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July 21, 2003 What Cease-fire? Last week, the Colombian government and the country's largest right-wing paramilitary organization, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), announced an agreement to begin peace talks that will lead to the demobilization of the AUC by 2005. This decision evolved out of six months of exploratory talks and a corresponding unilateral cease-fire called by the AUC in December 2002. The cease-fire was a requirement demanded by President Alvaro Uribe before the government would enter into discussions with any of the armed groups. The U.S. government has also held discussions with the paramilitaries and have endorsed the peace process. But what the Uribe and Bush administrations, as well as the Colombian and U.S. mainstream media have conveniently ignored is the fact that, in reality, there is no cease-fire. Since the alleged cease-fire was initiated, right-wing paramilitary death squads, often aided by the U.S.-backed Colombian military, have killed countless numbers of unarmed Colombians they suspected of being guerrilla sympathizers.
In the city of Cucuta, the first month of the cease-fire saw 84 people killed by paramilitaries who had supposedly agreed to cease hostilities. The violence in Cucuta continued into the New Year with the worst atrocity occurring on the night of January 9 when a paramilitary death squad entered the poor barrios of Camilo Daza and Antonia Santos and massacred eight unarmed civilians including a local community leader. Also in January, 150 paramilitary fighters from the Elmer Cárdenas Bloc crossed the border into Panama where they attacked two indigenous Kuna villages and killed four community leaders. Almost 500 indigenous people were displaced by the paramilitaries' cross-border incursion. Amnesty International described attacks against indigenous communities in Arauca in April when paramilitaries and soldiers from the Colombian army's Navos Pardo Battalion entered several rural indigenous communities in the municipality of Tame. Paramilitary gunmen killed two people, including a pregnant 16-year-old girl who was raped first and had the fetus cut out of her stomach. The attackers also raped three indigenous girls aged 11, 12 and 15, while three more indigenous people were "disappeared." During the military offensive, army helicopters allegedly transported soldiers and paramilitary fighters into the area. According to eyewitnesses, some of the paramilitaries were wearing armbands identifying themselves as ACC fighters who are not participating in the cease-fire, while other gunmen were wearing AUC armbands. By mid-May, army-paramilitary operations had forcibly displaced some 847 indigenous people from the municipality of Tame to the towns of Saravena and Alto Caranal. Similar paramilitary attacks have occurred throughout the country. On June 6, in the municipality of Sergovia in northeastern Colombia, four farmers were accused of being guerrilla sympathizers and massacred by paramilitaries who also set fire to numerous homes and forcibly displaced hundreds of peasants. And nine days later in the southwestern Valle de Cauca department, paramilitary gunmen from the Calima Bloc massacred eight unarmed civilians also accused of being rebel sympathizers. Colombia's attorney general recently illustrated that it is not only the Colombian Armed Forces that collaborate with the paramilitaries, but also politicians. On July 11, the mayor of Barrancabermeja, Julio Cesar Ardila, was arrested for allegedly ordering the assassinations of a local radio journalist and four other civilians this past April. Ardila is accused of using paramilitary gunmen supposedly participating in the cease-fire to carry out the killings. While the paramilitary cease-fire has resulted in fewer Colombian labor leaders being killed in comparison to last year, 37 unionists have still been assassinated during the first half of 2003. Among the victims is the leader of an oil workers union killed last week on the same day that the government and the paramilitaries announced their peace talks agreement. Meanwhile, the number of death threats against labor leaders has skyrocketed dramatically this year as paramilitaries continue to intimidate unionists they consider to be guerrilla sympathizers. The above cases are only a few of the known paramilitary attacks since the implementation of their unilateral cease-fire last December. Neither the Uribe or Bush administrations, nor the mainstream media in Colombia or the United States, have focused much attention on these paramilitary atrocities. The examples listed above clearly illustrate that the cease-fire is a charade, albeit a necessary one for Uribe to save his peace process and to save face following his prior proclamations of not talking with any armed group until they cease hostilities. Last week, Uribe called the peace talks agreement a "step toward peace and the restoration of human rights." On the other hand, human rights groups are afraid that demobilized paramilitaries will simply be incorporated into the ranks of the military or will remobilize and form new militias once the peace process has provided amnesties to Castaño and Mancuso. The amnesty process began last week when the government's peace commissioner, Luis Carlos Restrepo, announced, ''For those who have committed crimes against humanity, we are looking for punishment that is not jail, where they can make amends for the damage they've done.'' Clearly, this impunity process, which calls for human rights violators to pay compensation to victims' families instead of going to prison, is intended to pave the way for Castaño and Mancuso to become legitimate political figures (see, Reinventing Carlos Castaño). With Colombia now involved in Washington's war on terror, human rights have taken a back seat with regards to U.S. military aid and battlefield tactics. And with U.S. counterterrorism aid to Colombia not subject to the human rights conditions imposed on counternarcotics aid, the Bush administration can freely provide counterinsurgency assistance to all units of the Colombian military. A March 2003 United Nations report claims that human rights abuses committed by the Colombian military have increased since Uribe assumed the presidency last August, a strategy that makes some of the paramilitaries expendable in Colombia's dirty war. As for the Bush administration, it has openly embraced Uribe's talks with the paramilitaries despite the fact that the U.S. State Department holds the right-wing militias responsible for 70 percent of Colombia's human rights violations and has listed them as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Furthermore, the Bush administration appeared to violate its own stated policy of not negotiating with terrorist groups when U.S. Embassy political officer Alexander Lee met with a paramilitary emissary on May 3. According to a leaked memo, the two discussed the peace process and Lee told the emissary that paramilitary leaders Castaño and Mancuso might receive lenient sentences for the drug trafficking charges they currently face if they cooperate with the U.S. government. The Bush administration's endorsement of the paramilitary peace negotiations—including donating $3 million in initial funding for the process—stands in sharp contrast to Washington's blatant lack of support for former-president Andres Pastrana's recently failed peace talks with Colombia's largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). It appears that despite ample evidence that paramilitary forces have violated their unilateral cease-fire, peace talks between the AUC and the Colombian government will begin with the full blessing of the Bush administration. Any agreement that results in the demobilization of the paramilitaries will provide Uribe with a peace feather to place in his militaristic cap. But such an agreement will not be a "step toward peace," it will be nothing more than a public relations victory for Uribe, Castaño and Mancuso. Innocent Colombians will continue to die at the hands of the remaining paramilitaries and the armed forces, who are increasingly utilizing dirty war tactics under cover of the U.S.-backed war on terror. Furthermore, if the army and the remaining paramilitaries prove incapable of effectively fighting the guerrillas by the 2005 demobilization deadline, then new paramilitary groups will inevitably arise to pick up the slack. Former Colombian national defense adviser Armando Borrero recently told the media, "The same factors that fostered the rise of the paramilitaries will simply lead to the creation of new militia groups if the state can't provide protection, and I don't think the state has that ability." Sadly, the entire peace process will likely prove to be nothing more than a political public relations ploy that will do little to diminish the violence endured by innocent Colombians. This article originally appeared in Colombia Report, an online journal that was published by the Information Network of the Americas (INOTA).
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President
Uribe has repeatedly stated that his administration will not participate
in negotiations with any armed group until they have called a cease-fire.
Last November, AUC leaders Carlos Castaño and Salvatore Mancuso
announced that their paramilitary organization would implement a
unilateral cease-fire beginning December 1, 2002, in order to begin
negotiations with the Colombian government. While the two militia
leaders said that AUC fighters would not disarm during the cease-fire
because they needed to defend themselves against guerrilla attacks,
they clearly stated that AUC troops would only act in self-defense
and would not conduct offensive operations. Meanwhile, two regional
paramilitary groups—the Metro Bloc in Medellín and the
Self-Defence Forces of Casanare (ACC) in eastern Colombia—refused
to participate in the cease-fire and negotiations until the guerrillas
also ended hostilities. While these two paramilitary fronts have
continued to operate offensively, they have only been responsible
for a small fraction of the killings attributed to the paramilitaries
since the December cease-fire began.