Pubdate: Fri, 27 Jun 2003
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Page: A01 - Front Page
Copyright: 2003 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Scott Wilson, Washington Post Foreign Service
Bookmarks: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Plan+Colombia (Plan Colombia)
http://www.mapinc.org/colombia.htm (Colombia)

COLOMBIAN FIGHTERS' DRUG TRADE IS DETAILED

Report Complicates Efforts to End War

BOGOTA, Colombia, June 25 -- A confidential assessment prepared for the 
president of Colombia on whether peace talks should begin with the nation's 
main paramilitary force has concluded that the group, which frequently 
fights alongside the Colombian military, is a drug-trafficking 
organization, according to a copy of the document.

A six-month review commissioned by President Alvaro Uribe to evaluate the 
possibility of peace talks with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, 
known as the AUC and listed by the United States as a terrorist 
organization, reports that "it is impossible to differentiate between the 
self-defense groups and narco-trafficking organizations." The review also 
contends that paramilitary leaders seek to exploit peace talks to protect 
their drug-trafficking profits.

The paramilitary organization was founded in the late 1980s, initially 
funded by large ranchers and private businesses that were targets of 
kidnappings and extortion at the hands of Marxist guerrillas. The first 
units formed in rugged northwest Colombia and along the central Magdalena 
River basin where the guerrillas also flourished.

In recent years, however, both the paramilitary forces and the guerrillas 
have turned to drug trafficking to fund their operations. The government 
report states for the first time officially the scope of drug trafficking 
by the paramilitary forces. Through a handful of drug kingpins posing as 
paramilitary commanders, they control about 40 percent of Colombia's drug 
trafficking. The AUC "sells its franchise" to regional drug traffickers, 
who rely on the group for security in exchange for a cut of profits.

The report also estimates that as much as 80 percent of the AUC's funding 
comes from drug trafficking. Members of the group have said in interviews 
that up to 10 percent of the drug proceeds go toward the war effort, with 
the rest enriching individual commanders. Colombia accounts for as much as 
90 percent of the cocaine that reaches the United States.

The report's conclusions appear to challenge Uribe's plan to grant 
political legitimacy to the paramilitary forces by beginning a formal peace 
process that would lead to their disarmament. The report also reveals a 
deep split between Colombia's civilian government and the military 
leadership over the wisdom of demobilizing the 11,000-member AUC at a 
delicate moment in the country's 39-year civil war.

The Colombian military uses the paramilitary forces to carry out offensive 
operations against the country's two Marxist rebel insurgencies, but the 
irregular forces also are accused by international human rights 
organizations of massacring civilians.

"The Armed Forces are the principal enemy to a peace process with the 
self-defense groups," the analysis concludes. "Opposition exists at the 
highest ranks to permit demobilization."

A government official familiar with the preparations for peace negotiations 
characterized the analysis as "very real, and a step forward" in helping 
address the administration's differences with the military command.

"We're working on it and working on it and working on it," the official 
said. "The president wants this done quickly."

Colombia is the third largest recipient of U.S. military aid, receiving 
about $600 million a year in hardware and training for use against a drug 
industry that helps fuel the civil war. The Colombian army has long relied 
on the strength of the paramilitary forces in its fight against the 
18,000-member Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as the 
largest Marxist-oriented insurgency group is known.

As a condition for continued U.S. aid, the Colombian military has pledged 
to sever links to the paramilitary forces. But the analysis, prepared by 
six civilian appointees , states that "the exploratory phase [of the peace 
process] has had serious incidents of obstruction from the Armed Forces," 
whose leadership appears to oppose the demobilization of paramilitary 
forces while the guerrillas constitute an active threat to the government.

The assessment, delivered to Uribe last week, was not intended for public 
review. A copy was provided to The Washington Post by a splinter 
paramilitary group's leader, code-named "Rodrigo 00." He contends that the 
AUC leadership is hoping to use the peace process to obtain political 
legitimacy for major drug traffickers inside the organization so they can 
keep land, cash and other drug profits.

The analysis is likely to complicate matters for Uribe, who took office 
Aug.7 promising a broader war against the guerrillas, because it appears to 
undermine conditions he placed on the AUC in return for beginning formal 
peace talks.

Uribe, who was criticized by human rights organizations for allowing 
paramilitary groups to flourish in Antioquia province when he was governor 
there in the mid-1990s, required the AUC to declare a cease-fire before 
considering formal talks. Carlos Castano, the group's political leader, 
declared a unilateral cease-fire late last year. But, the analysis 
concludes, the "cessation of hostilities has not been complied with."

"We're discussing how to move forward with a peace process that has many, 
many difficulties ahead," said Vice President Francisco Santos, who 
declined in a brief interview today to specifically address the 
confidential assessment. "But we are determined to move ahead so that we 
can get rid of some 11,000 combatants that are harming this country. We're 
discussing different options and drawing on a lot of different material and 
information we have."

The analysis also poses political challenges for the United States, which 
for the first time plans to participate in Colombia's peace efforts by 
offering paramilitary fighters incentives to disarm. Although the United 
States has helped fund similar programs following civil wars in Central 
America, Africa and Asia, this is reportedly the first time it plans to do 
so on behalf of a group that the State Department considers a terrorist 
organization.

The U.S. government refused to participate in peace negotiations with the 
FARC, also on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations, that were conducted 
by then-President Andres Pastrana. Privately, U.S. officials sharply 
criticized those efforts, which granted the guerrillas control of a 
16,000-square-mile enclave in southern Colombia before the talks collapsed 
in February 2002. The FARC used the haven for military training, 
recruitment and increasing coca cultivation that it protects for a profit.

But the Bush administration's partnership with Uribe is stronger, mostly 
because the new president has embraced controversial U.S. aerial herbicide 
spraying that has devastated the coca crop in southern Colombia. Uribe also 
has allowed the extradition of 64 accused drug traffickers to the United 
States during his 10 months in office, more than Pastrana allowed during 
his four-year term.

The Bush administration has surveyed about 6,000 combatants involved in the 
two paramilitary units officially interested in peace talks, the AUC and 
the Central Bolivar Bloc. Officials said the U.S. government will spend up 
to $5 million in the first phase of a program to offer training, education, 
farmland and other incentives to paramilitary combatants who agree to lay 
down their arms.

If Uribe decides to proceed with peace talks, 2,000 paramilitary fighters 
could be demobilized by the end of the year, with the entire peace process 
completed by 2005, officials said.

"This is the first semi-serious show of intent on the part of one of these 
armed groups," said a U.S. official, explaining why the Bush administration 
decided to fund the paramilitary demobilization, after declining to 
participate in the FARC negotiations. Colombia's peace commissioner, Luis 
Carlos Restrepo, is scheduled to be in Washington this week for meetings 
with U.S. officials about the AUC process.

"I don't think it matters" that this is a terrorist organization, one U.S. 
official here said. "The idea here is to take pieces off the playing board. 
I think we have to look at it in those terms."

The AUC was a confederation of regional paramilitary groups that emerged 
across Colombia in response to the Marxist insurgency with a combined force 
of about 15,000 combatants. Many paramilitary fighters once served in 
Colombia's military, including some of its top commanders.

But the group splintered last fall, just before Castano and AUC military 
leader Salvatore Mancuso were indicted in the United States on 
drug-trafficking charges. It is now split into at least five groups after 
an internal dispute over the AUC's increasing role in Colombia's drug trade.

The analysis says the paramilitary movement is no longer principally an 
anti-insurgency force, but that most of its interests are focused on 
expanding its ties to the drug trade.

Only two of the AUC's constituent groups are seeking peace talks with the 
government, meaning that as many as 9,000 other paramilitary fighters could 
remain outside the negotiations. Paramilitary leaders also expect "security 
and development for the regions they occupy," "legalization of a part of 
their fortune" and "judicial security," according to the report. The United 
States has refused to consider lifting the drug indictments and extradition 
requests for Castano and Mancuso.

"The United States is not so naive, nor is the Colombian government," said 
Rodrigo 00, the dissident paramilitary commander.

The assessment also criticizes the Colombian military, whose leaders have 
claimed progress in recent years in cutting its paramilitary connections.

Colombian military officials have suggested that the dissolution of the 
paramilitary force would cause strategic problems for the army, which they 
say is stretched too thin to maintain control of paramilitary-controlled 
territory on its own.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake