Pubdate: Sun, 27 May 2001
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2001 Chicago Tribune Company
Contact:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82
Author: Laurie Goering, Tribune Foreign Correspondent

COLOMBIA CAUGHT IN A STRUGGLE FOR POWER

Militias Squeeze Left-Wing Rebels.

Barrancabermeja, Colombia -- For most of 40 years, this oil city along the 
Magdalena River in northern Colombia was a stronghold of the National 
Liberation Army, Colombia's second-largest guerrilla group.

Rebels of the ELN, as the leftist group is known by its Spanish initials, 
extorted "taxes" from local businessmen, kidnapped at will, ran a thriving 
smuggling business in gasoline siphoned from a local refinery and 
controlled most of the cocaine smuggling routes through the coca-rich region.

Then late last December, right-wing paramilitary "self-defense" forces 
declared they were taking over this town, and over the past five months 
that is exactly what they have done.

The paramilitaries, now Colombia's fastest-growing outlaw group, seized 
Barrancabermeja from the Fidel Castro-inspired ELN in a series of bloody 
battles, driving the guerrillas into the nearby countryside and installing 
a new "law and order" regime.

Che Guevara's image on the wall of the university was painted over. Parks 
were cleaned up, murals painted. Residents, long too scared to go out at 
night, returned to the city's restaurants and pool halls.

"We're working with people for the benefit of society," said Commandante 
Claudio, a paramilitary leader with an emerald-eyed eagle ring--the group's 
emblem--on his pinky. "Little by little we're creating a new ethic here."

Those who haven't adopted the new ethic are quickly filling 
Barrancabermeja's morgue. Homosexuals, prostitutes, drug users, suspected 
guerrilla sympathizers and the mentally ill who wander the streets have 
been assassinated in what the local newspaper terms a "social cleansing" 
campaign. Unionists, human-rights officials and journalists have been 
threatened and believe they are next in line. Police and the coroner's 
office estimate the deaths so far at close to 300.

Police recently had to rescue a man arrested by the militias and beaten for 
fighting with his wife in the street, a violation of the new civil order 
imposed by the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia.

"This is a totalitarian regime," said Juan Carlos Galvis, a Barrancabermeja 
union leader. "They're taking away fundamental rights of the people."

Militia's Heavy Hand:

Many of this city's of 220,000 residents say they are just happy somebody 
has been able to get rid of the guerrillas. The paramilitaries "have done 
away with most of the problems around here," said Gustavo Wolf, a pots and 
pans salesman and a regular at Barrancabermeja's main pool hall. "I don't 
like a heavy hand but I like peace, and we might need a heavy hand at first 
to get it."

Across Colombia, paramilitaries have become the hot new players in a brutal 
40-year civil war that has brought this nation, the region's oldest 
democracy, to its knees. Created as a mercenary force in the 1980s to 
protect drug traffickers and large landowners threatened by guerrillas, the 
paramilitaries gradually have become an independent force.

Their growth has been explosive, far outpacing the rebels. In 1991, 850 
paramilitary soldiers roamed the country. Last year the total was estimated 
at 8,100 and it now is believed to top 11,000.

By comparison, Colombia's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed 
Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has about 18,000 fighters, and the ELN about 
4,000, analysts say. "If this keeps up, the paramilitaries will be as big 
or bigger than the FARC," said Alfredo Rangel, a top military analyst.

Paramilitary leaders say their goal is to combat drug-fueled leftist 
subversion and help end a conflict that has left 40,000 dead in the past 
decade. But as they seize more territory and power from the guerrillas, the 
paramilitaries have turned to funding themselves with the same kind of 
crime--smuggling, drug trafficking, kidnapping--as their left-wing foes, 
military officials say.

Carlos Castano, the leader of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, 
or AUC, admits that 70 percent of the organization's finances now come 
directly or indirectly from drug trafficking. In Barrancabermeja, it is now 
the local paramilitaries that run the thriving gasoline theft rings and 
control cocaine and gun smuggling routes.

"The money that the guerrillas get is almost all illegal, and with the 
paramilitaries it's exactly the same," said Luis Fernando Ramirez, 
Colombia's defense minister. "They act as subversives, but of the right."

According to the Ministry of Defense, paramilitaries have quickly become 
the most deadly players in Colombia's ugly power struggle. While guerrillas 
commit the lion's share of kidnappings and extortion, the paramilitaries 
are the biggest killers. Last year they murdered more than 500 people in 75 
massacres, most in remote rural villages suspected of sympathizing with the 
guerrillas.

More Political Killings:

At Easter, paramilitary troops slaughtered at least 17 peasants in the 
Cauca province town of Naya, slicing one woman with a chain saw. Already 
this year, political killings have leapt by 75 percent, with the AUC 
responsible for most of the increase, according to government human-rights 
officials.

Still, the paramilitaries enjoy substantial popularity, especially among 
the urban rich and middle class. In areas run by paramilitaries, families 
say, their children can walk to school safely, and families can drive to 
their country homes on the weekend without worrying about guerrilla ambushes.

"There's no family in Colombia that hasn't had one of its members or a 
close friend extorted or kidnapped" by guerrillas, said Gen. Fernando 
Tapias, Colombia's armed forces chief, explaining why the AUC enjoys 
greater support than guerrillas.

The job benefits offered by paramilitaries help explain their phenomenal 
recruiting success. Each militia member gets $250 a month, a pistol and a 
cellular phone. That tempting deal, in a nation plagued by 20 percent 
unemployment and widespread rural poverty, has allowed the paramilitaries 
to recruit many highly trained former Colombian soldiers and even plenty of 
turncoat guerrillas.

Commandante Claudio, the deputy commander of AUC troops in Barrancabermeja, 
fought with the FARC eight years before swapping sides six months ago.

"A revolutionary looks for social change, and nothing was changing" under 
the guerrillas, he said, sitting in a newly renovated park and explaining 
his change of heart. Now there's no doubt "we're changing things, doing 
things people like," he said.

Social change, however, was not what brought the AUC to Barrancabermeja. 
Colombia's government has promised the ELN a "demilitarized zone" in their 
stronghold in Bolivar state, just across the Magdalena River from 
Barrancabermeja.

The zone, a smaller version of the Switzerland-size territory conceded to 
the FARC two years ago, is intended as a sign of goodwill to bring the ELN 
to the peace table and provide a neutral space for negotiations.

The problem is that the FARC has used its own zone around San Vicente del 
Caguan primarily as a haven to build its military strength and grow huge 
amounts of coca, while showing no serious sign of willingness to talk peace.

Critics fear the same thing could happen with the now seriously weakened 
ELN if it is given its own zone of control. By taking Barrancabermeja and 
nearby towns within the proposed peace zone, the paramilitaries hope to 
sabotage that effort by effectively removing the region from ELN control.

Local Opposition:

In San Pablo, one of two main towns inside the proposed haven, "Say No to 
the Zone" signs now hang over the little central park and are scrawled on 
concrete walls around town.

"We've had 30 years here with violence and we don't want to continue with 
it," says Eliseo Acevedo, head of the local Committee Against the Zone.

If the government insists on granting the ELN local control, over the 
objections of the residents and the AUC, San Pablo will become a war zone, 
he said, and "the victims will be us in the middle of the crossfire."

Not that San Pablo is exactly peaceful at the moment. Police and soldiers 
hefting automatic rifles patrol the humid streets, and residents whisper 
that this is a "hot" town, torn between the militias, who now hold power, 
and the guerrillas, intent on retaking it. Kidnappings and other acts of 
terror are common.

"There's a lot of uncertainty here. No one knows what is going to happen," 
says Father Jorge Camacho, a Jesuit. "There's an atmosphere of fear."

Colombia's military so far has shown only limited signs of being able to 
stop the bloody war between the AUC and the guerrillas. In Barrancabermeja, 
where gun-shy residents startle at the sound of a dropped glass or 
backfiring car, tanks and troop carriers patrol city streets, but it is the 
paramilitaries who are in charge.

Military Seeks Distance:

Almost since their inception, paramilitary groups have enjoyed close ties 
with Colombia's relatively weak military, largely because both were 
fighting the same enemy: the guerrillas. In recent years, with the AUC 
accused of human-rights violations and of involvement in drug trafficking, 
the government has set out to sever those links.

In the past four years, police and soldiers have captured 934 militia 
members--including the chief of Barrancabermeja, Commandante Salomon--and 
killed 150 in combat. About 800 members of the AUC are now in prison in 
Colombia, double the number of guerrillas.

In March, the government pulled the 31st army battalion out of southern 
Putumayo province to break ties there with the paramilitaries. Other 
officers and soldiers have been fired--and almost overnight joined the 
paramilitary, garnering a pay raise in the process.

And in late April, Colombia's military captured 58 paramilitaries involved 
in the brutal Easter massacre at Naya, one of the first large-scale 
captures of militia troops.

Critics, however, say such captures remain the exception rather than the 
rule, and that while the government appears to have a real commitment to 
combating the paramilitaries, such sentiments have been hard to get through 
to all of the rank and file.

"What happened at Naya is something occasional," said Gustavo Gallon, head 
of the Colombian Commission of Jurists, a human-rights organization.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom