the paramilitaries. “So this Col $358,000 (US $155) a month from the government isn’t good enough, it is not enough to get by,” he told me.

He went on to note another issue with the demobilization: no one in the group had been aware of the high level negotiations arranging the process. “They just called us one day and told us,” he said. Internal dissent over the process went deep among the paramilitary forces. “Some are tired of the war and they want to get out, but a lot think the war should go on, that they’ve found their thing and are doing well. A lot will go back. Many already have problems. In Cúcuta, some have already been killed, I asked about a friend of mine, one guy, and they told me he was already dead.”

Comandante Andrés, a senior commander from the Norte Bloc, echoed these concerns in an interview in the pre-demobilization camp set up in Santa Fe de Ralito. “A big problem is the issue of salaries,” he said. “Before [in the paramilitaries], the lowest level of salaries was Col $400,000 (US $170) a month, the most was Col $2 million (US $847), there are different levels. From the government they only get Col $358,000 (US $155) a month, and that is all people get. So it is starting off bad, because people have problems, maintaining their families and paying for their needs. So if people are really going to stay out of the war, that is another issue.” He went on to question the lack of psychological preparation programs offered by the government. “I don’t think a short talk for one hour to send them off to civil society is exactly adequate.”

Posted by Winifred Tate at 12:44 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 12, 2005

The wild, wild west

For years, we have made a point of paying close attention to what is happening in Putumayo, a Maryland-sized department (province) in Colombia’s far south, bordering Ecuador and Peru. We do so because Putumayo is where Plan Colombia truly began, and what is happening there is a good indicator of Plan Colombia’s impact.

When the Clinton administration’s big aid package was being developed, debated and approved in 1999-2000, Putumayo had more coca than any other department in Colombia. As part of the “push into southern Colombia” at the heart of the U.S. aid package, a 2,300-man Colombian Army Counter-Narcotics Brigade, equipped with donated helicopters, was beginning operations to introduce aerial herbicide fumigation to the zone. As we wrote four years ago, Putumayo was “Plan Colombia’s Ground Zero.”

Five years later, U.S. officials are claiming success. “Areas like Putumayo used to be like the wild, wild west,” Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert told the House International Relations Committee at a May 11 hearing [PDF format]. “Today, Putumayo has been reformed.”

We disagree. In fact, five years after the Clinton aid package’s approval, Putumayo offers a vivid testimony of Plan Colombia’s failure. The department does have less coca, after a relentless campaign of regular spraying and significant investment in alternative development. (It probably has less people too.) But it remains one of Colombia’s top coca-producing departments (fourth out of 11 departments that had at least 1,000 hectares in 2003, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime [PDF format]). Much coca-growing that was in Putumayo has simply moved to neighboring departments, with the result that State Department figures show Colombia as a whole with only 7 percent less coca today than it had in 1999.

Perhaps more troubling are indications that, despite massive investment in military and police presence, the activity of illegal armed groups is as intense as ever in Putumayo.

It is hard to get a decent picture of the department’s violence, since the media, human-rights groups and civilian government officials have little presence, particularly in the remote zones where much of the coca and the killing are concentrated, and where locals know that to stay quiet is to stay alive. The few reports from Putumayo’s countryside, combined with reports of what happens in town centers, depict a situation at least as dire as it was when Plan Colombia began.

Putumayo suffered a 19 percent rise in murders in 2004, according to government data compiled by Colombia’s Security and Democracy Foundation [PDF format]. Indeed, since mid-2004 there has been a noticeable increase in reports of paramilitary massacres, extrajudicial killings, and guerrilla attacks in the department.

The guerrillas

The FARC, pressured by the prolonged Plan Patriota military offensive taking place immediately to the north of Putumayo, has increased its presence in the department. The guerrillas have stepped up attacks on military targets, on small towns that they are seeking to re-take from military or paramilitary control, and key infrastructure, particularly the Trans-Andino oil pipeline that runs through southwestern Putumayo.

One of the hardest-hit zones has been the municipality of San Miguel bordering Ecuador, whose principal town is La Dorada. Fifteen minutes south of La Dorada, right across the San Miguel River from Ecuador, is the town of Puerto Colón (population about 1,000), which has been subject to a relentless series of FARC attacks that began on September 4 of last year. In that first attack, the FARC launched five homemade, notoriously inaccurate gas-cylinder bombs at the town’s anti-narcotics police station, but ended up destroying many of the town’s buildings. The guerrillas have hit Puerto Colón at least nineteen times since then.

The past few months have seen two major FARC attacks on military targets in Putumayo, which have taken the lives of eighteen soldiers. On February 2, guerrillas detonated mines just as a truckload of soldiers passed on the well-traveled road between Puerto Asís, Putumayo’s largest city, and the town of Santa Ana, which hosts a military base, about ten miles to the north. On March 23, guerrillas launched gas-cylinder bombs against a military patrol traveling between Puerto Leguízamo (home to a U.S.-supported Colombian Navy Riverine Brigade) and La Tagua, in a sparsely-populated zone of eastern Putumayo.

The paramilitaries

Paramilitaries, present in Putumayo since 1999 and currently under the control of the AUC’s drug-ridden Central Bolívar Bloc (BCB), continue to compete for dominance of Putumayo’s coca fields, as well as drug and arms-smuggling routes in and out of Ecuador. Though the BCB declared a cease-fire to satisfy the government’s condition for taking part in negotiations, paramilitary massacres and extrajudicial killings appear to have jumped in Putumayo. “The paramilitaries’ strategy in this zone is not exactly to combat or attack guerrillas, as there have not been any direct confrontations or fighting,” reports an excellent March 2005 overview by MINGA, a leading Colombian human-rights NGO [PDF format]. “Instead, it has involved attacking the civilian population, extorting merchants and maintaining control over the region’s economy, particularly through narcotrafficking.”

Reports of recent massacres in Putumayo resemble accounts of the tactics the paramilitaries used during the late 1990s-early 2000s period of AUC expansion that was overseen by Carlos Castaño: a group of killers, list of names in hand, slaughtering several people at a time, even using chainsaws or machetes. Individual killings appear occasionally to target those whom the paramilitaries believe to be guerrilla collaborators; many recent victims, however, are civilians who have tried to resist paramilitary extortion or local figures who, believing that Putumayo should have an effective government presence, report paramilitary activity to the authorities.

By gathering testimonies from local residents, MINGA has established that the paramilitaries carried out a major massacre in the rural hinterland of Valle del Guamuez municipality, just to the north of San Miguel. Between August 15 and August 20, about 200 uniformed men identifying themselves as AUC members passed through at least six villages, torturing and killing nine campesino leaders and forcibly displacing several families.

Shortly afterward, on September 4, a group of paramilitaries forced their way into a Pentecostal church in Puerto Asís, the largest city in Putumayo, while about a hundred people were inside attending services. The paramilitaries – apparently targeting the town’s notary, whom they had been threatening – fired indiscriminately at the worshippers, killing three and wounding fifteen.

Between November 7 and 24, paramilitaries – perhaps the same group that carried out the August massacre in Valle del Guamuez – killed thirteen people and forced the displacement of entire rural communities in San Miguel, along the Ecuadorian border. According to a witness interviewed by MINGA, “The paramilitaries traveled for fifteen days with a list in hand, telling people that if they were collaborating with the guerrillas they should leave, or else they would end up like the massacred ones.”

In late January of this year, citizens of La Dorada, the “county seat” of San Miguel, had had enough of the paramilitaries who had dominated the town since late 2000, but whose presence had been reduced with the arrival of more security forces in 2003-2004. As we discussed in an earlier posting, several La Dorada merchants, reacting to the paramilitary killing of a colleague, organized a daring protest. Hundreds of people blockaded roads and marched through La Dorada’s streets on January 28, carrying signs denouncing both guerrillas and paramilitaries.

The protest’s organizers, led by José Hurtado, an Ecuadorian citizen and longtime resident, convened the local military and police. They denounced the wave of paramilitary violence and the security forces’ apparent toleration of – or complicity with – paramilitary activities, including sightings of a military truck transporting paramilitary fighters between La Dorada and La Hormiga, about 30 minutes to the north.

The security forces asked the protesters for help identifying the paramilitaries in the town. Mr. Hurtado agreed, and led them to several residences and sites of paramilitary activity. The paramilitaries were quick to retaliate: they killed Hurtado on February 16.

On February 25, the paramilitaries called leading La Dorada residents to two meetings. At the first, a meeting with merchants at a nearby hamlet, the paramilitaries showed them a list of those they believed had organized the January protest, and told them that a town councilman and a local journalist “would not be pardoned.” At the second meeting, called with the entire community under the threat of a massacre if nobody attended, the paramilitaries made clear that they would “forgive” the townspeople of La Dorada for their protest, but repeated their threat against the councilman and journalist.

CIP staff have visited La Dorada twice. The first time, in March 2001, the paramilitary presence was very noticeable, including men with radio equipment taking up key positions at the town’s entrances, and few people on the streets. In April 2004, following the opening of a police station and a greater presence of security forces, the paramilitary presence was less apparent and the town appeared to be much livelier. Since José Hurtado’s murder, however, we understand that the paramilitaries have clamped down on the town, and conditions have reverted to something like what we saw in 2001.

Paramilitaries have killed at least three more local leaders in and around La Dorada, MINGA denounced last week. Two prominent campesino leaders, Abel Hómez Anacona and Abelardo Antonio Ocampo, were murdered on March 30 and April 4. On April 3 paramilitaries forced Carlos Evid Cuarán, who had participated in the January 28 protests, to leave a restaurant with them. Cuarán was taken to a nearby hamlet and killed. Meanwhile, faced with paramilitary threats, two La Dorada councilmembers have had to leave the town since March.

Where are the authorities?

This wave of violence is severe, though not unusual for a marginal zone of rural Colombia with significant narcotics production. But Putumayo is not typical of these zones: thanks in large part to Plan Colombia and tens of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid, the department has a heavy security-force presence. MINGA’s March report details this presence in two municipalities alone, San Miguel and Valle del Guamuez:

Starting with Plan Colombia, this region was strongly militarized. In Puerto Colón there is an Anti-Narcotics Police base and a military base protecting the ECOPETROL [state oil company] installations. This region is also within the area of the 27^th Brigade’s base (with a battalion located in Valle del Guamuez). La Dorada has a permanent presence of the National Police, units of the 9^th Infrastructure Protection Battalion and “peasant soldiers.”

To this must be added the frequent presence of units from the U.S.-funded Army Counter-Narcotics Brigade and Navy Riverine Brigade, plus dramatic improvements to military and police bases at Tres Esquinas, Puerto Leguízamo and Villagarzón.

Why, then, is Putumayo as insecure as ever, five years into Plan Colombia? There are several reasons. Many of these military units are specialized: their principal missions are protecting pipelines or assisting drug eradication, not patrolling rural areas to protect people from the badguys. In fact, rural Putumayo is still a place where military and police presence remains rare, and civilian government presence is rarer still. The state security forces are also crippled by difficult relations with local authorities and the silence of the local population, which offers little information out of distrust or fear of retribution from the armed groups.

The distrust owes greatly to a widespread perception that the security forces are either in league with the paramilitaries, or at least have no interest in fighting them. Our own research indicates that this pattern is mixed: the degree of paramilitary collaboration or toleration appears to depend on the attitude of the local military or police commander. This is why, for instance, introducing police made paramilitaries scarcer for a time in La Dorada, and why the La Dorada protesters saw fit to demand a greater presence of the security forces in their town despite problems with collusion. Though not uniform, military-paramilitary collaboration in Putumayo remains a problem, and it is rarely if ever investigated and punished.

Consider all of these reasons why Putumayo is still a mess, and the outlines of an alternative security strategy become clear – not just for Putumayo but for much of the country. Instead of specialized units like the counter-narcotics brigades, protection of citizens should be the local security forces’ main mission. In the rural areas where insecurity is greatest, much more investment is needed to bring the government into regular contact with citizens, through everything from policing to alternative development to infrastructure-building. It is crucial to coordinate this closely with local elected leaders, and to assiduously seek to win the local population’s trust. The locals must be treated not like potential narco-traffickers to be searched or sprayed, or potential guerrilla collaborators to be interrogated or intimidated, but instead as potential allies who desperately need basic security and economic opportunity. And by all means, it is imperative to confront the paramilitaries aggressively and to punish any examples of collusion swiftly and transparently.

Until changes like these are implemented and begin to take hold, however, the security situation in Putumayo will continue to be one of many stains on Plan Colombia’s record.

Posted by isacson at 6:20 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 3, 2005

Beyond Plan Patriota

Today’s El Tiempo features a very in-depth series of articles about “Plan Patriota,” the U.S.-supported military offensive in southern Colombia, involving nearly 20,000 troops, that began in early 2004. If you read Spanish, the articles are definitely worth a look. They offer much new information.

On El Tiempo’s “Conflicto Armado” page today, right next to the Plan Patriota series, is a link to coverage of yesterday’s FARC attack on “La Línea,” the pass through the Andes in Tolima that links Bogotá to Cali. Three policemen and a civilian were killed.

Tolima, of course, is not in the Plan Patriota zone of operations. Nor is northern Cauca, where the FARC have carried out a string of attacks on indigenous towns since mid-April. Nor are Nariño and Arauca, where the FARC have hit military targets several times in recent months.

While combat is no doubt constant in the Plan Patriota zone, little information about these FARC-military confrontations is being made public. What we do know is that the dramatic escalation in guerrilla attacks of the past few months is being felt, strongly, outside the area where Plan Patriota is taking place.

Here is a rough map, based on press coverage, sketching out some of the more significant incidents of combat between the FARC and the Colombian security forces so far this year. Though schematic, it shows that while the FARC is being pressured within their longtime southern stronghold, they are emerging from their two-year “tactical retreat” by launching attacks throughout the length and breadth of Colombia’s national territory.

This is very bad news, both for the Uribe government’s security strategy and for anyone who wants to see the killing come to an end. It also casts strong doubt on one of the El Tiempo series’ too-optimistic claims, that “both the government and the FARC recognize that the current moment is the beginning of the end of the war.” That’s far from certain, though the war is certainly entering a new phase.

(The map includes only confrontations between guerrillas and security forces. It doesn’t include confrontations between guerrillas and paramilitaries, such as the ongoing violence in southern Bolívar and the Atrato River region of Chocó. It doesn’t include guerrilla attacks on civilians, such as the bombing of RCN studios in Cali, the murders of councilmembers in Caquetá and Huila, and many others. Some dates are approximate.)

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Quote of the week:

"We're not interested in anything like that. The dividing line is clear: between those who are democratic and those who are anti-democratic, between those of us who defend the Constitution and those who would do away with it. In this second group are - with varying interests - Uribe, the paramilitaries and the FARC." - Representative (and former M-19 guerrilla) Gustavo Petro, responding to the FARC's call to join forces against President Uribe's re-election.

Posted by isacson at 2:44 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 1, 2005

A defense minister's bad week

Colombia’s defense minister, Jorge Alberto Uribe, had an unusually bad week. A businessman with little prior experience in military affairs or politics, Uribe managed, in a few days, to raise the ire of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Colombia’s own foreign minister, much of his own high command, and several members of the Colombian Congress, who by the end of the week were calling for him to resign. Some of his difficulties were self-inflicted, but the minister was also caught up in a quiet but longstanding turf battle between Colombia’s civilian and military leaders. Meanwhile Uribe’s boss, President Álvaro Uribe (no relation), somehow managed to stay unscathed and above the fray.

On Tuesday, Senator Hernán Andrade leaked a secret memorandum the minister had sent to the congress in answer to several legislators’ questions. One of the questions had to do with Venezuela’s recent wave of arms purchases, including 100,000 AK-47s from Russia, an issue that Colombia’s government has officially sought to downplay. The minister’s memo took a different position, one which it’s easy to imagine reflects the true opinion of Colombian officialdom: “It is an undeniable fact that the Venezuelan re-armament deepens the military imbalance in the Andean region.”

The document, leaked the day before Condoleezza Rice was to arrive in Bogotá, ensured that U.S. relations with Venezuela would be on everyone’s minds during the secretary of state’s visit, even though Rice was taking pains not to criticize Caracas directly during her four-day swing through Latin America. On Wednesday, as Rice was on her way to Bogotá, Hugo Chávez responded to minister Uribe on Venezuelan television. “The imperial lady is traveling throughout South America, and a pawn has told the queen what she wanted to hear, to please the imperial lady, so that she might laugh and feel happy.” He added that “Nobody should act as a pawn of the empire, because that's a pretty sad role.”

That same day, the “pawn” was publicly slapped down by Colombian Foreign Minister Carolina Barco, who made clear that the defense minister’s opinion was not the government’s position, and that she, not the Defense Ministry, is in charge of making foreign-policy pronouncements.

This was the least of minister Uribe’s problems on Wednesday, however. That morning, he had to fire (or force into retirement) four of the army’s top generals: Roberto Pizarro, the army’s second-in-command, Duván Pineda, the inspector-general, Luis Fabio García, the chief of operations, and Hernán Cadavid, the chief of human resources.

The reason given for the generals’ exit was their strong opposition to a U.S.-encouraged change in the way the armed forces work. All were against efforts to get Colombia’s army to work seamlessly with its much smaller navy and air force, particularly within so-called “joint task forces.” Two such task forces exist today: the Caribbean Joint Command in northern Colombia, and Joint Task Force Omega, which is carrying out the “Plan Patriota” offensive in the south.

The “retired” generals, speaking freely to the press, harshly criticized the joint-task-force strategy, but saved some of their strongest words for the defense minister. In this respect, minister Uribe may have been a proxy for President Uribe: according to today’s Semana magazine, “the generals chose him as their target in order to avoid tangling with the President.”

Minister Uribe’s bad week comes on top of a series of recent problems. The weeks-long confrontation in and around Toribío, Cauca, which still has not completely died down, has brought unprecedented questioning of the government’s security policy. In January, the minister was embarrassingly forced to admit that he had been publicly lying about ordering the abduction of a high-ranking FARC member who had been living in Venezuela.

Last year, Miami’s El Nuevo Herald reported that, months before becoming defense minister, the unmarried Uribe had paid conjugal visits to a woman serving a prison sentence for narcotrafficking. The Colombian media largely ignored the story; Uribe insisted that the visits were not in fact conjugal. Gen. Pineda, one of the four fired officers, recalled the allegations last week in a Colombian radio interview. He questioned the minister’s “moral authority,” adding that “if any of us had gone to visit a narcotrafficker in jail, we surely would have been expelled and an object of public scorn.”

The defense minister is being called to testify this week before Colombia’s Congress, where several legislators are calling for his head. This is an unusual area of agreement between two of the very few members of the congress with any military experience: Gustavo Petro, a former M-19 guerrilla, and Jaime Ernesto Canal, a former general and head of the Cali-based Third Brigade.

“The government tries to punish the military. First it insults them and later it fires them,” said Petro, who said last week that minister Uribe’s tenure is “unsustainable.” Sen. Canal – who, Human Rights Watch has reported, presided over the Third Brigade while the unit helped the AUC to set up its Calima Bloc in southwestern Colombia – added that “the minister should not continue in his position, because he had not efficiently served the fatherland. We all know that the minister has much business knowledge, but he has no aptitude for managing men in arms.”

“With regard to management,” added Sen. Luis Élmer Arenas, “the minister is very good and he knows what he is doing. But he doesn’t know military operations and he ends up being the generals’ ventriloquists’ dummy, transmitting their information to the President. This keeps good decisions from being made.” 

More criticism came from former military leaders. Retired Gen. Rafael Samudio went so far as to say that Uribe doesn’t reserve “the respect even of the lowest-ranking soldier.”

Samudio served as a minister of defense before 1991, back when the post was occupied by uniformed officers, not civilians. Though Colombia has now had nearly fifteen years of civilian defense ministers – during which ten individuals have filled the post – the job remains a difficult one. The civilian part of the ministry is small and must deal with a military high command that, as Cali’s El País notes, “still shows resistance to the orders of someone without a military background.”

The job is still tougher for defense ministers who seek to reform the way the military operates; that is when Colombia’s difficult civil-military relationship gives off the most sparks. This has been the case for both of President Uribe’s defense ministers. The first, Marta Lucía Ramírez, was forced out in November 2003 under intense pressure from top commanders, who bristled at her attempts to gain more control over military contracting and discretionary budgets – and at the idea of taking orders from a woman. Minister Uribe too, with his businessman’s approach, has stepped on a lot of officers’ toes, a colonel who asked not to be identified told Cambio magazine.

Little by little, each one of them [defense ministers] has taken a step forward, but minister Jorge Alberto Uribe, with his management experience, has sought to consolidate changes that were already occurring, and to introduce new ones, which without a doubt has won him enemies among some officers who don’t like the idea of civilians overseeing, controlling and improving the efficiency of processes that had been very confused and led to poor management.

One such process, of course, is the one that led the four generals to quit last week: something that U.S. defense planners like to call “jointness” and basically means making the army, navy, and air force work better together, and sometimes even take orders from each other. The U.S. military underwent this reform, somewhat painfully, in the late 1980s, after the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 mandated it. The change was resisted by those who did not want to find themselves taking orders from another service; this resistance is even stronger within Colombia’s Army, which dwarfs the navy and air force in size. Generals who have opposed this change, including Martín Orlando Carreño, who headed the army from late 2003 until being forced out in late 2004, have characterized it as something imposed upon Colombia by the United States.

For now, with the exit of the four generals, it appears that the “jointness” argument has been settled in favor of more reformist generals. But there will be other arguments, and Minister Uribe will no doubt be in the thick of them.

So far, it seems that minister Uribe is not going anywhere; President Uribe seems intent on keeping him. It may be, in fact, that the minister is playing a useful political role by diverting criticism away from the president. According to El País, “he could be playing a role that was filled in the past by the controversial ex [Interior and Justice] Minister Fernando Londoño Hoyos: to say in public what the President thinks in private.”

The bigger question, however, is not how much longer Jorge Alberto Uribe will stay, but how much longer Colombia’s defense ministers will continue to be civilians. “It is undeniable that we are at war,” argued Sen. José Renán Trujillo last week. “It is fundamental to return to a military minister, either active or retired, who knows the fundamentals about what it is to be in the military. The morale of the troops must be kept high.”

This is a terrible recommendation. The presence of a civilian defense minister in Colombia – however weak or frequently questioned – is an important sign of health for Colombia’s civil-military relations and for its democratic institutions. Just look at those meetings of the region’s defense ministers that have taken place periodically since 1995. Every few years there have been fewer men in uniform posing in the meetings’ group picture. That is a clear indicator of progress, and for Colombia to put an officer back into the defense minister’s position would be a major step backward. Minister Uribe’s troubles must not lead to this outcome.

Posted by isacson at 11:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 29, 2005

San Pablo confronts the paramilitaries

Eclipsed by all the headlines of the past week – Condoleezza Rice’s visit, tensions with Venezuela, fighting in Cauca, paramilitary talks in trouble – is a surprising story about something that doesn’t happen very often in Colombia. For the second time in thirteen months, the people of San Pablo, a town in southern Bolívar department, have risen up in angry protest against the paramilitaries who dominate their town and the police who work with them.

An oil-producing port in the highly conflictive Magdalena Medio region, San Pablo is a tough place. It was an ELN guerrilla stronghold for much of the 1980s and 1990s. Those unfortunate enough to have seen Collateral Damage, the 2002 Arnold Schwarzenegger-versus-Colombian-rebels movie, might recall that Arnold’s character spends a good part of the movie trying to get to San Pablo, portrayed as the seat of rebel-held territory (when the CIA agent in the movie points to it on a map, he’s pointing right at San Pablo, Bolívar). This is wildly inaccurate, since paramilitaries took control of the town years before, during the late 1990s, as part of a bloody offensive that brought them control of much of the Magdalena Medio.

During failed peace talks with the ELN in 1999-2002, Andrés Pastrana’s government had agreed to an ELN demand to demilitarize San Pablo and two neighboring municipalities (Yondó and Cantagallo) and hold negotiations in the zone. The military fiercely resisted the idea, and the paramilitaries mobilized hundreds of people to protest any possible troop withdrawal. Pastrana was never able to demilitarize the zone.

The AUC’s Central Bolívar Bloc now runs San Pablo’s town center, coexisting with the contingent of police stationed there. The guerrillas remain nearby, relegated to the municipality’s rural zone, where they continue to compete for control of the local drug trade. San Pablo and its environs have been important to the narco business for a long time; they lie along a key transshipment corridor, and are not far from Puerto Triunfo, the site of Hacienda Nápoles, Pablo Escobar’s legendary ranch. Today, the countryside is a major coca-growing zone, and cocaine labs can be found in remote areas.

None of this makes San Pablo unusual. Colombia, especially north and central Colombia, has no shortage of violent towns in drug-producing zones where paramilitaries, with the security forces’ cooperation or acquiescence, have taken control. What makes San Pablo interesting is that the locals actually dare to vent their anger about it.

On March 8, 2004, paramilitaries killed a prominent local merchant named Fidel Peña. In an episode that the local press calls the “San Pablazo,” hundreds of residents, including some from nearby towns, responded with a peaceful protest that soon got out of hand. Though there were few casualties, enraged residents burned vehicles, motorcycles and five houses considered to belong to the paramilitaries.

They pelted the police station with rocks – a choice of target that indicates how completely residents take for granted that the local security forces are in league with the paramilitaries. (In a meeting this week with the governor of Bolívar, reports Bucaramanga’s Vanguardia Liberal newspaper, the government’s regional human-rights ombudsman [Defensor del Pueblo] “said he was concerned by the kind of complaints that had been coming from San Pablo in recent days, and he indicated that the complaints continue to have to do with a supposed collaboration between government institutions and illegal armed groups.”)

Nobody was ever arrested or tried for Peña’s murder. Then, on April 19 of this year, the paramilitaries struck again. Gunmen killed José Luis Pinzón, a 27-year-old merchant known to all in San Pablo as “El Chiqui,” in broad daylight in the center of town. According to José Otálora, the mayor’s secretary of government (sort of like chief of staff), Pinzón “was a very well-known kid, a fighter, a leader, a small businessman who was born and raised here in the town. That is why the population rejects [his killing] so strongly, because if it was him today, tomorrow it could be any of us.”

On the 20th, many San Pablo merchants shuttered their stores to protest the killing. A peaceful protest against paramilitary harassment and police-paramilitary collaboration was planned for the 21^st, to accompany the funeral. “By 10:00 in the morning,” reports Vanguardia Liberal,

The town’s demands of the authorities were clear: “no more crimes by police personnel or friendships with illegal groups.” Almost at the same time, the Magdalena Medio police commander, Lt. Col. Jorge William Gil Caicedo, admitted to Vanguardia Liberal that paramilitary infiltration among the institution’s ranks is possible, and he indicated that an investigation will take place within the corps of police in San Pablo.

Again, the protest didn’t stay peaceful. Up to 500 protesters remained in the streets on April 21 and 22, throwing rocks at the mayor’s office and the police station. Police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.

The situation has calmed somewhat, and the Bolívar governor’s office and local military authorities have held meetings to hear the townspeople’s demands. The acting governor of Bolívar has proposed to take the San Pablo issue to the government’s high commissioner for peace, Luis Carlos Restrepo, so that he may raise it at the negotiating table with paramilitary leaders in Ralito. The killings of both Peña and Pinzón appear to be among hundreds of clear violations of the cease-fire that President Uribe had demanded of the paramilitaries as a pre-condition for negotiations.

Clearly, San Pablo’s street disturbances are not a model of nonviolent resistance to be replicated elsewhere. They are nonetheless noteworthy because of their very unusual targets: the feared paramilitaries and the security forces who coexist with them.

These actions could invite retribution; the paramilitaries are not known for tolerating opponents, especially in towns like San Pablo. We must therefore remain aware of what is happening in San Pablo and be prepared to respond to alerts about possible paramilitary attempts at “payback.”

In fact, alerts and early warnings shouldn’t even be necessary. After all, San Pablo is a small town that already has a significant police presence, plus marines on the river and army patrols throughout the zone. The Colombian government forces in San Pablo have to do their job and do more to protect the citizens from the paramilitaries in their midst. Collaboration with the illegal groups must be punished far more systematically than it is now. Those suspected of it must be suspended – the whole unit if necessary – and replaced with forces who are willing to confront the AUC.

So far, security-force officials are proposing to rotate new police into San Pablo (especially mobile, militarized carabineros) and to send troops to keep order. Let’s hope that the new arrivals are less inclined to support or tolerate the paramilitaries. There are no guarantees of this, though, since security-force personnel know that support and toleration are rarely punished. Let’s hope as well that Colombia’s creaky justice system manages to punish those responsible for the San Pablo killings. Continued impunity will only allow the paramilitaries to tighten their grip over San Pablo and many towns like it.

Posted by isacson at 1:25 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 22, 2005

Toribío

On Thursday the 14^th, and again on Sunday the 17^th, several hundred guerrillas from the FARC’s 6^th Front and Jacobo Arenas Column attacked Toribío, a largely indigenous town of about 3,500 people in the mountains of northeastern Cauca department, about 40 mostly dirt-road miles from the Panamerican Highway between Cali and Popayán.

The guerrillas indiscriminately rained homemade gas-cylinder bombs on the town, damaging the police station that the Uribe government had installed, but also destroying a hospital and dozens of houses.

Ten hours after the April 14 attack began, the security forces arrived; several dozen police and soldiers were helicoptered into the town center, and the FARC fighters retreated to the mountains surrounding the town, from where they continued to launch mortars and shoot at the government forces. Military aircraft strafed guerrillas from the air, while FARC fighters took control of both roads entering the town, effectively isolating it by land.

Sporadic fighting continues as the town, protected by difficult terrain, has still not completely returned to government control. So far, the death toll has included at least five police and two soldiers, an unknown number of guerrillas, and a nine-year-old boy. Twenty-three civilians were wounded, some seriously, and nearly the entire popluation of the town has been at least temporarily displaced.

What this means for the Uribe government

The Toribío attack was brutal and showed no concern whatsoever for the civilian population, beyond a guerrilla warning issued a few hours before the shooting started. Violations of international humanitarian law, however, are something the FARC commits routinely. More about that in a moment.

Toribío was unusual, though, for its scale. During the first two and a half years of Álvaro Uribe’s term in office, the FARC simply did not attempt anything this ambitious – a takeover of a mid-sized town with a police station, using hundreds of fighters, that was clearly the result of months of planning.

The relatively low level of FARC activity between August 2002 and early 2005 caused a debate among security analysts about what was going on. Supporters of Álvaro Uribe and his “Democratic Security” strategy gave credit to the president’s tough policies, the military’s improved capabilities, and even U.S. military aid. Some even went so far as to predict the FARC’s defeat within a few years. Others noted that the military’s size and capabilities, though greater, had not grown enough to bring such a sharp drop in guerrilla activity, and speculated that the FARC – its leadership, fronts, and financing largely intact – had chosen to pull back, responding to the Uribe offensive with a “tactical retreat.”

It now seems apparent that the latter group was right. The FARC were capable of launching large-scale attacks like Toribío – and the only thing keeping them from doing so was that they chose not to.

In fact, it could be argued that a main reason why the guerrillas attacked Toribío – the latest in a wave of attacks on both military and civilian targets that began in late January – was to demonstrate that the Uribe strategy was not affecting the guerrillas’ ability to operate. Top FARC leader Raúl Reyes told an interviewer from ANNCOL, a Sweden-based guerrilla-solidarity site, that the Toribío action was “a blow to ‘Democratic Security.’ … After this action, the government looks silly when it asserts that it has the ability to force the FARC into retreat.” Reyes added that the attack disproves President Uribe’s insistently repeated argument that Colombia has no armed conflict, just a terrorist nuisance.

Indeed, Toribío was a blow to the Democratic Security strategy. It was embarrassing for Uribe and the high command to helicopter into the ruined town center on Friday the 15^th, call the guerrillas “cowards” and assure the townspeople that they were safe, only to have the FARC attack again two days later. A cornerstone of the Uribe government’s strategy was to deploy contingents of police into all the country’s 1,092 county seats (cabeceras municipales). Actions like Toribío – in which the police station, in the middle of town, was nearly as vulnerable as the rest of the population – recall why the police were absent in the first place.

Toribío also calls into question the U.S.-supported “Plan Patriota” offensive, which has concentrated about 17,000 soldiers in the departments of Caquetá, Meta, and Guaviare, a longtime FARC stronghold a couple of hundred miles east of Toribío. Plan Patriota has required the deployment of troops away from the department of Cauca; Senator Luis Élmer Arenas, from the department of Valle del Cauca just to the north, said last week that the army’s 6^th Mobile Brigade, which had been assigned to Cauca, was moved to the zone that had once been demilitarized for the failed 1998-2002 negotiations with the FARC, which lies in the middle of the Plan Patriota area. Arenas said that Cauca has been left with only four army battalions (a battalion usually has about 500-600 men), and these are mostly tied down guarding roads or – as “peasant soldiers” – other towns.

El Tiempo reporter Marisol Gómez speculates that the FARC are responding to the pressures of Plan Patriota by shifting their rearguard to a new “triangle” – the southwestern departments of Cauca, Nariño and Putumayo.

The attacks on Toribío could be part of a strategy to consolidate themselves in the Cauca-Nariño-Putumayo axis. Having lost their rearguard in Caquetá, Meta and Guaviare due to Plan Patriota, the guerrilla group may need a new one in order to provide security to its Secretariat. And what better than a strategic triangle like this one in the country’s southwest, which it has cultivated for years with its presence. Of this corridor, says analyst Alfredo Rangel, Nariño is perhaps the most important province, “because it has become the new center of coca-leaf production (it is calculated that there are 17,000 hectares planted there), because it offers access to the Pacific Ocean to get drugs out, and because the border with Ecuador eases the entry of munitions and supplies over land.” Cauca also has ocean access, and Putumayo, access to Ecuador. As a result, we cannot view as gratuitous the attacks on the Iscuandé (Nariño) naval base, in which fifteen marines died last February 1, and the ambushes in Santa Ana and Puerto Leguízamo (Putumayo) on February 2 and March 23, in which nine soldiers and eight marines died. This would also account for the assaults on Samaniego, Ricaurte and Guachavez (Nariño) and on Jambaló (Cauca) on the same day the Toribío attacks began.

Toribío also calls into question the effectiveness of the Colombian government’s U.S.-supported Early Warning System (SAT), which has already been criticized for past failures to respond in a timely way to warnings about imminent armed-group attacks. Representatives of the Defensoría del Pueblo (the Colombian government’s human rights ombudsman) say that the SAT failed them in the Toribío case. Due to a communications breakdown within the SAT the night before the attacks began, “we had to use other, alternative communications channels, because by morning the attack was to begin,” said Darío Mejía, the secretary-general of the Defensoría, adding that his office had been issuing periodic warnings since December.

Why Toribío?

Perhaps the most fundamental question about the meaning of the FARC’s latest attacks is: if the guerrillas’ goal is to undermine the Uribe government’s security policies, why choose to attack a civilian target? And especially, why choose a target like Toribío, which has become a symbol of non-violent indigenous resistance to the conflict? There are no good answers.

As much as 90 percent of Toribío’s residents belong to the Nasa or Páez indigenous group, one of the largest and most cohesive of Colombia’s dozens of native ethnicities. During the 1980s, Toribío was a center for an indigenous guerrilla group, known as Quintín Lame, that sought to resist both the security forces and the guerrillas before demobilizing in 1991. Later, in the 1990s, leaders chose a non-violent option, reviving the tradition of the Indigenous Guard – a “self-defense force” armed only with short ceremonial sticks called bastones. The guard now has over 5,000 members. The guard had successfully prevented FARC incursions in the past, including standoffs with the FARC in Toribío and Totoró in August 2002 and the rescue of Toribío mayor Arquimedes Vitonás, whom the guerrillas briefly kidnapped in August 2004.

This non-violent model has won praise for Toribío and the Indigenous Guard throughout Colombia. But the guard resists more than just the FARC. Toribío was a center of organizing for the massive minga, or gathering, of tens of thousands of indigenous people last September, who peacefully marched from northern Cauca to Cali to protest free-trade negotiations and the Uribe government’s Democratic Security policies. The community members have also been adamant opponents of Plan Colombia.

Clearly, on paper at least, the FARC shares a lot of those political positions. Why, then, would it choose Toribío for its most vicious attack on a population in years?

Part of the answer might simply be revenge for the residents’ past displays of resistance. Part of it might be the FARC’s stubborn belief that they, and only they, are the true expression of resistance to Colombia’s ruling class. Writes Colombian analyst Héctor Mondragón, a fierce critic of both Uribe and the guerrillas, “The FARC, now on the offensive, has been spectacularly dismissive of the mass movement of the popular sectors of Colombia. The FARC is uninterested.”

The FARC, like all of Colombia’s armed groups, has a terrible record of preying on indigenous leaders and activists. In recent months the FARC has kidnapped or killed members of indigenous communities in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta; Ricaurte, Nariño; and in northern Cauca. And we mustn’t forget the FARC’s murder of three U.S. indigenous-rights activists who were working with the U’wa people in Arauca in 1999.

Indigenous claims may be irrelevant to a group whose rigid Marxism allows only for the possibility of class conflict. But the FARC’s hostility to indigenous communities probably owes more to military calculations. It is possible that Toribío was targeted mainly because its location made it difficult to re-take militarily, because it lies along a key corridor across the Andes, and because it is part of an attempt to create a new “axis” in southwestern Colombia.

If the FARC is indeed still giving primacy to military calculations, it would mean that the group’s leaders have learned absolutely nothing during the past few years about the importance of politics and the support of local populations. The group’s image, both domestically and internationally, took a severe battering with the demise of the Pastrana peace process, and its continued resort to terrorism – defined as deliberate attacks on civilians – has made it a pariah nearly everywhere. Its attacks on organized critics of Uribe and the security forces – such as the Nasa in Toribío or the five members of the human-rights group Justicia y Paz who were kidnapped for two weeks earlier this month – show that even on the left, the FARC’s attitude is, “The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy.”

This lack of regard for popular opinion makes the FARC unique among guerrilla groups. In their dealings with the civilian population, most guerrillas have at least tried to follow the dictates of Mao Tse-Tung (“the richest source of power to wage war lies in the masses of people”) and Che Guevara (“Conduct toward the civil population ought to be regulated by a large respect for all the rules and traditions of the people in order to demonstrate effectively, with deeds, the moral superiority of the guerrilla fighter over the oppressing soldier”).

Instead the FARC, at least many of its fronts during the past few years, has maintained a predatory relationship with the civilian population, a relationship based more on fear than on trust. Some of its leaders (“Mono Jojoy” comes to mind) clearly believe that military advantages trump all political considerations, including any gains to be had from respecting international humanitarian law. Toribío indicates that these leaders are still hugely influential within the FARC, despite the group’s lack of significant military successes over the last five years or so.

The continued power of the FARC’s most militaristic, least political leaders probably means that peace talks are unlikely to happen anytime soon. But it also means that the FARC may be approaching the end of its existence as a cohesive guerrilla organization.

Ultimately, its illegal money cannot substitute for its lack of popular support. An army of violent resistance that attacks communities of peaceful resistance is on a self-destructive path. It is the FARC’s neglect of politics and popular support – not the U.S.-supported Colombian military pressure – that most threatens to bring the group down in the medium-term. Losing popular support is more than just a tactical disadvantage – it leads a group to lose touch with the pueblo in whose name it claims to fight. The likely consequence of that is increasing division within the group and gradual disintegration.

The Toribío attack also shows a far more effective model of resistance: the community that remains strong despite seeing much of its town center reduced to rubble. Three thousand Indigenous Guards, coming from throughout northern Cauca, are poised to enter Toribío. The residents’ opposition to Bogotá’s militarized approach remains strong.

To see how well-organized Toribío and neighboring communities are, how well-linked with national and international solidarity, look no further than the up-to-the-minute website of the Northern Cauca Association of Indigenous Communities (ACIN). There you find not only calls for humanitarian aid, local development proposals and expressions of support, but calls for alternatives to Plan Colombia and the Democratic Security strategy. This is a model of reform and activism many times more promising than whatever it is the FARC is offering.

Posted by isacson at 2:39 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 11, 2005

Paramilitary talks: last week's legislative train wreck

Last week, Colombia’s Congress narrowly approved most of the law that will govern the demobilization of paramilitary groups. A slight pro-government majority rejected nearly every attempt to make the bill tougher, for instance by making it easier for prosecutors to investigate crimes, by requiring full confessions in exchange for light sentences, by excluding narcotraffickers from getting amnestied, or by seeking to dismantle the paramilitaries’ underlying support and command structures.

The tougher standards foreseen in the bill proposed by Sen. Rafael Pardo and others – a bill that had the support of Colombia’s human rights community and many international observers – were eviscerated. The Uribe government – particularly chief negotiator Luis Carlos Restrepo, who had threatened to resign unless a lenient bill was introduced – got its way on nearly every point.

(In a press conference called in the Ralito negotiating zone on Sunday, paramilitary leaders insisted that even this “soft” bill was too tough on them, since it contemplated jail sentences of 5-8 years – or as little as 2 ½ to 5 ½ years, with good behavior and time spent in negotiations counted against the sentence. “If we have to decide to head back to the mountains, the first ones to feel sorry about this decision will be us,” said Central Bolívar Bloc leader Iván Duque. It is quite possible, though, that the paramilitaries are bluffing. They may be using the jail-term issue in order to distract attention from other provisions that are too weak, such as confession, seizure of ill-gotten assets, and dismantlement.)

The resulting bill is likely to make peace harder to achieve in the long term. It is a blueprint for a disastrously flawed demobilization process that simply does not deserve the United States government's support. Here is what some participants and analysts – none of them radical firebrands – wrote or said last weekend, in the wake of Pardo’s legislative defeat.

Rep. Luis Fernando Velasco: “A bill will be approved but the negotiations will not advance. It is a bill to give favorable sentences to people who have committed very serious crimes, without asking in exchange for truth, reparations, or the effective dismantlement of the phenomenon that led them to commit these crimes. That is, it will end up recycling violence in Colombia.” 

Rep. Gina Parody: [Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo] “thinks that peace means handing in a weapon, taking a picture and playing the ‘Ode to Joy’ in the background. That is where peace, for him, begins and ends. In reality, it should be giving reparations to victims and building collective memory, and this is only done if they deliver us the truth.”

Sen. Rafael Pardo: “Let’s suppose that 1,000 men demobilize. The attorney-general (Fiscalía) has 20 prosecutors and 150 assistants. These 1,000 men will have to be investigated and the Fiscalía will determine whom it will forgive [those guilty only of sedition, a political crime] and whom it will prosecute [for involvement in atrocities] according to this law. Let’s take the case of one of those being prosecuted: the paramilitary member will have two alternatives: to admit or to deny his guilt. If he admits it, the Fiscalía must bring him to justice and sentence him in a few days, to a term of five to eight years in prison. If he pleads “not guilty,” the Fiscalía has 30 days to gather evidence and try him in court. But in 30 days one cannot do what couldn’t be done in ten years. And if the crime can’t be proven, the court must drop the investigation. This is a farce of justice.”

El Tiempo editorial, April 11: “The legal framework for the controversial paramilitary process has been a total imbroglio. … The result is rather unusual: other than the flimsy legislative majorities that [Interior Minister] Pretelt and Commissioner Restrepo have won in committee, few support the bill. Neither the victims and their spokespeople, nor part of the pro-Uribe bloc, nor the international community. The United Nations has drawn up a catalog of the bill’s judicial failings. The International Criminal Court announced that it is keeping an eye on it. And [U.S.] Ambassador [William] Wood issued a telegraphic warning about its lack of broad support. Even the paramilitaries and their friends in Congress say they reject it. Though it is worth asking to what extent this opposition is real … it is clear that the ‘paras’ know that this is the best deal they can get.”

Daniel García-Peña, former government peace commissioner: “While the world said farewell to the Pope, the Colombian Congress slowly and quietly was burying any possibility of a legal framework that might contribute to the overcoming and the dismantlement of the paramilitary phenomenon through truth, justice and reparations.”

María Jimena Duzán, columnist, El Tiempo: “It would be good if [Luis Carlos Restrepo] stopped writing columns – this takes a lot of time – and instead traveled through Atlántico, Magdalena, Cesar, Sucre, Córdoba, Bolívar, Urabá, the coffee-growing zone, Meta, Casanare, and Arauca. There, he would notice how the paramilitary phenomenon has taken over local politics, the health system’s resources, and the best contracts from the mayors’ offices.”

Michael Frühling, director of the Bogotá office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, cited in El Tiempo: “In a letter made public on Friday, dated March 30, [Frühling] said the term “inadvisable” was appropriate because the bill ‘is not in agreement with international principles and norms about the rights of victims of serious crimes, in accordance with international law.’”

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April 6, 2005

Truth, justice and reparations: taking a beating in Colombia's Congress

Whether the United States or other donors should fund the Colombian government’s negotiations with paramilitary groups depends heavily on what kind of law the Colombian Congress passes to govern these negotiations and the groups’ demobilization.

Will this law include accountability for past human-rights crimes? Will it allow narcotraffickers to win amnesty by disguising themselves as paramilitaries? Will it allow victims to get back what was stolen from them? Will it actually dismantle paramilitarism, or will it allow paramilitary leaders to remain in command of powerful mafias and death squads?

The relevant committees in Colombia’s Senate and House of Representatives are considering the Uribe government’s draft law (known as the “Justice and Peace” bill). Our position – and that of most of the U.S. and Colombian human rights communities, as well as victims’ groups and even some business coalitions (see this consensus document) – is that this bill is too weak. It allows jail terms of as little as 2 ½ years for crimes against humanity. It does not require confession of crimes as a requirement for leniency, and thus will make dismantlement of paramilitaries more difficult. It fails to prevent narcotraffickers from escaping punishment for sending drugs overseas.

As it stands now, says Michael Frühling, who heads the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ Bogotá field office, “It seems that too little of the advice we have provided so far has been taken into account” in the development of the Uribe government bill. “It runs the risk of becoming a legal framework that is incompatible with the rights to truth, justice and reparations.”

A coalition of representatives and senators, led by a former defense minister, Sen. Rafael Pardo, has been promoting a more strongly worded bill [MS Word format]. Many observers had hoped this bill would either pass or have a strong influence on the law that does get approved. Their hopes are being dashed.

The debate in the committees has been acrimonious, but so far the Uribe government has proven able to line up legislative majorities on behalf of its weaker law. On point after point, the tougher Pardo bill is getting steamrolled in committee. After a string of losses on Monday, Rep. Gina Parody, a co-sponsor of the Pardo bill, told reporters that “our bill has been defeated.”

One of the most stinging losses was a rejection of a Pardo provision that would have required demobilizing paramilitaries to confess their crimes and reveal what they know about their command and support networks. Without this information, it will not only be difficult to reveal the truth about past massacres, displacements and other abuses, it will also be harder to gain the knowledge necessary to dismantle paramilitary structures. While the Uribe government bill requires demobilizing paramilitaries to reveal what they know about their own involvement in crimes against humanity, it includes no punishments for those later found to have been lying or deliberately omitting information.

Another loss, suffered yesterday, should particularly bother drug warriors in the U.S. government and Congress. Legislators in both committees failed to remove the so-called “narcomico” (roughly, “narco-loophole”): a provision in the Uribe government’s bill that could allow narcotraffickers among the paramilitaries to avoid punishment for their drug activity, to keep most of their assets, and to be exempt from extradition to the United States.

Article 64 of the “Justice and Peace” law would define paramilitarism – an attempt to supplant the state, not oppose it – as “sedition,” thus making it a political crime. Colombia’s constitution says that those guilty of political crimes cannot be extradited. Article 20 of the Uribe government bill would make crimes “connected” to paramilitary activity – such as narcotrafficking – fit under the same umbrella, essentially making paramilitary narcotrafficking a non-extraditable political crime as well.

According to Sen. Rodrigo Rivera, a key opponent of the narcomico, “By giving them this status as political criminals, that is, those who commit sedition, their extradition for other crimes, such as narcotrafficking, is blocked, because the National Constitution prohibits extradition of political criminals.” Adds columnist María Isabel Rueda, “A door could be opening for narcotraffickers to launder their fortunes and, because they are supposedly carrying a ‘political’ flag, they could be pardoned by this law.”

The justification for the narcomico is that both guerrillas and paramilitaries have become heavily involved in narcotrafficking in order to pay for their weapons and fighters. But the past few years has witnessed a parade of “new” paramilitary leaders who have precious little experience fighting guerrillas – and in fact may be doing occasional narco business with the FARC. Individuals with long histories in Colombia’s drug underworld, facing U.S. indictment for shipping cocaine to the United States – such as Diego Fernando Murillo (“Don Berna”), Victor Manuel Mejía (“El Mellizo”), Francisco Javier Zuluaga (“Gordolindo”), Guillermo Pérez (“Pablo Sevillano”) and others – have bought or intimidated their way into the paramilitary leadership, where they now masquerade as comandantes in the hope of winning amnesty and keeping their illegal wealth.

Yesterday, Sen. Germán Vargas Lleras (a grandson of a former president, considered a leading figure on Colombia’s right, who lost his pinky finger to a FARC package-bomb a few years ago) introduced an amendment that sought to distinguish between the old-guard paramilitaries and the newly arrived narcos. The amendment had two parts. The first, which the Uribe government supported, would have excluded from the bill’s lighter jail terms any paramilitary leader who had engaged in narcotrafficking before joining the paramilitaries. The second, which the Uribe government opposed, would have declared ineligible any paramilitary leader who had enriched himself illegally while a member of the paramilitaries.

Even this attempt to exclude the drug lords failed, in both committees. The votes were close, though: nine to eight in the Senate, and 14 to 11 in the House.

Though the majorities were slim, the persistence of the narcomico makes it more possible than ever that some of Colombia’s most notorious narcotraffickers will evade prosecution and extradition – and maybe even get to keep much of their narco assets – just by donning a uniform and calling themselves “comandante.” According to Vargas Lleras, his legislative loss “could open the door … for the ‘paras’’ illegal fortunes to be laundered.” Added Sen. Rivera, “We have just approved the narcos’ inclusion within this law. Now all they have to do is confess in order to gain benefits [like drastically reduced sentences.]”

Colombia’s most-circulated newspaper, El Tiempo, put it well in a March 11 editorial.

It is healthy and necessary to … find solutions that can demobilize the complex marriage between paramilitaries and narcotrafficking. But one thing is to recognize the need to put the issue on the table and another thing – unacceptable – is that narcotraffickers escape through the back door thanks to a poorly made law. The narcos’ lawyers, who know the halls of Congress well, must be sharpening their tools.”

All is not yet completely lost. There is a slim chance that the narcomico, the lack of confessions, and other weak provisions in the “Justice and Peace” law can still be turned back when Colombia’s full Congress debates the law. This is pretty unlikely, though, as President Uribe and his peace negotiator, Luis Carlos Restrepo, have lined up solid majorities on behalf of this too-lenient law.

If the law passes in something like its current form, the paramilitary talks will not meet the standards of truth, justice, reparations and dismantlement necessary for financial support – either from the United States or from any other international donor. As the law stands now, it carries too great a risk that demobilized paramilitary leaders will get to keep much of their illegal assets and continue to lead powerful political-mafia networks.

Postscript as of April 7:As this post was being added on Wednesday, Sen. Vargas Lleras won a partial victory, when the Uribe government granted its approval to include his anti-narco language in the case of individual demobilizations (such as deserters). However, the provision still does not apply in the case of collective demobilizations, which is probably the loophole through which the paramilitary leaders with long histories in the drug trade will still hope to pass.

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April 4, 2005

"Operation Shield" in Arauca

Last Thursday’s edition of Vanguardia Liberal – the main newspaper in Bucaramanga, Colombia’s seventh-largest city – included an interview with Gen. Carlos Saavedra, the head of the Colombian Army’s Bucaramanga-based Second Division.

The general discusses “Operación Escudo” (Operation Shield), a large-scale military offensive just getting underway in the departments of Arauca and Norte de Santander in northeastern Colombia. The offensive, he says, can be considered a “clone” of Plan Patriota, the U.S.-supported military offensive that has been going on in southern Colombia for well over a year.

Arauca, of course, is the department where, since early 2003, U.S. military personnel have been training the Colombian military to protect an oil pipeline.

Here is a transcript of the interview translated into English.

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Vanguardia Liberal: What are the Second Division’s current goals?

Brigadier General Carlos Saavedra Sáenz: The guiding direction of the Army’s command is to continue the campaign plan toward concrete objectives. In our case, that means guaranteeing the security of the country’s economic infrastructure in our zone: Caño Limón [the oil pipeline for whose protection the United States has provided over $100 million in military aid], the electrical grid…

VL: The feeling here in Santander [the department of which Bucaramanga is the capital] is that you have specific orders to focus on the border [with Venezuela]. How accurate is this?

BGCSS: Arauca is a critically important department. Obviously because of its strategic position, because much of the country’s economic structure is there, and it is where terrorist cells have grown, generating chaos and trying to sabotage our oil policy. This created a terrorist culture, a culture of violence, beginning years ago. While this has luckily changed, due to the state’s and all of the security forces’ efforts to eradicate them. An extraordinary job has been done.

VL: President Álvaro Uribe has denounced the infiltration of the zone’s political leadership [by armed groups]. What has happened?

BGCSS: Yes, it was like that, but this co-government, which made any development difficult, has ended. They stole not only the oil, but huge amounts of oil royalties. Now we find a department with legitimate government, legitimate mayors and people committed to development.

VL: Can it be said that Arauca has recovered?

BGCSS: Totally. There are outbreaks of violence like in all other parts of the country, but there is a commitment, we have a common vision.

VL: What is the situation of the fronts who remain there, the FARC’s 10^th and the ELN’s Domingo Laín?

BGCSS: They have retreated in the strategic sense, not just the tactical. They still carry out criminal activities aimed at destabilizing, to try to do what they did before, to make the department’s situation seem uncertain.

The 10^th Front has had to change its tactics and dedicate itself to massacring people, as occurred at the end of last year in Tame [when the FARC killed 16 people]. They know that it is not possible to confront the security forces and this way they hope to create an atmosphere of fear.

VL: What did they intend with that massacre?

BGCSS: To affect the self-defense groups’ movements, to try to take control of the narcotrafficking market. Because that is the true fight, over the coca-producing zones. For that reason, at some moments, the FARC and ELN even fight each other. The troops we have in the zone hear the fighting, which is sustained and very strong.

Wounded fighters who have escaped tell us that they are fighting for control of the drugs, because since the three armed groups have lost their co-government [from which they stole resources], they have had to turn to the drug trade. That is why Operation Shield has begun, and this is how we are going to get them out of there.

VL: What is Operation Shield?

BGCSS: It is a new strength that will give the army the ability to improve its mobility, such as the transport of troops, with the goal of reacting more rapidly.

VL: What will be increased: troop strength, technical equipment, tactics?

BGCSS: We are going to have more prepared troops, more immediate measures, we are going to grow to 12,000 to 15,000 men…

VL: Isn’t that a very large troop concentration for the region? Are the guerrilla fronts so large that they demand so many armed personnel?

BGCSS: No, it’s not that they are so large, it is that we need to do away with the problem more quickly.

VL: All of these troops just for Arauca?

BGCSS: And part of Norte de Santander, but Arauca is the epicenter.

VL: Is there still U.S. training involved?

BGCSS: Yes, they are giving training support to the men, above all in embarkation and disembarkation maneuvers [from aircraft, especially helicopters].

VL: It is said that there is a contingent from the U.S. Southern Command…

BGCSS: No, there are not that many of them, but we do have this aid, which has prepared many men, who have gone on to multiply the training.

VL: All are specialized in counter-guerrilla skills, or do they have other characteristics?

BGCSS: The units are counter-guerrilla units, some specialized in lowering aircraft, in rapid unloading… Nothing more. There are others specialized in providing physical security for oil infrastructure.

VL: Is it true that there is a plan to set up a theatre of operations in the zone?

BGCSS: No, in that sector it has still not been considered. Joint commands will be set up like in the south of the country and the Caribbean coast, but here, no.

VL: Will the Air Force be stood up in Arauca?

BGCSS: The aircraft that will be used there come from both the Air Force and the Army. We will surely have to buy others in order to improve troop mobility.

The plan is to carry out an effort in Arauca that can later be carried out in Catatumbo [a region in Norte de Santander department, to the north] and later in other regions. It is a fusion of men and machines to consolidate peace.

VL: In this moment Arauca is an experimental center for the strategy that will be carried out in other zones later on?

BGCSS: It already began in the south with our own resources [with Plan Patriota], now it is Arauca’s turn.

VL: Can it be said that it is a clone of Plan Patriota?

BGCSS: Yes sir, something like that.

VL: How many men do the guerrillas have in that zone?

BGCSS: Between the FARC, ELN and self-defense groups, there are no more than four thousand.

VL: General, the Army has always complained about the lack of resources to control the aircraft that come and go carrying drugs or small arms. What has happened with that?

BGCSS: The Air Force has done much to control that situation, without having to set up radars or use other more sophisticated measures. With the radars in Guaviare the control [of airspace] has been optimized; now there are no so-called black holes. The shooting down of aircraft making suspicious flights has increased.

VL: What is the situation in the rest of the [Second Division’s] jurisdiction?

BGCSS: In these moments in the Magdalena Medio region, the most critical issue is the theft of gasoline, as happens in Puerto Berrío. However, in the first three months we have reduced the theft of fuels by 67 percent in that region.

VL: What is happening in Norte de Santander?

BGCSS: There we are developing “Operación Fortaleza” (Operation Fortress). There have been some strong combats there, because both the ELN and the FARC think they will be able to take back territories that the self-defense groups have left behind [after the December 2004 demobilization of the paramilitaries’ Catatumbo bloc]. The quantity of landmines has been hard on the troops, but we are going to keep going, we are operating and fighting the FARC, who intended to take over those areas.”

VL: And in Santander?

BGCSS: In Santander we are basically dedicated to protecting the civilian population, because it is a region that is under control. However, we are working on the problem of extortion, which is growing in the cattle-raising zones, because as far as kidnappings are concerned there is luckily only one person currently being held captive.

We have been able to control the armed groups in Santander, thanks to prolonged work in past years. Control of the recovered areas must be consolidated.

VL: What is coming for the northeast, General?

BGCSS: Times of war are coming, because I’m not so used to being in an office. We are carrying out tough confrontations in Norte de Santander, and others in Arauca, on the highway on the edge of the jungle. With me it is pure war.

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March 28, 2005

Paramilitarization's inexorable progress

Antonio Caballero, an outspoken editorialist for Colombia’s newsweekly Semana, began a recent column with a scary quote from Senator Carlos Moreno de Caro, the vice-chairman of the Colombian Senate’s Peace Committee. (Sen. Moreno is known, among other things, for setting free two live scorpions on the floor of Colombia’s Senate in the midst of a debate last year.) According to Caballero, Sen. Moreno defended the idea of giving paramilitaries a lenient treatment in their current negotiations with the government, arguing that “the thing is, half the country is theirs.”

This is an exaggeration, but not a wild one. Even though Colombia’s paramilitaries are massacring fewer people lately and are negotiating “demobilization” with the Bogotá government, their leaders have been steadily tightening their grip on local politics and patronage, the drug trade and other illegal activity, and even a chunk of the legal economy. They are maintaining this grip through the same means as always – ruthless use of violence.

El Tiempo’s Álvaro Sierra put it well last September.

Today the country is becoming aware that – following an offensive that involved terrible crimes – a substantial portion of national territory, of the daily lives of millions of people, of politics, of the economy and local-government budgets, and an unknown amount of power and influence at the level of central-government institutions like the Congress, is in paramilitary hands.

While this trend – call it “paramilitarization” for want of a better word – has been going on for a few years, only in the last few months has it begun to receive attention from mainstream information sources. Colombia’s principal media began paying attention on September 26 of last year, when by some odd coincidence both Bogotá Sunday papers (El Tiempo and El Espectador) and both newsweeklies (Semanaand Cambio) ran stories about some aspect of the paramilitaries’ growing influence. Reports since then have been sporadic, but they make up most of the sources for what follows. There has been almost nothing about paramilitarization in the English-language media (though the New York Times and Houston Chronicle did publish pieces in November about paramilitary allies in Colombia’s Congress).

“Death clubs”

“According to a map drawn up by the Presidency of Colombia,” El Tiempo noted in its September 26 report, “49 paramilitary fronts are present in 26 of the country’s 32 departments [provinces] and 382 of its 1,098 municipalities [counties]. This adds up to 13,500 men distributed across 35 percent of the national territory.”

What is remarkable about this presence today is how little it resembles the paramilitary model of five or six years ago, with hundreds of heavily armed men wearing camouflage uniforms, living on encampments and carrying out bloody offensives to expand into new territory. While there still are plenty of these truly “paramilitary” paramilitaries – especially in strategically (or narcotically) important rural zones – they are becoming obsolete, a throwback to the Carlos Castaño era.

Instead, in the many regions of the country where their military control is uncontested (by the guerrillas or the military), the AUC’s blocs are increasingly coming to resemble Italian-style mafias. “In Colombia we may be entering an ‘a la italiana’ phase,” writes analyst Álvaro Camacho, “in which control and protection of illegal activity extends itself and accelerates, threatens free enterprise, overflows into politics and becomes a new form of organized crime that must be added to the already long list of threats to Colombian democracy.”

Like Italy’s mafias, the paramilitaries are getting involved in politics in order to drain money from public coffers. Particularly in the northern part of the country, the paramilitaries have managed to get “their” candidates elected to governorships, mayor’s offices and town councils in both big cities and small towns, university presidencies, and even Colombia’s Congress and Senate. This allows them to siphon off a lucrative cut of all government contracts and otherwise tap into municipal and departmental treasuries. While this is something that guerrillas have also done to fund themselves (such as the ELN’s access to oil royalties in Arauca department), the paramilitaries are taking over politics not in remote, neglected zones but in some of Colombia’s principal population centers.

Unlike Italy, though, the paramilitaries also seem to be getting involved in politics for its own sake. Many blocs have developed a social discourse (if not an ideology) that – while it stresses order and property – includes so much advocacy for the poor, including calls for land reform, that it sounds a bit like the guerrillas’ rhetoric. Paramilitary “foundations,” meanwhile, are paying for road-building, health services and development projects in much of northern Colombia.

After the 2002 legislative elections, paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso boasted that the AUC controlled at least 30 percent of the Colombian Congress. While not all of these legislators are willingly doing the paramilitaries’ bidding, a few are enthusiastic backers. The most visible are Rocío Arias and Eleonora Pineda, who represent paramilitary strongholds in northern Antioquia and southern Córdoba departments. Arias and Pineda were the driving force behind a controversial July 2004 address to the Congress by Mancuso and paramilitary leaders Iván Duque and Ramón Isaza.

Arias and Pineda belong to a new political party, “Colombia Viva,” many of whose members express open support for the paramilitaries. The party includes thirteen members of the Congress, 27 mayors and 388 councilmembers. Many other paramilitary-backed (or paramilitary-controlled) politicians belong to Colombia’s traditional parties.

The mere fact that paramilitary supporters are participating in the democratic process is not necessarily bad news – a measure of success working “within the system” could be an incentive for all armed groups to choose the ballot box over the rifle. The trouble is, just as guerrilla groups did in the past with disastrous results, the paramilitaries are choosing both. “The paramilitaries are forging ties with the Colombian political class even here, in this Congress, while they kill people along the length and breadth of the country,” warned Rep. Gustavo Petro, a former member of the M-19 guerrillas, in an October congressional debate. “What is being built in Colombian territory are death clubs that kill opponents.”

The paramilitaries’ “combination of all forms of struggle” goes well beyond electoral power and violence against political opponents. Like any proper mafia, the AUC’s blocs have increased their control over much of Colombia’s illegal economy. Not just the drug trade (of which, according to U.S. Ambassador William Wood, they control about 40 percent), but a big share of contraband smuggling, counterfeiting, prostitution, and gang activity.

Extortion is a major illegal income source as well. A “high-level security-force source” told El Tiempo about this phenomenon in the Caribbean port city of Santa Marta: “From the 1,000 pesos (40 cents) they charge each street vendor in Santa Marta to the 250,000 to 500,000 ($100 to $200) that every truck that enters the port must pay … and we’re talking about ships that need 70 trucks to unload them.”

Recently, the paramilitaries have begun to expand their income from Colombia’s legal economy. Part of that is their increasing share of local-government contracts, especially funds from the Subsidized Regimen Administration (ARS), a program of block grants from the central government to provide health care for the poorest. Colombian authorities are investigating as many as 63 cases of ARS funds being diverted to the paramilitaries.

Like drug cartels before them, paramilitary groups are setting up their own companies to provide services like private security and cable television in urban areas. Competitors are being run out of business – and not by the paramilitary companies’ superior service or low prices.

What follows is a description of how “paramilitarization” is advancing in several departments of Colombia, including some of the country’s most populous. This rundown, culled mainly from recent Colombian press reports, likely indicates only the very tip of the iceberg.

Córdoba

The department of Córdoba, which hosts the Santa Fe de Ralito demilitarized zone where the Colombian government is negotiating with the AUC, is the most strongly held of all paramilitary strongholds in Colombia. The following is from El Tiempo:

The AUC and Salvatore Mancuso [whose hometown is Montería, the department’s capital] have absolute control over the department’s south. The best reflection of this is that different sectors of society openly defend the self-defense groups’ discourse. The local newspaper, El Meridiano, has editorialized more than once in their favor. In Tierralta [the municipality that includes the Santa Fe de Ralito zone] there is a public hospital financed by the paramilitaries, where they attend to their combatants and anyone else who needs care.

Córdoba is the place of origin of Colombia Viva, the political movement whose members have expressed respect for the paramilitary cause. This group has two members of Congress from the department, Miguel Alfonso de la Espriella and Eleonora Pineda. The latter has been a political spokesperson for the self-defense groups in the current peace process.

Tierralta and Valencia can be considered the capitals of the AUC. There are no investigations or judicial accusations against either of these towns’ mayors. In the first, the mayor, Humberto Santos from Colombia Viva, won the elections a day after all other candidates protested against the paramilitaries’ pressures against them. In Valencia, Negus Correa won as the only candidate for mayor; the same happened in two previous elections.

It is acknowledged that the “paras” have some influence over the University of Córdoba. In 2003 a Congressional proceeding revealed a meeting between the president, Claudio Sánchez Parra, and members of the Superior Council with Salvatore Mancuso. The official denies any ties, and while he admits having been in the meeting, he justifies it as a response to an offer that no Colombian is in any position to refuse. A relative of Mancuso occupies a high administrative position in the university.

In the 1990s Fidel Castaño [Carlos’ brother, allegedly killed in the mid-1990s] created the Córdoba Peace Foundation (Funpazcor) through which he donated land, money and cattle to former EPL guerrillas to support development projects. Today, Funpazcor is on the “Clinton List” [the U.S. Treasury Department’s “Specially Designated Nationals” (SDN) list].

Magdalena

The most aggressive pioneer of paramilitary political dominance and patronage is Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias “Jorge 40,” the second-in-command of the AUC’s powerful Northern Bloc. He has brought it to an advanced state in the department of Magdalena, the home province of Gabriel García Márquez whose capital is the Caribbean port city of Santa Marta. Since 2002, “much of the business in Santa Marta takes place during hours set by the AUC,” notes El Tiempo. “Their control over the department is almost total, with the exception of part of the Sierra Nevada [coastal mountain chain, which still has a strong guerrilla presence].”

Magdalena’s governor, Trino Luna Correa, was elected in 2003 as the Colombia Viva candidate after running unopposed. The other candidates all quit, citing threats from paramilitaries. In the city of Santa Marta, where paramilitaries’ control of politics is less firm than in rural areas, blank ballots filed in protest outnumbered votes for Governor Luna.

AUC pressures also led to overwhelming electoral margins for Magdalena Senators Dieb Maloof (a recent arrival from the city of Barranquilla in Atlántico department), Salomón Saade and Luis Vives, and Representatives José Gamarra, Jorge Caballero and Alfonso Campo. A similar phenomenon occurred at the mayoral level; in Concordia municipality, candidate Efraín Escalante was murdered after ignoring paramilitary demands to abandon his run.

Earlier this month on the floor of the Colombian Congress, Rep. José Joaquín Vives, claiming that “the paramilitaries have 60 percent of Magdalena’s political class,” alleged that Sen. Saade had met with “Jorge 40” in Ralito to plot his murder.

Cesar

Paramilitaries, chiefly those under the command of “Jorge 40,” are the principal power today in Cesar department, the birthplace of Colombia’s signature vallenato music. They dominate all but the mountainous parts of the department, where drug crops and guerilla groups are both present.

Like Magdalena, Cesar also had a single gubernatorial candidate in 2003. Hernando Molina’s two opponents quit, citing AUC threats. As in Magdalena, voters in the capital city, Valledupar, cast more blank ballots than votes for Molina. In 2004 Molina’s peace advisor, María Victoria Barreneche, was arrested for suspected paramilitary ties.

La Guajira

The mayor of La Guajira’s capital, Ríohacha, Wilder Antonio Ríos, was arrested in September, along with ten city officials. They were charged with channeling to the paramilitaries funds provided by the Bogotá government to provide healthcare to the poorest (the Subsidized Regimen Administration program, or ARS). The crime was first denounced by leaders of the Wayúu indigenous group.

The officials diverted at least 148 million pesos in ARS funds (about US$60,000, a lot of money in underpopulated La Guajira) to the paramilitaries through a representative of Jorge 40 known as “La Tía” (The Aunt).

“Jorge 40” protested that the charges were overblown. “We only received 5 million pesos from the ARS. The corrupt politicians kept the rest.”

Atlántico

El Espectador notes that in Barranquilla, Colombia’s fourth-largest city, “through some ARS the paramilitaries control the destination of some public funds. There is mention of a woman known as ‘La Gata’ [The Cat], protected by the self-defense groups, who presumably through the distribution of lottery tickets in Atlántico, Bolívar and Magdalena, manipulates the millions in public resources that come from state-run games of chance.”

Norte de Santander

The Venezuelan border city of Cúcuta, the capital of Norte de Santander, was long known for the quality of the counterfeit dollars (and now Euros) that its citizens produced. Since a campaign of massacres in 1999, the city and the nearby coca-growing region of Catatumbo have been under very firm paramilitary control. Cúcuta now has one of Colombia’s highest murder rates.

The frontrunner in the 2003 gubernatorial elections was Tirso Vélez, a leftist poet who used to belong to the virtually extinguished Patriotic Union party. Vélez was killed well before the elections, paving the way for Governor Miguel Morelli Navia. The Colombia Viva candidate, Ramiro Suárez Corzo, was elected mayor of Cúcuta.

Mayor Suárez was arrested in June 2003, charged by the Human Rights Unit of the Attorney-General’s office (Fiscalía) with receiving paramilitary funds for his campaign and holding several meetings and telephone conversations with local paramilitary leaders. In June 2004, one of the mayor’s police bodyguards was arrested for paramilitary links. Earlier this month, nearly two years after his arrest, Mayor Suárez was suddenly released when a higher level of the Fiscalía, citing “a reasonable doubt,” dropped all charges.

In Cúcuta, the Fiscalía itself has been heavily infiltrated by paramilitaries. The director of its Cúcuta office, Ana María Flórez, has been a fugitive since 2003, when it was revealed that her office had been passing information to the local paramilitaries. Twelve Cúcuta Fiscalia employees are in prison, among them Flórez’s secretary, Magally Moreno, who was allegedly the girlfriend of a regional paramilitary commander known as “El Gato” (The Cat – a different feline than the one in Barranquilla). Three prosecutors and two police assigned to the investigation of the case have been killed or disappeared.

Much business in Cúcuta is now a paramilitary affair. According to El Espectador, “Many young engineers have warned that one cannot get business from the mayor’s offices or the governor’s office, because the contracting process is controlled by paramilitarism.”

Paramilitaries are also deeply involved in the private security business, sharing in security firms’ profits while using the guards themselves as information sources, as El Tiempo reports.

Investigators affirm that the “paras” forced managers of these security firms or associations to resign, in order to insert trusted people in their positions.

According to these investigations, self-defense groups’ penetration of the private guard business is so great that “para” comandantes were able to call managers of unlicensed security cooperatives to meetings in Juan Frío, 30 minutes from Cúcuta.

The objective of these meetings, affirms a police intelligence source, was to establish a series of weekly and monthly quotas that these firms must pay the AUC in order to be able to operate. Also, to define the mechanisms by which guards would provide information.

“Through intimidation they broadened their information network. The private guards, before informing the police, first advised the ‘paras’ about guerrillas, robbers, lowlifes or car thieves, who took justice into their own hands,” said a police sergeant who coordinated the investigation.

Tolima

The following account of widespread paramilitary extortion in Tolima comes from an October 2004 report by Inter-Press Service.

In each of the 36 municipalities in Tolima, the paramilitaries have lists of “1,000 or 2,000 citizens” whom they extort, said the parliamentarian [Tolima state legislator Hugo Zárrate]. Rice growers in the department “have to pay a very high tax by weight to the paramilitaries,” he said.

And for each of the 700,000 head of cattle in Tolima, stockbreeders pay 3.80 dollars in taxes to the paramilitaries, who take in around 3.28 million dollars a year in Tolima from stockbreeders and rice producers alone, said Zárrate.

Although the security forces have a strong presence in Tolima (unlike in portions of the country dominated by the guerrillas), the paramilitaries control urban areas in the department, and from that base they extort “casual laborers, butchers, supermarkets, landowners, transport drivers, etc.,” he said.

This kind of “paramilitary activity has increased and been strengthened since the second half of 2002,” said Zárrate.

Caldas

On March 18, a hitman murdered Colombian Congressman Óscar González Grisales in the Liberal Party headquarters in Manizales, the capital of Caldas. González represented the municipality of Aguadas, just over the border from Antioquia, which is the hometown of top paramilitary leader Iván Roberto Duque (a.k.a. “Ernesto Báez”), the chief of the AUC’s Central Bolívar Bloc. In statements to the press, Duque placed the blame for the murder on the mayor of Aguadas, saying that were it not for the paramilitaries’ declared cease-fire, “I would do justice myself.”

The episode revealed, as a Fiscalía investigator told El Espectador, “that it seems every political movement in Aguadas is controlled by paramilitary spokesman Ernesto Báez.” The municipality, hit hard by the 1990s plunge in coffee prices, saw much of its best lands bought up by narcotraffickers, chief among them Duque and a family, known as “Los Cocholos,” that is believed to be a large source of financing for the Central Bolívar Bloc. Citing a university study released last year, El Tiempo states that “Aguadas is the Caldas municipality in which the narcos have bought the most hectares of land.”

According to an associate of the murdered congressman quoted in a Semana magazine article, “Every politician who wants to do something in those two towns [Aguadas and the neighboring municipality of La Merced] first needs the approval of ‘Báez’ and ‘Los Cocholos.’”

Meta

Paramilitary extortion has also been commonplace in Meta, where the AUC’s Centaurs Bloc – headed by drug figure Miguel Arroyave from about 2000 until his own men killed him last September – manages to get a 5% cut of all government contracts. According to El Tiempo, “the August murder of Carlos Pérez Gómez, a departmental government contractor, for refusing to pay his fee, made this custom evident. In addition, in Casibare, Puerto Lleras, the ‘para’ chief maintained a ‘tax collection’ center where cattlemen and merchants had to pay.”

Last August, the mayors of El Dorado and El Castillo municipalities, the ex-mayor of Lejanías, and Euser Rondón – who lost the 2003 gubernatorial election despite being Miguel Arroyave’s chosen candidate – published an open letter in El Tiempo supporting the paramilitary presence in Meta and thanking the rightist fighters for their contributions. (Rondón was killed in September 2004, shortly before Arroyave’s murder).

Valle del Cauca

If you want to sign up for satellite or cable television service in one of the towns around Cali, you will likely find yourself doing business with the AUC. According to El Tiempo, paramilitary figures known as “Carelata” and “Lombrís” have been buying up small neighborhood television providers at astronomical prices, and forcing unwilling sellers out of the business. The paramilitaries have done away with the competition either by tempting away their subscribers with offers of several free months, or by destroying their antennas and cables. The owner of one of these competitors told El Tiempo that the mastermind of this big buyout is “a recognized paramilitary leader who has yet to demobilize,” in partnership with a local narcotrafficker “for whom the United States is offering a sizable reward.”

Antioquia

Though his 860-member “Cacique Nutibara Bloc” (BCN) demobilized to much fanfare in November 2003, Diego Fernando Murillo (a.k.a. “Don Berna” a.k.a. “Adolfo Paz”) continues to dominate criminal activity and much else in Medellín. Many of those who demobilized (only some of which were actual paramilitaries, many were street criminals rounded up at the last minute) remain under Don Berna’s control, and the powerful AUC leader maintains another un-demobilized bloc, the “Heroes of Granada,” on the outskirts of the city.

Demobilized BCN members were quite successful in the 2004 election of local development advisory groups (Juntas de Acción Comunal) in Medellín’s poor barrios, winning posts in 30 of them. A very credible Colombian official recently explained to CIP that Don Berna maintains “offices” throughout the city where young men are recruited and paid to collect extortion money, gather intelligence, and run illegal moneymaking activities ranging from gambling to drugs to prostitution. This same source claims that the sharp drop in Medellín’s murder rate since 2002 owes to a direct order from Don Berna to abstain from killing. (For that reason, our source adds, Medellín mayor Sergio Fajardo, a progressive who has invested much municipal resources in the BCN demobilization, “must be praying every night that nothing happens to Don Berna.”)

Paramilitaries are very much in the private security business throughout Antioquia, starting up unlicensed firms in several parts of the populous department. This is the case in Urabá, where many members of the “Bloque Bananero” paramilitary group that demobilized in November have apparently begun new careers as guards.

Paramilitaries are also trying to take over satellite and cable television service in Antioquia, as evidenced by reports of a 2004 assassination attempt in Medellín against a satellite television provider who was being pressured to sell his business.

Bogotá

The paramilitarization phenomenon extends even to Colombia’s capital. Last September, El Espectador offered the following discussion of paramilitary activity in the neighborhoods of Los Mártires and Santa Fe, which comprise much of Bogotá’s old downtown.

In the last five years, the localities of Los Mártires and Santa Fe have been experiencing a phenomenon of paramilitary factions’ control that has resulted in innumerable selective killings, kidnappings and extortions. Several years ago they took control of the zone’s prostitution centers, where they also supervise the movement and sale of drugs. Various leaders of the sector who have tried to denounce this have been victims of attempts on their lives. The latest was Los Mártires Councilman Harvey Ayala, killed on August 31, 2004.

It is an open secret that the AUC’s Capital Bloc [an offshoot of the late Miguel Arroyave’s Centauros Bloc] has taken control of the sector’s three sanandresitos [markets where people can buy imported goods duty-free, as well as pirated music and videos, counterfeit designer clothing, and similar contraband]. … “And they have managed to mix themselves in, controlling piracy of music and all of the cellular phone outlets. From the cellphones they can make as much as 100 pesos [about 4 cents] for every phone call,” said a leader of the [sanandresito] sector.

The same article alleges that in the past three years, several paramilitary fronts have taken control of Corabastos, Bogotá’s main wholesale food market.

The vendors denounce that no less than 200 members of the Capital Bloc are constantly patrolling, supervising collections from the farmers who arrive and leave (taking 15 percent of what they earn), and that many of the nearly 6,000 displaced people in the vicinity of Corabastos work as informants. According to the authorities, their control is so structured that the paramilitaries store their weapons in locations near Corabastos’ ten entrances. That way, they dominate the transit of drugs and arms through the facility.

The new model: mafia plus death squad plus political movement

All of this activity is taking place while the paramilitaries are negotiating a demobilization deal with the Colombian government, and getting serious about politics.

Semana magazine reported last month about a January 13 meeting between informal AUC advisors, demobilized paramilitaries, Rep. Rocío Arias of Colombia Viva, “a well-known businessman who has deserted the ranks of Uribe supporters because he considers the President ‘too soft,’” representatives of “Jorge 40” and Salvatore Mancuso, and others. They produced an internal document setting an immediate objective of “identifying the AUC as a political organization” and establishing a national political movement that, “in permanent contact with the AUC Negotiating General Staff” in Ralito, would coordinate a regional election campaign strategy.

“The revelation that an AUC political movement is in its infancy has caused a stir because the demobilizations have not concluded,” Semana notes. “In the current context there is a very high risk of armed campaigning” – the practice of getting one’s party elected through threats and intimidation.

Much of rural Colombia is already represented by corrupt political bosses who govern through patronage and backroom, machine politics. If the AUC’s new version of “combination of all forms of struggle” serves them well, this old guard may soon be replaced by a new class of corrupt political bosses.

These new congressmen, senators, governors and mayors would be quite different from the politiqueros of old. They would be part of a national political project: one that is vaguely right-wing, intimately tied to the drug trade and other criminal networks, represents the interests of a Paleolithic large-landholding class, and freely uses violence when the political process gets in the way of their agenda. If “armed campaigning” allows them to increase their share of control over government institutions – if the “para-state” is allowed to grow within the state – Colombia will finally become the “narco-democracy” that U.S. drug warriors have worried about for so long.

One might expect that the Colombian government would be seeking to put an end to this now, early on, before it advances any further. The Fiscalía, for instance, would be more aggressively investigating what lies below the tip of the iceberg, going after paramilitary-run criminal networks, paramilitary involvement in the legal economy, and elected officials who may owe their positions to paramilitaries’ armed support.

The Uribe government’s negotiators would be going beyond their immediate goal of demobilizing rank-and-file paramilitary fighters. They would push for steps necessary to dismantle the paramilitary-tied mafias and violence networks, including provisions in the “Peace and Justice” law, currently being debated in the Colombian Congress, that would require all demobilizing fighters to reveal what they know about their command and financial support structures. They would be encouraging demobilized paramilitaries to participate in politics after demobilizations are complete and, even then, taking all necessary measures to ensure that this participation is unarmed. As Sen. Rafael Pardo, a key proponent of such provisions, wrote in February: “To demand less would be to subordinate democracy to armed groups, whether new ones or old ones. It would be to send society the message that crime does pay.”

Unfortunately, this is not happening. Faced with the threat of paramilitarization, the Colombian government has been surprisingly inactive, even insisting that no such threat exists. Defense Minister Jorge Alberto Uribe unconvincingly assured El Tiempo last September that “the disease is being attacked with many medicines.”

For its part, the U.S. government’s position is less clear. While some officials are insisting that the paramilitary negotiation process must truly dismantle the paramilitaries, others are either eager to achieve the short-term goal of taking several thousand fighters out of the conflict, or are unwilling to challenge a major initiative of President Uribe, their closest ally in Latin America.

In recent conversations with U.S. officials, we have also heard an argument that we can paraphrase as, “If they end up as mafias, that would still be a major improvement over the large armies they are today, and we can deal with them more easily later.”

We believe that this is a grave misreading of the threat that “paramilitarization” presents. To ignore the problem now will create a much larger problem later. If their plan of combining crime, violence and political power succeeds, the AUC may insert itself into Colombia’s institutions to an extent well beyond what the drug cartels of the 1980s and 1990s could have hoped to achieve. They would enjoy near-total impunity, and the impossibility of opposing them politically would cause Colombia’s democracy to unravel dramatically. The effect on U.S.-Colombian relations – and on the amount of drugs arriving on our shores – would be devastating.

It makes much more sense to take the problem seriously and address paramilitarization now, not later.

Posted by isacson at 4:09 PM | Comments (1)

March 27, 2005

Security: An electoral liability for Uribe?

Here is an English translation of a column that appears in today's El Espectador.

Security: An electoral liability for Uribe?

Adam Isacson*

A bit more than a year before the Colombian presidential elections, President Uribe is doing so well in the polls that his likely opponents are either hoping that the Constitutional Court blocks his re-election, or they simply have their gaze truly fixed on 2010.

While today it seems as though Uribe can get re-elected by a wide majority, the coming election year could bring some surprises that might strongly benefit his opponents. And the Constitutional Court isn't even on the list of potential challenges.

In fact, the major risk to Uribe's re-election comes from something that, until now, has been his chief strength: the country's security situation. What would happen if, before May 2006, the improvements in security indicators (massacres, killings, kidnappings, attacks on populations, etc.) lose their momentum, or - worse still - begin to move in the other direction? There are several reasons to be concerned that the coming year may bring some negative surprises.

1. The end of the FARC's supposed "retreat." If what the guerrillas say is true, and they really are increasing the intensity of their attacks on vulnerable targets throughout the national territory, this could bring an increase in several violence indicators, a drop in investors' confidence, and a greater perception of generalized insecurity. These could result even without a significant change in the actual balance on the battlefield.

2. The possibility that the dialogues with the AUC might fail. Uribe and his advisors surely are conscious of the risk that Ralito could become another Caguán. If the "paras" leave the negotiating table and call off the cease-fire they are partially observing, the result could be a strong wave of violence throughout the country. But there is another possibility: if the dialogues stay alight but the Colombian Congress passes a "justice and peace" law that fails to do enough to dismantle the paramilitary phenomenon, the "mafia plus death squad" model that the paramilitaries are adopting in several parts of northern Colombia could multiply throughout the country, leaving the population feeling even less secure.

3. The possibility that "Plan Patriota" could fail due to a lack of social investment. Colombia already has a long history of military offensives that recover territory from armed groups. The problem has always been that the soldiers' action is never coordinated with the entry of the state's non-military institutions (courts, social services, infrastructure-building, etc.). When the military leaves the "recovered" zone - and the bulk of their forces must eventually leave when Colombia has only 360,000 military and police to cover the entire country, including those at desk jobs - it leaves a vacuum that illegal armed groups easily fill. If the lack of social investment continues in the vast Plan Patriota zone, there is a great danger that this ambitious offensive will have the same result as its forebears. If this model also fails, it could have important electoral implications.

4. The lack of money. The state of government finances threatens President Uribe's security programs. With a central-government deficit projected to reach a frightening 6.6 percent of GDP in 2005, it is very possible that there may be neither social investment in recovered zones nor more military resources for the "Democratic Security" policy. Meanwhile, the U.S. government - which has its own credit cards maxed out as a result of the Iraq war - does not appear willing to increase its own contribution to Colombia. To the contrary.

Any of these challenges could do great damage to Uribe's re-election plans. Of course, it is always possible that none of these surprises may arise during the next thirteen months, or that even if they do they fail to have a fundamental effect on Uribe's popularity. No matter what, the possibility that Uribe may fall into one of these traps is real, which means that, despite his current popularity, he is assured of nothing next year.

* Director of Programs at the Center for International Policy in Washington

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March 21, 2005

A murder in Putumayo

Below is a translation of a month-old memo from the Colombian human-rights group MINGA. It details the February 16 murder of José Hurtado, a shopkeeper in La Dorada, the “county seat” of San Miguel municipality in Putumayo department, just across the border from Ecuador. In late January, Mr. Hurtado dared to organize a protest against the paramilitaries who have dominated the town since about 2000. He was killed three weeks later.

CIP joins MINGA and other Colombian groups in condemning this murder, demanding that its perpetrators be brought to justice, and calling on Colombia’s government to protect other participants in the January protest. In addition, though, we wish to draw attention to two important points about Mr. Hurtado’s murder.

First, it shows that paramilitaries still enjoy great power and freedom to operate in a region that was the original target of Plan Colombia back in 2000. La Dorada lies amid one of Colombia’s densest coca-cultivation zones. It made the news in Colombia in September 2000 – just as Plan Colombia, and the first wave of herbicide fumigation – was about to get underway. That month La Dorada, which had spent years under FARC control, became the latest stop in the paramilitaries’ swift takeover of all of Putumayo’s town centers, an offensive that claimed hundreds of civilian lives and clearly took place with the security forces’ support. With massacres of civilians and pitched battles against guerrillas in the middle of town, the newly arrived paramilitaries managed to push the guerrillas to the outskirts and the countryside. The FARC responded by calling an “armed stoppage” that brought Putumayo’s road travel to a total standstill for three months.

“Putumayo is a poster child for why you need Plan Colombia,” Clinton administration Pentagon official Brian Sheridan told The St. Petersburg Times back in the fall of 2000. “The FARC and the paramilitaries are running roughshod all over the Putumayo right now, killing each other, blockading roads, holding villages hostage … and the military and the police are nowhere to be found.”

Nearly five years later, that description of Putumayo still fits. The paramilitaries still dominate town centers and operate openly (I had no problem finding some on an April 2004 visit). The guerrillas still operate freely in rural areas. Competition over control of coca revenue continues, though reports of the two sides doing business with each other are growing more frequent. Guerrillas continue to destroy infrastructure with remarkable frequency: attacks continue against bridges, power pylons, and the Transandino Pipeline that flows out of Ecuador on its way to Colombia’s Pacific port of Tumaco (guerrilla attacks on the Transandino have risen since about mid-2003). Extrajudicial killings committed by all sides are very common. Citing government data, Colombia’s Security and Democracy Foundation documented [PDF format] a 19 percent rise in murders in Putumayo in 2004.

Putumayo is still extremely insecure and ungoverned, even after years of heavy U.S. investment in Colombian military and police units based there. The Army Counternarcotics Brigade founded with Plan Colombia funds began its operations in Putumayo. The existing 27^th Brigade (which replaced the old 24^th) has been expanded with the addition of new counter-guerrilla and infrastructure-protection units. A Marine Riverine Brigade was established with U.S. funds and has its headquarters in Puerto Leguízamo. The presence of police, both narcotics and regular, has expanded in part with U.S. funds. “Campesino Soldiers” – recruits who receive a few months’ training and live in their hometowns – have been introduced in many parts of Putumayo. Despite all of this, it is still unsafe even to hold a protest against paramilitaries in La Dorada, Putumayo.

Second, as the memo below notes, José Hurtado was murdered by a group that pledged more than two years ago to observe a cease-fire. Upon taking office, President Uribe made clear that, unlike his predecessor, he would only negotiate with armed groups that first declare a unilateral cease-fire. The guerrillas refused, but the paramilitaries accepted, allowing talks to begin in December 2002. Though they promised to silence their weapons, the paramilitaries have not stopped killing people. Estimates of the number of non-combatants killed or disappeared by the AUC since the cease-fire began run well into the hundreds, or even as high as 2,000. José Hurtado’s murder is another entry on this long and growing list. Yet neither the Uribe government nor the OAS mission charged with verifying the cease-fire is doing much to press the paramilitaries to honor their commitment.

MINGA’s memo about José Hurtado’s killing follows.

 

Paramilitaries murder leader in La Dorada (Putumayo, Colombia) and threaten merchants

The Association for Alternative Social Promotion, MINGA, denounces before the national and international communities the persistence of paramilitary criminal acts against the civilian population in Putumayo, and warns of a possible wider attack against other social and business leaders in the region.

Events

On Wednesday, February 16, at 1:00 PM, two men driving a pickup truck from the state oil company ECOPETROL, wearing uniforms from the same company, arrived at the house of Mr. JOSÉ HURTADO – an Ecuadorian citizen – whom they killed in front of his wife and children, after threatening and throwing to the ground the auxiliary policeman who was assigned to guard him. Afterward they went to the house of JOSÉ GUSTAVO ÁLVAREZ, the vice-president of the municipal council, who saved himself by not being at home.

Background

Mr. JOSÉ HURTADO was a merchant who lived in La Dorada municipality for twenty years. On January 28, 2005, he led a demonstration against paramilitary groups, in protest of their kidnapping of another merchant on January 27.

This demonstration denounced the presence of paramilitaries in the town center [of La Dorada], the extortion of merchants, the killings and disappearances of campesinos in the town center in broad daylight, and the likely existence of mass graves in the zone. This protest march ended with formal complaints issued by Mr. HURTADO and forty others to the security forces, local authorities, and the Attorney-General’s office in La Hormiga. This led to the arrest of some presumed paramilitaries and steps toward the expulsion of this armed group from the town center.

According to testimonies from local residents, after these complaints were filed, Mr. HURTADO accompanied the Police and Army to help them locate places where the paramilitaries were to be found, in order to ensure that the complaints would have a real effect.

The risk that Mr. JOSÉ HURTADO and the leaders of the demonstration have since faced was denounced repeatedly by the municipal authorities and the Personería [the local human rights ombudsman]. As a result, the issue of protections and guarantees for the threatened merchants and leaders was of central importance in various security meetings with officials. Similar efforts were made before the offices of the national ombudsman [Defensoría] and the attorney-general in Mocoa [the capital of Putumayo]. The response to these calls was to assign an auxiliary policeman to act as a bodyguard.

On February 8, the situation of risk worsened for Mr. JOSÉ HURTADO and other leaders and merchants who had participated in the protest. That night, they received threatening telephone calls to their homes. In response, another security meeting with officials was to be convened on February 10 to discuss protections and guarantees, but was inexplicably canceled. The community now demands investigation and clarity about this act, which demonstrates the alarming impunity with which paramilitary groups operate.

In addition, concerns continue for the security of Mr. HURTADO’s family; the vice-president of the municipal council, GUSTAVO ÁLVAREZ; his family; and forty more merchants who took part in the mobilization and denunciations against the paramilitary group. In response to threats, many have already displaced themselves elsewhere.

We therefore demand:

 

1. That the Attorney-General and Internal Affairs office [Procuraduría] begin the corresponding penal and disciplinary investigations for the crimes denounced herein;

2. That the national government protect the lives of the leaders and merchants threatened in the municipality of San Miguel (La Dorada), and bring an end to the openly criminal activity that the paramilitary groups carry out in the municipality.

3. That Dr. SERGIO CARAMAGNA, the director of the OAS mission accompanying the negotiation process between the national government and the paramilitaries, immediately verify whether the paramilitaries are respecting the cease-fire in Putumayo department.

Bogotá, February 18, 2005

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March 10, 2005

Jail for paramilitaries but not guerrillas?

After weeks of often acrimonious discussions, the Uribe government and the pro-Uribe bloc in Colombia’s Congress have agreed on legislation to govern what might happen to paramilitary leaders who negotiate their demobilization but are guilty of gross human rights violations. The legislation is softer on the paramilitaries than the principal alternative bill, introduced a few weeks ago by another group of legislators led by former Defense Minister and normally pro-Uribe Senator Rafael Pardo, which in particular seeks to do more to dismantle paramilitary networks.

Like the Pardo bill, however, the “official” government legislation does include some time in prison for paramilitary human-rights offenders. While Pardo calls for terms of five to ten years, the Uribista bill would impose terms of five to eight years. The government bill, however, would also allow terms to be reduced by up to one-fifth for good behavior, and would let negotiators count toward their sentence up to eighteen months of time spent in the Ralito demilitarized zone. Under this regime, then, it is possible that the perpetrators of massacres and forced displacements could spend as little as 2 ½ years in jail (5-year minimum sentence minus 1 year for good behavior minus 1 ½ years spent in Ralito).

Nonetheless, at least all viable legislative proposals include some jail time, something that was not contemplated in the Colombian government’s first legislative proposal [MS Word file] (introduced in August 2003 and so lenient that the congress didn’t even bother to debate it) and something that most paramilitary leaders still insist is unacceptable.

Fifteen years ago yesterday, Colombia’s M-19 guerrillas signed a peace agreement with the Colombian government, which allowed its members to enter political life with a full amnesty for all past offenses. Amnesty was also the rule for other armed groups that demobilized in the early 1990s in Colombia (EPL, PRT, CRS, Quintín Lamé), as well as in Central America. None of these groups’ members spent a day in jail after demobilizing.

Why, then, is the paramilitary process different? Why do most agree that Don Berna, Jorge 40 and Salvatore Mancuso should spend at least a token period in jail – in all cases, too small a period to fit the crime – for their human rights abuses?

This question has been asked surprisingly infrequently, so there is no ready-made, prepackaged answer. This leaves a big opening for characters like Fernando Londoño, President Uribe’s first Interior-Justice Minister and now a prolific right-wing columnist.

In all of these cases [of past peace processes] guns were turned in, amnesties and pardons were granted, ex-combatants were accepted into society and the state financed employment projects. But now, none of this is possible. Punishment, not peace, is what is important. Not pardon, but reparations for victims. Not forgetting, but collective memory. Why? Simply because before, the groups in question were leftists, supported by international socialism, and now the groups are rightists hated by international socialism.

Londoño, as usual, gets it completely wrong. Rightist groups have also benefited from amnesty during the past fifteen years (the Nicaraguan Contras, for instance, or the Tangüeros paramilitary bloc run by Fidel Castaño, Carlos’s brother, in Colombia during the 1980s). It’s not a left or right issue.

There are several far more compelling reasons that, when taken together, explain why even most of Colombia’s ruling establishment believes that AUC leaders must spend at least some time in a jail cell.

1.      These negotiations are taking place between a government and a pro-government group. Unlike a peace process between longtime enemies, both sides in these talks share a very strong interest in sweeping the same past abuses under the rug, minimizing the importance of the worst violations, and avoiding reforms to the status quo. The paramilitaries want as much “forgiving and forgetting” as possible in order to avoid jail, to keep from losing most of their assets, and to be able to keep their violent power bases intact in some form. The government, and the ruling class from which it draws most of its leadership, has no desire to reveal the role that officials, military officers, and wealthy individuals played in establishing and training paramilitaries, facilitating or willfully ignoring massacres, or supporting the groups financially along with some of the country’s worst drug figures. Those without a seat at the table, then, reasonably believe that they must pressure for an agreement that holds the worst violators accountable in some way – and at least some time in jail is an indicator that accountability is being taken seriously.

2.      The scale of the abuses committed matters. While this is probably the weakest of the reasons presented here, it still carries some weight: the paramilitaries simply committed many, many times more abuses than the M-19 or the other groups that demobilized fifteen years ago. As murderous as guerrillas have been over the years, the paramilitaries have dominated statistical categories like massacres, extrajudicial killings, disappearances, displacement, and torture – at times by ratios of as high as three to one over the anti-government fighters. This does not excuse guerrillas, who dominated other categories like kidnapping, attacks on populations and destruction of infrastructure. But it does make it harder to give the paramilitaries the same deal that the M-19 got in 1990.

3.      International norms have changed since 1990. When the M-19 and other groups demobilized fifteen years ago, few disputed that the abuses they committed were “political crimes” that could be pardoned in exchange for pledges to demobilize and to seek reconciliation with society. Since then, two things have happened. First, September 11 caused a blurring of the line between “political crimes” that can be forgiven, and “terrorism” that must be punished. For the moment, there is no international standard for discerning which is which. Second, the establishment of an International Criminal Court (to which Colombia is a signatory) and efforts of judges like Baltasar Garzón have made it at least conceivable that war crimes amnestied by a national government are still punishable in a higher, international jurisdiction. Both of these new ways of viewing war crimes make peace negotiations trickier to navigate, and the paramilitary talks are one of the first to take place in this new environment.

4.      President Uribe’s pre-conditions for talks make these dialogues look like surrender negotiations. In order to start the talks, President Uribe required the paramilitaries to declare a unilateral cease-fire, which armed groups normally do not agree to do unless they are near defeat on the battlefield. Meanwhile, the Uribe government’s repeated rhetoric insists that no “armed conflict” exists in Colombia, merely a terrorist menace – which means that an M-19-style negotiation of political reforms would be preposterous. What is left to discuss, then, but the terms of the AUC’s surrender? Under those circumstances, it makes perfect sense to be discussing imprisonment for war criminals.

5.      By putting them out of circulation for a few years, jail time will make it harder for paramilitary leaders to maintain their networks of criminality and violent social control. If ex-leaders of the M-19 had decided to devote themselves to narcotrafficking and other crime, while keeping their ex-fighters armed and on call to carry out threats and killings when needed, few doubt that the Colombian security forces would have worked assiduously to break up these networks. There is more reason to doubt, though, that we might see a similar will to break up paramilitary networks: the paramilitaries have already made inroads into local government in many parts of the country, and enjoy the support of powerful sectors of society, including powerful sectors of the security forces. Instead of crossing one’s fingers and hoping that the paramilitaries’ structures disintegrate on their own, much can be accomplished by keeping the groups’ leaders in jail cells, where it will be much harder for them to ensure that their followers do their bidding. (“Jail cell,” obviously, cannot mean the kind of arrangement that allowed Pablo Escobar and the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers to continue to run their cocaine empires from prison.)

Would these five reasons have put leaders of the M-19 in jail if they were negotiating today (or the FMLN in El Salvador, or Nicaragua’s Contras)? Probably not, in fact; only point three, regarding international norms, would have been applicable to those cases. Will these reasons require jail time for FARC and ELN leaders after an eventual peace process? Maybe, though it’s still less likely than in the case of the paramilitaries.

The FARC and ELN are still subject to new international norms, and the scale of their atrocities, though somewhat less than that of the paramilitaries’, is still horrifying enough. These two reasons alone may be enough to create pressure to put guerrilla leaders behind bars for a few years after reaching an agreement.

However, the other three reasons do not apply. As a future negotiation with guerrillas would be a dialogue between enemies, not friends, both sides would have an interest in shedding maximum light on the other’s past abuses. If both sides in such a process are actively sweeping the past out from under the rug, making truth commissions and full confessions more likely and forcing guerrilla leaders to acknowledge the blood that is on their hands, there might be less of a public demand for jail as an accountability mechanism.

For the foreseeable future, any talks with guerrillas would not at all resemble surrender negotiations. Unless the battlefield situation shifts dramatically, it is hard to imagine guerrillas agreeing to a cease-fire anytime soon, much less accepting the Uribe government’s idea that they have no political claims and are mere “terrorists.” If the negotiations encompass more than just surrender terms, the prospect of jail will be less.

Finally, it’s easy to imagine the Colombian government doing much more to stamp out criminal networks run by ex-guerrillas, whose action against economic elites would be predatory, than those run by ex-paramilitaries, who would be in league with corrupt sectors of the elite. Jail time would make little difference to the effort to dismantle post-conflict guerrilla networks.

Notice that the words “leftist” and “right-wing” did not come up at all in this discussion. Mr. Londoño is wrong – ideology has nothing to do with it. Some jail time is virtually inevitable for top paramilitary leaders because the AUC talks are fundamentally different from most other peace negotiations.

Posted by isacson at 9:44 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

March 1, 2005

From paramilitarism to "hidden powers"?

One of the thorniest issues the paramilitary negotiations must untangle is the question of dismantlement: how to guarantee that the AUC doesn’t emerge from a “successful” dialogue in some other violent and threatening form.

The group of Colombian congresspeople led by Senator (and former Defense Minister) Rafael Pardo at least tries to address the dismantlement question. The legislation they are promoting would require demobilizing paramilitary members to confess to crimes and to reveal what they know about who commanded them and who supported them. The bill would require investigations of demobilizing paramilitaries to “seek especially to know the structure, formation, command and systematic patters that the suspect’s group has developed, in order to establish the diverse and varied misconduct carried out in the armed group’s name.”

While this is far from a perfect tool for eliminating paramilitary networks, it is far more than what many in the Colombian government – including peace negotiator Luis Carlos Restrepo and Vice President Francisco Santos – would ask. This faction would only require demobilizing paramilitaries to provide their names, towns of origin and similar contact information.

If Colombia passes a demobilization law that fails to dismantle paramilitarism, it doesn’t automatically follow that the paramilitaries will reassume their present form. The era of militarized self-defense groups – with thousands of members wearing uniforms with armbands and insignia, carrying heavy weapons, and living in remote encampments – would probably come to an end no matter what. This model of violent territorial control may now be obsolete in parts of Colombia where landowners, ranchers, drug lords and other monied interests have used paramilitaries to push out guerrillas (Córdoba, much of Antioquia, Cesar, southern Magdalena Medio).

To see what the future might look like if the AUC is not properly dismantled, it’s worth reading (or re-reading) Hidden Powers in Post-Conflict Guatemala [PDF file], a late-2003 report that Susan Peacock and Adriana Beltrán wrote for the Washington Office on Latin America. The researchers painted a grim, scary picture of Guatemala seven years after the 1996 peace accord: a country where levels of political violence are again rising, and many forms of political dissent are growing riskier, because of a shadowy network of traditional-landowning-elite types, narco-criminals, former military officers and paid killers. Most of the network’s trigger-pullers have combat experience, particularly as former members of Civil Self-Defense Patrols (PACs), which were Guatemala’s notoriously vicious version of the paramilitaries.

Three representative excerpts from that report:

The clandestine groups do not act on their own, but at the behest of members of an inter-connected set of powerful Guatemalans. The individuals and groups that make up this secretive, amorphous network are known as the hidden powers. They oversee and profit from a variety of illegal activities that they carry out with little fear of arrest or prosecution. These illegal activities often involve the improper exercise of influence in the state – skimming at customs, bribery and kickbacks, for example – and include connections to drug trafficking and other forms of organized crime. Along with their influence in the state bureaucracy, the hidden powers have relationships with most of the political parties and actors in Guatemala.

…

The abuses are clearly targeted. While many appear on the surface to be acts of common crime, the number and patterns of the cases point to a systematic targeting of civil society actors and others involved in “anti-impunity initiatives” – both those who seek justice for past abuses (human rights groups, forensic experts, judges, lawyers, and witnesses) and those who denounce present-day corruption by state agents. Those who fight for economic and social rights, particularly land rights, and for an end to discrimination against indigenous people, are also singled out for attacks.

…

The term hidden powers refers to an informal, amorphous network of powerful individuals in Guatemala who use their positions and contacts in the public and private sectors both to enrich themselves from illegal activities and to protect themselves from prosecution for the crimes they commit. It describes an unorthodox situation where legal authorities of the state still have formal power, but, de facto, members of the informal network hold much of the real power in the country.

This sounds like parts of Colombia today, and it sounds like the situation that many analysts are describing when they voice concerns about the country’s creeping “paramilitarization.” In the past two or three years, a period in which the AUC’s blocs have made little effort to conquer new territories, paramilitary power has grown in other ways.

The groups get their chosen candidates elected to the legislature, governorships and mayoralties (often by threatening opposing candidates). Salvatore Mancuso famously bragged after the 2002 legislative elections that the AUC had over 30 percent of the Congress in its pocket. They siphon funds from state coffers, including municipal and departmental healthcare and pension budgets. They are reportedly increasing their share of both legal and illegal commerce. And they continue to target human rights activists, union organizers, independent-minded journalists, and other would-be threats to the status quo. (For more on the subterranean rise of paramilitarism, see the reports that Colombia’s El Tiempo and El Espectador published on the same day last September.)

If the AUC negotiations do not stop this diffusion of paramilitary power throughout society, Guatemala’s present could be Colombia’s future. The way to avoid it is twofold: governance and dismantlement.

It will be difficult for the Colombian government to guarantee security in zones where paramilitaries are demobilizing: 375,000 soldiers and police can only stretch so far. But the same powerful interests that supported and nurtured paramilitary groups for the past twenty years are not about to see their tightly run communities and properties fall to the guerrillas. If the Colombian state fails to step in with a significant, well-funded presence – partly military but mostly civilian – these regions’ “hidden powers” will have a Plan B of their own, and they will have hundreds of demobilized fighters on whom they can call. The state, then, cannot fail to step in and govern zones that paramilitaries would vacate after a demobilization accord is reached.

That accord, meanwhile, must include a thorough effort to identify, investigate, and dismantle the AUC’s sources of financial and logistical support, as well as its formal and informal chains of command. Of course it will be impossible to uncover all that is hidden. But the Pardo bill at least takes a step in the right direction.

Is this enough to avoid a Guatemala outcome? Perhaps not; much will depend on the investigators’ aggressiveness and the government’s political will to devote resources to formerly paramilitary-held zones. And of course, it will also depend on the Colombian government’s Restrepo-Santos faction not getting its way with a weaker version of the “truth, justice and reparations” law.

Posted by isacson at 11:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 26, 2005

Paramilitary talks: the breaking point?

After more than two years of watching the pendulum swing from crisis to optimism and back again, the paramilitary negotiations have finally reached their breaking point. The AUC leadership let it be known this week that they will walk away from the table if their leaders have to spend time in jail. The Colombian government’s response: if you quit the talks, you have five days to pack, turn off the lights and get out of the Ralito demilitarized zone.

Though the AUC seems to have since softened its position, it looks like this negotiation process is about where the Pastrana government’s talks with the FARC were in late 2001. The talks have reached the point at which discussion of procedural and technical matters (cease-fires, demilitarized zones, in the AUC’s case the distraction of hastily thrown-together demobilizations) has been exhausted, and all parties’ true interests – the potential dealbreakers – come into sharp focus.

The Colombian government and AUC leadership probably would have been happy to spend a good deal more time allowing the talks to continue meandering and avoiding the big questions. (This is what tends to happen to any talks that lack an outside, third-party facilitator empowered to hold both sides to an agenda.) What has forced the issue now is the need for money.

Demobilizing and reintegrating the paramilitaries could cost a quarter-billion dollars or more (which, incidentally, is only a shade more than what the United States already spends each year just to maintain all of the aircraft it has given Colombia over the past several years). The Colombian government is asking international donor countries for funding. Uncomfortable with supporting a process that could end up consolidating paramilitarism’s power in Colombia, donor countries are demanding that Colombia first pass a law to govern what will happen to demobilizing paramilitary leaders accused of serious crimes against humanity, how victims will be compensated, and how the AUC will be dismantled.

This law is now under discussion within the Uribe government, where Interior Minister Sabas Pretelt is backing a “peace and justice” law that chief negotiatior Luis Carlos Restrepo, backed by Vice-President Francisco Santos, believes is too tough on the paramilitaries and will thus make it impossible to negotiate. Where President Uribe himself stands is a mystery to everyone.

Simultaneously, the Uribe government is in discussions with key members of the Colombian Congress, particularly those who back Uribe vociferously and will do whatever he asks (and, in a few cases, whatever the AUC asks). Talks have largely broken down with another key bloc of the Congress backing a much tougher “truth, justice and reparations” bill, the coalition of pro-Uribe and leftist parties whose most visible face is Senator and former Defense Minister Rafael Pardo.

The present offers a terribly confusing picture of several competing blocs with widely diverging positions on a broad array of interests. What follows is an attempt – perhaps not a successful one – to make sense of it without oversimplifying to the point of uselessness.

Right now, we can identify seven key interest groups and five strongly divisive issues. Certainly there are more than seven interest groups (for instance the guerrillas do not appear on this list even though they can torpedo the talks with a few acts of violence). There are also more than five divisive issues (such as cease-fire violations or narcotraffickers’ presence in the AUC) but the focus here is on those that appear in the contentious debate over the “framework legislation” to govern demobilizations.

Interest groups include:

1. The paramilitary leadership, which does not want to spend a day in jail, fears extradition to the United States on narcotics charges, and wants to keep at least a good share of the land and wealth it plundered over the years.

The entire Uribe government wants to stuff the paramilitary genie back into the bottle, use a successful negotiation as an argument for re-election in 2006, and keep the names of paramilitary supporters out of the historical record. For now at least, the government divides in two blocs with different estimations of how much the paramilitaries’ demands can be appeased without losing foreign aid and political face.

2. The Restrepo-Santos bloc calls for less jail time, would not require demobilizing paramilitaries to confess their crimes or give information about their command and support networks. It would put some limits on reparations and paramilitary asset seizures.

3. The Sabas Pretelt bloc backs a somewhat tougher law with more jail time, some confession and post-demobilization investigation of crimes, and a stronger reparations regime.

4. The Pardo congressional bloc backs a tougher law with fewer loopholes and less vague language than the Pretelt bill; a stated goal is the true dismantlement of paramilitarism – an effort to guarantee that the AUC does not continue to exist in another violent, lawless form. Like the two government blocs’ proposals, the Pardo bill does not appear to make a priority of identifying the paramilitaries’ past supporters in the Colombian military or their wealthy civilian donors.

5. Non-U.S. donor nations seem to be backing something similar to the Pardo bill, though they probably have somewhat more interest in extraditing paramilitary members and perhaps more interest in seeing the groups’ supporters named as part of a “historical memory” or other healing process. The U.S. Congress probably falls along these general lines, as indicated by statements like a bipartisan letter sent to President Uribe in early February.

6. The Bush administration occasionally talks tough about jail time and dismantlement, but it is hard to underestimate its desire to support President Uribe in all of his endeavors. It is possible, then, that the administration might support a weaker bill and try to put a good face on it. There is little flexibility on the extradition issue, of course, though the administration will probably not allow a failure to extradite demobilized paramilitary leaders to affect its relations with Colombia.

7. Victims’ groups, of course, want everything: jail time for paramilitary offenders, reparations, dismantlement, and naming of paramilitary supporters – though they are more ambivalent about extradition. They are joined by Sen. Piedad Córdoba, leader of the Liberal Party’s left wing, and some of the non-governmental human rights community. (Many human-rights NGOs are reluctantly backing the Pardo bill because it is the only legislative vehicle with even a remote chance of passage, though their hearts are clearly with the hard line of the victims’ groups.)

The five key issues at the moment are:

1. Some jail time for paramilitary abusers. Positions on this issue range from none at all (the AUC) to a few years with a chance for suspended sentences (Restrepo-Santos) to 5-10 years (Pardo) to 20-40 years (victims’ groups).

2. Requiring demobilized paramilitaries to confess their crimes and provide information necessary to dismantle paramilitary networks. Positions range from the current situation of taking down only names and ID numbers and making sure no arrest warrants are outstanding (which the AUC and Restrepo-Santos appear to support), to requiring vague “cooperation” instead of “confession” (Pretelt), to requiring confession and dismantlement (Pardo, and even more strongly, victims’ groups).

It would seem uncontroversial to require paramilitaries to confess and reveal what they know about their organization. Yet the Uribe government has consistently objected to this, as well as anything resembling a truth commission. The official reason is that they believe this would be a dealbreaker for the AUC – but the paramilitary leadership seems to be much more worried about jail and extradition. An unofficial reason might be that the Uribe government and its wealthier and more powerful backers fear a real investigation into paramilitary support networks. By casting a wide net of investigations and interviews of demobilizing fighters, a dismantlement process could end up uncovering more information about paramilitarism than they want revealed. In particular, such an investigation could reveal the identities of military officials and wealthy Colombians who materially supported paramilitaries over the years.

3. Naming of supporters, then, is another key issue of contention at this phase of the talks. Though the Pardo bill requires much more investigation of demobilizing paramilitary fighters than the Uribe government would, the bill does not make a specific effort to identify those who helped the paramilitaries over the years with money, weapons, training, logistical support, or simply by looking the other way.

4. Reparations for victims is a somewhat less controversial issue – almost everyone agrees that victims should have their assets returned if possible. Positions vary, however, on issues like what sort of body should be in charge of adjudicating claims, whether funding will come from seized assets or from the government treasury, and whether “reparations” should include payments for non-tangible losses like pain and suffering.

5. Extradition is strongly opposed by the paramilitaries and strongly favored by the United States (at least rhetorically). Elsewhere in Colombia, though, support for extradition is generally rather tepid. The Uribe government will not extradite paramilitary leaders who comply with commitments in a future peace agreement. Groups that want to see paramilitaries go to jail often oppose extradition as an imperialist imposition, or they are simply agnostic on the issue.

The table below offers a further oversimplification of the issue – a rough overview of where each bloc stands on these five issues. Opinions on each issue are ranked on a scale of 1 to 5. “1” means strongly disagree, “5” means strongly agree, and “3” means no strongly expressed opinion (or division with the bloc).

	Some jail	Confession / Dismantlement	Name supporters	Reparations	Extradition	Total out of 25 (desire to change status quo)
AUC	1	1	1	3	1	7
Government I (Restrepo / Santos)	2	2	1	4	2	11
Government II (Pretelt)	3	3	1	4	3	14
US government	3	3	2	4	5	17
Pardo bloc in Congress	4	4	3	5	2	19
Most non-U.S. donor nations	4	4	4	5	3	20
Many victims’ groups (ideal preference of many NGOs supporting Pardo bill)	5	5	5	5	2	22
Total out of 35 (likelihood of a reform)	22	22	17	30	18

Though clearly too simple to be useful for very much, this table still reveals some interesting conclusions:

1. Adding the totals on the bottom row shows that a generous reparations regime might be likely, while naming the paramilitaries’ outside supporters might prove difficult. Extradition also looks unlikely to happen. Meanwhile, the questions of jail, confession and dismantlement yield totals right in the middle of the scale, making it hard to predict what the final outcome will be.

2. Adding the totals in the right column shows that the two blocs most opposed to any change from the status quo happen to be the two blocs seated at the negotiating table: the AUC and the Restrepo bloc of the Uribe government. If the negotiators on both sides favor a lenient deal, any hope for tougher truth, justice, reparations and dismantlement measures must come from outside actors who do not have a seat at the table.

This may be the most important conclusion we can draw at the moment. The role of outside actors – dissident legislators, NGOs, organized victims, foreign donors – is absolutely crucial right now. Any hope for a tough “truth, justice and reparations” regime lies with their ability to counter-balance the interests of the two groups sitting at the negotiating table.

Posted by isacson at 10:04 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

February 21, 2005

Uribe's re-election and the bond market

“You mean to tell me that the success of my program and my reelection hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of f***ing bond traders?”

That’s how Bill Clinton responded in 1993, according to an account in Bob Woodward’s The Agenda, after his advisors told him that his ambitious economic plan had to be put on hold because of deficit jitters in the equities markets.

It seems the bond traders are at it again in Colombia, according to a Reuters piece from last Wednesday.

In December, Colombia's Congress passed a constitutional amendment that would allow President Álvaro Uribe to run for re-election. Sometime during the next few months, Colombia’s Constitutional Court will rule on the amendment. It is possible that the court may strike it down on procedural grounds. Last spring, for instance, it killed an “anti-terror” amendment, heavily favored by President Uribe, that would have given Colombia’s military the power to arrest civilians, interrogate them and tap their phones.

Should the court stop Uribe from running again in 2006, writes reporter Hugh Bronstein, a likely result will be a “selling of the Andean country’s bonds.”

If Uribe can’t run for re-election, says one U.S.-based portfolio manager, “you would see a significant sell-off across the board in Colombian assets.” The result: “A dive in bond prices would make it more expensive for the already cash-strapped government to borrow.”

In other words: if Uribe’s re-election is struck down and someone else appears likely to occupy the Palacio de Nariño in 2006, Colombia risks seeing its debts approach junk-bond status. This other president would have to use much more of his budget just to service existing debt, which would mean less money for both military and social needs. Though foreign bond traders don’t get to vote in Colombia, they’re already indicating that electing someone other than Uribe could carry a big price tag.

The bond market is quite pleased with Álvaro Uribe. His security policies have made Colombia safer for the investor class. He is loath to tax upper income brackets or corporate profits. By holding down growth in social spending wherever possible, he has managed to bring deficits within IMF targets – though less-than-expected economic growth may make that hard to sustain. The bond traders would nonetheless hate to see Uribe have to go when his term ends.

When a country is running high deficits, the international bond market can become almost an additional branch of government, with strong checks on the other branches’ power. It is a very conservative branch – no surprise, since big money is involved – and its participants are made very nervous by leaders (such as Clinton, or Lula in Brazil) who appear to favor using government to fight poverty or increasing the tax burden of the wealthiest. The danger of a selloff leaves those leaders with fewer policy options; they in fact find themselves bending over backwards to prove that they are not about to recklessly blow the treasury on national healthcare, anti-hunger programs or education grants. They are left with incrementalism.

Meanwhile, bond traders don’t seem to put anywhere near as tight a straitjacket on leaders for whom they feel an affinity. George W. Bush thus continues to enjoy historically low interest rates even as he runs historically high deficits. And Álvaro Uribe’s mere presence is enough to avoid a bond selloff.

This is not a sinister conspiracy. Bond traders are ultimately motivated by perceptions of risk – the chance that they could lose lots of money – and not a right-wing political agenda.

However, there does seem to be an assumption that right-wing government equals lower risk. That assumption is faulty and it could end up losing people big money.

In fact, it’s been proven wrong. Look no further than the two recent examples of candidates who sent the bond market into a tailspin every time they went up in the polls: Bill Clinton and Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. Clinton ended up presiding over the longest period of economic expansion in U.S. history, and his government was the first in thirty years to run a budget surplus. Lula’s moderation has angered his base, but Brazil’s economy grew 5.2 percent last year, CEPAL estimates.

Colombia, by comparison, grew by only 3.3 percent. Its central government deficit is expected to top 6 percent of GDP this year. Yet the bond market sees no alternative to re-election?

Posted by isacson at 1:49 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

February 12, 2005

The end of the FARC's "retreat"?

“The FARC have tried to go on the offensive, but they have not been able to do so,” said Gen. Reinaldo Castellanos, the head of the Colombian Army, back in December. “Militarily they are evidently in retreat.”

That statement, a pretty common one during the past year or two, has been called seriously into doubt by events of the past two weeks. After a long period of only sporadically committing acts of violence large enough to make the news, the guerrillas have launched a series of large-scale attacks, ambushes and pitched battles against the Colombian military.

• Iscuandé, Nariño, February 1: An estimated 200 FARC fighters carried out a nighttime surprise attack on a riverine marine post near the Pacific coast in Colombia’s far southwest. The guerrillas launched homemade mortars, made from the small gas tanks that Americans know from their household gas grills, at the sixty mostly sleeping marines stationed there. Over half of the contingent were “campesino marines,” participants in a Uribe government program that stations volunteer soldiers in their home towns after giving them three months of training. Fifteen marines were killed, and twenty-six were wounded.
• Puerto Asís, Putumayo, February 2: In an Iraq-style roadside bombing, guerrillas detonated mines just as a truckload of soldiers passed by. The attack occurred on the well-traveled road between Puerto Asís, Putumayo’s largest city, and the town of Santa Ana, which hosts a military base, about ten miles to the north. The area has a significant military and police presence; much of it is funded by the United States, since Putumayo, a province in southwestern Colombia, was the initial focus of “Plan Colombia” 4-5 years ago. Eight soldiers were killed and five were wounded.
• Vistahermosa, Meta, February 2: Combat between guerrillas and Colombian forces killed five soldiers and twelve guerrillas. Vistahermosa, one of five south-central Colombian municipalities that was demilitarized to host the failed 1998-2002 FARC peace talks, is now part of the large zone where “Plan Patriota,” an ambitious U.S.-supported military offensive begun more than a year ago, is taking place.
• Pasto-Tumaco highway, Nariño, February 7: In the only one of these attacks to target civilians, guerrillas staged several roadblocks on a heavily traveled highway in southwestern Colombia, burning several trucks, buses and taxis. Security forces arrived in time to prevent the kidnapping of twelve people.
• Mutatá, Antioquia, February 8-9: The military killed several FARC fighters during firefights in an indigenous village in the Urabá region near Panama. As the soldiers were returning to their base, the guerrillas regrouped and ambushed them. Nineteen soldiers and eleven guerrillas were killed. Gen. Héctor Fandino, the chief of the army unit responsible for Urabá (17^th Brigade), was relieved of his command.
• FARC activity in January: The FARC carried out a few large-scale actions in January as well, including a New Year’s massacre of sixteen civilians in Tame, Arauca; the killing of seven soldiers in a Tolima minefield, and an attack on a Tolima jail that freed 20 guerrillas.

(On a personal note, the two roadside attacks in the above list are unsettling because I’ve been on both of those stretches of road within the past year.)

End of the “tactical retreat”?

The early February eruption reminds Colombians of the 1996-2002 period in which the FARC – attempting to move from hit-and-run guerrilla activity to what Mao called the “war of position” – launched frequent large-scale attacks on both military and civilian targets, occasionally overrunning rural towns and military outposts. The news of the past two weeks has analysts in Colombia wondering whether these days have returned. As Semana magazine’s excellent cover story / editorial on the subject noted, on the morning of the Iscuandé attack

The news sounded like something from another era. The majority of Colombians had forgotten what it was like to wake up, turn on the radio, and hear an account of a violent takeover of a town, as occurred so often several years ago. Above all when memories are fresh of holiday vacations in which Colombians were able to travel throughout the country in peace, when highway traffic increased by 30 percent, when murders dropped by 15 percent in 2004, kidnappings 42 percent and forced displacement 37 percent.

Why did the FARC’s “war of position” stop after 2002? Supporters of Álvaro Uribe give the credit to his government’s “Democratic Security” policy, which continued the previous Pastrana government’s increases in defense spending and military manpower, while deploying the security forces throughout the country and involving civilians as informants.

Of course the policy gets some credit – it seems as though Colombia’s violence levels began their documented decline exactly in August 2002, after Uribe was sworn in. But skeptics insist that there is more going on. After all, they point out, the reductions in official measures of violence – especially guerrilla violence – are much greater than the increases in defense spending or military and police manpower. How, for instance, does a 28 percent increase in force strength lead to a 69 percent decrease in attacks on towns, or a 57 percent decline in massacres?

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Official statistics show changes in security results during the Uribe presidency that are often far greater than increases in defense spending or force strength.

 

Colombian government sources consulted:

Departamento Nacional de Planeación, La seguridad democrática en el Plan Nacional de Desarrollo 2003 – 2006 (PowerPoint)
Ministerio de Defensa Nacional, Situación Presupuestal del Ministerio de Defensa para el Año 2005 (PowerPoint)
Presidencia de la República, Resultados Seguridad Democrática (Excel)
Presidency / Defense Ministry: The Effectiveness of the Colombian Democratic Security and Defence Policy August 2002 - August 2003 (PDF)
Vicepresidencia de la República, Resumen Ejecutivo del Informe Anual de Derechos Humanos 2005 (Word) 

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Skeptics also point out that the Uribe government’s counter-offensive has so far had little impact on the guerrillas’ leadership or force structure. “They still have yet to step on the head of the snake,” says retired Gen. Manuel Bonnett, a former armed forces chief. Adds Alfredo Rangel, an advisor to the Pastrana government’s Defense Ministry whose Security and Democracy Foundation is now a main source of critical appraisals of the Uribe security policies, “According to our analysis, the FARC have been badly hit in Cundinamarca [near Bogotá] and eastern Antioquia [near Medellín], where they practically don’t exist. But in the rest of the country, including the Plan Patriota zone, they are intact.”

The most common explanation for the drastically reduced 2002-2004 guerrilla violence, then, is that the FARC chose to go into a “tactical retreat” in response to the Uribe government’s offensive. Faced with a “storm” called Democratic Security, this theory goes, the guerrilla leadership decided to wait it out, as they had done previous presidents’ “total war” efforts that eventually faded away. They retreated deep into the jungle, called a halt to most mass attacks on towns and bases, and ordered their fronts to avoid most engagements, limiting themselves to ambushes, snipers, mine-laying and similar small-scale surprise strikes.

By some measures, though, the FARC has remained quite active. A recent report by the Security and Democracy Foundation found that “the number of insurgent attacks during Uribe’s first two years – about 900 – is almost equal to all of the attacks that took place during the Pastrana administration’s four years – 907.” Most of these 900 attacks, though, have been much smaller in scale than what came before.

So is the “tactical retreat” ending? It’s really impossible to say. The FARC itself has never acknowledged that it was ever in any sort of retreat or slowdown. However, in a December 27 missive, the FARC’s Eastern Bloc predicted that “our combat against Plan Patriota and other current war operations will transition from resistance to assault.”

During the past 2 ½ years, there have been periods of a week or two in which it appeared as though FARC activity was increasing, only to die down again afterward. (One example is June-July 2004, which saw a FARC massacre of 34 coca-pickers in the Catatumbo region of northeastern Colombia, an attack on an army column in Putumayo that killed thirteen soldiers, and a series of coordinated attacks on towns in Nariño, among other events.) It is impossible to know whether the latest attacks are any different.

The Uribe security team, of course, assures us that everything is under control. While contending that the Democratic Security policy is working, President Uribe has blamed the recent setbacks on military mistakes. Iscuandé was the result of poor discipline; Puerto Asís owed to an officer’s unauthorized decision to deploy troops; Mutatá cost a brigade commander his job. While his column in yesterday’s El Tiempo predicts that the February attacks spell the end of the FARC’s “retreat” and the beginning of the Democratic Security policy’s “breakdown,” Rangel does not expect a “massive counter-offensive” to be in the offing. Instead, “the situation could grow worse as elections [legislative late this year, presidential next year] draw near.”

Why now? - political reasons

Why would the FARC choose this moment to go on the attack? Perhaps to coincide with the 2 ½ year anniversary of the Uribe government, though that wouldn’t make much sense. Perhaps to knock the paramilitary negotiations off course: Mutatá, after all, lies on the edge of the zone where the AUC’s Bananero Bloc, which demobilized its 450 members in November, used to operate. If we see FARC activity in other zones where paramilitaries laid down arms, such as Catatumbo or southern Valle de Cauca province, we will know that the guerrillas aim is to disrupt the AUC talks.

The timing may also be explained by another political objective: to prove that Colombia is indeed embroiled in an armed conflict. While that may seem obvious, the Uribe government’s repeated position is that no conflict exists in Colombia. It was common knowledge that President Uribe would insist on this point at the February 2-3 meeting of international donors assembled in Cartagena, and indeed it was a central argument in his opening speech. “I have asked that our reality of violence not be called a conflict. It is a terrorist challenge to Colombian society and democratic institutions,” Uribe said, with an eye toward getting the international community to endorse this view.

While it sounds like so much semantic nonsense, it really does matter whether or not Colombia’s violence is considered a “conflict.” If the Uribe government can get the international community to avoid using the “c-word,” it can score a key tactical victory by taking away whatever international political space the FARC had left. If there is no conflict, then the FARC is not a combatant with political demands – and therefore negotiations with the guerrillas about anything other than terms of disarmament are out of the question.

Far more troubling is that if no conflict exists, the standards of international humanitarian law do not apply. Even those who surrender stand a chance of being killed. Standards for treatment of prisoners are watered down. Medical missions, like the Red Cross, are at greater risk. The distinction between combatants and civilians need not be recognized.

In international legal terms, Protocol II of the Geneva Conventions, which includes all of these standards, only applies in conflicts between

Armed forces and dissident armed forces or other organized armed groups which, under responsible command, exercise such control over a part of its territory as to enable them to carry out sustained and concerted military operations and to implement this Protocol. This Protocol shall not apply to situations of internal disturbances and tensions, such as riots, isolated and sporadic acts of violence and other acts of a similar nature, as not being armed conflicts.

If Uribe can convince the world that the FARC do not meet the standard of “dissident armed forces,” then Protocol II does not kick in.

Like it or not – and even though they commit frequent acts of terrorism – the FARC still qualifies. “Despite all of their barbarity,” Rangel writes, “we have to recognize that their recent actions are acts of war executed by a hierarchical military force, capable of carrying out sustained and coordinated actions, with uniforms and visible insignia, with a chain of command, and with presence and control in many zones of the national territory.” Analyst León Valencia, a former member of the ELN, made a similar argument in Wednesday’s El Colombiano.

The United States – which has refused to apply Protocol II in its own wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – backed Uribe’s position in Cartagena (try to find the word “conflict” in the statement of the highest-ranking U.S. representative, USAID administrator Andrew Natsios). Nearly every other donor nation present, however, was unwilling to drop the word “conflict” from the meeting’s final declaration. Their argument that a conflict exists was strengthened, obviously, by the guerrilla-military combat in Iscuandé, Puerto Asís and Vistahermosa in the two days before the declaration was signed.

International humanitarian law aside, it makes little strategic sense to deny the presence of a conflict. Calling the FARC terrorists is quite accurate – they do use terrorism – and seeking to deny their combatant status is a smart strategy for the government to use in its political war against the guerrillas (though it reduces the possibility of negotiating political reforms as opposed to demobilization only).

But if the government starts to believe its own rhetoric and allows this fiction to affect its tactics, it is in for more unpleasant surprises like the ones we’ve seen since February 1. The FARC may use terrorism, but they are not ETA or the Red Brigades, operating in cells and controlling no territory. The way one fights them is completely different, and in fact requires a much more ambitious effort in which the military is only one part of the picture.

Retired Colombian Army Colonel Carlos Velásquez (the military-whistleblower-turned-college-professor mentioned in this previous posting) warned this week, “To deny the political background of this confrontation could lead to a mistake with great consequences: to diminish or underestimate one’s opponent. If we adopt the government’s position, the armed forces will be putting their center of gravity in the wrong place.” A U.S. security expert – not an NGO do-gooder – put it to me more succinctly in a conversation last year: “Of course the FARC haven’t lost their ideology. That’s why they’re still dangerous.”

Why now? - tactical reasons

The recent upsurge in violence may mean that the FARC is making some tactical shifts that indicate how it will emerge from its “retreat.” For one thing, it appears that the group has shelved its alleged plan to increase its operations in cities; the latest attacks have been in remote areas.

For another, it appears that with the exception of the combat in Vistahermosa, the FARC is launching its actions in areas outside the southern Colombian zone where the Plan Patriota offensive is taking place. This may be an effort to relieve the pressure on the fronts fighting the Colombian military in that zone. The guerrillas may also be perceiving weaknesses among the military units stationed in other parts of the country, who may be stretched thin by the demands of the 17,000-man offensive in the south. It could be a bit of both.

It could also be that the guerrillas have made a decision to begin targeting the far-flung, lightly-manned military and police outposts that the “Democratic Security” strategy has caused to spring up in small towns and along roads and rivers throughout the country.

The Uribe government has endeavored to provide a police presence in all 1,092 of Colombia’s municipalities (or counties); at least 200 had no police at all in 2002. It has also set up 600 detachments of campesino soldiers – most of them with about 36 men each – throughout the country.

Iscuandé, the marine post hit by the FARC gas-cylinder-bomb attack, is typical. The town had lacked any armed state presence since 2000, when the FARC destroyed the local navy post. In January 2004, to the applause of the local population, 70 marines, half of them hometown campesino soldiers, re-established a presence, turning the grounds of an old school into their new base.

When it came, the FARC’s attack – possibly helped by guerrilla infiltrators among the marines – was overwhelming and devastating. According to retired General Álvaro Valencia, the guerrillas had all the advantages: in addition to far superior numbers, “gas cylinders charged with explosives, massive concentration around a difficult-to-defend position, the element of surprise, and the darkness of night to assure retreat.” Nearby police were at least able to arrive in time to prevent the guerrillas from taking over the base – an element that was certainly absent from many of the FARC’s attacks of the 1990s.

FARC supply points?

While I admit that I have as much military experience as Dick Cheney or Paul Wolfowitz, this part of Uribe’s strategy always struck me as odd. While it is noble and desirable to seek to protect people throughout the country, does it make sense to disperse tiny units all over a vast national territory if they will be no match for determined guerrilla attacks?

The scattered police-and-campesino-soldier deployments bring to mind a passage in A Bright Shining Lie, journalist Neil Sheehan’s brilliant book about Vietnam. During the early 1960s, U.S. military advisor John Paul Vann tried in vain to convince the South Vietnamese to stop stationing military and police in tiny rural outposts, which the Viet Cong were easily overwhelming and from which, as a result, they were recovering hundreds of U.S.-donated weapons.

What [U.S. advisory mission chief Gen. Paul] Harkins and his staff had failed to foresee prior to ordering the [armament] program full speed ahead was that no weapons should be handed out until the little outposts garrisoned by the territorials had been dismantled and consolidated. Otherwise the Saigon territorials would serve as a conduit to channel the American arms largess to the Communists, which was exactly what was happening. The Civil Guards and the Self-Defense Corps were the troops most frequently ambushed, and they manned the 776 outposts in the northern Delta which were the prime targets of the guerrillas. … The elimination of these “VC [Viet Cong] supply points,” as Vann and his advisors referred to the outposts in general, had been another of the priorities that Vann and Porter had agreed on. … He had recommended to Cao [his Vietnamese military counterpart] and the province chiefs that they consolidate the 776 outposts into 216 camps of company size or larger capable of defending themselves until help could arrive. These defensible posts could then function as bases from which to patrol and initiate local operations. [Page 100]

I know that was more military jargon than CIP’s website usually contains, but does this discussion of small, hard-to-defend outposts, in areas where other units are unable to come to a timely rescue, sound at all familiar? A hallmark of the Democratic Security policy is to place small detachments in remote, guerrilla-heavy areas: campesino soldiers, police posts in municipalities and corregimientos that had none, units guarding highways or rivers. While Colombia’s military today has more mobile units and helicopters to come to the rescue, the vulnerability remains very real. One of the most remarkable aspects of the FARC’s “tactical retreat” is that the guerrillas have launched so few Iscuandé-style attacks on what, in many parts of the country, must present tempting targets. That may change, I’m afraid, if the “retreat” is truly ending.

What to do, then?

President Uribe’s first defense minister, Marta Lucía Ramírez, spells out a worthy goal when she writes that “Democratic Security is based on a simple, consistent principle: that the state must offer protection to all of Colombia’s citizens without regard to political beliefs, religious creed, ideological conviction or socioeconomic level.” If the protectors themselves are beyond protection, though, they are not really protecting anyone. How to make this aspiration a reality?

One possibility is to pull the dispersed troops back, concentrating them on bases while sending out patrols, until an ambitious but slow military buildup provides enough manpower and mobility. This seems to be what the Pastrana government was doing, and it didn’t work very well.

Another possibility is to keep increasing the military and police presence until an area is blanketed with bases, posts and barracks that can support each other if attacked. That seems to describe the Plan Patriota offensive. The trouble is that the troops involved in Plan Patriota, as our last posting points out, are on their own: the Colombian government is making no effort to bring the rest of its institutions into the zone being “re-conquered” from the guerrillas. No judges, courts, prosecutors, well-equipped mayors, roads, schools, clinics, energy, potable water, credit, land titling, technical assistance, or aid to the displaced. Just soldiers, mass arrests, and fumigation planes.

If the response is entirely military, the military is bound to get bogged down. And there are signs that this is happening with Plan Patriota. Last Sunday’s edition of Cali’s El País reports that “according to information provided by the Ministry of Defense, Plan Patriota, designed to fight the FARC in the south of the country, is seven months behind schedule.”

A far better – and perhaps even cheaper – way for the Colombian government to consolidate its presence in far-flung zones is to carry out the military component in close coordination with the (re)entry of the civilian part of the state. Bringing other essential government services (beyond just security) would have the immediate effect of winning the population’s support. If residents of long-forgotten parts of the country can be convinced that a greater state presence will improve their lives, the locals will go to greater lengths to help the military to avoid attacks like the ones suffered so far this month.

Sen. Antonio Navarro, the former M-19 leader who now represents Nariño, put it this way:

Iscuandé is a municipality situated in one of the poorest regions of the country. The state’s abandonment and neglect have been constant throughout its history. Those of us who know these corners of Colombia know that these are the forgotten lands. Faced with this reality, what would be its residents’ reasons for being actively in solidarity with a democracy that has done little more for them besides asking for their vote? Why should we expect that these fellow Colombians should feel morally committed to running the risk of informing on the FARC and clearly taking the side of our institutions?

Still not convinced that the strategy has to be much more than military? Writing about Iraq in Newsweek last November, Fareed Zakaria quoted an unlikely source:

The center of gravity in counterinsurgency operations is the local population. Winning and maintaining their support is crucial. Gaining territory is less important than eliminating support for the insurgents. Now if all this sounds like drippy analysis, it's not my own. All of the sentences above are taken from the Army's most recent manual on counterinsurgency operations (FMI 3-07.22), classified but now widely available on the Internet.

What would this look like in Colombia? The Uribe government’s Democratic Security Strategy document itself [PDF file] points the way, albeit in vague terms, on page 42:

Consolidation of State Control over Territory: Once a basic level of security has been established, the State will embark upon a policy of territorial consolidation, re-establishing the normal operation of the justice system, strengthening local democracy, meeting the most urgent needs of the population, broadening state services and initiating medium to long term projects aimed at creating sustainable development.

Semana magazine’s cover story / editorial offers some suggestions for this “consolidation” phase.

There would be less emphasis on the policy of mass arrests, which has alienated the population against the armed forces in many towns, and there would be more emphasis, for example, on cutting all links between the military and the self-defense groups [paramilitaries]. But above all, there would be less effort to attack political opponents – including human-rights defenders – in speeches and books, and more effort to bring the state to the country’s abandoned regions. To bring judges, prosecutors, schools and economic alternatives to the zones where the soldiers are fighting Plan Patriota with so much effort and sacrifice. After the rifle has to come legitimacy.

While aid from the United States and other foreign donors will be important, the effort required to truly govern – and thus pacify – long-neglected zones is so great that Colombia will have to provide most of the resources. However, the United States can, and should, do much more, and it can begin by taking two urgent steps.

First, stop fumigating small-scale coca growers, a strategy that is guaranteed to alienate local populations and to reduce any support that the Colombian government might enjoy in neglected, conflictive zones.

Second, change dramatically the balance of U.S. aid packages, in order to help Colombia meet these non-military needs. For the past five years, 80 percent of our aid has gone to the Colombian security forces, with only the remainder going to the kinds of programs that are so badly needed in long-neglected areas. Unfortunately, the Bush administration’s 2006 aid proposal promises more of the same. If we can learn anything from the FARC’s recent battlefield successes, it should be that far-flung military deployments are not enough by themselves. The priorities of both of our governments – Washington and Bogotá – need to shift.

Posted by isacson at 6:44 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

February 8, 2005

Pity the paramilitary process participants

Do you feel lonely? Awash in self-pity? As though the whole world is plotting against you?

You’re not alone. This affliction seems to be common among those involved in the Colombian government’s negotiations with paramilitary groups.

• “I look once again, to my left and to my right, in front and behind, and I don’t understand the solitude in which the international community has left us.” – AUC leader Salvatore Mancuso, at the demobilization of the Mojana Bloc in Sucre, 2/2/05
  
  
• “The enormous solitude that has marked these months of arduous work has been very difficult to bear, and the attitude of an important sector of the international community remains troubling. … We are overthinking this issue. I have never seen such a heavily conditioned peace process.” – Sergio Caramagna, head of the OAS Mission in Support of the Peace Process (MAPP-OEA), quoted in El Tiempo, 11/10/04
  
  
• “Even in the midst of this legal confusion, the solitude of the process, the disinformation, the opportunism, the professional discrediting, the incomprehension, the hypocrisy … the movement of peasant self-defense groups will end this year by turning in an enormous arsenal.” – leadership of the Central Bolívar Bloc paramilitaries, 11/24/04
  
  
• “I basically think that there was a political plot against the government; the negotiations for a Truth, Justice and Reparations bill were broken unilaterally just as the Cartagena donors’ summit was occurring, in a deliberate effort to put the government up against the wall and to portray us as favoring the paramilitary groups and supporting impunity. … What took place here was a political ambush against the government.” – Luis Carlos Restrepo, Colombian government high commissioner for peace, 2/4/05

A recurring theme of the paramilitary negotiation process has been the AUC leaders' efforts to portray themselves as "victims," their good intentions spurned by skeptics who have withheld full support to the process. The best response to this ploy comes from conservative matriarch Ayn Rand: "Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent."

Self-pity alone is not going to win support for these negotiations. Participants should do less wallowing and more listening to the international donors and others who have kept their distance from the negotiations.

These would-be supporters have indicated the basic conditions the talks should meet in order to assuage their very real concerns about impunity and the persistence of paramilitarism. If there is no movement to meet these conditions, the negotiators’ “solitude” will only get worse.

Posted by isacson at 9:02 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

February 3, 2005

AUC demobilization: Eduardo Pizarro gets one wrong

The Colombian government’s talks with the AUC paramilitary group are high on the agenda at a meeting going on right now in Cartagena with representatives of 24 donor nations and international lenders. The Uribe government is expected to give a strong push for international funds to pay for the demobilization and reintegration of paramilitary fighters.

While this sounds reasonable, most non-governmental organizations, including CIP, are urging donors to hold back their contributions for now.

This, after all, is not a post-conflict demobilization. Not only is a peace agreement with the AUC far off, the Colombian government has not even passed a law to determine what will happen to the more than 3,000 paramilitaries who have already turned in weapons. This leaves serious human-rights abusers with a huge opportunity to avoid punishment. It also means that paramilitary networks of violence, intimidation, command and financing may remain intact.

Human Rights Watch, in a January 18 memo, called on donors at the Cartagena meeting “to withhold demobilization aid unless Colombia enacts a law that can effectively dismantle paramilitary groups and hold their members accountable for massacres and other crimes against humanity.”

This position is very reasonable, and CIP supports it. But Eduardo Pizarro, an influential Colombian political scientist, thinks it is tantamount to murder.

The brother of Carlos Pizarro, the assassinated head of the M-19 guerrillas, Dr. Pizarro is no ideologue and is a harsh critic of all armed groups (in fact, he was wounded in a 1999 paramilitary assassination attempt just outside Bogotá’s National University, where he was a respected professor). He is also a columnist for El Tiempo, Colombia’s most-circulated newspaper.

In his column last Sunday, Pizarro called the Human Rights Watch recommendation “a very serious error,” adding that if donors follow HRW’s advice, the result could be “a new humanitarian tragedy in Colombia.”

Tomorrow, when the AUC demobilizations have culminated and ex-combatants are drawn to criminal gangs due to a lack of resources to reinsert them into productive life, HRW will have to answer to Colombians for its wrongheaded and unhelpful recommendations.

Pizarro bases most of his very forceful argument on one nightmare scenario: the post-conflict experience in El Salvador.

In El Salvador and Guatemala, after the signing of peace accords, former combatants were left at society’s margins, without jobs or education. They ended up entering criminal or juvenile gangs (the “maras”) that are assaulting both countries. That is without even mentioning the thousands and thousands of weapons that remained available after the civil war’s end.
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During the [Salvadoran] civil war (1980-1992) an average of 6,250 murders per year took place in the country. In 1998, the number of murders had jumped to 8,281, making this small nation the most violent in Latin America, even above Colombia. Today, El Salvador’s murder rate is twice Colombia’s.

Eduardo Pizarro knows better than this. The El Salvador comparison is specious for many reasons.

First, most of the gang members committing crimes today hadn’t even reached puberty by the time formal hostilities ended in El Salvador, thirteen years ago. Second, several Latin American nations that had no civil wars have seen crime rates and gang activity similarly skyrocket: Honduras, Mexico and Venezuela to name a few. Third, many of the worst criminals – including those who brought the mara phenomenon to El Salvador – were not combatants; they were among the tens of thousands of Salvadorans with criminal records whom the United States began deporting after 1992. Fourth, it shouldn't be surprising that crime rates were lower during the years of war, death squads and military rule: extremely repressive regimes almost always have low crime rates (Russia’s murder rate was also lower back when the KGB ran things).

Fifth, it’s a huge stretch to portray El Salvador as a country whose post-conflict rebuilding and reintegration process was stiffed by international donors. Well over a dozen countries and international organizations gave El Salvador well over a billion dollars in aid in the years after 1992. (See this PDF file.) Over $100 million went to ONUSAL, a UN mission that oversaw the demobilization of 11,000 guerrillas (who eventually handed in more than 10,000 weapons, 74 missiles and 9,000 grenades) and three times as many soldiers, verified a cease-fire, observed elections, and much else. Though international donations were often delivered too slowly and there were some shortfalls (problems that Colombia will also face), donors – including the United States – carried out ambitious and (for their time) innovative efforts to reintegrate ex-combatants, including distribution of land to nearly all ex-combatants who wanted it.

Of course it's possible that the El Salvador scenario could play out in Colombia. However, if it does – contrary to Pizarro’s argument – it will have little to do with donors deciding, with NGO encouragement, to condition demobilization funds on the approval of clear rules for justice and dismantling.

In fact, the argument works the other way. Pizarro needs to respond to a concern that his column only mentions briefly: that the current scheme – and the Uribe government’s likely proposal – will fail to dismantle the paramilitaries, leading to an entirely different, but perhaps scarier, nightmare scenario.

The reality is that the essence of paramilitarism is not being dismantled. Those disarming in the [televised demobilization] ceremonies are still under the hierarchy of those who are still armed and are in Ralito [the zone where AUC leaders have congregated for negotiations]. These leaders still have more than ten thousand men in arms, and their structures remain in place. Re-mobilizing the demobilized would be relatively simple: just give them new weapons. … This negotiation will define the type of democracy we are going to have. From their encampments, the paramilitaries are assembling a political project. They are already deciding whom to support in the next elections. And, more ominously, whom they will keep from running: in the past few days, two congresspeople have told me that they had been notified that they may not run for reelection.

The paragraph above comes from a column in Wednesday’s El Tiempo by Senator Rafael Pardo, a former defense minister and – except on this issue – a strong supporter of Álvaro Uribe. Pardo, along with legislators from across the political spectrum, has proposed (but not submitted) legislation to fill the urgent need for a legal framework to govern demobilizations – a law that Colombia’s congress is under some pressure to pass quickly. The Pardo proposal is the main competitor to the Uribe government’s plan.

While far from perfect, the Pardo proposal does much more than the government’s version to ensure that those accused of crimes against humanity spend some time in a real jail. It would also offer relatively generous reparations and do much to return property that paramilitaries have stolen.

Just as importantly, the Pardo bill would at least try to dismantle paramilitary structures by requiring all who demobilize to reveal what they know about their commanders, their supporters, the location of weapons caches and similar information. For some reason, the Uribe government has been unwilling to take this simple – and hardly stringent – step toward dismantling paramilitarism. Donor countries should view with extreme skepticism any law that does not include a measure like this.

Unfortunately, it seems that the U.S. government is leaning more toward Pizarro than Pardo. In a wide-ranging interview with El Espectador on Sunday, Ambassador William Wood also played the Salvador card.

HRW’s position, as I understand it, is that the international community should not contribute to the process until the congress approves a law to regulate it. But we already have 4,500 demobilized. How many more months must Colombia wait for this judgment from outside the country to end? For example, in Central America, after the conflicts in El Salvador and Nicaragua there was peace and demobilization, but no programs, so armed gangs formed, there was no legal orientation, there was nothing.

This is simplistic, ahistorical, and just plain wrong. It is perfectly reasonable for governments to insist that their money support a process that actually seeks, through force of law, to dismantle the armed group in question. They should not be swayed by flawed analogies to a fictionalized Central American experience.

Let’s hope that other governments in Cartagena are not swayed, and stand firm.

Posted by isacson at 2:13 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

January 27, 2005

At issue in Cartagena

Next week, Colombia’s government is hosting a meeting in Cartagena with representatives of twenty-four governments, both neighbors and donors, as well as officials from multilateral lending institutions and other international organizations. Many non-governmental organizations will also be there (CIP will not, unfortunately), because what is decided in Cartagena will guide many countries’ aid and diplomacy. This is less applicable in the case of the United States; while U.S. officials will be in Cartagena and will participate in writing the resulting declaration, the U.S.-Colombia bilateral relationship will no doubt take precedence.

This is the first such meeting since a July 2003 event in London, at which the Uribe government sought an explicit endorsement of its counter-terror mission and most foreign governments insisted that Colombia agree to follow the recommendations of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. A year and a half later, most countries have granted the Uribe government’s request to include the FARC and ELN on their list of terrorist groups, and most have endorsed its military campaign against illegal armed groups. For its part, the Colombian government has not followed all of the UN recommendations, especially those having to do with separating civilians from the conflict.

Today, as preparations for the Cartagena meeting continue, wrangling among governments and NGOs has already begun. At stake is the wording of the final declaration that will come out of the meeting. Here are the main points that remain unresolved:

Should the declaration state that Colombia is in an “armed conflict?”
If the Uribe government gets its way, the Cartagena declaration will not recognize that an armed conflict exists in Colombia, recurring instead to other euphemisms like “terrorist problem” or “situation of violence.” (The July 2003 London declaration, by contrast, used the word “conflicto” five times.)

The difference is significant for international humanitarian law, as a communiqué released Monday by Refugees International (a group headed by former Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon) makes clear: “President Uribe denies there is a conflict in Colombia, and instead refers to the perpetuation of violence as ‘terrorist activities.’ By characterizing the conflict as a terrorist threat, the government is able to deny civilians protection guaranteed under international humanitarian law.”

Our view: of course the violence should be characterized as an armed conflict. Not just because of its effect on international humanitarian law, but because the guerrillas and paramilitaries – however brutal and murderous – have long histories and claim to have political goals. To deny that an armed conflict exists is to deny the possibility of an eventual negotiation about anything but the terms of surrender and disarmament.

Conditions for supporting the paramilitary demobilizations.
One of Colombia’s main goals at this meeting is to convince donor nations to be more generous in their support of the AUC demobilization process. The European Union has made clear a reluctance to aid the process until Colombia approves a legal framework to govern demobilizations “in accordance with Colombia’s international commitments and taking into account victims’ rights to truth, justice and reparations.” The U.S. Congress made a similar call in non-binding narrative language accompanying the 2005 foreign aid bill.

Colombia has yet to adopt a law to determine what happens to those who demobilize, especially those who face allegations of crimes against humanity. Two competing proposals are under consideration by the Colombian Congress: one from the Uribe government, and one from several Colombian legislators, including former Defense Minister Rafael Pardo, that would do more to ensure jail time for abuses, reparations, return of stolen property, and the provision of information necessary to dismantle paramilitary networks.

The legislative process could take months, and the Uribe government wants donors to contribute as soon as possible. The U.S. government, for its part, seems less inclined to push for a stringent legal framework, as evidenced by Ambassador William Wood’s disappointingly negative reaction this week to a recent Human Rights Watch report supporting Sen. Pardo’s tougher proposal.

Our view: the Cartagena declaration should build upon the European Union’s call for a legal framework that respects victims’ rights to truth, justice and reparations, and should specify that this framework should seek the effective dismantling of paramilitary networks of command and support.

The UN human rights recommendations.
While the Colombian government’s commitment to follow the recommendations figures prominently in the July 2003 London declaration, the Colombian government would rather not see them mentioned explicitly in the Cartagena document. The recommendations regarding the “principle of distinction” between civilians and noncombatants, as well as those calling for Colombia to respect its international human rights obligations, run afoul of some aspects of the “Democratic Security” policy.

Our view: the recommendations should appear in the declaration, and the discussions in Cartagena should use them as a framework to determine where progress has been made and in which areas Colombia still has much to do.

The loss of the UN’s “good offices” role.
The July 2003 London Declaration specifically thanked the UN Secretary-General’s special advisor for Colombia, James LeMoyne, for his contributions to the effort to seek a negotiated peace. However, we learned this week that, under heavy pressure from the Uribe government, the UN relieved LeMoyne (who was never a favorite of Colombia’s right wing) of his duties and terminated the special-advisor position.

Our view: the declaration should not ignore the very unfortunate loss of this UN facilitation role. It should at least thank the United Nations and the special advisor for its years of hard work on behalf of peace in Colombia.

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January 18, 2005

The abduction of Rodrigo Granda

Colombia and Venezuela are consumed by an escalating dispute over the December 13 abduction of Rodrigo Granda, alias “Ricardo,” a FARC member who clandestinely represented the group internationally. Things began to get worse quickly once the Colombian government was forced to admit last week that, despite claims to the contrary, Granda was indeed picked up in Caracas. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez called back his ambassador and froze several commercial deals with Colombia, and the U.S. embassy announced “100 percent” support for Colombia.

Granda reportedly attended the “Second Bolivarian Congress of the People,” a December 8-9 civil-society gathering in Caracas at which Chávez gave an address. Days later, Granda was abducted, probably by off-duty members of the Venezuelan security forces, and taken hundreds of miles away to the border city of Cúcuta, Colombia, where Colombian police announced his arrest and paraded him before reporters’ cameras. As the FARC, leftist websites and eventually the Chávez government presented evidence that Granda had been abducted in downtown Caracas, Colombia’s government spent the next four weeks insisting that he had been arrested in Cúcuta, sticking to its story even as late as last Tuesday. Eventually, on Wednesday the 12^th, Defense Minister Jorge Alberto Uribe admitted that Colombia’s government indeed paid a bounty for Granda’s capture in Venezuela.

Since then, the problem has snowballed and spiraled. Today, there is an apparent impasse. Chávez is demanding a bilateral meeting with Uribe – a formula that has reduced tensions during past crises – but is first demanding a public recognition that Colombia acted illegally. Uribe refuses to issue such an apology, wants a summit of Andean leaders instead of a face-to-face meeting, and appears to be trying to shift the debate toward long-rumored allegations that Chávez is harboring the FARC in Venezuela.

What we don’t know

It’s hard to make any definitive statements about this case, because we still don’t know exactly how Granda was captured, who was paid and when. It is clear, though, that Granda was not formally arrested in Venezuela (as FARC member Simón Trinidad was a year ago in Ecuador). The FARC representative – who lived in Venezuela, carried a Venezuelan ID card and even reportedly voted in Venezuelan elections – was abducted. Since legal channels were not used to bring Granda to justice, Chávez is probably right when he says that Venezuelan law was broken.

We still don’t know much about Granda’s captors, other than that they were apparently members of the Venezuelan security forces. Did the Colombian government recruit, bribe or pay them beforehand? (Chávez has alleged that “Colombian government agents were in Venezuela for months bribing and encouraging Venezuelan government agents.”) Did the Colombian government merely offer reward money after the fact, as it does with Colombian citizens who offer intelligence about guerrilla whereabouts? Were U.S. intelligence services involved, as the FARC and other left-wing analysts have charged without proof?

The presidents must meet

Though we don’t know all of the details, it should be obvious that this must be ended through diplomacy, and soon. Before trust deteriorates still further, communication between the two governments is necessary to determine not only what happened, but whether Colombian perceptions of Venezuelan non-cooperation have any basis in fact.

Chávez’s request for a bilateral, face-saving meeting is reasonable, and Uribe should accept it. Chávez’s pre-condition for that meeting – requiring Uribe to make a humiliating admission that Colombian police committed a crime – should be dropped. The two leaders should meet without pre-conditions. Past meetings have shown that the two leaders can work together when their positions are not filtered through the hard-liners on both sides.

All sides are wrong

Colombia

So far, no party to this dispute is without blame. The Colombian government looks bad, of course, because it appears to have enthusiastically condoned a cross-country abduction of an unarmed individual, without the knowledge of the host government. Obviously, the golden rule should apply here: Colombia would be terribly offended, for instance, if Venezuela paid Colombian agents to kidnap a Venezuelan from downtown Bogotá. This scenario is not too far-fetched, since Pedro Carmona, the businessman who spent a few hours as Venezuela’s would-be president during a failed April 2002 coup, now lives in exile in Colombia.

The Colombian government also looks bad because it got caught lying. All governments lie, but this cover-up is especially damaging because the Uribe government had to admit that the FARC were telling the truth. While the government was insisting that Granda was arrested in Cúcuta, the FARC had been claiming since a December 30 communiqué that the abduction had happened in Caracas. In Washington, where Colombian government data are accepted as gospel and FARC claims generally ignored, it is a bit disorienting to see the government caught in a lie and the guerrillas on the side of truth. How far does this credibility problem extend? Is the Granda abduction an isolated case, or must we look more skeptically at other cases in which all we have is the government’s word against the guerrillas’ version of events?

An example is the “Plan Patriota” military offensive in southern Colombia. The government insists that the large-scale operation is going well but offers little information, while the guerrillas offer what appear to be wildly inflated accounts of victories and government casualties (like this one, this one, this one and this one). Are the guerrillas exaggerating, or – as in the Granda case – is there some truth to their claims of high body counts and effective repulsion of government advances?

Venezuela

Hugo Chávez looks bad because his relationship to the FARC is being called uncomfortably into question. The Granda case reveals what is essentially an untenable position for Chávez with regard to Colombian guerrillas in Venezuelan territory. If he helps the Uribe government to root them out and capture them, he risks condemnation from some sectors of the Latin American left whose support he seeks in order to promote his “Bolivarian” vision. If he knowingly tolerates them, though, he risks making an enemy out of a close neighbor and trading partner. (Ideology aside, you can’t expect to be friends with a neighboring government if you’re giving safe haven to those who want to overthrow it.)

While it’s not official Venezuelan government policy, Chávez seems to have settled on a piecemeal position: FARC members in Venezuela on political missions – such as attending conferences or holding informal dialogues – appear to be largely tolerated. It is less likely that Chávez encourages or allows guerrilla military operations on Venezuelan territory.

That doesn’t mean the FARC (or the ELN or the AUC, for that matter) can’t be found on the Venezuelan side of the two countries’ long, remote, largely undeveloped and ungoverned border zone. In a statement issued Sunday, Uribe cites the presence of “seven terrorist leaders and various encampments” that the Venezuelan security forces have allowed to persist in their territory. Is the armed FARC presence evidence that Chávez is providing “safe haven” for the guerrillas? Or is the situation similar to what exists in Ecuadorian, Peruvian or Panamanian border zones?

All of Colombia’s neighbors wish to avoid seeing violence spill beyond the remote frontier areas, but have also wished to avoid giving Colombian armed groups a reason to attack the usually small detachments of soldiers and police stationed near the border. The result is that most of Colombia’s neighbors have been tacitly allowing Colombian armed groups to operate in remote border zones for years. The Venezuelan case is unremarkable. (It is remarkable, though, that the two countries’ border forces coordinate and communicate so rarely, considering the length and unguarded nature of their common border.) No official has denounced that the Chávez government’s policy is to give free rein to FARC military elements; if that were true, Bogotá would have broken relations with Caracas long ago.

Meanwhile, Chávez is also wrong to take such a hard line on the way out of the dispute. It is not clear what he hopes to achieve by cutting off trade ties, recalling the ambassador and demanding that Uribe apologize publicly before agreeing to a meeting. A more skillful statesman would offer Colombia a means to recognize its wrongdoing – thus giving Venezuela a moral victory – without rubbing Uribe’s face in it by forcing him to make a humiliating admission. Some face-saving will be necessary in order to crawl out of this crisis. Otherwise, Colombia and Venezuela will be condemned to a relationship of mutual hostility for quite some time (a situation that, given the closeness of trade ties and the long border they share, neither can afford).

The United States

Meanwhile, the United States is wrong too. Our government could have played a key role in defusing this crisis and encouraging both sides to move on, or we could have concluded – correctly – that we don’t have a dog in this fight. Instead, Ambassador Wood decided to jump in on Colombia’s side, telling reporters that “we support 100 percent the declarations from [Colombia’s] presidential palace.”

If this statement was intended to help smooth things over, we have no idea how. In fact, it might be the beginning of a likely escalation of Bush administration criticism of Chávez, as part of a policy shift documented in a Washington Times piece from last week.

Next steps

Uribe will be discussing the Venezuela issue in a previously scheduled meeting on Wednesday with Brazilian president Lula da Silva, and in a special meeting on Thursday with the government’s Foreign Relations Advisory Commission, a body that includes ex-presidents and former foreign ministers.

Most observers agree that the two presidents should meet as soon as possible. For this to happen, Chávez should back down from his demand that Uribe first admit Colombian wrongdoing. Uribe must back down from his demand that the meeting in fact be a summit of the Andean region’s presidents. We wholly endorse the following series of steps recommended by the Colombian human rights group CODHES for “a political and diplomatic solution”:

1. President Uribe should offer a public explanation of the operation that led to Granda’s capture.
2. President Chávez should offer a public explanation of the presence of FARC guerrillas in Venezuela.
3. Both presidents should meet in private to overcome the impasse and to develop mechanisms for joint action within the framework of the rule of law to confront crimes like narcotrafficking and terrorism. While this meeting occurs, no other government functionaries should make public statements about the issue.
4. The two presidents should jointly announce agreements for security and police cooperation, reaffirm the economic integration process, reactivate commercial arrangements and signal the renewal of trust in binational relations.
5. As Venezuelan officials are fired and prosecuted for accepting reward money from the Colombian government, the same should happen to Colombian officials who offered and distributed these payments.

(A note on CIP’s position regarding Hugo Chávez)

The Center for International Policy is encouraged to see that a representative of the left can win at the polls in Latin America despite the opposition of traditional elites and broad sectors of the armed forces. We are pleased by many of the policies Hugo Chávez has adopted, especially his effort to direct oil revenues toward social services for Venezuela’s poor majority. It is a sign of enormous progress for Latin America if a leftist leader can be elected, institute deep reforms, and not suffer the fate of Salvador Allende or Jacobo Arbenz.

That said, our position is not “Chávez, right or wrong.” We reserve the right to criticize what we disagree with. Along with journalists’ rights groups, we are concerned by the recent law allowing the government to shut down media outlets it perceives as threatening “public order.” We are concerned by efforts to pack the Supreme Court with Chávez loyalists. As a possible extension of political control, the Bolivarian circles worry us the same way that Álvaro Uribe’s network of informants worries us. We voice disapproval when the U.S. Southern Command encourages Latin American armies to take on internal roles that have nothing to do with defense, and we note that Chávez has similarly given the military a host of internal roles.

The Bush administration is free to express concern about perceived lapses from democracy and the rule of law, preferably in coordination with regional partners and the OAS. We absolutely oppose any illegal effort at regime change, however, whether violent or nonviolent. Though we have concerns, Chávez remains the elected (and re-confirmed) leader of Venezuela, and we must work with him. It is important that the U.S. government maintain cordial relations, even if his policies run counter to free-market orthodoxy.

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January 13, 2005

Welcome bounty hunters!

If you wish to visit Colombia as a representative of a foreign non-profit or non-governmental organization (for instance, to speak at a conference), it’s not easy. You have to jump through a lot of hoops.

In addition to filling out a form and providing three passport pictures:

• Your passport has to be at least 6 months old (and you have to provide photocopies of all used pages).
• You have to provide a notarized copy of your criminal record.
• You need an invitation letter from the organization that invited you, complete with a list of everyone you plan to interview on your trip.
• You need proof, translated into Spanish, that your organization has existed as a legal entity for more than five years.
• You need to prove your own financial solvency.
• You need to prove that you have experience in your field.
• If you’re not a U.S. citizen, you must pay US$175.

Then you have to wait three weeks for approval (or disapproval) of your visa.

But there’s a faster, easier way to go. When the official in the immigration line asks what you do for a living, don’t say “I work for an NGO.” Say that you’re a bounty hunter!

As Vice President Francisco Santos made clear yesterday, Colombia’s doors will swing wide open for anybody willing to hunt down guerrilla leaders, just like those who were paid to track down FARC member Rodrigo Granda in Venezuela last month. “Hopefully all the bounty hunters of the world will come here to capture these bandits. The money is here for them and the rewards are good and can be handed out anywhere in the world.”

So there you have it: International NGO equals distrust and red tape. International bounty hunter equals red-carpet treatment. The choice is yours!

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December 21, 2004

Holiday cheer from Fernando Londoño

Fernando Londoño was in rare form in his latest column, which appeared in Monday’s edition of El Tiempo. He informs us that the Uribe government’s peace talks with paramilitaries would be going just swimmingly if it weren’t for the sabotage of those all-powerful human-rights activists, UN representatives, former guerrillas and other assorted communists.

While our pueblo in arms gives its lives in jungles and valleys for Colombia’s Liberty, and the vast majority of our judges and prosecutors do their duty with an abnegation and selflessness that we will never forget, the juridical dogs work indefatigably to render sterile the efforts of their blood and sweat. Leading this entourage marches Mr. [Michael] Frühling [the head of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ Bogotá Field Office], demanding the memory, reparations and justice that the UN never mentioned when he and [UN Special Representative James] LeMoyne were embracing the FARC’s murderers in the Caguán [during the failed 1998-2002 peace process]. They are followed by all the Associations and Collectives of jurists, with their purses filled with foreign gold, proposing whatever perverse obstacles that might slow the progress of our tragedy’s final process, while also inventing arguments that they never mentioned when talks were occurring with the band of Marxist bandits. At their side, some pardoned members of the old M-19 [dissolved guerrilla group], who want to occupy the professor’s chair of moral values, using the part of their conscience not compromised by their massacres, kidnappings, vile murders and acts of terror. In the group are Communist legislators, who venerate the Chávez dictatorship and detest the democracy in which we permit them such freedoms.

Londoño seems to have left off his list the paramilitaries’ many victims and their relatives, who no doubt are doing the fatherland a disservice with their constant bellyaching about accountability, reparations, the return of their stolen property, and their desire to see the AUC truly disappear.

I wouldn’t bother to translate and post this if it were just the ravings of another paleo-right, anti-modern, feudal-landowning, red-baiting dinosaur still fighting the cold war. (You’re on your own, for example, if you want to wade through Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza’s screed in Sunday’s El Nuevo Herald.)

But Fernando Londoño is no ordinary extremist crackpot. Until about a year ago, he was perhaps the most influential figure in Álvaro Uribe’s government. In 2002, when the newly elected president was picking his cabinet, he created a hugely powerful post by fusing the ministries of interior and justice – and then surprised most by picking Londoño to fill it. The outspoken minister lasted only fifteen months, consumed by scandals about shady investment deals and embarrassing misstatements (such as suggesting that Uribe, if denied a chance to run for re-election, would resign, call new elections, and run again).

No space will be wasted here responding to the “arguments” in Londoño’s column; CIP has written much elsewhere about the paramilitary dialogues, the M-19 process, and the important role of NGOs. If Fernando Londoño ever reads this, though (say, if he Googles himself), I’d like to say to him: Mr. Londoño, you’re doing your former boss a grave disservice with this overheated, irresponsible prose.

And to President Uribe, who hired Londoño in the first place: You will be known by the company you keep.

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December 20, 2004

Simón Trinidad's extradition

Let’s be clear here: “Simón Trinidad,” the most senior FARC member ever to be in Colombian government custody, is going to be extradited to the United States by the end of the year.

On November 24, Colombia’s Supreme Court gave the green light to the extraditions, on drug-trafficking charges, of Trinidad (real name: Ricardo Palmera) and paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso. The rulings force President Uribe to decide promptly whether to hand them over to U.S. authorities. Uribe has now made decisions in both cases, determining that each must meet specific conditions in order to avoid extradition.

Mancuso's conditions merely require the top paramilitary figure to keep doing what he has already said he would do: keep taking part in peace negotiations and “abandon illegal activities.” Of course, what Mancuso has said he would do may not be what he actually will do. If the AUC leader continues participating in “illegal activities,” let’s hope the Colombian government doesn’t turn a blind eye.

The conditions facing the guerrilla leader’s extradition are much tougher: if Trinidad’s extradition is to be avoided, President Uribe has declared, by December 30 the FARC must free all sixty-three of the hostages it has held, in some cases since the late 1990s. The list of prominent kidnapped people – whom the guerrillas insist on exchanging for FARC prisoners in Colombian jails – includes military officers, politicians (including former senator and presidential candidate Íngrid Betancourt), and three U.S. citizens captured while working for a Defense Department contractor.

There is about a zero likelihood that the FARC will agree to Uribe’s demand. The guerrillas view their hostages as an enormous bargaining chip, and have sought to hold talks in a temporarily demilitarized zone (the latest demand is the municipalities of Florida and Pradera southeast of Cali) to discuss a deal to secure their release. Though a prominent guerrilla leader, Trinidad was neither a member of the FARC’s top Secretariat nor its 18-member high command (Estado Mayor Central); the guerrilla leadership is unlikely, then, to give in to what it regards as blackmail, freeing hostages it has held for years merely to secure Trinidad’s release.

So Trinidad will be on U.S. soil sometime around New Year’s Day. If that happens, what comes next?

Gustavo Petro, a Colombian congressman and former M-19 guerrilla, put it well: President Uribe’s demand “is like attaching a bomb to each hostage.” The FARC has already shown its willingness to kill its hostages in cold blood. In May 2003, FARC captors killed the governor of Antioquia department, his peace advisor (a former defense minister) and several others during a botched army rescue attempt.

What is to stop the guerrillas from responding with equal brutality to Trinidad’s extradition, killing one or more hostages? In their calculations, doing so would set a precedent making it very costly for the government to agree to extradite future FARC prisoners. The hostages’ family members are right to be very worried. The blackmail runs both ways.

President Uribe’s ultimatum not only endangers the FARC hostages, it makes it even less likely that dialogue can be re-established anytime soon. Angelino Garzón, the governor of Valle del Cauca department, which includes the area the FARC hoped to demilitarize to hold talks (a proposal Garzón supported), laments this situation. “Extradition and a humanitarian negotiation are different dynamics. The government should carry out greater efforts to find spaces for agreement, achieve the hostages’ liberation and stimulate opportunities for peace, such as what is being done with the paramilitaries.”

The government is doing the opposite, issuing ultimatums that play to popular opinion. Uribe’s demand “isn’t going to have any positive effect on an eventual hostage liberation,” Camilo Gómez, the Colombian government’s chief peace negotiator between 2000 and 2002, told El Tiempo. “The President is playing politics instead of seeking the hostages’ freedom.”

Posted by isacson at 2:28 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 15, 2004

Paramilitary Talks (6): Extradition and the U.S. role

It isn’t easy to characterize the U.S. approach so far to the Colombian government’s talks with the AUC. “Ambivalent,” perhaps. The United States has been the talks’ biggest foreign detractor at the same time that it has been its biggest foreign financial supporter.

The government of Álvaro Uribe is prodding Washington to offer the talks more political support and more funding. (Curiously, the OAS verification mission, MAPP-OEA, is playing a similar cheerleading / lobbying role; mission chief Sergio Caramagna was here in Washington last week making a sales pitch to key members of Congress, and he admonished the United States and Europe to do more in an interview Monday with the Associated Press.) The U.S. response, however, has been unclear – at least in part because the Bush administration’s position still appears to be evolving.

“Support for peace should be the easiest of decisions. But in Colombia it is not,” U.S. Ambassador William Wood said in June. Instead, Washington is adopting a tricky position of modest support and strong criticism, of moving toward helping to demobilize paramilitary fighters while simultaneously seeking to extradite their leaders on drug charges.

The U.S. government officially supports the peace talks, or at least the idea of negotiations as a cheap, peaceful way to eliminate the paramilitaries as a factor of instability and narcotrafficking. Washington’s shows of support, though, have been relatively small and tentative. In May 2003 Alex Lee, then the head of the embassy’s political section, met with an AUC emissary to discuss the talks. That year, a February 2004 letter from the State Department (PDF format) indicates, USAID spent $150,000 in Andean Counterdrug Initiative (ACI) funds on “a needs assessment study and to pay for consultants from two USAID contractors (International Organization for Migration and Creative Associates) to advise the Colombian government as they design demobilization/reintegration programs.”

This sort of logistical support has continued in 2004. Caramagna’s MAPP-OEA mission got several hundred thousand dollars from USAID to help establish itself. “The government just provided $1 million [to the OAS] for further preparation and development,” Ambassador Wood said in June. “But long-term funding is unclear.” Like the European Union, the United States has indicated that the overall process will be easier to support once Colombia’s congress approves a “legal framework”: a law determining what happens to demobilized paramilitaries accused of serious abuses, dismantling paramilitarism, and compensating victims. Small amounts of U.S. funds have gone to non-governmental organizations advising the drafting of such “justice and compensation” legislation, including the yet-to-be-introduced bill drafted by Sen. Rafael Pardo and a multi-party group of congresspeople (discussed in an earlier posting).

Overall, though, the U.S. contributions to the AUC process have been small, though its outlays exceed those of other donors – Sweden, the Netherlands, and the Bahamas – whose support has mostly (perhaps entirely) gone to the OAS mission.

In fact, the U.S. government’s expressions of skepticism have attracted much more attention. Officials speaking off the record will readily admit strong concerns about issues like the paramilitaries’ narcotization and economic power, the possibility of impunity for rights abusers, and the security vacuum that demobilizations could leave behind. For his part, Ambassador Wood took on a markedly more critical tone during early and mid-2004. A few examples:

• February 2004: “It is clear that the paramilitaries have not completely met the commitments of the cease-fire,” Wood told the daily El Tiempo.
• June 2004: “I’m not sure the self-defense groups have a political goal or that they have a political agenda. They have only one program: narco-terror. And only one agenda: destruction. … We are skeptical about the peace process,” Wood told the newsweekly Cambio.
• July 2004: After calling three paramilitary leaders’ address before the congress a “scandal,” Wood told the Cartagena daily El Universal that the Congress was not an appropriate forum to host the AUC leaders. “We’re willing to give them a forum, if they want it. It’s called a courtroom.”
• July 2004: Referring to the “launch” of negotiations in the Santa Fe de Ralito demilitarized zone, which no U.S. official attended, Wood said, “It doesn’t look to me like a transition in favor of peace as much as one in favor of narcotrafficking.”
• July 2004: “We believe that Dr. Restrepo [government peace negotiator Luis Carlos Restrepo] has done a magnificent job, but this all depends on the compliance of the evildoers.”

While statements like these have made headlines in Colombia, they pale in comparison to the best-known expression of U.S. skepticism about the AUC talks: the U.S. Justice Department’s requests to extradite paramilitary leaders on narcotrafficking charges. “Our position has been that we’re not involved in negotiations. We’re not involved either in dropping any charges or other legal action that we might want to take against individuals,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in September. It is now a cliché in the Colombian press to refer to the extradition requests as a “Sword of Damocles” hanging over the negotiations.

To the best of our knowledge, ten AUC leaders are wanted to stand trial in the United States. Most, though not all, of these leaders are currently in the Ralito demilitarized zone negotiating with the Colombian government. Those in the zone do not face any danger of arrest as long as the talks continue. Those outside the zone are powerful fugitives whose arrests are unlikely. Several of those listed here are among the wave of notorious narcotraffickers who have only recently put on paramilitary uniforms in an effort to win amnesty.

1. Salvatore Mancuso, the top AUC leader, was one of the first to face an extradition request, a September 2002 indictment on charges of shipping at least seventeen tons of cocaine to the United States. On November 24^th, Colombia’s Supreme Court gave final approval for his eventual extradition, should talks end and Colombia arrest him.
2. Juan Carlos Sierra, a lower-ranking chieftain nicknamed “El Tuso,” was also named in the September 2002 indictment. In an effort to prod the talks during a low point in late September 2004, the Colombian government declared that Sierra, who was present in Ralito, would be arrested and extradited. He has since been a fugitive.
3. Vicente Castaño, “El Profe,” is a longtime narcotrafficker allegedly implicated in the April 2004 attack on, and subsequent disappearance of, his brother and longtime AUC leader Carlos Castaño.
4. Diego Fernando Murillo, nicknamed “Don Berna” or “Adolfo Paz,” is the AUC’s very powerful “inspector-general” and head of several blocs.
5. Víctor Manuel Mejía Múnera, nicknamed “El Mellizo” (“The Twin”) but known in Ralito as “Pablo Arauca,” is the head of the AUC’s “Avengers of Arauca” bloc.
6. Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, or “Jorge 40,” runs the AUC’s Northern Bloc and is based in the port of Barranquilla.
7. Ramiro Vanoy Murillo, or “Cuco,” heads the Antioquia-based Mineros Bloc.
8. Francisco Javier Zuluaga Lindo, known as “Gordo Lindo” in the drug underworld but in Ralito as “Comandante Gabriel Galindo,” is the political chief of Don Berna’s Pacific Bloc.
9. Guillermo Pérez Alzate, or “Pablo Sevillano,” heads the Liberators of the South Bloc, based in the Pacific port city of Tumaco, Nariño.
10. Hernán Giraldo Serna, based in the Caribbean port city of Santa Marta, is wanted for ordering the murder of two DEA agents.

In the extremely slim chance that he is still alive, Carlos Castaño would of course be an eleventh paramilitary leader facing extradition.

While seeking to bring the AUC’s top leadership into U.S. courtrooms, the Bush administration wants to give a different treatment to rank-and-file paramilitaries, expressing some interest in funding their demobilization, disarmament and reintegration (DDR). The State Department indicated in February that “in its FY 2005 Budget Request, USAID asks for $3.25 million of the Andean Counterdrug Initiative (ACI) account for ‘Peace Initiatives’ in Colombia, which could be used in support of the AUC peace process.”

Most of that $3.25 million is likely to go to DDR, though it will cover only a tiny sliver of the Colombian government’s expected total cost. According to Ambassador Wood, “Estimates have placed the cost of the whole demobilization process at about $8,500 per head.” Multiply that by 20,000 paramilitaries and you get $170 million, or 52 times the USAID obligation.

It’s hard to imagine the U.S. contribution increasing much in the near term, for at least two important reasons. First are the conditions the Bush administration appears to have set for itself, which the State Department indicated in February.

We have made it clear to the Government of Colombia that our overall support for the peace process is conditioned upon a clear timetable for demobilization, legal accountability for those AUC members who have committed gross human rights violations, and a continuing commitment to illegal drug eradication and interdiction in AUC areas. In addition, the government should control any zones in which armed militants are concentrated for the purposes of demobilization and disarmament.

Some of those requirements have been met: a demobilization timetable does exist for the 3,000 paramilitaries expected to hand in their weapons by the end of the year (though it requires a lot to be done in a very short period), and herbicide fumigation certainly takes place in AUC areas. But no legal framework is yet in place to guarantee accountability for rights violators, and the government’s ability to control zones where paramilitaries are demobilizing is very much in question. While the United States and Europe have been pushing hard for a legal framework, this remains stalled in Colombia’s congress, and probably won’t be taken up again until the next legislative session begins in February.

Second, though the executive branch is free to fudge its own conditions for increased support, the U.S. Congress – which is not enthusiastic about supporting the AUC talks – has added some strong, though non-binding, requirements of its own. The House-Senate Conference Committee that drew up a compromise version of the 2005 foreign aid bill had some strong words and some stringent conditions in the narrative report that accompanied the bill, approved in November.

The managers [the Conference Committee members] believe that the costs of demobilizing illegal armed groups should be borne by the Colombian Government, not the United States. The managers are concerned that the demobilization process is being undertaken without adequate safeguards to ensure the dismantling of such FTOs [Foreign Terrorist Organizations], to deter members of such groups from resuming illegal activities, or to prosecute and punish those involved in drug trafficking and human rights violations.The managers do not believe the Administration should request funds in fiscal year 2006 for the demobilization / reintegration of members of such FTOs unless it is for limited activities that are determined by the Justice Department to be consistent with United States anti-terrorism laws.

The committee urges that any DDR aid be contingent on the following conditions:

(1) The FTO is respecting a ceasefire and the cessation of illegal activities; (2) the Government of Colombia has not adopted any law or policy inconsistent with its obligations under the United States-Colombian treaty on extradition, and has committed to the United States that it will continue to extradite Colombian citizens to the United States, including members of such illegal armed groups, in accordance with that treaty; (3) the Colombian legal framework governing the demobilization of such groups provides for prosecution and punishment, in proportion to the crimes committed, of those responsible for gross violations of human rights, violations of international humanitarian law, and drug trafficking, for reparations to victims, and for the monitoring of demobilized individuals; (4) the Government of Colombia is implementing a policy of effectively dismantling such groups, including the seizure of financial and property assets; and (5) the Government of Colombia is taking actions to enable the return of stolen assets, including real property, to their original owners.

The committee also urges that future assistance to the OAS mission meet a set of conditions:

The managers request that, prior to the provision of additional funds to the OAS for this purpose, the Secretary of State report to the Committees that the OAS Mission is strictly adhering to its verification role, FTOs are concentrated in zones for demobilization, the legal framework governing the demobilization conforms with (3) above, and the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights is providing advice to the OAS Mission.

Since this is narrative report language, not legislation, the Bush administration can ignore these conditions without breaking the law – and it might, since several of these conditions, especially the requirement for a legal framework, are unlikely to be met soon. But to do so would be to run counter to the strongly expressed preferences of both houses’ appropriations committees – which means that a great deal of negotiation will be required to free up even the planned $3.25 million for demobilization.

As we’ve indicated in earlier postings, CIP supports conditions along these lines. However, the phrase “punishment in proportion to the crimes committed” is too vague. If the standard of “proportional punishment” were to be rigidly applied, all AUC leaders would have to go to jail for life, which they won’t do willingly. Instead, a maximum sentence of ten years is contemplated in both the Colombian government’s and Sen. Pardo’s proposed laws. Left-of-center Sen. Piedad Córdoba introduced an alternative bill on December 6 calling for up to twenty years in jail – a tougher penalty but still hardly a proportional punishment for mass murder. It is unclear whether even Sen. Córdoba’s bill meets the standard set in the Conference Committee’s report.

(A third obstacle to increased U.S. aid for DDR was a Justice Department interpretation of Section 803 of the PATRIOT Act. The interpretation left open the possibility that DDR aid to ex-AUC members might be construed as giving “material support” to terrorists. According to communications with congressional staff, though, an agreement with the Justice Department has recently been reached, thus removing that obstacle.)

The Bush administration’s approach has so far been two-pronged: offer a small amount of support for the AUC’s rank-and-file – thus showing that Washington supports the process – while taking a very hard line against their leaders. Can this two-pronged approach work? The answer depends on how the extradition issue plays out.

The Justice Department – which exists to enforce U.S. law and doesn’t care about peace processes – is not going to withdraw its extradition requests. Ultimately, the Colombian and U.S. governments will each have to make a decision. The Colombian government must decide whether or not it will honor the U.S. extradition requests for AUC leaders (or whether it will only honor some, perhaps handing over those who became paramilitaries only recently in a bid to win amnesty). If it does not – if paramilitary leaders receive assurances that they will not be extradited after negotiations conclude – the U.S. government would then have to decide whether rejection of the extradition requests will damage U.S. relations with Colombia.

If a final peace accord can be reached with the AUC (or the FARC, for that matter, as several guerrilla leaders also face extradition), it is very likely that Bogotá would promise not to extradite and Washington would not make a big issue of it. (Governments change, however, and unless Colombia’s constitution is amended to protect paramilitary leaders permanently – which is unlikely – one of President Uribe’s successors could someday choose to honor the extradition requests.)

While the “don’t extradite, don’t complain” result is by far the likeliest, the extradition issue, while it remains unresolved, gives the Colombian government significant leverage in the talks. The Colombian and U.S. governments would do well to hold this card close to their chests as long as possible, using the threat of extradition as a means to extract the greatest possible concessions from the paramilitaries, particularly with regard to reparations and the dismantling of the AUC’s support networks. The threat of extradition can also keep paramilitary leaders at the negotiating table: if they break off the talks, they risk finding themselves on a plane to Miami.

Colombian government negotiators would do well, then, to make no concessions on this issue early in the talks. Government negotiator Luis Carlos Restrepo did some damage already by hinting, in taped negotiation sessions leaked by Mancuso, that President Uribe could use “discretionality” on extradition.

Using extradition as a negotiating tool is a double-edged sword, however: pushing too hard could torpedo the talks. Paramilitary leaders have made no secret that extradition is of paramount importance to them. Salvatore Mancuso told an interviewer earlier this month that unless an understanding on extraditions is reached, “The demobilizations will not advance, because it is easier for me to go back, gather the few remaining troops that haven’t demobilized, run off to the jungle and die there, either of old age or when the law kills me, than it is to finish the negotiations here only to be taken away to jail in the United States.”

For the time being, the extradition requests will remain the most visible element of Washington’s policy toward the paramilitary peace talks. However, if Colombia manages to pass a “legal framework” law governing demobilization, dismantling and reparations – thus satisfying a key administration and congressional pre-condition – we can probably expect U.S. support to become more visible.

We probably cannot expect U.S. aid for demobilizing the paramilitaries’ rank-and-file to reach high levels, though. Congressional appropriators have made clear that they expect Colombia to pay for it, and only a few million dollars would be available between now and 2006 unless the administration includes more money for DDR in a supplemental budget request for 2005 (and we’ve heard no indications that this will happen).

This “wait and see” attitude is understandable, and we support it. Until basic conditions are met – a real cease-fire, the exclusion of narcotraffickers from the talks, a strategy in place of improvisation, a plan to fill the “security vacuum,” and a legal framework for justice, reparations and dismantling – the U.S. government would be wise to continue its current policy of modest aid and “skeptical support.”

Posted by isacson at 9:58 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 13, 2004

Top Gun

Colombia is debating whether to spend $234 million on twenty-four new turboprop attack planes for its air force. The aircraft the Defense Ministry has in mind are likely to be a model made in Brazil (though models from the Czech Republic, China, and Poland are also under consideration).

In a rare show of civilian scrutiny of the military budget, Colombia’s Congress has proven reluctant to approve this expense. Two leading senators, Germán Vargas and Rodrigo Pardo – both strong supporters of Álvaro Uribe – have led the challenge, arguing that a big airplane buy should not be a priority right now, and that it is not clear how useful these airplanes would be for an internal guerrilla war.

This is not the first time the Colombian Air Force has pushed for this $234 million purchase. A similar debate took place in the fall of 2002; at that time, even Gen. James Hill, then the head of the U.S. Southern Command, felt compelled to weigh in with a letter to Colombia’s armed-forces chief opposing the sale. “The U.S. Congress will probably not view a light-attack aircraft fleet as the Colombian Air Force’s most urgent purchase, and this could have a negative impact on the U.S. Congress’ support for additional aid,” Hill's letter warned. The 2002 plan to buy planes collapsed amid what El Colombiano calls “scandals of corruption and inappropriateness.”

What is different today? Nobody is saying it in as many words, though it was raised when Colombia’s congress debated the issue in early December: Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, flush with revenue from high oil prices, may be embarking on an arms-buying spree. On a recent visit to Russia Chávez expressed interest in a major purchase of MiG-29 fighter planes.

It is not clear how turboprop planes would serve as a deterrent against MiGs in some very unlikely future conflict between Colombia and Venezuela; in any case, it’s now looking less likely that the Chávez government will in fact go ahead with the MiG purchase. (Incidentally, when asked in late November about Venezuela's plans, an “unnamed Bush administration official” giving a background briefing told reporters, “Let me put it this way: We shoot down MiGs.”)

Colombia’s air force is no doubt tired of its old fleet of planes. But for Colombia to buy new ones right now would be a bizarre misuse of very scarce resources. Gen. Hill’s warning of two years ago is perhaps more relevant now. The U.S. Congress is about to consider whether it will renew Plan Colombia or move foreign-aid money somewhere else. Budget-cutters in both parties would view a $234 million aircraft purchase as evidence that Colombia either has enough money to buy planes it does not urgently need, or has its priorities badly out of order. Either way, the purchase would strongly weaken the case for renewed U.S. aid at current levels.

In Colombia’s current circumstances, $234 million is a lot of money. Many urgent priorities aren’t getting that much.

• Colombia’s treasury plans to set aside $160 million to disarm, demobilize and re-integrate all of the AUC paramilitaries, reports El Tiempo.
• Next year, Colombia plans to spend $120 million to assist internally displaced people, according to the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES).
• According to the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá, the United States has spent $206 million since 2000 on alternative development programs in Colombia. Total aid to displaced people in all those years is $129 million.
• According to the State Department, the United States expected to spend $207.6 million in 2004 just to maintain the planes and helicopters already given to Colombia’s military and police. For some time, Congress has been asking the administration to encourage Colombia to assume more of these costs, even requiring a report (PDF format) detailing plans for handing over more of these responsibilities. The congressional appropriators who asked for this report will look poorly on a decision to spend $234 million on new planes.

None of these priorities have received the kind of resources that the Colombian government now proposes to devote to new planes of uncertain usefulness. Meanwhile Colombia’s central government is running a budget deficit of 5.6 percent of GDP this year (excluding profits from state-owned enterprises) – about $5.4 billion or 23 times the size of the proposed aircraft purchase.

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December 10, 2004

Grim prospect for a supply-side war

In several forums, CIP has argued that before the United States makes a larger commitment to Colombia, we should first see greater sacrifice from the wealthiest 10 percent of Colombians. In particular, the richest Colombians must pay more taxes. In one of the world’s most unequal countries, only the top income brackets have the resources Colombia’s government needs in order to end the war, establish the rule of law, and make neglected conflict zones economically viable.

As you might imagine, Colombia’s business community disagrees strongly with us. Using arguments reminiscent of the domestic U.S. debate over the Bush tax cuts, they contend that taking more from the wealthiest will stifle investment and retard economic growth. The best way to raise money for Colombia’s defense and governance needs, our opponents argue, is to demand less sacrifice and eliminate trade barriers, which will spur economic growth, which will lead to higher tax revenues.

Those who support this idea of a “supply side war” in Colombia have been pointing to the country’s rosy macroeconomic prospects. GDP growth was expected to exceed 4 percent this year, allowing Colombia to whittle away at its very high deficit. This forecast growth rate still lags behind Latin America as a whole, which is expected to grow 4.7 percent this year, according to the World Bank. (Colombia’s largest newspaper, El Tiempo, meanwhile, estimates that 5 percent growth is in fact needed to guarantee a lasting drop in unemployment.)

However, this week’s news indicates that even 4 percent growth isn’t likely. Due to “a decline in consumer demand,” GDP grew only 2.43 percent during the third quarter of 2004, compared with a year earlier. This rate, the lowest since mid-2003 and less than 1 percent above population growth, was far lower than expected. The news, according to an El Tiempo editorial, hit “like a bucket of cold water.”

Less growth means projected tax revenue will be less, which means that Colombia will have to borrow more even to meet its existing commitments. The Treasury Ministry foresees spending cuts and a need to go back to Congress in March for more money – deficit spending, though the deficit is already too high – to cover expenses.

This bad economic news makes it even less likely that Colombia is going to have the resources it needs for courts, schools, hospitals and roads – or for helicopters, planes and special-forces units, for that matter. While U.S. aid can help, the current rate of $700-750 million a year – whether mostly military or mostly economic – is just a drop in the bucket.

Which takes us back to our original conclusion. There’s no such thing as a supply-side war. Fighting a war – as well as “nation-building” in areas where the state has never been – is essentially a socialistic exercise. It requires a government to take a big share of resources out of the economy and redirect them toward an important national goal: in this case, ending the conflict and guaranteeing that it doesn’t flare up again.

That is going to have to be done with mostly Colombian resources. Which means, again, that the wealthiest Colombians are going to have to pay more taxes.

Posted by isacson at 6:02 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 7, 2004

Paramilitary Talks (5): Justice, victims' rights and accountability

Paramilitary groups have cut a bloody swath through Colombia in the more than twenty years since landowners, drug traffickers, and the Colombian military began setting up so-called "self-defense groups." Since the 1980s, paramilitaries have killed tens of thousands and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes. During most of this period, the violence they committed against civilians – massacres and extrajudicial killings, torture and forced displacement – far exceeded the leftist guerrillas' own horrific record.

As we watch the government-paramilitary talks proceed, we must recognize a very uncomfortable fact. Any agreement that results is going to include some impunity for mass murderers. This is plain, simple and unavoidable. By offering to negotiate with any illegal armed group, a government implicitly guarantees that it will not submit its leaders or members to ordinary justice, and offers a degree of impunity to induce them to lay down their arms.

Santa Fe de Ralito isn't Nuremberg, after all, nor is it the site of negotiations with a group that has all but surrendered. No matter what a final agreement looks like – even with a fair amount of "naming names," admissions of guilt and generous reparations – individual paramilitaries who ordered or took part in the deaths of dozens (or even hundreds) of civilians, people who committed "crimes against humanity" normally punishable with life imprisonment, will almost definitely be out of jail and living in polite society within ten years of its signing.

That level of impunity is awfully hard to accept, even when given a fashionable name like "transitional justice." But it has happened in many countries that have settled civil conflicts through negotiation over the past couple of decades, from Central America to sub-Saharan Africa to East Timor.

Unlike these past peace processes, though, Colombia's talks with the paramilitaries are taking place between two parties that are far from sworn enemies. The Colombian state sponsored or tolerated paramilitaries for many years; though official policy is now to treat the paramilitaries as adversaries, most AUC leaders continue to insist that they are pro-government. Both sides share an interest in papering over the paramilitaries' past abuses and the government collusion or omission that allowed many to happen. As a vocal advocate of "forgetting," AUC advisor Carlos Alonso Lucío, recently argued in Colombia's Semana magazine, "We should be more concerned with those living in the present and future than with the dead from the past."

No justice, no peace?

Most supporters of the Uribe government's peace talks argue that insisting on proportional justice will make peace unattainable. "I'm disturbed by this strain of humanitarian fundamentalism," wrote Eduardo Pizarro, a noted Colombian political scientist and brother of assassinated former M-19 chief Carlos Pizarro, in October. "Its demands are so great that it could keep us from reaching peace. Should the peace efforts fail, they and their intolerant attitudes will have an enormous responsibility for the thousands who would die in the coming years."

This belief underlay the Uribe government's original "alternative punishments" bill, introduced in Colombia's congress in August 2003. This legislation, which went nowhere, would have required only light and symbolic penalties, along with financial reparations, for serious crimes. (It is worth noting that many of the bill's opponents in fact support the idea of negotiating with paramilitaries. They are concerned, however, that any law that emerges will set a precedent: the same weak standards could later be applied to guerrilla leaders following a future peace process.)

On the other end of the debate is much of Colombia's human rights community, which essentially argues "no justice, no peace." A peace deal that fails to punish the perpetrators and do right by the paramilitaries' victims, the argument goes, will only prolong a generations-old cycle of revenge, violence and warlordism. Many contend that an agreement that allows paramilitary leaders to remain free will fail to dismantle their structures of command, finance and support, allowing the phenomenon of paramilitarism to persist. (A few argue that paramilitaries deserve to be treated differently than guerrillas; since they acted on behalf of the state, they contend, their crimes should be subject to the same punishment as those committed by soldiers.)

The "no justice, no peace" argument is a strong one. Colombia has been through many “forgive and forget” peace agreements that have forced people to live alongside their loved ones’ and leaders’ amnestied killers, or to watch those who stole their land and property simply get away with it.

This argument's principal weakness, though, is its inoperability. Common sense and the historical record tell us that armed-group leaders do not willingly turn themselves in and go to jail for long periods. They only do so if they face a far worse alternative: military defeat. Yet neither the paramilitaries nor the guerrillas are likely to be defeated militarily anytime soon. To insist on zero impunity, then, is to condemn Colombia – which has a poor record of fighting paramilitaries anyway – to many more years of fighting. The fighting would have to drag on until armed-group leaders see no choice but to submit to life imprisonment (and possible extradition to the United States).

The point of this long discussion: in our view, a foreign government need not insist on zero impunity as a precondition for its support of the paramilitary peace talks. However, would-be supporters must take care not to back a process that grants amnesty too liberally.

Searching for a compromise

Can a balance be struck between these two extremes? While it is hard enough for donor nations to determine what threshold must be reached to merit support, Colombians themselves are debating the issue intensely. The paramilitaries and the Uribe government (with its original "alternative punishment" legislation) have indicated that, if left to their own devices, they would favor a very liberal amnesty deal. Much of the rest of Colombian society – particularly victims' groups, human rights groups, and key members of Congress – has kept that from happening by demanding far greater justice and accountability.

As Colombians search for a compromise, there is currently no legal framework to deal with armed-group members who willingly demobilize but are accused of committing crimes against humanity. Those paramilitaries who demobilize – as many as 3,000 are expected between now and December 31 – are covered by existing law ("Law 782" and "Decree 128") governing individual deserters. Under these provisions, those who have no outstanding arrest warrants for serious crimes are automatically amnestied and enter government "reinsertion" programs. (Semana notes that if any rank-and-file paramilitary fighter "committed a crime against humanity but faces no arrest warrant or judicial process, he can simply hide this information and go home.")

Those who do face charges of committing serious crimes will find themselves in a legal limbo once they demobilize. While they will not go into Colombia's criminal justice system and face life imprisonment, there is still no law in place to determine what will happen to them. For now, these "unpardonables" must congregate in the Ralito demilitarized zone while they wait for Colombia's congress to agree on an "alternative punishments" law.

Opposition from many in Congress, including pro-Uribe legislators, has so far torpedoed two "alternative punishments" bills introduced by Uribe and his high commissioner for peace, Luis Carlos Restrepo: the lenient August 2003 version and a somewhat more stringent April 2004 bill. Neither bill even came to a vote.

The Pardo "Truth, Justice and Reparations" bill

A new bill that comes closer to an acceptable "midpoint" is nearing introduction in Colombia's congress. This time, the legislation is not coming from the Uribe government, but from opponents of the earlier bills. Former defense minister and pro-Uribe Senator Rafael Pardo has joined with a diverse group of legislators (among them Wilson Borja, a former labor leader and leftist congressman who suffered a paramilitary assassination attempt in 2000) on what they call a "Truth, Justice and Reparations" law.

The proposed law, like the Uribe government's April 2004 submission, would grant amnesty to all who are not accused of crimes against humanity. Those who face more serious charges would be subject to at least five, and probably closer to ten, years in prison, followed by parole. (The maximum penalty in Colombia's normal judicial system is forty years.)

The bill would create several special units to deal with demobilizations. A Prosecutor for Truth, Justice and Reparations would investigate and prosecute accused paramilitary members, who would be judged and sentenced by a special nine-member Tribunal for Truth, Justice and Reparations. A special unit of the government internal-affairs branch (Procuraduría) would help victims in the exercise of their rights.

A National Reparations Council would maintain a fund to compensate victims. The fund would come from fines charged to paramilitaries and from the sale or return of ill-gotten assets seized from paramilitary members. The bill makes clear that demobilizing paramilitary members must account for and give up all stolen assets, including the thousands of acres of land they appropriated by displacing peasants; if found to be keeping these assets, they would cease to benefit from the law's lighter punishments.

Reparations to victims would include not just the return of stolen assets but payments for pain and suffering, psychological harm, lost opportunities (such as inability to attend school), and "damage to reputation and dignity." As in the recent arrangement for Chilean torture victims, the government would assume responsibility for payments even if funds supplied by former paramilitaries are not sufficient.

The bill would guarantee victims' "right to the truth" about what happened. While no "truth and reconciliation commission" is contemplated, the bill would require the government to maintain an archive of all cases and guarantee public access.

Compared to the two previous "alternative punishments" bills, the proposed legislation would make a more serious effort to dismantle paramilitary structures. Upon demobilizing, all paramilitaries would have to provide a thorough accounting of their background in the organization, their stolen land and other assets, and their understanding of the group's command and financial structures. Those found to be hiding information would be transferred to the criminal justice system to face stiffer sentencing.

The Pardo bill, written with input from mainstream Colombian NGOs like the Fundación Social and Fundación Ideas para la Paz, has gained the stated support of such critical voices as José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director of Human Rights Watch.

Though a dramatic improvement, though, the bill could use some improvements. One of the most glaring omissions is the failure to hold accountable those who participated in paramiltiarism and aided serious crimes, but need not demobilize – especially the military officers who facilitated the groups' growth and activities, and the landowners, drug dealers and other wealthy individuals who contributed funds. While many of their names may appear in the public archive of cases, they will not stand accused or even named by an impartial truth and reconciliation commission.

Meanwhile, the commitment to have the government pay reparations could become a huge "unfunded mandate" requiring the state to cough up millions of dollars each year from a budget that is already deeply in deficit. At the same time – as shown by the decade-old effort to untangle the true holdings of Medellín and Cali cartel leaders – it will be very hard to verify that paramilitary members have truly given up all of their stolen assets, dismantled their command structures, and broken up their networks of drug trafficking and death-squad activity. The bill will have to provide a long mandate, a big budget, and extensive security protections for employees of the proposed Prosecutor for Truth, Justice and Reparations. Finally, the idea of ten years or less in jail may not satisfy many victims, though victims' groups have yet to offer a public evaluation of the proposed bill.

In fact, the legislation's most vocal opponents have been the paramilitaries and, to a lesser extent, the Colombian government. The AUC's muscular Central Bolívar Bloc, in a statement full of veiled threats against Wilson Borja, rejected the bill as "a series of mortal traps set against peace, into which no organization outside the law would allow itself to fall."

For its part, the Uribe government favors a law covering demobilization on an individual basis, not the collective demobilization foreseen in the Pardo bill. This means that the government does not wish to require those demobilizing to reveal the details of their organization's command and support structures. The government would not require commanders who demobilize to guarantee that their entire blocs demobilize as well. The government also opposes the creation of a separate tribunal to judge crimes, preferring to keep this function under its control in the executive branch. It also opposes the idea of denying the bill's protections to paramilitaries who fail to comply fully with their commitments.

It is not clear why the government would reject such common-sense provisions that aim to dissolve paramilitary structures permanently. The upshot, however, is that agreement is unlikely before the Colombian Congress ends its session in about a week and a half; legislative debate will have to wait at least until March.

Conditions for donor-nation support

The Pardo bill – if it goes anywhere – represents a big step forward compared to what came before. Is it not quite enough, though, to assuage would-be donor countries' concerns about human rights, victims' rights and the need to do away with paramilitarism once and for all. To merit significant international support, the talks should meet the following minimum requirements, some of which the Pardo bill does address.

• The agreement must seek to dismantle paramilitary structures, not just demobilize individuals. A peace process is a waste of time if it leaves paramilitaries controlling territory through fear, violence and criminality – even if out of uniform, without the AUC label, and not based at rural camps. Paramilitarism is becoming a significant political and economic force in Colombia, and undoing it will not be easy. The structures of territorial control, and the lucrative linkages to the drug trade, are unlikely to disappear without a concerted, well-funded, and well-protected government effort to eradicate them. This means requiring demobilizing paramilitaries – at risk of losing their benefits – to reveal the nature of their organizations' structures and assets. It also means giving the government the resources and tools it needs to verify that paramilitary activity truly stops.
  
  
• The agreement must involve victims in the design of an appropriate settlement. A negotiation between two groups with a history of collusion is extremely suspect if victims and their organizations are denied meaningful opportunities to participate and if their concerns are clearly ignored by the resulting agreement.
  
  
• At a bare minimum, the agreement must require paramilitary human rights abusers to make a public admission of their crimes and to return all of their ill-gotten assets. Beyond this bare minimum, jail sentences, financial reparations, and prohibitions from holding public office would lend a great deal more credibility to the process. The land issue is of critical importance: the Colombian human rights group CODHES estimates that 4.7 million hectares of agricultural land (11.75 million acres, about the size of Vermont and New Hampshire combined) have been abandoned due to illegal armed-group activity. A peace process that ends up legalizing stolen landholdings would be worse than none at all, as it would virtually guarantee a future explosion of violence.
  
  
• The agreement must not let the paramilitaries' material supporters remain unnamed (or, ideally, unpunished).
  
  
• The agreement must include a financial plan, indicating how much resources will be available for such costly commitments as reparations, demobilization and verifying the commitment to dismantle paramilitarism. This plan should make clear how much is expected to come from foreign donors.
  
  
• The agreement should make clear that ex-paramilitaries will not be admitted into the Colombian armed forces while the conflict continues. As long as fighting against the FARC and ELN persists, "recycling" paramilitaries into the security forces is a recipe for trouble. Demobilized paramilitaries who join the security forces would find themselves carrying out the same mission they performed before: fighting guerrillas (and, perhaps, those whom they feel are guerrilla collaborators). The likelihood of abuses would greatly increase. After years of alleged military-paramilitary collusion, merging the military with former paramilitaries would severely damage the credibility of the Colombian armed forces, which have been endeavoring to portray themselves as professional and respectful of human rights. The same prohibition should apply to inclusion of ex-paramilitaries in other security structures, such as the Uribe government's network of paid informants or the "peasant soldiers" program.

Coming soon: (6) Extradition and the U.S. role

Posted by isacson at 6:47 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 3, 2004

Releasing FARC prisoners: can it work?

Say what you want about Álvaro Uribe – he's certainly not predictable. Yesterday evening, the hardliner who got elected by promising not to give an inch to Colombia's guerrillas announced a move that even "appeasers" like his predecessor, Andrés Pastrana, had never contemplated. Uribe pardoned twenty-three low-ranking FARC prisoners in Colombian jails, granting them a unilateral release, with no strings attached.

Uribe's move seeks to encourage the FARC to release approximately fifty-nine people – captured military officers, kidnapped political figures, and three U.S. citizens who were working on a Defense Department contract when their plane went down in FARC-held territory in February 2003. Though the guerrillas probably have over 1,000 kidnapped people in their custody at any given time, the group considers the fifty-nine to be "political detainees": instead of a ransom, it is demanding a reciprocal release of prisoners in Colombian jails.

The FARC wants to win the return of dozens of mid-ranking leaders whom Colombian authorities have captured over the years; the group's leadership no doubt believes that the reincorporation of such experienced cadres would improve command of its far-flung fronts and help it on the battlefield. The guerrillas also are pushing for the return of the few "big fish" in government custody, among them "Simón Trinidad," a high-ranking guerrilla who was one of the FARC's most visible faces during the 1998-2002 peace talks; "Sonia," who ran the finances of the FARC's Southern Bloc; and perhaps "Julián," the second-in-command of the FARC's feared Teófilo Forero Column.

("Julián" still faces prosecution, incidentally, even though two weeks ago President Uribe put him up for two nights in a suite in Bogotá's five-star Tequendama Hotel. This was an odd ending to a bizarre episode: the hotel stay was a reward for the FARC comandante's decision to turn himself in to authorities, less than two weeks after a remarkable (and no doubt expensive – lots of guards had to be paid off) escape from his detention cell in the headquarters of Colombia's attorney-general (Fiscalía), a heavily guarded fortress across the road from the U.S. Embassy.)

For its part, the Bogotá government is under pressure to do something – or at least to appear to be doing something – about the military and police officers, senators, congresspeople, local legislators and governors, and U.S. personnel in FARC custody. The list includes former senator and presidential candidate Íngrid Betancourt, an internationally known figure. Most of the detainees have been imprisoned at FARC jungle camps for years – as many as six or seven years in the case of several military officers.

Both sides' positions on a possible prisoner exchange have been evolving. The FARC initially insisted that the government pull troops out of the departments of Putumayo and Caquetá before it would agree to talks. The government automatically rejected that request: those two departments, the initial focus of Plan Colombia, are a vast coca-growing area far larger than the zone ceded to the FARC during President Pastrana's failed peace talks. Though it has since agreed to use the Catholic Church as an intermediary and has named its representatives to eventual talks, the FARC still insist on a demobilized zone for discussions; their most recent demand has been a troop pullout from a smaller zone: the municipalities of Cartagena del Chairá and San Vicente del Caguán in Caquetá, which lie at the geographic heart of the months-long "Plan Patriota" military offensive occurring in southern Colombia.

The Uribe government – already wary of a prisoner exchange, which could establish a precedent that would encourage the FARC to kidnap more civilian officials – refused that request as well, since complying would cripple Plan Patriota. Uribe's position has nonetheless evolved over the past two years. The president arrived in office refusing to engage in direct talks with any group that did not first declare a cease-fire. Though the FARC have kept fighting, he has since sought contacts with the guerrillas through intermediaries – first the UN, then the Catholic Church – but has made no progress on securing any hostage's release. While Uribe has refused to demilitarize territory for talks, he has more recently offered to host FARC negotiators in the Vatican embassy in Bogotá or a third country. He has even offered to carry out negotiations over the Internet. The FARC has rejected all of these proposals, insisting on a demilitarized zone for talks.

The decision to begin letting prisoners go unilaterally is a new evolution (erosion?) in Uribe's position. But it is not brand-new: the president in fact announced this policy in a speech back on October 1.

We have sent a proposal via the Swiss government: we are willing to free a number of FARC guerrillas, before the FARC free their hostages, to show the government's seriousness. … We have proposed that only guerrillas found guilty of rebellion (treason) can be freed. We cannot free anyone jailed for atrocities. … And a second condition: that those who leave jail do not return to the guerrillas. Do you think we would be doing any good if we released everyone from jail only to see them committing crimes again? What of the security forces' sacrifice in capturing them? … We have offered two options: that they go to another country, like France, or that they enter the government "reinsertion" program.

I have no idea whether the FARC sent back a positive reply via the Swiss government; in fact, I don't know whether the FARC responded at all to this proposal. It would be surprising indeed, however, if the guerrillas expressed any interest. It would mean yielding on two of their main goals: reincorporating experienced mid-level leaders, and benefiting from a temporary demilitarized zone.

If Uribe carried out the unilateral release without any expression of interest from the FARC – as is likely – he has overwhelmingly ratified critics' charges that he and his peace team have no coherent negotiating strategy, that they are wildly improvising and simply hoping for the best. (This charge, of course, has also been leveled at his government's talks with the paramilitaries.)

While Uribe's hard line toward negotiations stood almost no chance of working, improvising and unilaterally releasing prisoners is likely only to embolden the FARC. The timing of the release will not be lost on the guerrilla leadership. From their jungle hideouts, they no doubt see a president who, having just won a legislative fight to seek re-election, is trying to show progress in advance of the 2006 campaign. With hostages in custody for years, the guerrillas have shown that they can wait a long time; if they believe that President Uribe will keep loosening his position according to a political timetable, they will be content to wait a bit longer to get a better deal.

So why did Uribe authorize the prisoner release, which seems so strange on the surface? Probably because it's a brilliant piece of domestic politics. The president has been under fire from relatives of FARC "detainees," as well as from several ex-presidents, for failing to do enough about the hostage crisis. A botched mid-2003 rescue attempt resulted in the guerrillas' killing of the governor of Antioquia and a former defense minister; he has since abandoned the military route and either done nothing or made only halting steps toward dialogue.

In Colombia's political arena – the arena that matters most to a president about to seek re-election – the unilateral prisoner release essentially "inoculates" Uribe on the hostage issue. He now has a ready response to family members and ex-presidents who were pushing for action: "I’m doing all I can, I even pardoned twenty-three prisoners, but I haven't received a response."

The release also places the ball in the FARC's court, politically at least. Will the FARC respond positively by releasing some of those in its custody? I would be surprised if they did, since the release is not happening even remotely under the circumstances that they have demanded. There's little reason for optimism. The FARC even said in April that a prisoner exchange will be impossible while Álvaro Uribe is president; if Uribe is re-elected, this would close the door until 2010.

I could be wrong, and I hope I am. How wonderful it would be if Uribe's gamble paid off, even a little bit. A reciprocal prisoner release could be a foot in the door – a toe in the door, really – toward more substantial contacts between the government and the guerrillas. If the door stays open even a crack, a bare minimum of mutual trust could be established, after two years of total distrust. Channels of communication opened through this process could stay open. The result could be the embryo of a new attempt to negotiate peace.

Even though it is probably the product of a rash improvisation, we encourage the FARC – whom so many have written off as "narcoterrorists" who have jettisoned their ideology – to seize this opportunity to re-engage in a political discussion.

But don't get your hopes up. While the ball may be in the FARC's court, it is unlikely that the guerrillas – notorious for their imperviousness to political pressure, public and international opinion – will hit it back.

Posted by isacson at 1:55 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

November 29, 2004

Paramilitary Talks (4): The post-demobilization security vacuum

In the neglected, largely rural zones where Colombia’s conflict is most fiercely fought, government representatives – including soldiers – are much scarcer than guerrillas and paramilitaries. Colombians living in these conditions (there are millions) will tell you that if they have to live without a government, they prefer to live under one illegal group’s solid control. To live in a contested area – where combat is frequent and all are under suspicion of serving the other side – is to begin each day with no guarantee of seeing its end.

In paramilitary-dominated zones, residents know that there is a more frightening alternative to the reasonably predictable tyranny of the warlords. A return of the FARC or ELN to their communities would bring a territorial struggle with the AUC, with pitched battles, massacres, and a dirty war against residents who, in the guerrillas’ eyes, formed the paramilitaries’ support system.

As the AUC prepares to demobilize 3,000 fighters by 2005 and all 20,000 of its members by 2006, it is understandable, then, that many residents of paramilitary-dominated areas are terrified by what might happen next. As Human Rights Ombudsman Volmar Pérez puts it, “people are afraid that the guerrillas will come and destroy them because they had to live among the paramilitaries.” 

Urabá and Catatumbo

One such zone is Urabá, a banana-growing region encompassing parts of Antioquia and Chocó departments near the Panamanian border. The AUC wrested Urabá from guerrilla control with a very bloody campaign of massacres and displacements during the mid-1990s (a period that included Álvaro Uribe’s term as governor of Antioquia). One of the three paramilitary groups active in Urabá, the Bananero Bloc commanded by Hernán Hernández, made headlines on Thursday with a demobilization ceremony. The bloc’s 450 members turned in a smaller number of weapons, making them the first of 3,000 paramilitaries expected to do the same by the end of the year.

Colombian journalists have detected a palpable fear that the Bananero Bloc’s disappearance will encourage the FARC, which continues to dominate the nearby Serranía de Abibe region, to return in force. “We haven’t had police here for ten years,” Fernando Callejas, a councilman from Turbo municipality, told Medellín’s El Colombiano. “First we were under the FARC’s control, and now the AUC is nearby, blocking the guerrillas’ way. We hope the security forces stay in the zone and don’t abandon us.” The director of Urabá’s largest private-security firm told El Tiempo that her business is picking up. “Cattle ranchers, merchants and even individuals are requesting our services. It all owes to the demobilizations.”

Another zone likely to see an imminent paramilitary demobilization is the Catatumbo region of Norte de Santander department, a coca-growing zone near the Venezuelan border. Catatumbo was an ELN stronghold until 1999, when the paramilitaries poured into the area, killing hundreds and displacing thousands. (The commander of the Colombian Army’s 5^th Brigade at the time, Gen. Alberto Bravo, was fired for allowing the paramilitaries to advance unhindered.)

Sometime in December, the AUC’s Catatumbo Bloc, commanded by Salvatore Mancuso, is to disband its 1,400 members – the largest single bloc expected to dissolve in 2004. The guerrillas’ return to this zone is a very real possibility: according to El Tiempo, 500 FARC and ELN fighters continue to dominate the sparsely populated left bank of the Catatumbo river, while the paramilitaries reign on the right bank, where most of the population lives. We may have seen a preview of what might happen if the guerrillas cross the river for good: in June, the FARC massacred 34 coca-pickers in the paramilitary-dominated La Gabarra district of Tibú municipality.

The Colombian press has noted a slow but steady exodus from Catatumbo since word of the Catatumbo Bloc’s demobilization began to spread. Anticipating a rise in violence and a disruption to the coca economy, locals have been leaving by the busload. A campesino who has lived in the zone for twenty years told Cali’s El País that his bags are packed “because we are going to be unprotected and abandoned. What people are saying is that if the ‘paras’ leave, the guerrillas will enter, and we don’t know how they will act nor what their intentions will be, because they will consider those of us who live here to be collaborators.”

A greater military and police presence, he added, won’t make much difference. “It’s not enough, because they’re not going to put a policeman or soldier on every corner. And if they do, what will happen to the people who live in the countryside? Before, when the guerrillas ran things and the security forces were also present, the guerrillas killed at any time of day or night, anywhere they pleased, and we don’t want to see that situation repeated.”

Filling the vacuum

The Colombian government has announced its intention to fill the vacuum left by demobilizing paramilitaries, deploying new troops and police to the zones the AUC claims to be vacating. In the short term, the Defense Ministry expects to send personnel from elite mobile brigades, which may require a drawdown from other anti-guerrilla operations elsewhere in the country, particularly “Plan Patriota.” By next year, the armed forces are promising an additional 4,000 troops in the demobilization zones, a gap that they expect to fill in part by “redirecting” some peasant soldiers – participants in a program originally designed to station soldiers in their hometowns.

“The important thing is that they come to stay. Our hope is that we can finally have a state here,” a druggist in El Tarra, Catatumbo told El Tiempo. Unfortunately, it is far from clear that the Colombian military will be able to maintain a long-term presence of that size in these zones, when the conflict continues to be fought on so many other battlegrounds throughout the country.

“At its innermost circles, the government seems to fear the same thing,” writes security analyst Alfredo Rangel, who directs the Bogotá-based Security and Democracy Foundation. “It knows that it is still unable to stop the guerrillas’ return to many places where paramilitary groups will be demobilized. … Where will it find these additional troops? Clearly, by pulling them out of Plan Patriota in the south, because the government does not have enough military power to demobilize the paramilitaries and to try to defeat the guerrillas at the same time.”

Of course, truly filling the vacuum and securing these zones would require more than just military force; Human Rights Ombudsman Volmar Pérez has proposed a more integral “humanitarian cordon” in the demobilization zones, with agencies from the civilian government, governors and mayors, the international community and civil society carrying out an ambitious strategy “to rebuild the social fabric and allow the population to live in peace.” Of course this is absolutely what needs to be done. Like any workable solution in Colombia, though, it would be expensive – and the Colombian government lacks even the budget to deploy soldiers, much less carry out such an ambitious program.

A grim outlook

If the demobilizations embolden the guerrillas and the Colombian government cannot mount an effective deterrent, what will happen? The likely outcomes are grim.

The first possibility is a guerrilla takeover of key paramilitary demobilization zones. The guerrilla fronts that were pushed out of these areas (especially the FARC fronts) remain largely intact and are generally present in remote nearby zones, poised to return. If they do, the result could be quite bloody, as has been the case in the few areas where the FARC has made inroads into paramilitary dominance (such as lower Putumayo and the Atrato River region in Chocó).

A guerrilla resurgence in these zones would also deal a death blow to the Colombian government’s talks with the AUC. If their gesture is met with a guerrilla scorched-earth campaign, it is hard to imagine the paramilitaries agreeing to demobilize any more of their blocs.

In fact, the guerrilla-takeover scenario is rather unlikely. The paramilitaries are near their peak military strength and well positioned at the negotiating table; for them to cede control over strategic zones at this point defies all logic. They probably have something else in mind. It is more likely that the AUC leadership’s control will simply assume a different form.

In the short term, AUC control may be preserved through duplication of blocs. Most, if not all, of the paramilitary blocs slated to turn in their weapons between now and January 1 operate alongside other AUC groups in the same regions. In Urabá, two more AUC blocs continue to operate: the Élmer Cárdenas bloc commanded by “Alemán” (and not participating in peace talks), and the Héroes de Tolová bloc commanded by “Don Berna.” The Catatumbo bloc is part of a larger AUC structure in Norte de Santander department; Salvatore Mancuso’s paramilitaries around the nearby city of Cúcuta, for instance, are not going anywhere.

We witnessed a similar phenomenon after the much-heralded November 2003 demobilization of Don Berna’s Cacique Nutibara bloc in Medellín. It later emerged that Don Berna had begun another Medellín-based group, the “Héroes de Granada,” which continues his dominance over the city’s crime-ridden slums and in fact absorbed several former Nutibara bloc members.

If the AUC is truly to demobilize, however, these parallel blocs will have to disappear eventually. To solidify control over territories after “demobilizing,” the paramilitaries would have to pursue a less formal solution.

Taking off the camouflage fatigues and the armbands, turning in some weapons and serving some light jail sentences will certainly do away with the AUC as Colombians know it. But this alone will not undo the command structures, the criminal financial networks, the support from large landowners, drug kingpins, military officers and local officials, and large payrolls of killers-for-hire. In other words, demobilization alone will not undo AUC dominance over its territories.

While it may no longer operate within a “paramilitary” structure of uniformed fighters living with military discipline in encampments, a post-negotiation AUC may still be a lethal force with broad dominion over territory and control over much of the drug economy. In some areas, it could exert control as a network of shadowy death squads; in others, it could be a private system of vigilantes carrying out private “justice”; in still others, it may be nothing more than a mafia controlling illicit behavior. Or it could be all three at the same time.

The paramilitary peace talks could end up as a nationwide repeat of what Alfredo Rangel calls “‘the Cacique Nutibara model’: demobilization without demobilization, disarmament without disarmament, reinsertion without reinsertion, and a veiled toleration of territorial control by paramilitaries who impede the guerrillas’ return.”

If this reconfigured paramilitary control is to be the result, the current negotiations are clearly not worth the effort.

Some tough questions

The Uribe government and the AUC leadership would of course object strongly to this analysis, insisting that the main point of the negotiations is to restore government control to the zones the paramilitaries are to vacate. Filling the security vacuum, they will argue, is a challenge, but Colombia’s security forces and other institutions are ready.

Would-be donor governments should not just take the negotiators’ word for it. They must ask tough questions about the Colombian government’s plans to keep the guerrillas or re-configured paramilitaries from filling the vacuum:

• What troop strength is needed to secure the population of the demobilization zones?
• Will this presence guarantee security in rural areas, or just town centers?
• For how long must that troop strength be maintained?
• Do the Colombian military and police have the manpower to maintain that sort of presence for that long a period, or is it likely that they will be called away early for more urgent missions?
• When, and to what extent, will civilian government institutions, especially the judiciary, enter the zone – and is the ombudsman’s proposal for a “humanitarian cordon” being taken seriously?
• How much would all of this – the military and civilian components – cost? Does the Colombian government’s budget anticipate covering that cost? Where will the money come from?
• What is being done about parallel paramilitary blocs in the same zones?
• Will the OAS or some other credible mechanism be in place to verify that (a) former paramilitary leaders are not carrying out illegal activities in the zones they previously dominated, and (b) the security forces are working diligently to dismantle any illegal networks involving former AUC leaders?

Until the Colombian government can offer satisfactory answers to these questions – and clear responses have not been forthcoming – the “security vacuum” question will continue to be an urgent concern.

If the talks go ahead without good answers to these questions, the unlucky residents of paramilitary-controlled zones will not be any better off after the AUC demobilizes. If the state fails to fill the vacuum, either they will find themselves living under the same brutal leadership under a different name, or – perhaps worse – they will be caught in the crossfire, living in a territory disputed by guerrillas and ex-paramilitaries. The likelihood of either outcome poses an important obstacle to international support for the paramilitary peace talks.

Coming soon: (5) Justice, victims' rights and accountability

Posted by isacson at 3:41 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 24, 2004

Paramilitary talks (3): Improvisation and secrecy

I apologize for the delay in posting this continuation of the paramilitary talks discussion. Blame Bush's visit to Cartagena, which proved to be a bit of a distraction.

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Between now and December 31, at least 3,000 of the AUC paramilitary group's approximately 20,000 members are to hand in their weapons and re-enter civilian life. In other words, a massive demobilization process – larger than what happened in Colombia over a decade ago, when the M-19, EPL, and several other guerrilla groups turned in their weapons – is to occur in a timeframe of just over two months.

This would be an amazingly good piece of news if the demobilization were part of a reasonably well thought-out, well-funded process. But it isn't. The coming AUC "layoff" leaves the impression that thousands of unemployed young men with violent backgrounds are being thrust upon a Colombian government that has little more than a hastily thrown-together plan for dealing with them, and probably doesn't have the resources even for this plan.

In all, ten or eleven paramilitary fronts from eight parts of the country are to demobilize between now and the new year.

1. The Self-Defense Groups of Córdoba, commanded by Salvatore Mancuso;
2. The Catatumbo Bloc, commanded by Mancuso – this bloc is the largest to demobilize, with approximately 1,400 members;
3. The Urabá-based Bananero Bloc, commanded by "Hernán Hernández," which is to be the first to demobilize formally, starting tomorrow (November 25);
4. The Valle del Cauca-based Calima Bloc, commanded by "Hernán Hernández";
5. The Pacific Bloc, commanded by "Don Berna";
6. The Cundinamarca Bloc, commanded by Luis Eduardo Cifuentes ("Águila");
7. The Sucre-based Mojana Front, commanded by "Ramón Mojana";
8. The Southeast Antioquia Front, commanded by "John Santamaría" (this 50-man front recently indicated it may not in fact be ready to demobilize by the end of the year);
9. The Self-Defense Groups of Southern Magdalena and San Fernando Island, commanded by "Chepe Barrera";
10. The Self-Defense Groups of Meta and Vichada, commanded by Guillermo Torres; and
11. The Vichada Front of the Central Bolívar Bloc, commanded by "Javier Montañez" and "Julián Bolívar" alias "Macaco."

Right now, and for several more weeks, top paramilitary leaders like Salvatore Mancuso have their arrest warrants suspended and can travel throughout the country without fear of detention or extradition to the United States, in order to "coordinate" the demobilization. As columnist María Isabel Rueda wrote in Semana magazine, "It won't be long until we see Mancuso sitting down to eat in northern Bogotá's best-known restaurants."

            A compressed "cronograma"

The process began on November 3. Members of the Bananero Bloc, the first to turn itself in, have been trickling into their concentration zone, a ¾-square-kilometer ranch in the municipality of Turbo, Antioquia, in anticipation of a November 25 kickoff ceremony.

There is a plan, or "cronograma," in place, although it is remarkably rushed in comparison with demobilization efforts carried out in other countries and contexts. A first phase, covering roughly the month of November, has involved educating citizens and local governments in affected areas about what is to come, compiling lists of those who will turn themselves in, and concentrating the paramilitary fighters in the zones where they will hand in their weapons.

A second phase – beginning November 25 for the Bananero Bloc, later for others – will include several challenging tasks; incredibly, all of the following is to happen in only two to ten days. Fighters will turn in their weapons. Their identities will be verified. Minors will be sorted out and sent into the government family welfare system (ICBF). Fighters will be interviewed to determine if they have any marketable skills useful for future civilian employment.

All will undergo a background check to uncover allegations of past human-rights abuse. It is not clear how thorough this check will be, though, since Colombian authorities will be performing hundreds of them in less than ten days. Existing Colombian law ("Law 782" and "Decree 128") will allow most rank-and-file paramilitaries to benefit from amnesty for their crimes. Paramilitary leaders, and members accused of committing larger-scale crimes against humanity, will not be amnestied. Currently, there is no law in place to determine what will happen to these leaders and top abusers (they have made clear that they will not turn themselves in at all if they must enter Colombia's regular criminal-justice system); until this legal framework exists, these "unpardonables" will be concentrated in a special zone, probably the demilitarized area in San José de Ralito, Córdoba, where negotiations have been taking place.

In a third and final phase, which the "cronograma" compresses into eight days, ex-fighters will return to their places of origin. The Colombian government will set up four regional "centers of reference" to serve a variety of needs: legal status, education, health, psychological adjustment, and a legal way to make a living. Each ex-fighter who participates in job-training or microenterprise programs will be entitled to 300,000 pesos ($125) per month for up to two years. Many will be given short-term employment performing tasks like manual eradication of coca, while local businesses will be given tax breaks for hiring ex-paramilitaries.

All of this is to be carried out in two months by a Colombian government that is so cash-strapped and inefficient that displaced people in many areas must wait months to have their status "verified," people who have had their legal crops fumigated must wait months or years to have their compensation petitions resolved, and rural communities country-wide are still awaiting fulfillment of years-old promises to maintain roads, build schools or formalize land titles. What, short of a miracle, will guarantee that Bogotá has the political will to see this ambitious new commitment through?

And are the resources on hand? If done right, this will be a very expensive undertaking. The Colombian Treasury Ministry claims to have set aside 410 billion pesos (about $160 million) for the AUC's disarmament, about $8,000 per fighter. In a country that already has a ballooning fiscal budget deficit, it is not clear where Colombia's government plans to find even this extra 0.2 percent of GDP.

            A poor precedent: the 2003 BCN demobilization

The experience of the first AUC demobilization, which happened a year ago tomorrow, gives further cause for skepticism. Last November 25 in Medellín, 874 members of Don Berna's Cacique Nutibara Bloc (BCN) turned in 200-plus weapons in a ceremony that received a good deal of media attention in Colombia and some favorable coverage in the United States. The ex-fighters were whisked off for three weeks' "reorientation" at a recreation center outside Medellín; quick background checks there found 214 under suspicion of having committed past crimes, and fourteen have been detained.

Those demobilized have entered poorly funded education, job training and job placement programs, run largely by the Medellín mayor's office. Though the programs have certainly helped some ex-fighters, the overall result of the BCN process is far from encouraging. The Brussels-based International Crisis Group, which has done the most thorough follow-up on this process, found in August that efforts "made on a limited budget, with little central government support and against the backdrop of a partial demobilization process" have failed to address key issues like "bringing offenders to justice, compensating victims or dealing with drug trafficking and other illegal activities," leaving a "long-term risk … that paramilitary power in Medellín will be strengthened by institutionalizing it."

Worse, the ICG and other observers have pointed out that many of those who demobilized – somewhere between 30 to 70 percent – were not even AUC members in the first place. It appears that, in the days before the weapons-handover ceremony, the BCN recruited hundreds of gang members, common criminals, and aimless young men from Medellín's slums to pose as paramilitary members and enter the process as free-riders. It is not clear why Don Berna would have felt a need to pad his group's numbers, since a BCN "political coordinator" told Medellín's El Colombiano in March 2003 that his group had 4,000 members.

Today, many ex-BCN members have returned to their former activities, dominating their marginal Medellín neighborhoods and controlling common crime and the local drug trade. The ICG reports that many "appear to remain in close contact with the AUC through a cellular phone network, to consult their commanders on important decisions, and to operate according to their strict hierarchy." Some, according to Colombia's human rights ombudsman, have joined other paramilitary blocs like the Antioquia-based "Heroes of Granada." As of August, the OAS verification mission reported, seven demobilized fighters had been murdered. Less than fifty have found work in the private sector, according to El Tiempo. Even the Colombian government's peace negotiator, the ever-optimistic Luis Carlos Restrepo, has called the BCN process "an embarrassment."

Restrepo and other Colombian officials insist that the upcoming demobilization will not be a repeat of what happened in Medellín last year. Lists of those turning themselves in are to be handed over beforehand, instead of demobilizing anybody who shows up. Many of the weapons are being turned over beforehand as well.

Measures like these are not enough, though, to head off many likely consequences of a partial, largely improvised demobilization. The current plan does little to guarantee that the demobilized individuals will truly be removed from the paramilitary orbit. Most of the blocs about to turn themselves in co-exist geographically with other AUC groups. The Bananero Bloc, for instance, operates in Urabá alongside Don Berna's "Heroes of Tolová" bloc and the venerable Élmer Cárdenas bloc, headed by "Alemán," which is not participating in peace talks. (Don't miss the bizarre "Farcman and Elena" flash-animation story on the Élmer Cárdenas bloc's website.)

Will such active groups absorb, or at least exercise strong influence over, those who demobilize? Or as El Tiempo's editorial-writers put it, "What are the mechanisms foreseen to avoid a situation in which, two years from now, these zones are under the control of pro-'para' political movements, NGOs or cooperatives, this time legalized and legitimized?" Re-recruitment has certainly happened after past peace processes; in fact, dozens of those likely to be demobilizing from the Bananero Bloc are former members of the EPL guerrilla group that dominated Urabá in the 1980s, and who participated in demobilization programs over a decade ago.

Meanwhile, there is little way to tell whether those being demobilized are paramilitaries, or whether all of the paramilitaries who belonged to a particular bloc are demobilizing. Colombian prosecutors and intelligence agents note that paramilitary blocs' sizes fluctuate wildly, depending on needs – it is not unusual for a bloc's membership to range between 50 and 500 over the course of a year. At the same time, few are convinced that Colombia's military and police have either the resources or the strategic plans in place to fill the "security vacuum" left in zones where paramilitaries are disappearing. (This topic will be covered in our next posting.)

A pattern of improvisation

These are just some of the consequences of a peace process that, for two years now, has consistently adopted a cart-before-the-horse, "let's see what happens next" approach. Post-mortems of President Andrés Pastrana's failed 1998-2002 attempt to negotiate with the FARC almost uniformly note that a major reason for failure was the lack of a coherent plan. With both negotiating teams wildly improvising, the talks careened from topic to topic, commitments were made hastily and without consultation (such as agreeing to cede five municipalities to the FARC), other commitments were ignored, and the talks often ran aground on fruitless discussions of procedural details.

The critics were right. While some improvisation is necessary – negotiators have to be flexible in a very fluid situation – something as serious and risky as a peace negotiation cannot be made up as one goes along. Without a plan and a timeline in place, consideration of the thorniest, most difficult issues – and there are many – gets delayed and put off; delay and foot-dragging in turn deteriorate confidence in the process and sharpen divisions on both sides about how, and whether, to proceed.

In the case of the paramilitary talks, we can even discern a troubling pattern resulting from over-improvisation. The talks have shown a tendency to flounder for months with no breakthrough, until a crisis takes them to a potential breaking point. At that point, an ultimatum is issued and both sides take a small, very public step that is intended to show "progress." Then the talks go back to their previous floundering.

For instance, this spring the talks were going nowhere, then were thrown into crisis by reports of continued cease-fire violations and the disappearance / murder of Carlos Castaño. On April 27, President Uribe issued a strongly worded statement demanding that the paramilitaries concentrate themselves in special zones and progress toward demobilization. By late June, the AUC leadership had relocated to the San José de Ralito zone. The latest "breakthrough" – the upcoming demobilizations – came after several more months with no progress, followed by numerous crises, such as the September killing of paramilitary leader Miguel Arroyave, reports of narcotraffickers entering the paramilitaries (the so-called "paracaidistas"), press coverage of increasing paramilitary influence over Colombian politics, and Mancuso's leak of controversial recordings from the peace negotiations (discussed below). The Uribe government reacted by agreeing to extradite a mid-level paramilitary leader; only Mancuso's October announcement of a big new demobilization was able to break the impasse.

An elusive legal framework

Improvisation has led to a situation in which combatants are demobilizing, but there is no law in place to deal with those who stand accused of crimes against humanity. Those accused of war crimes who turn themselves in over the next five weeks will enter a legal limbo, confined to sites like the Ralito zone while they await passage of legislation.

Though the Uribe government has introduced two "alternative punishment" bills in Colombia's Congress – the first calling for only "symbolic" punishments and payments – these have gone nowhere, with opposition coming even from some of President Uribe's strongest supporters. Nearly two years into the process, the government has failed to develop a consensus proposal that major political factions, as well as victims' groups and the human rights community, can support.

Senator Rafael Pardo, a leading opponent of Uribe's first legislative efforts, has worked with members of other parties – including congressman Wilson Borja of the left-of-center Democratic Alternative party, who was wounded in a 2000 paramilitary assassination attempt – to craft a new "justice, reconciliation and reparation" law. This bill hasn't been introduced in Colombia's Congress yet, but it proposes to resolve some of the thorniest issues with five to ten-year jail sentences for the worst violators and an effort to compensate victims, both through paramilitaries' return of stolen assets and government compensation for damages. The latter commitment could carry an enormous price tag. A special tribunal, a new branch of the inspector-general's office (Procuraduría), and a new National Reparations Council would take on most of these responsibilities.

The legislation should undergo a few modifications – so far, for instance, anyone who aided, abetted, or funded the paramilitaries remains untouched – but it is a significant improvement over past attempts to create a legal framework for this demobilization and possible future processes with guerrillas. However, it has not been introduced yet, the Uribe government has not yet signaled its support, and it remains to be seen whether all major paramilitary leaders will agree to spend up to ten years in jail. (While Salvatore Mancuso has indicated he might accede to this, some of those who have spent more time in Colombia's drug underground, like "Don Berna," may refuse.) Even after being introduced, the bill could take months to pass, and will probably undergo a Constitutional Court challenge afterward. So a legal framework for demobilization could be lacking for some time to come.

Money

Colombia has a good deal of experience now with demobilizing armed groups, but few examples of success. Past "forgive and forget" peace processes have left behind seething hatreds among survivors. There has also been a failure to address the poverty and lack of opportunity that led fighters to join armed groups in the first place. Desire for revenge in an atmosphere of few economic options is a recipe for another generation of conflict.

These are difficult challenges to overcome, and they require of the Colombian government not only a deep reserve of political will, but a clear plan and lots of resources. Not only are justice and opportunity impossible to improvise, they are also expensive. And for the moment, it is far from clear how Bogotá plans to pay for them.

Even if Colombia's government can indeed carve $160 million out of its existing revenues to demobilize the AUC, this is unlikely to be anywhere enough to help rebuild lives, livelihoods and communities in the zones the paramilitaries have dominated. Colombia is obviously counting on the international community to step in and help. But the international community has so far proven reluctant: the United States, Sweden and the Netherlands have offered modest support for logistical aspects of the negotiations, but nobody has paid for demobilizations yet. The European Union is typical: it has sought clearer human rights guarantees – nobody wants to fund amnesty for war criminals – but is also holding off until a clearer plan is in place.

Like any investor, they are unwilling to put their money down without having a better sense of the details. The continued reliance on improvisation is deterring them. This is, of course, a bit of a vicious circle: it is difficult to craft a workable plan until one knows what level of resources one can expect to have on hand – but donors are unwilling to grant resources until they see a plan. The way out of this circle is to craft a plan in close coordination with the donor community, something that has not been done systematically for the paramilitary demobilizations.

The U.S. government shares some of the EU critique. The House-Senate Conference Committee's final version of the 2005 foreign aid bill, which may be signed into law at any moment, includes in its non-binding narrative report the following concerns about the lack of well-thought-out safeguards.

The managers [the bill's primary authors] believe that the costs of demobilizing illegal armed groups should be borne by the Colombian Government, not the United States. The managers are concerned that the demobilization process is being undertaken without adequate safeguards to ensure the dismantling of such FTOs, to deter members of such groups from resuming illegal activities, or to prosecute and punish those involved in drug trafficking and human rights violations.

Since it is non-binding, this language does not make it illegal for the United States to fund the demobilization of rank-and-file paramilitaries, something that many in the executive branch would like to do after receiving repeated entreaties from the Uribe government.

What does make it illegal, remarkably, is the 2001 USA-PATRIOT Act. Section 803 of this very controversial law makes those who "harbor or conceal" terrorists subject to fines or up to ten years in jail. The Justice Department has advised the State Department that this provision could make it a jailable offense to fund the demobilization even of those who have renounced membership in terrorist groups (the AUC, FARC and ELN are all on the State Department's list of international terrorist groups). So no U.S. money for demobilization will be forthcoming even if Colombia comes up with a detailed, foolproof plan – at least until a legislative fix is made to Section 803 of the PATRIOT Act.

Secrecy

Compounding the sense that the talks are occurring in an atmosphere of improvisation and disorganization – that they are going around in circles – is the high level of secrecy in which they are taking place. It is difficult to gauge what progress, if any, emerges from the periodic meetings between negotiators, or how close or distant agreement on key points may be.

This shield of secrecy is in part a reaction to the Pastrana government's talks with the FARC, which took place amid heavy media coverage in the Caguán demilitarized zone. Every minor setback was amplified, and both sides set the process back by posturing in the press.

The current talks have gone to the other extreme. Without transparency, confidence in the talks is damaged – especially when the talks are taking place between a government and an armed group that happens to be pro-government. The AUC's many victims and other stakeholders are denied opportunities for meaningful input into the negotiations as well, adding to a sense of outrage that was perhaps most palpable when three AUC leaders addressed Colombia's Congress in July.

Suspicions of foul play are magnified when scandalous pieces of news do penetrate the barrier of secrecy, such as the recordings of negotiation sessions leaked to the media by Salvatore Mancuso in September. In the tapes, government peace negotiator Restrepo assures Mancuso that he is trying to keep reports of paramilitaries murdering civilians in the Ralito demilitarized zone out of the media. Restrepo also tells the paramilitaries that they have nothing to fear from the International Criminal Court, even though Colombia is a signatory to the Rome Statute.

Make a plan and stick with it

Defenders of the paramilitary talks in their current form often acknowledge the negotiators' reliance on improvisation, but respond that the situation is too complex to demand adherence to a fixed strategy. But nobody is calling for a rigid, subpoint-by-subpoint timeline – confidence in the talks would suffer every time they ran behind such a detailed schedule. Of course flexibility is important. But the current level of improvisation may end up being worse than no talks at all.

Without plans and mechanisms to keep the talks on track and to verify gains, the Colombian government is forced to depend heavily on the paramilitaries' goodwill. For instance, we are required right now to trust that the AUC is indeed demobilizing eleven blocs and truly reducing its presence in the affected zones. There is no way to verify this, especially when the timeframe is compressed to two months and the international community is hardly participating. "Trust but don't verify" is a poor guideline.

Colombia has improvised its peace processes before, and it has nearly always gone badly. Simply taking a leap into the unknown and hoping for the best is not a strategy. It is a recipe for future neglect of the demobilized fighters, future resentments in affected communities, and future violence as Colombia's conflict drags on.

Coming soon: (4) The post-demobilization security vacuum

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November 13, 2004

Paramilitary talks (2): The "paracaidistas"

Pity poor Pablo Escobar. The flamboyant, brutal drug dealer always wanted a clean slate – to be seen, in journalist Mark Bowden's words, "as a benevolent, law-abiding citizen." But he came and went 15 years too early for that.

Had he been trafficking drugs and killing enemies today, perhaps Escobar could have avoided ending up dead on a Medellín rooftop, surrounded by smiling, photo-snapping policemen. Today, he could have put on camouflage fatigues, christened himself "Comandante" something-or-other, and bought himself a seat at the table in the Santa Fe de Ralito demilitarized zone, where negotiations are proceeding between the Colombian government and the AUC paramilitaries. There, Escobar would have stood a decent chance of winning amnesty, or at least a vastly reduced penalty, for his past crimes. His presence at the table would also have stymied any U.S. attempt to extradite him.

Sounds farfetched? Well, it's happening right now for an entire corps of Colombia's top drug dealers. An odd wave of brand-new comandantes has swept the AUC leadership over the past three or four years: people with precious little experience fighting guerrillas but a long record as capos in Colombian narcotrafficking organizations. Among them are no less than three of the twelve figures on the U.S. government's "wanted" list of members of the North Valle Cartel, Colombia's largest existing drug organization.

Colombians even have a term for these traffickers-turned-paramilitaries: the "paracaidistas" – the parachutists – as in people who've just "dropped in." The paracaidistas' presence at Ralito, and their growing influence over the AUC, might be the largest obstacle the Uribe government's talks face right now.

The difference between these new leaders and more "traditional" AUC comandantes may at first seem semantic, since today's paramilitaries got their start and get much of their support from drug traffickers' money, since they control 40 percent of Colombia's drug trade (according to U.S. Ambassador William Wood), and since much of the AUC leadership is subject to U.S. Justice Department extradition requests. In addition to ordering mass murder, longtime paramilitary leaders like Salvatore Mancuso, Iván Roberto Duque, "Macaco" and Ramón Isaza have helped send prodigious amounts of drugs to the United States.

As awful as they are, though, the paramilitaries' old guard at least can claim to have fought guerrillas and those they regarded as guerrilla sympathizers. The paracaidistas can hardly even claim that. They have few anti-guerrilla credentials, but long resumes in Colombia's drug underworld. It is not even clear whether they view the guerrillas as blood enemies or merely as rival drug mafias. In one celebrated example from February, when Colombian troops participating in the early stages of Plan Patriota captured "Sonia" (Nayibe Rojas Valderrama), the "financial chief" of the FARC's Southern Bloc, they found e-mails on her computer asking the local AUC to lend a helicopter "to transport arms and drugs through the jungle." 

The distinction between old-line paramilitaries, however "narco," and the paracaidistas makes a world of difference for Colombia's peace talks with the AUC. First, it makes international support impossible: a negotiation with longtime, unreformed cartel leaders – regardless of the insignia on their new uniforms – is still a negotiation with cartel leaders, something that no other government is going to touch. Second, the paracaidistas are rapidly supplanting the AUC's old guard – even killing those who (like Carlos Castaño in April, or the Metro Bloc's "Rodrigo 00" in May) opposed the group's advanced narcotization and may have been seen as too likely to turn state's evidence. Under this new management, the paramilitaries are turning into a mafia, or rather a set of rival mafias united only by their common hope to negotiate an amnesty.

Here are some examples of paracaidistas currently in the Ralito zone talking with government representatives.

• Diego Fernando Murillo, nicknamed "Don Berna" or "Adolfo Paz," is the AUC's "inspector-general" and, by some accounts, the group's most feared and powerful leader. A July narcotrafficking indictment issued by New York prosecutors calls him the "de facto leader of the AUC." His long biography includes time spent as a Medellín cartel bagman, a participant in a Cali Cartel-funded effort to kill Pablo Escobar, and leader of La Terraza, Medellín's feared, but now defunct, network of hitmen-for-hire and street criminals. He did not join up with the paramilitaries until 2000 or so; thanks to a combination of generous buyouts of paramilitary blocs and sheer ruthlessness, his rise within the organization has been meteoric. Among several paramilitary units that answer to him was a short-lived Medellín-based paramilitary front, the Cacique Nutibara Bloc, that produced 860 young men for a widely questioned November 2003 "demobilization" ceremony.
  
  
• Víctor Manuel Mejía Múnera, nicknamed "El Mellizo" ("The Twin") but known in Ralito as "Pablo Arauca," is the head of the AUC's "Avengers of Arauca" bloc. Mejía, along with his twin brother, has long been on FBI most-wanted lists as a high-ranking figure in the Northern Valle cartel. Apparently he's a member of the "General Staff" of Iván Duque's Central Bolívar Bloc, and his group operates in Arauca, the oil-rich department of northeastern Colombia where U.S. military personnel have been present for nearly two years now, training the Colombian army in pipeline-protection and offensive anti-guerrilla operations. Observers were surprised to see him in Ralito when the current stage of talks was launched in July; Mejía was not before known to be a paramilitary leader. The "Avengers of Arauca" purportedly plan to demobilize by the end of the year; if that happens, though, few believe that it will mean an end to paramilitarism in Arauca.
  
  
• Francisco Javier Zuluaga Lindo, known as "Gordo Lindo" in the drug underworld but in Ralito as "Comandante Gabriel Galindo," is the political chief of Don Berna's Pacific Bloc. He was an associate of the Medellín cartel's Fabio and Jorge Ochoa and later, a partner of narcotrafficker Alejandro Bernal Madrigal, or "Juvenal," who was captured and extradited in Operation Millenium, a large-scale 1999 drug sting. A court in Fort Lauderdale requested Zuluaga's extradition at that time, but he had evaded capture. Along with Mejía, his presence at the Ralito negotiating table in July surprised many who did not know him to be a paramilitary associate.
  
  
• Ramiro Vanoy Murillo, or "Cuco," heads the Antioquia-based Mineros Bloc. Along with "Gordo Lindo," Vanoy is sought by the Fort Lauderdale court as an associate of "Juvenal."
  
  
• Guillermo Pérez Alzate, or "Pablo Sevillano," heads the Liberators of the South Bloc, based in the Pacific port city of Tumaco near the coca fields of western Nariño department. He is wanted by Colombian police in connection with a shipment of 11 tons of cocaine. He also reputedly coordinated the North Valle Cartel's "mule" operation (recruiting women to board planes to the United States after swallowing sealed packets of drugs). He paid large sums to the AUC sometime after 2001 for control of southern Pacific coast narcotrafficking routes and for permission to wear the AUC label. According to Moritz Ackerman, a columnist for the Medellín daily El Colombiano, Perez's group routinely does business with guerrillas: "in the department of Nariño, in a region called 'Coca City,' the 'Liberators of the South' paramilitaries buy the harvest and the FARC's 29^th Front supervises the refining of cocaine."
  
  
• Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, or "Jorge 40," runs the AUC's Northern Bloc and is based in and around the port of Barranquilla, Colombia's fourth-largest city. He allegedly controls the lion's share of narcotrafficking in Colombia's Atlantic Coast region, though he disputes it with Santa Marta-based paramilitary leader Hernán Giraldo. The dispute has often flared up into large-scale internecine violence, including frequent fighting over routes through the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region of northern Colombia. Giraldo and the rest of the AUC, led by Tovar, fought an all-out war in 2002 that killed dozens in the port city of Santa Marta. The AUC allegedly sought to rein in Giraldo after he ordered the murder of two U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents, a crime for which the United States seeks his extradition.
  
  A truce between Tovar and Giraldo has mostly held since then, though both have committed numerous high-profile violations of the cease-fire the AUC should be observing as a pre-condition for negotiations, among them the February murder of park ranger Marta Lucía Hernández, the abortive June kidnapping of Sen. José Gnecco, the August murder of indigenous leader Freddy Arias, and the September killing of professor Alfredo Correa.
  
  
• Last but not least, a recent report in the Colombian newsweekly Semana asserts that, after paying a US$5 million fee, top North Valle Cartel leader Diego Montoya Sánchez, "Don Diego," is now in the Ralito demilitarized zone, wearing olive-green fatigues and posing as the head of a new 150-man bloc, the "Heroes of Ríonegro." Montoya is on the FBI's worldwide list of its ten most-wanted fugitives, alongside Osama bin Laden. If it turns out that Don Diego has truly "parachuted in" – and his online wanted poster notes that "Montoya is presently protected by the Colombian paramilitary group, 'Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia' (AUC)" – it could prove to be a near-fatal blow to the credibility of the Uribe government's peace talks.
  
  Note as of November 24: Semana magazine has revised this claim. In a November 21 article, it contends that the AUC refused Don Diego's request to play comandante in the Ralito zone, saying it posed to great a risk to the peace process. So Don Diego is probably not in Ralito - though his FBI wanted poster still claims that "Montoya is presently protected by the Colombian paramilitary group, 'Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia' (AUC)."

How remarkable that, in the name of peace and disarmament, some of the world's most prominent narco-criminals not only have a safe haven, but they have regular opportunities to meet with government officials to demand an amnesty deal. If they get even some of the impunity they want, the paracaidistas will have succeeded in a scheme so brazen that even Pablo Escobar couldn't have devised it.

How remarkable as well that the government of Álvaro Uribe – which takes such a hard line against the hapless peasants who grow the narco-kingpins' coca – has reacted so meekly to the growing presence of the kingpins themselves. So far, the Colombian government has sought to extradite only one paracaidista in the Ralito zone, Juan Carlos Sierra Ramírez or "El Tuso," a relatively minor figure who had bought up a small paramilitary bloc in Antioquia department. And they didn't arrest him; "El Tuso" remains at large.

The Colombian government has made no secret of its unhappiness with current low levels of international support for the paramilitary peace talks. For donor governments, though, the talks will remain radioactive – utterly untouchable – as long as the paracaidistas remain at the table. They have to go if this process is to have any credibility at all.

Coming soon: (3) Improvisation and secrecy

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November 9, 2004

Paramilitary talks (1): Cease-fire violations

The imminent demobilization of 3,000 paramilitary fighters is likely to bring a wave of optimistic statements and glowing press coverage about the Uribe government's very troubled process of negotiations with the AUC. In order to help keep things in perspective, the next few days' postings will explore several troubling issues that urgently need to be sorted out before we can recommend that the U.S. government support the Santa Fe de Ralito peace talks.

These issues include (1) continued paramilitary cease-fire violations; (2) drug traffickers at the negotiating table; (3) improvisation and secrecy; (4) the post-demobilization security vacuum; and (5) justice, victims' rights and accountability; and (6) extradition and the U.S. role.

(1) Cease-fire violations

Between 1998 and 2002, a right-wing presidential aspirant named Álvaro Uribe relentlessly criticized President Andrés Pastrana for agreeing to negotiate with the FARC guerrillas while the fighting raged on away from the negotiating table. Uribe promised that, if elected, he would only talk with groups that first agreed to a unilateral cease-fire.

Uribe was elected in May 2002, inaugurated that August, and by December the AUC paramilitaries had declared a cease-fire, allowing talks to begin. After two years, though, there's a snag that's awfully hard to overlook: the AUC hasn't stopped killing people. Cease-fire violations are routine, and usually the government, rather than threatening to get up from the table, hardly even acknowledges them.

Granted, there has been a partial truce; the AUC has significantly slowed the pace of its slaughter since December 2002. (This is a main reason for the recent torrent of statistics about reduced violence since Uribe took office.) Cease-fire violations nonetheless continue at an alarming rate.

On October 3, the Colombian government's human rights ombudsman (Defensoría del Pueblo) announced that its offices in eleven of Colombia's thirty-two departments (provinces) had received 342 complaints of paramilitary cease-fire violations since December 2002. In the department of Tolima alone, the local ombudsman said that the paramilitaries had killed 170 people since the cease-fire was declared. Nationally, the Colombian Commission of Jurists cites a far higher number of violations: Between December 1, 2002 and September 10, 2004, the respected human-rights group reports, the paramilitaries killed or disappeared at least 1,895 civilians "in actions not directly related to the armed conflict."

The last three months alone offer some high-profile and very disturbing examples of cease-fire violations.

• In August, paramilitaries killed Freddy Arias, a leader of the Kankuamo indigenous group, in the northeastern city of Valledupar. Paramilitaries and guerrillas have both killed numerous civilians, many of them in deeply rooted indigenous communities, in an all-out war for control of drug crops and trafficking routes in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region of northern Colombia.
• In September, paramilitaries killed Alfredo Correa de Andreis, a professor at Barranquilla's Simón Bolívar University. Correa, a leading local advocate of human rights, had been arrested and charged with helping guerrillas a few months earlier; he was shot shortly after being released for lack of evidence.
• In October, paramilitaries in Medellín killed Teresa Yarce, a community organizer in the conflictive Comuna 13 neighborhood.
• An October massacre of at least 11 people at a resort in Candelaria, Valle del Cauca – part of an ongoing war between drug traffickers in the area – appeared to involve paramilitaries. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights' Bogotá field office issued a statement noting that "this mass killing appears to constitute another clear violation of the commitments the paramilitaries have made at the Santa Fe de Ralito negotiating table."

Even the office of the Colombian government's peace negotiator (High Commissioner for Peace) recognizes a (far smaller) number of cease-fire violations in periodic reports. For its part, the OAS support mission (MAPP-OEA), which is charged with verifying the cease-fire, has noted in reports issued in May (PDF format) and August (MS Word format) that cease-fire violations are a problem.

Instead of forcefully denouncing these violations, however, the OAS has chosen to downplay them: the August report, which contains the most extensive discussion of cease-fire violations, devotes much space to a repetition of the Uribe government's statistics showing a general decline in violence. "We are deeply concerned that the OAS is in fact abandoning its impartial verification role and locating itself openly alongside one of the parties in the current conflict," read a May 2004 letter to OAS mission chief Sergio Caramagna from dozens of Colombian human-rights organizations and political groups.

With the cease-fire routinely violated, the Uribe government is left sitting with armed-group leaders at a table in a special demilitarized zone, while the group's members go on killing people throughout the country. In that respect, there's a strong similarity between the Ralito dialogues and the Pastrana government's much-maligned talks with the FARC.

Clearly, having a cease-fire in place makes negotiators' work easier; ongoing battles, offensives and atrocities create distractions that make dialogues very difficult to sustain. It is not always practical to require a cease-fire, though: if a group is willing to talk without one, and forcing them into a truce would entail a great deal of bloodshed on the battlefield, being flexible about a cease-fire could save lives. For this reason, CIP did not recommend a cease-fire as a pre-condition for the 1998-2002 talks with the FARC.

In this case, however, the AUC's noncompliance casts strong doubts on the whole negotiation process. Since President Uribe had made the cease-fire a fundamental pre-condition for talks, it has become an early test of the paramilitaries' will to negotiate in good faith. By violating their word so blatantly, the paramilitaries fail this test miserably. The result is mounting distrust at the negotiating table and weakening public and international confidence in the talks.

The Colombian government, along with the OAS, must keep the situation from getting worse, and not by issuing yet another empty ultimatum. Bogotá's options include (1) suspending the talks until the killing measurably stops; (2) greatly stepping up military pressure on the paramilitaries, especially in zones where cease-fire observance is poorest; or (3) abandoning the "cease-fire first" requirement, which in fact would allow the government to accelerate and regularize its discussions with the FARC and ELN.

Coming soon: (2) The "paracaidistas"

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October 25, 2004

Donations to the FARC

To those who, like President Uribe, have trouble distinguishing between non-governmental human rights groups and guerrillas (recall Uribe's characterization of most Colombian human rights NGOs as "spokespeople for terrorism," among other things, on several occasions over the past 13 months), we direct you to the website of CODHES, one of Colombia's best-known human rights organizations.

In an editorial published Saturday, CODHES strongly condemns a group of misguided activists in Denmark who recently raised $8,500 and sent it to the FARC. The Colombian group makes clear that no money for war – whether cash for the guerrillas or helicopters for the Colombian army – is welcome from the international community. An English translation follows.

The announcement that a group of Danish citizens donated US$8,500 to the FARC elicits not only indignation and condemnation, but should also serve to open a national and international political debate about the methods of finance and support for the internal war from which Colombia suffers.

We should not accept support of any kind, be it economic or political, from governments, non-governmental organizations, or social organizations that continue to feed the confrontation, because after 40 years we are convinced that war is not the path and weapons are not the answer.

The country is mired in a deep social crisis, the result of accelerated poverty for the majority of the population combined with the utilization of a sizeable portion of resources for war.

The FARC, ELN, and self-defense groups are spending approximately US$2,592,251 each day, much of it coming from drug trafficking, to prolong this unjustifiable war.

Last year, the national government spent a daily average of approximately US$7,287,175 on its defense and national security budget, amid the warlike enthusiasm surrounding the idea of a military solution.

From the United States, US$1,680,175 arrives in our country every day to feed this war, in the framework of the struggle against terror and drugs, with no result other than the indefinite prolonging of the conflict and the unchanged supply of narcotics in the streets of the world's largest cities

This is why it is imperative that all types of support for those who make war must be condemned. The aid we demand of the world is aid for peace, democracy, human rights, justice and social equality.

Nobody should send their money to buy guns, promote attacks, displace, confine or kidnap civilians, disappear citizens, lay mines, destroy the national infrastructure, or arbitrarily arrest people.

Instead of money for war, Colombia requires support for a political and negotiated solution to this conflict, a serious process with results, which includes broad participation of civil society (including the victims) and serious mechanisms of international facilitation and verification, within the framework of the principles of truth, justice, reparation, and international human rights instruments.

Ladies and gentlemen of Denmark, we do not want your money for the FARC.

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October 21, 2004

Uribe's Iraq?

A poll released October 15 by Colombian media giant RCN contained some very bad news for Álvaro Uribe. The RCN-Yanhaas survey found an 18.2 percent drop in the president's approval rating since August. Of those surveyed, 47.8 percent characterized his performance as "good," 37.9 percent as "medium" and 12.7 percent as "poor." This follows an October 8 Invamer-Gallup survey, in which the president's approval rating fell from 78 to 72 percent (Invamer-Gallup doesn’t offer "medium" as an option).

Though not catastrophic or irreversible drops, these represent the lowest points for Uribe at least since early 2003. For the first time in his presidency, Invamer-Gallup found that the number of people who think the country is on the wrong track (38 percent) nearly equals the number who believe things are improving (39 percent).

Keep in mind that this poll does not sample a cross-section of Colombian opinion. It only reaches Colombians (1) who live in the four to seven largest cities; (2) who own a telephone; and (3) who may be less than candid about their political opinions when speaking to a total stranger on the telephone. Nonetheless, even with a sample so skewed toward the wealthy, Invamer found three economic issues – the cost of living, unemployment, and management of the economy – to be the main reasons for the drop in approval.

According to the same poll, the fourth-most damaging issue for Colombia's president is his "management of the paramilitary problem." Indeed, the Bogotá government's attempt to talk peace with the AUC have been unraveling in an atmosphere of secrecy, miscommunication, infighting and widespread concern about what might happen next.

Uribe and his peace commissioner, Luis Carlos Restrepo, have faced mounting criticism for launching the peace talks without a clear plan, devoting insufficient resources to get the job done right, failing to win the international community's support, and denying, in the face of much evidence, that a fundamental change in strategy is needed.

Those same criticisms, of course, have also been leveled at the Bush administration's handling of Iraq. In both cases, these self-inflicted wounds are doing significant damage to both presidents' domestic approval ratings.

As bad news continues to flow out of Baghdad, the Uribe government's talks with the AUC have generated their own torrent of alarming developments just during the past month.

- On September 19, one of the principal paramilitary negotiators, Miguel Arroyave – who assumed control over the AUC's "Centauros Bloc" in Cundinamarca, Meta and Casanare in 2001, after serving jail time for narcotrafficking – was killed by his own men. Arroyave became the third top paramilitary leader, and second AUC negotiator, killed by fellow paramilitaries since April, when longtime leader Carlos Castaño disappeared following an armed attack. (Castaño is presumed dead; U.S. Ambassador William Wood revealed recently that the warlord's 22-year-old wife was granted asylum and is currently in the United States.)

- On September 26, Colombia's Semana magazine printed transcripts of secretly taped conversations between government negotiator Restrepo and AUC leader Salvatore Mancuso. In the tapes, Restrepo assured the paramilitary leader that he is trying to keep reports of paramilitaries murdering civilians in the Ralito demilitarized zone out of the media. He also told them they have nothing to fear from the International Criminal Court, even though Colombia is a signatory to the Rome Statute. It turned out that the leaker of the tapes was Mancuso himself, apparently making a heavy-handed effort to weaken Restrepo's position. Restrepo offered his resignation, but President Uribe did not accept it.

While those revelations shocked Colombia, the impact was amplified by simultaneous reports that same September 26 in Colombia's main Sunday papers. El Tiempo and El Espectador both reported on the paramilitaries' growing influence in Colombia's economy and political system, including a strong presence in 35 percent of the country's municipalities (counties), close ties to many members of the Congress and local governments, and revelations of schemes to channel public funds into paramilitary coffers.

- On September 30, authorities arrested Andrés Vélez, who served for months as the AUC's spokesman at the Ralito peace talks, as part of a DEA-assisted operation to dismantle a money-laundering ring. Further investigation revealed that Vélez played a role in a massive multinational scheme to bring drug money back into Colombia for the Centauros Bloc, the paramilitary unit headed by Miguel Arroyave until his murder less than two weeks earlier.

- President Uribe had made clear that he would not hold peace talks with any group that did not first declare a unilateral cease-fire. The paramilitaries declared a cease-fire in December 2002; while this has slowed the pace of paramilitary human-rights abuses, violations of the cease-fire continue at an alarming rate. On October 3, the Colombian government's human rights ombudsman (Defensoría del Pueblo) announced that its offices had received 342 complaints of paramilitary cease-fire violations since December 2002. The statistic refers to records the ombudsman has kept in only eleven of Colombia's thirty-two departments (provinces). In the department of Tolima alone, the local ombudsman announced on October 17 that the paramilitaries had killed 170 people since the cease-fire was declared.

- An October 3 massacre of at least 11 people at a resort in Candelaria, Valle del Cauca – part of an ongoing war between drug traffickers in the area – appeared to involve paramilitaries. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights' Bogotá field office issued a statement noting that "this mass killing appears to constitute another clear violation of the commitments the paramilitaries have made at the Santa Fe de Ralito negotiating table."

- On October 7, Colombian authorities arrested Gabriel Puerta Parra, alias "The Doctor," one of twelve top North Valle Cartel figures the United States has sought to extradite since May. El Tiempo reported this week that in August, Puerta Parra had written to an unnamed top AUC leader asking permission to join the ranks of the paramilitary leadership in the demilitarized zone where talks are taking place. By becoming "Comandante Agamez," the name he chose for himself, Puerta Parra hoped not only to evade arrest, but to negotiate a possible amnesty and a way to avoid extradition to the United States. Though his letter's addressee apparently said no to this scheme, Puerta Parra's text indicates that several top paramilitary leaders – Vicente Castaño, Diego Murillo Bejarano (Don Berna), Lorenzo González Quinchía (Macaco), and Iván Roberto Duque (Ernesto Báez) – had already approved the idea. (The amount of money the AUC would have received in exchange is not discussed.) In the letter, the narcotrafficker reminded the AUC leadership of his eighteen years of financial support for paramilitaries in several parts of the country.

Though it didn't work out for Puerta Parra, other narcotraffickers-turned-paramilitary-leaders have been luckier: they are currently serving as paramilitary negotiators in the demilitarized zone at Santa Fe de Ralito, Córdoba. Among them are no less than three of the twelve North Valle capos on the U.S. government's "wanted" list. They include Víctor Manuel Mejía Múnera, nicknamed "El Mellizo" ("The Twin") but known in Ralito as "Pablo Arauca," the head of the AUC's "Avengers of Arauca" bloc; Francisco Javier Zuluaga Lindo, known as "Gordo Lindo" in the drug underworld but in Ralito as "Comandante Gabriel Galindo," the political chief of the Pacific Bloc; and Ramiro Vanoy Murillo, or "Cuco," the chief of the Antioquia-based Mineros Bloc. (See this interesting list, in a recent issue of Semana, of narcos who have recently converted to paramilitarism.) The Uribe government did take the step of ordering the extradition of a mid-ranking paramilitary leader present in the Ralito zone, Juan Carlos Sierra (alias "El Tuso"), on September 26. Angry AUC leaders did not turn over "El Tuso," who remains a fugitive from justice.

- U.S. support for the peace process continued to weaken. In an October 10 interview with Semana magazine, U.S. Ambassador William Wood again ratified the United States' position that Washington's support depends on paramilitary leaders' submission to justice, "including the jailing of those guilty of crimes against humanity and the extradition of those who broke our laws." He added that the paramilitaries "are not political actors. They are criminals, narcotraffickers, murderers and thieves."

In the face of this punishing barrage of bad news, the AUC and the Colombian government have proposed a measure to try to shore up the talks' flagging image: the demobilization of 3,000 paramilitary fighters – about one-sixth to one-seventh of the AUC – between early November and late December.

It is unclear whether the proposed demobilization is a show of paramilitary goodwill or, as some observers contend, a take-it-or-leave-it offer to accept thousands of fighters whom the paramilitaries no longer wish to pay. Peace Commissioner Restrepo, however, is seizing on the proposal as a sign of success. When El Tiempo reporters asked him on October 10 about his statements in the leaked tapes, he dismissed the issue: "The episode of the leaked tapes is, for me, an issue of the past. What interest me are deeds, and what is happening today [the AUC demobilization proposal] is a positive step. This is what definitely should be reported."

With hundreds of young, unemployed fighters possibly ready to begin exiting the paramilitaries as early as two weeks from now, the Colombian government's ability to ease their transition is a very urgent question. Right now, the Uribe administration appears to have neither the resources nor a solid plan in place for demobilization. Questions like financing, logistics, security guarantees, verifying weapons stockpiles, identifying known human-rights abusers, and the design of reintegration assistance all remain unanswered.

The November 2003 demobilization of 850 members of the "Nutibara Bloc" paramilitary group in Medellín does not offer a hopeful model. Though some in the U.S. media reported it as a hopeful step (a Miami Herald editorial at the time called it "a move in the right direction"), even peace negotiator Restrepo now acknowledges that this underfinanced, thrown-together episode was "an embarrassment." Up to 70 percent of the young men who demobilized with much fanfare that day (handing in about 200 weapons, mostly pistols) were in fact street criminals rounded up at the last moment and passed off as paramilitaries. Three weeks of "reintegration" and a poorly-financed follow-up have had almost no impact; the "demobilized" young men continue to control the same poor Medellín neighborhoods, and many have been killed by internecine gang-fighting.

In an editorial, El Tiempo asks some difficult questions.

Is the government prepared and does it have the resources to handle the surrender of 3,000 men all at once? Have control measures been contemplated to avoid a repeat of the errors of the "Nutibara Bloc" in Medellín? How to make sure that young people aren't recruited at the last minute and passed off as paramilitaries? What verification mechanisms will be applied to determine if the "paras" are complying? If it has been difficult in an urban zone like Medellín, how will it be now? And their security? With so many troops in the south searching for the FARC's rearguard [in "Plan Patriota"], how will the security forces be able to respond in zones that the paramilitaries leave in their hands?

With answers to these questions far off, the upcoming demobilization – if it indeed happens – may end up being yet another liability to add to the long list of blows the paramilitary talks have suffered. As with President Bush and Iraq, the damage could come to extend well beyond President Uribe's approval rating.

Posted by isacson at 2:46 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 20, 2004

Colombian Army push-polling

The Colombian Army's website this morning has an interestingly worded poll question:

The high commissioner for peace, Luis Carlos Restrepo, said that now is the best moment for the self-defense groups [paramilitaries] to carry out a massive demobilization.

Do you think this is the best moment, considering that the FARC still remains active as a terrorist organization?

The question's phrasing indicates that the army is still not viewing all illegal armed groups equally as enemies. Even in question form, the army should not publicly be entertaining the notion that one group might serve as a bulwark, or a balance, against another. If the AUC demobilizes (which is pretty unlikely anyway), the army should be pleased to have an enemy removed from the battlefield, not worried about having to confront the FARC alone.

Encouragingly, the majority of respondents so far - 69% as of noon today - have voted "yes," the AUC should demobilize no matter what happens to the FARC.

Posted by isacson at 12:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 14, 2004

Democratic Security's fuzzy math

The Colombian Defense Ministry's latest "Operational Results" report released this week (pdf format) presents a wide range of conflict-related statistics compiled since President Uribe took office in August 2002.

The document offers the following figures about the number of paramilitaries and guerrillas taken out of combat since Uribe's inauguration, whether by capture, death or desertion/demobilization:

• Paramilitaries captured: 7,576
• Paramilitaries killed: 896
• Paramilitaries demobilized individually: 1,432
• Paramilitaries demobilized in groups: 1,042
• Guerrillas captured: 14,031
• Guerrillas killed: 4,150
• Guerrillas demobilized: 3,960

Adding these up reveals a total of 33,087 "terrorists" out of circulation since August 2002.

In a February 2004 op-ed published in the Madrid daily El País, Álvaro Uribe declared that when he arrived in office, "my government found 30,000 people integrated into terrorist organizations."

If you take these numbers at face value and perform some quick subtraction, you find that the combined membership of the FARC, ELN and AUC should be 30,000 - 33,087 = –3,087 fighters.

That's awfully odd, since all three groups appear to have more than zero members - in fact, all are very evidently still out there killing people in great numbers.

Perhaps the groups' ability to recruit is greater than even previously imagined. Perhaps the Defense Ministry is padding its figures, for instance by including among its captured "guerrillas" many of the thousands of civilians arrested lately (and often released within weeks) after paid informants have labeled them guerrilla collaborators.

Whatever the reason, this "body count" statistic is clearly not a particularly useful indicator of anything.

Posted by isacson at 3:05 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 11, 2004

Yesterday's El Espectador

If you read Spanish, yesterday’s edition of the Sunday-only Colombian newspaper El Espectador featured some highly recommended reading (in addition to its coverage, and my summary, of the joint report on military aid we released last week with LAWG and WOLA). (Sorry about all those hyperlinks.)

Two articles in particular were "must-read":

• A debate between Ricardo Vargas of Acción Andina, one of Colombia's most articulate drug-policy critics, and Gen. Gustavo Socha, a former head of the Colombian Police Anti-Narcotics Division (he left this post in 2002, when he was reassigned after several members of his unit allegedly stole about $2 million from a U.S.-donated fund for fuel and spare parts). The article is interesting because these are two drug-policy experts who rarely spend much time together.
  
  "Fumigation has a perverse effect," Vargas says, "because it has been focused too much on the smallholding peasants, while an effective strategy against narcotrafficking is nowhere to be seen."
  
• A U.S.-based analyst named Zachariah Bruyn Decker writes about changes in the FARC guerrillas' strategy in response to Uribe's security policies, as indicated by captured guerrilla documents.
  
  Apparently, a letter from FARC leader Manuel Marulanda to his subalterns outlines three goals: first, don't let Uribe consolidate security throughout the country; second, don't allow the economy to bounce back from the 1999-2001 downturn; and third, create a division in Colombian public opinion about how peace can be achieved. A key tactic was to be increased attacks and bombings in cities, especially Bogotá, in order to "make the rich and the government feel the war." The article indicates that the adoption of urban terrorism was not a popular idea with all guerrilla leaders, some of whom reportedly noted that "it's good for weakening the state, but causes the people to reject us." Though the FARC has carried out more attacks in cities, such as the February 2003 bombing of the El Nogal social club in Bogotá, the article notes that the urban campaign has been nowhere near as intense as the guerrilla leadership had hoped.
  
  The captured communications also indicate that the FARC seeks to follow the Maoist dictum of dispersing forces when the government is strong, and concentrating them when the government is weak. Apparently, their attempt to put this into practice failed a year ago, when the fronts in Cundinamarca department surrounding Bogotá were routed by the Army's "Libertad I" offensive despite dividing into small groups. The conclusion is that "the Democratic Security strategy and its military component, Plan Patriota, have indeed substantially diminished the FARC's ability to carry out offensive actions."
  
  Is this accurate? It's hard to tell; groups like Alfredo Rangel's Security and Democracy Foundation have issued positive, but far less rosy, evaluations of their own. Nonetheless, there's a lot of new information in Decker's piece, it's definitely worth a close read.

Posted by isacson at 3:33 PM | Comments (1)

October 6, 2004

Were the M-19 peace talks an “error”?

Álvaro Uribe can always be counted on to say what’s on his mind. Colombia’s president did it again last Thursday, while answering audience questions at Florida International University in Miami. Seeking to assure a questioner that paramilitary leaders would not be amnestied following peace negotiations, he took a swipe at an important past peace effort.

“In the past, guerrilla atrocities were amnestied,” Uribe said. “The M-19 burned down the Palace of Justice, in association with narcotraffickers, and was amnestied. Colombia cannot repeat these errors, whether in favor of paramilitaries or in favor of guerrillas.”

With three sentences, Uribe slammed a peace process generally regarded as a success, probed the still-open wounds left by the 1985 Palace of Justice takeover, and failed to answer questions about what will happen to demobilized paramilitaries should their struggling peace talks with the government ever reach conclusion.

Between 1989 and 1991, the April 19th Movement (M-19), one of Colombia’s main leftist guerrilla groups, agreed to lay down its arms and participate in politics, in exchange for political reforms that included a redrafting of Colombia’s constitution. This peace process, which took place at about the same time as successful negotiations in El Salvador, brought the demobilization of over 6,500 fighters from the M-19 and six smaller groups. In 1990 elections of delegates to the Constituent Assembly that rewrote the constitution, the M-19 did so well that demobilized guerrilla leader Antonio Navarro Wolff was able to serve as one of the assembly’s three co-presidents.

The M-19 became a political party. A few candidates were killed, particularly movement leader and presidential candidate Carlos Pizarro – whose murder the rightist paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño (missing in action since April 2004, probably dead) claims credit for in his autobiography. The party ultimately failed to prosper in Colombia’s political system, but most of its leaders have indeed survived. Antonio Navarro and Gustavo Petro are now top vote-getters in Colombia’s Senate and House, respectively, and central figures in the Polo Democrático, Colombia’s most successful left-of-center political party (its ranks include Bogotá’s mayor, Luis Eduardo Garzón, who does not have an M-19 background). Other former M-19 members, like Otty Patiño and Vera Grabe, are respected analysts of peace and conflict in Colombia.

The M-19 process was a rare hopeful moment for Colombia, observes Patiño: “The peace processes of the early 1990s opened a new perspective on the possibility of a different country, one where changes could be made through peaceful means.”

The M-19 deal did include an amnesty for “political crimes,” which excludes both common crime and more serious crimes against humanity. Among guerrilla actions covered by amnesty was the M-19’s absurd November 1985 attempt to take over the supreme court building, the Palace of Justice in downtown Bogotá, in order to carry out a “public judgement” of then-president Belisario Betancur. The military counter-attacked, leaving searing images of tanks slamming into the front doors of the palace and flames licking out of its windows. The inferno took the lives of 95 people, among them eleven Supreme Court justices and most of the M-19 fighters involved.

With last Thursday’s comments, Uribe made allegations about the incident that either aren’t true or, at least, are very much in dispute. Senator Navarro, the former top M-19 leader, did not mince words, calling Uribe’s statements “an offensive and untruthful aggression.” The guerrillas “made a profound, terrible mistake,” Navarro added, “with an operation that we will never stop regretting and for which we’ll never stop asking forgiveness.” However, “that doesn’t mean that the M-19 burned down the Palace of Justice, or that there was any alliance with narcotraffickers.”

There is no credible evidence that the M-19 intended to immolate themselves by burning down the Palace of Justice. Former Colombian Attorney-General Alfonso Gómez Méndez, who in his earlier post of Procurator-General headed an investigation of the incident, recalled this week that the building burned down due to the armed forces’ “inappropriate reaction to the terrorist act” of the M-19. (For more information on the 1985 incident, including a disturbing account of the military’s heavy-handed response, I recommend journalist Ana Carrigan’s 1993 book The Palace of Justice: A Colombian Tragedy.)

Even more sensitive is Uribe’s allegation that the M-19 conspired with narcotraffickers (many of whose trial records and incriminating evidence were destroyed in the conflagration) to take over the palace. Gómez Méndez recalled this week that no links to narcotraffickers – which at that time, pretty much meant Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel – have ever been demonstrated.

Gustavo Petro, the former M-19 member, now congressman and head of the Polo Democrático, recalled that the Medellín Cartel in fact killed 200 of the group’s members during the early 1980s, and that “Ramiro,” the guerrilla who led the ill-fated takeover, had once been tortured and left for dead by Escobar’s men. “The President apparently believes Carlos Castaño – who invented the tie to narcotrafficking in order to justify murdering [top M-19 leader] Carlos Pizarro – more then he believes the country’s justice system, which found no ties between narcotraffickers and the M-19 in the Palace of Justice takeover.”

Three former government peace negotiators and a former interior minister – among them Horacio Serpa, who Uribe defeated in the 2002 presidential election – sent Uribe a sharply worded letter over the weekend denying any link between the M-19 and drug lords. The former officials point out that the M-19 were only granted amnesty for political crimes, and that some who demobilized were sent to jail for committing common crimes or atrocities. Cooperation with narcotrafficking is not a political crime, and as such could not have been amnestied. “If any citizen possesses information about atrocities or narcotrafficking, these crimes cannot remain unpunished,” reads the former negotiators’ letter to Uribe. “It is necessary to take them before the justice system.”

The reason the narcotrafficking charge is so sensitive today, of course, is its relevance to the Colombian government’s ongoing talks with the paramilitaries. Critics – among them former M-19 members – are concerned that these talks may not only allow dozens of horrific massacres to go unpunished and unaccountable, but that the nexus between paramilitary leaders and drug traffickers may end up being “legalized” by the process. Today’s paramilitaries, they argue, are so involved in the drug trade that it is now difficult to distinguish between leaders of the “self-defense groups” and leaders of major trafficking organizations. Their resulting economic power has made them very powerful figures in Colombia.

For its part, the M-19 is alleged to have been in contact with drug traffickers, and even to have traded marijuana for arms in the 1970s and early 1980s. But the group’s relationship with the Medellín cartel was consistently terrible, especially after M-19 leaders made the mistake of trying to raise funds by kidnapping drug lords’ family members. The drug lords proved to be much more ruthless than the guerrillas.

If the M-19 did dabble in the drug trade to raise money, it never became a significant income stream for the group. Nor did the group ever gain a reputation as allies of the cartels. It is worth noting that the U.S. government, which is currently seeking the extradition of eight paramilitary leaders for narcotrafficking, issued no such requests for M-19 leaders. Perhaps because they didn’t benefit from the massive resources that the drug trade later provided to the FARC and the AUC, the M-19 by 1989 was badly beaten: down to a couple of thousand members, with little territory and its prestige shredded by the 1985 fiasco. When it agreed to negotiate, it did so from a position of profound weakness.

Compare that to the current talks with the paramilitaries. The group of gentlemen negotiating with the government in the Santa Fé de Ralito demilitarized zone includes some of the most notorious narcos in the country. AUC military chief Salvatore Mancuso is wanted by the U.S. Justice Department for sending at least 17 tons of cocaine to our shores. Iván Roberto Duque’s Central Bolívar Bloc manages drug-manufacturing labs all over the country. (Mancuso and Duque, incidentally, addressed Colombia’s Congress in a special session in June.) Diego Fernando Murillo (“Don Berna”) was a minor Pablo Escobar henchman and head of Medellín’s main gang of hitmen-for-hire before joining the AUC in 2000. Hernán Giraldo exercises brutal control over the drug trade in the port city of Santa Marta. Víctor Manuel Mejía, one of the top figures in the Norte del Valle Cartel, showed up in the negotiation zone in June as titular head of the AUC in oil-rich Arauca department. Miguel Arroyave, a paramilitary since emerging in 2001 from a jail term for narcotrafficking, ran the “Centauros Bloc” in eastern Colombia until two weeks ago, when he was killed by his own men.

Once a network of anti-guerrilla death squads whose leaders furthered their right-wing cause by allying with drug lords, the paramilitaries have metamorphosed into a network of mafias, with a new generation of leaders who were drug lords first, and paramilitaries later. Observers even have a term for the recent wave of drug figures who have recently bought their way into the paramilitary structure, presumably in order to benefit from a negotiated amnesty: they are the “paracaidistas,” or those who have just “parachuted in.” These new leaders have few anti-guerrilla credentials; if anything, they view the FARC as competition for drug funds and trafficking routes, a rival mafia – and in some cases, they are alleged to be doing business with the guerrillas, such as buying coca paste from them. For evidence of their increasing grip on the paramilitaries, look no further than the recent fate of high-profile AUC leaders, like the late Carlos Castaño and Rodrigo Franco, who were allegedly murdered for opposing the group’s increased fealty to the drug underworld.

Unlike the M-19, these narco-paramilitaries are negotiating from a position of surprising strength. Colombia’s press has been abuzz lately with stories about the “paramilitarization” of the country. Mancuso claims that the AUC “controls” about 35 percent of the Congress. Together, the groups reportedly have 49 fronts in 35 percent of the national territory. As Garry Leech’s Colombia Journal points out this week, the Colombian military has aggressively fought paramilitaries outside the AUC structure, but the main paramilitary network remains largely unchallenged as talks with the government move along slowly and secretly.

The paramilitaries know they are in a position of strength, especially as President Uribe, concerned about his popularity as he seeks a constitutional amendment to run for reelection, is unwilling to take the politically costly step of calling off the negotiations. Doing so would end the AUC’s declared cease-fire and cause violence levels to climb back upward.

Because the paramilitaries have room for maneuver, they have only partially observed the cease-fire, which was Uribe’s main pre-condition for engaging in peace talks. Colombia’s human-rights ombudsman’s office announced last week that it had documented 342 cease-fire violations. And that doesn’t even count Sunday’s horrific massacre of 11 people, including children and a pregnant woman, in Valle del Cauca department. From their position of strength, paramilitary leaders know they can continue to violate the cease-fire with impunity and to remain inflexible in their demands for a full amnesty for past crimes.

Under these circumstances, one can imagine why Uribe might be responding so testily to questions about where the paramilitary peace talks are headed. But there is no need for such an unhelpful response.

The right answer would have included a promise to redouble efforts to curtail the paramilitaries’ narcotrafficking, and to put so much pressure on their leaders that they will have no choice but to agree to accountability for past atrocities. How disappointing, then, that Uribe instead chose to denigrate a past peace effort and to imply that there is nothing new about negotiating amnesty with a group that is up to its neck in illegal drugs. The M-19 comparison simply doesn’t fit. While a rectification is unlikely, let’s hope that the president does the right thing about the paramilitary talks, which are becoming more troubled with each passing week.

Posted by isacson at 3:45 PM | Comments (3)