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 Castaño, 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 Castaño 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 Castaño 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.
Colombia's Civil War
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