| SPECIAL
REPORTS: COLOMBIA |
|
|
|
Demobilised
Paramilitary Forces in Two Years
Yadira Ferrer
BOGOTA, (IPS) - The Colombian
government issued an appeal Wednesday
for international community and
private sector support in carrying out
the demobilisation of most of the
country's right-wing paramilitaries, a
gradual process that is to be complete
by the end of 2005.
The negotiations finalised Tuesday
with the dominant faction of the
paramilitary United Self-Defence of
Colombia (AUC) will have high economic
costs if they are successful, and
state resources are scarce, said the
government's high commissioner for
peace, Luis Restrepo, explaining the
call for financial support.
”We are confident that the
international community will give us a
hand and support us in this process of
reinsertion” of the paramilitaries
into society, Restrepo said in an
interview on Caracol national radio.
The governmental Reinsertion Programme
calculates that the demobilisation of
1,000 AUC members would cost 7.1
million dollars a year. In other
words, more than 92 million dollars is
needed to disband the 13,000
paramilitaries covered by the
agreement, stressed the peace
commissioner.
The official, who signed the agreement
on behalf of the Alvaro Uribe
government, said that the plan is for
the demobilisation process to begin in
approximately three months, and it is
to be implemented gradually.
Initially, the paramilitaries are to
gather in areas stipulated in the
agreement, ”which basically
correspond to the areas in which the
AUC fronts operate,” he said.
”One must understand that these
people who have spent so much time at
war also suffer many fears, which are
based on having to abandon the
expansive territories in which they
have been the ones in charge, and now
have to gather in reduced areas,”
noted Restrepo.
The safest possible sites must be
found, where it is possible for state
security forces to provide protection
for the AUC members as they lay down
their weapons, added the official.
The government and the paramilitary
leaders announced in a joint communiqué
Tuesday that they had signed, after
seven months of contacts, a 10-point
accord in which the AUC commit
themselves to ”demobilising all of
their members, in a gradual process
that will begin later this year and
will be finalised by Dec. 31, 2005, at
the latest.”
For its part, the Colombian government
promises to carry out ”the actions
necessary to reincorporate them into
civilian life.”
The AUC had underscored their
commitment to disband by announcing a
unilateral ceasefire that began last
December.
The paramilitary leaders say they are
still perfecting mechanisms to ensure
compliance with the truce, which has
been jeopardised by ”unforeseeable
circumstances” that cast doubt on
the talks underway with the
government.
Human rights defence organisations
recognise that a broad sector of the
paramilitary forces no longer attack
leftist guerrillas or massacre
civilians (a massacre is defined as
the killing of four or more people in
the same location at the same time).
But the groups stress that
”selective” assassinations
continue to occur in certain regions
of the country.
In the communiqué the parties to the
agreement also announced that the AUC
commanders will back the state policy
against drug trafficking. The
paramilitaries are believed to have
funded their operations in part
through ties to the illicit drug
trade.
”The AUC share the government's goal
of a Colombia without narco-trafficking,
and they back the actions of the
Colombian state against this
phenomenon that is destroying
democracy, peaceful coexistence, the
economy and the environment,” states
the joint declaration.
The United States has requested
extradition of the two top AUC
commanders, Carlos Castaño and
Salvatore Mancuso, accused of ties
with drug traffickers. Both men signed
the agreement Tuesday.
The extradition request ”is a stone
in the shoe” of the negotiation
process, Luis Valencia, political
science professor at the private
Javeriana University, said in comments
to IPS.
The important thing for the agreement
is that the dominant sector of the
paramilitary forces renounce fighting
the leftist guerrillas, which was
their reason for existence, and
instead dedicate themselves to
supporting the government's anti-drugs
fight, Valencia said.
But it remains to be seen what the AUC
will demand in return, he added.
The U.S. government is within its
rights to request the extraditions,
just as Colombia has the right to
decide whether it will comply, but the
important thing is that they reach a
political agreement, said the
political expert.
Camilo Guiza, lawyer for AUC leader
Castaño, said Thursday that the fact
that his client and Mancuso are
negotiators in the process underway
with the government should
automatically suspend the extradition
request hanging over their heads.
Washington has indicated that it
supports the talks with the AUC, but
has made it clear that the
demobilisation process and the demands
for justice in U.S. courts are two
very different things.
President Uribe said Thursday that the
matter of Castaño and Mancuso's
extradition ”will be analysed in
conjunction with the international
community and with the United
States.”
The agreement was signed in the
northern town of Santa Fe de Ralito by
nine units of the AUC (with around
13,000 combatants), but five other
units (totalling some 3,000) are not
part of the accord.
This division within the paramilitary
forces could be a major obstacle in
the demobilisation process, says
Camilo Castellanos, of the Latin
American Institute of Alternative
Legal Services.
Another potential problem is the
impunity of the paramilitaries if the
bill that the Uribe administration is
sending to Congress is approved.
The legislation would authorise
conditional freedom for the
demobilised right-wingers, who are
accused of having perpetrated the
worst human rights violations during
the decades-long Colombian civil war.
The plan for provisional freedom does
not provide an in-depth solution to
the matter of the AUC's victims and
the state's obligation to satisfy
their demands for justice, but instead
”responds to the demands of the top
AUC officials to find normal
reinsertion into Colombian society,”
said Castellanos.
Roberto Goldman, the Organisation of
American States' special rapporteur
for Colombia, visited Bogotá earlier
this month and at the time warned
about the risks of negotiations that
would lead to impunity of the AUC
combatants.
The right-wing paramilitaries emerged
in Colombia in the 1970s to fight
leftist guerrilla groups. They were
backed initially by large landowners
and by the army. But in 1989 they were
declared illegal due to their ties to
drug trafficking and for assassinating
labour union leaders and other social
activists.
Email
this page to a Friend
|
|
|
|
|
