Paramilitarism in Colombia

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Historical Events:
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Mapiripán Massacre (1997)
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Paramilitarism in Colombia refers to the origin and development of paramilitary groups in Colombia during the 20th century. Paramilitary groups, whether of private or public origin, having legal or illegal support, were originally organized during the Cold War proxy wars as small groups, being created as either a preemptive or reactive consequence to the real or perceived growing threat represented by the actions of guerrillas and militant political activitists of Marxist-Leninist ideology.

Paramilitarism in its present form, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, has become one of the parties most responsible for continuing human rights violations in Colombia during the later half of the current Colombian Armed Conflict, as the result of a trend that dates to the late 1970s or early 1980s. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other human rights organizations, paramilitary groups and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) in particular, would be considered responsible for 70 to 75% of identifiable political murders in Colombia. Paramilitarism has also become associated with several of the major druglords that operate the illegal drug trade of cocaine and other illegal substances. In year 2005, some of the largest caches of cocaine and a few of its corresponding processing labs were seized by the Colombian military and police, in areas of paramilitary influence or under their protection.

The AUC, considered to number somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 men, underwent gradual demobilization starting the year 2003 during a controversial process of negotiations with the administration of President Alvaro Uribe Velez. One of the most disputed issues between the paramilitaries and the Colombian government dealt with the subject of extraditing some of their top leaders to the United States for drug traffcking charges, a topic that halted demobilizations during the later quarter of 2005. During late November, demobilizations restarted and were expected to conclude by February 15, 2006. The AUC fully demobilized after the process, but remnants of combatants from these groups are still operating in newly organized small and regional groups under new names, as the case of the Águilas Negras (Black Eagles) in Norte de Santander Department[1] or in other cases as simple common delinquents.

Contents 1 Historical Background 1.1 1960s 1.1.1 Law 48 of 1968 1.2 1970s 1.2.1 Private Initiatives 1.3 1980s 1.3.1 Expansion 1.3.2 Yair Klein 1.4 Early to Mid-1990s 1.4.1 U.S. Involvement in guerilla policy 1.4.2 CONVIVIR 1.5 Late 1990s to Early 2000s 2 Massacres 2.1 The Mapiripan Massacre 2.2 The Alto Naya massacre 2.2.1 The Betoyes Massacre 3 Notes 4 See also 5 External links 6 References

[edit] Historical Background

[edit] 1960s

Part of the earliest history of paramilitarism in Colombia goes back to the 1960s, when U.S. President John F. Kennedy and his government promoted a proxy war under regional security initiatives such as Plan LASO (Latin American Security Operation), ostensibly to counter the possible extension of Soviet influence in the region at the hands of guerrilla insurgents and local Communist Parties. As a result, small groups of civilians throughout Latin America were armed and trained as guides, informants and/or security collaborators by local and foreign military officers, with the intention of providing aid in counterinsurgency operations and/or subsequently establishing a permanent citizen militia and intelligence network if possible.

In the specific case of Colombia, Plan LASO was implemented as a military offensive in the southern Tolima Department against Communists, radicalized Liberal guerrillas and self-defense militias, which had set up one of several autonomous enclaves known as Marquetalia. The Commander of the Colombian Army and later Defense Minister (1962-1965), General Alberto Ruiz Novoa, was a veteran of the Korean War and was influenced by contemporary US military war doctrines, receiving recommendations from a team of military experts which visited the country in February 1962. The head of the visiting team was General William Yarborough and his recommendations included the training of local civilian personnel as part of the military effort being carried out against the Tolima guerrillas and also to counter the influence of the Colombian Communist Party. [2]

The 1962 military offensive failed to expel the guerrillas from their Marquetalia enclave, leading to a further attempt in 1964 which managed to do so. Most of the rebel combatants themselves were able to flee and later regrouped as the "Southern Tolima Block", eventually forming the core of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 1966.

[edit] Law 48 of 1968

The first outright legal framework for the training of civilians by military or police forces for security purposes was formally established by the Colombian presidential decree 3398 of 1965, which vaguely stated that it was necessary to organize and motivate the country's population against the danger of Communist insurrection.

The decree was later developed into the Law 48 of 1968, which allowed the creation of self-defense militias by private citizens for the purposes of protecting their properties and lives, an activity which was thus recognized as a right, and was therefore eligible to receive aid and guidance from the Defense Ministry and the Colombian Military.

Colombian Military training and procedure manuals dating from this era began to include some practical aspects and further developments of the above principles. Under the heading of "Regulations to Counter Guerrilla Combat", one of the later manuals (in use in the 1980s) explained how to organize civilians against leftist guerrillas, specifically how to use civilians as informants about guerrilla activities and how to get their support during military operations against them. In theory, civilians were to be organized into "self-defense committees" which would maintain contact with local military officers, keeping a high level awareness about any suspicious communist action in their communities, in particular those of suspected "guerrilla supporters", vaguely defined as such. The manual also allowed military personnel to dress in civilian clothes when necessary to infiltrate areas of suspected guerrilla influence, and also for civilian helpers to travel alongside military units. Separately, in order to help gain the trust of local citizens, the military was advised to participate in the daily activities of the community where applicable. [3]

[edit] 1970s

By the early 1970s, most of the original projects to train civilians as military informants or as self-defense forces had fettered out, though newer local efforts continued. Several of the measures were often partially and sporadically implemented for short periods of time by local military and police officials, with no lasting nationwide network of informants or of self-defense committees being permanently established. The effectiveness of the practical application of the theoretical principles was compromised due to budget constraints and the Colombian government's distrust of some top military officers, including General Alberto Ruiz Novoa himself, who resigned in 1965 amid a political scandal.

Novoa had supported the creation of self-defense militias by private citizens, also proposing a strong push towards "civic-military" development projects in order to lessen the appeal of Communism in marginal or impoverished sectors. He considered that this was part of a "carrot and stick" approach to counterinsurgency that had its roots in contemporary U.S. doctrine, calling for the use of force and of persuasion. Once he was out of the government and retired from the military, he continued to defend both aspects of the theory in a lower profile role as a military analyst of continuing policies.

As the mid-1970s progressed, it appeared that no sustained effort on the part of the Colombian state materialized, neither on the side of the "stick" nor on that of the "carrot". Despite this, at the time it was sometimes perceived as easier to allow local officials to attempt the earlier rather than on the later. The expansion of the Communist Party's political influence in some areas, a national strike in 1977, the 19th of April Movement's (M-19) emergence and the FARC's continuing recruitment and criminal activity were perceived by many military officers and several Defense Ministers as part of a dangerous insurrectional strategy that deserved to be stopped, if necessary through the use of force.

Feeling that the government was not fully backing their efforts, petitions requesting additional measures and support were increasingly made to successive governments by high ranking members of the military. A 1978 decree, known as the Security Statute, was implemented by the Julio César Turbay administration (1978-1982), giving the military an increased degree of freedom of action, especially in urban areas, to detain, interrogate and eventually judge suspected guerrillas or their collaborators before military justice tribunals. Human rights organizations, newspaper columnists, political personalities and opposition groups complained about an increase in the number of arbitrary detentions and acts of torture as a result. The Security Statute became highly unpopular and public pressure for its abolition gradually increased, until it was phased out towards the end of the Turbay administration. [4]

The controversial Security Statute did not appear to specifically reinforce the mostly abandoned strategy of civilian militias, though it did not rule it out either. In some cases, the attempted implementation by local military contingents of smaller scale security and intelligence programs tended to divide rural communities and would potentially provoke an increase of internal harassment and resulting abuses against political agitators and protest movements, irrespective of their actual relationship with the guerrillas.

[edit] Private Initiatives

The relative de facto abandonment by the state of most initial attempts to widely spread civilian counterinsurgency, (except for those that local officials continued to engage from time to time) contrasted with the emergence of many fragmented private initiatives, such as those of landholders, contraband runners and of certain legal enterprises, like the emerald mining complex in the Boyaca Department, which employed armed civilian personnel fundamentally in the role of bodyguards.

After the emerald mines were brought under state control and later privatized in 1973, some of the resulting concessions were controlled by members in a mafia style group, which used profits from the business to finance private protection schemes. Several private militia structures were formally created for the purposes of supporting and protecting businesses and its owners from the threat of guerrilla aggression, under the rights established by the Law 48 of 1968. Contemporary and later reports also indicated that sometimes they were also used to intimidate civilians into settling land disputes, in order to secure or to expand existing mining territories.

An equivalent development took place near the city of Santa Marta along the Caribbean coast and the La Guajira Department, where a limited bonanza in the illegal marijuana trade gave rise to comparable groups of bodyguards and hitmen while it lasted, before counternarcotics efforts at the repeated request of the United States and changes in the global market made the business much less prosperous.

Towards the end of the decade, the illegal cocaine trade imposed mainly by Pablo Escobar and his Medellín Cartel, took over and became a major source of profit, one which was used to begin to create a similar security apparatus, mostly out of hitmen and gang members at first. The emerging class of druglords was experiencing rapid upward social mobility and financial prosperity, which allowed it to buy lands from impoverished traditional landowners at low costs, especially in areas where guerrilla presence, influence and kidnappings had impeded standard economic activity. At the same time, some of the older landowners managed to make a successful transit into the newer business. Initially, the newer druglords and the guerrillas managed to establish a precarious agreement due to their common illegality and the mutual possibility to benefit from it, their differences persisted and soon led to a forceful split.

[edit] 1980s

As individual druglords and their associates grew in power, size and influence, they formed unofficial cartels to better handle the business and settle internal disputes, such as the Medellín Cartel and the Cali Cartel. The cartels were then able to form more extensive security schemes, both for themselves, their businesses and their properties.

Increasing guerrilla extortions and kidnappings, as a whole on the rise since the previous decade, of cartel members and their families eventually led to the formation of a new style of armed force, usually considered by analysts to be the first modern paramilitary group of the contemporary period, or more specifically the "first generation" of modern paramilitarism. [5]

The kidnapping of Martha Nieves Ochoa, a sister of the drug businessmen in the Ochoa family, by the 19th of April Movement (M-19) led to a meeting of her family were it was decided that a ransom would not be paid, and eventually preparations were made in order to set up an aggressive response. On December 3, 1981, three weeks later, leaflets were dropped from a small airplane before a soccer match in the Pascual Guerrero soccer stadium of Cali, announcing the creation of the "Muerte a Secuestradores" (Death to Kidnappers) or MAS, an armed group which would henceforth seek to find and execute all kidnappers and their collaborators, whether of guerrilla or criminal origin.

The text of leaflet stated that 223 drug traffickers and mafia bosses were involved, of which each would contribute several million pesos and ten of their best men, to reach an expected number of 2,230 MAS members. At its height, the MAS itself is estimated to have had at least 1,500 men at arms. [6] [7] In 1982, a meeting of drug traffickers, landowners, businessmen, local politicians of the Liberal and Conservative Parties, local military officials and representatives of the Texas Petroleum Company in Puerto Boyacá, Santander discussed the issue of growing guerrilla activity in the region, in spite of the climate of optimism that surrounded presidential candidate and later president-elect Belisario Betancur's (1982-86) proposal of an amnesty and the future beginning of negotiations with the insurgents.

During the meeting it was decided to create a fund to sustain an armed paramilitary force, with the intention of both protecting the participants and the general population from guerrilla action and of eradicating all signs of guerrilla presence in the region. The following year, the "Asociación Campesina de Ganaderos y Agricultores del Magdalena Medio" (Association of Middle Magdalena Ranchers and Farmers) or ACDEGAM, was created to handle both the logistics and the public relations of the organization. Numerous assassinations, massacres and displacements of population ensued, involving suspected guerrilla sympathizers as well as innocent bystanders, members of political opposition groups, government officials, jugdes and members of judicial investigating teams.

[edit] Expansion

Other groups of paramilitary forces were later created, often with greater or lesser influence from druglords, though also involving relatives of victims of past guerrilla crimes, and even a number of guerrilla deserters. The Castaño brothers, led by Fidel Castaño Gil and his brothers Carlos and the lesser known Vicente, sought revenge for the FARC's kidnapping and murder of their father, a cattle rancher, which led them to collaborate with the military and later to create their own paramilitary group ("Los Tangueros") in northern Antioquia and Córdoba. José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, a druglord known as "El Mexicano" (The Mexican), controlled the Middle Magdalena valley together with another son of a cattle rancher, Henry de Jesús Pérez Duran,, whose father had formerly created an independent paramilitary group there. [8]

President Belisario Betancur, once in power, ordered an investigation of reported abuses committed by military and police officers in cooperation with the MAS and other paramilitary groups, which resulted in a report by the National Ombudsman's office implicating some 59 active duty security officials, including two battalion commanders with jurisdiction over the general area of Puerto Boyacá and Puerto Berrio. The accusations were downplayed and rejected by military spokesmen, which cited the Law 48 of 1968 as making the organization of self-defense groups a legitimate action to protect against guerrilla activity. The investigation, over the objections of Ombudsman Carlos Jiménez Gómez, eventually was handled by military tribunals which dismissed all the charges.

By 1985, Betancur had taken steps to attempt to establish peace in the country by finding a political solution with the guerrillas, including the declaration of a cease fire and allowing the FARC to create a political party known as the Unión Patriótica (Patriotic Union) or UP. Those two moves were controversial and subject to criticism by several sectors of Colombian society, including but not limited to the military, landowners, drug traffickers, ACDEGAM under the Liberal politician Pablo Emilio Guarín Vera, and the nascent paramilitary groups.

General Fernando Landázabal, as Defense Minister, complained that the military's hands were being tied because the guerrillas were taking advantage of the cease fire in order to continue illegal activities under the cover of the UP, as guerrilla recruitment, kidnappings and skirmishes never fully ceased. Landázabal himself was not directly linked to paramilitary groups and their abuses, but critics and analysts considered that his discourse and his support for Law 48 of 1968 was often used to ostensibly contribute to their motivation and justification. [9]

The UP suffered a high death toll (at least between 2,000 and 3,000 and two presidential candidates by the end of the 1980s) at the hands of paramilitary groups, druglords and members of official security forces, which significantly contributed to the end of the cease fire in 1987 and the eventual end of the peace process with the FARC. Allegedly the FARC themselves have come to believe that the CIA participated in plotting the killings in collaboration with the paramilitaries, though that statement has not been addressed by other parties, including critics and opposition groups that prefer to blame sectors of the military and the political elite, in particular, and the state, in general.

In Puerto Boyacá and its surrounding area, once both real and suspected guerrilla influence had been mostly eradicated by paramilitary violence, became unofficially known as the "antisubversive capital of Colombia". In other words, the city became a self-proclaimed stronghold of anti-communism, a predominant political position which seemingly impressed President Betancur himself during a 1985 visit.

The further escalation of violence and the drug war towards the later half of the 1980s led to a frontal confrontation between druglords, their paramilitary allies and the government, especially after the 1984 and 1989 assassinations of Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla and presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán, respectively. As a result, by the presidencies of Virgilio Barco Vargas (1986-1990) and César Gaviria (1990-1994), Pablo Escobar and his Medellín Cartel increasingly became the targets of the government's military and police offensives, after years of relative passivity due to bribery, intimidation and murder.

In 1989, as part of the above confrontation and recognizing the abuses committed under the vague provisions of the Law 48 of 1968, the Colombian Supreme Court declared it invalid and revoked the rights that it had granted. A month later, President Barco issued the Decree 1194 of 1989, which prohibited the creation, promotion or organization of paramilitary or self-defense groups, declaring such activities illegal.

Some of the paramilitaries of Puerto Boyacá, in particular the "Autodefensas Campesinas del Magdalena Medio" (Peasant Self-Defense Forces of the Middle Magdalena), sought, through the intervention of ACDEGAM's spokesman Iván Roberto Duque Escobar (after the 1987 murder of his predecessor Pablo Emilio Guarín Vera), to develop a little known proposal for a political party known as "Movimiento de Reconstrucción Nacional" (National Reconstruction Movement) or MORENA, roughly between 1988 and 1989, until government pressure after the death of Luis Carlos Galán led to the cancellation of its electoral recognition. [10]

[edit] Yair Klein

In the 80s, Yair Klein, an Israeli ex-military and mercenary established a private mercenary company called Spearhead Ltd. Through this company, Klein began providing arms and training to armed forces in South America. Klein was accused of training several members of Colombian paramilitary organizations and the militias of drug traffickers such as José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha and Pablo Escobar Gaviria. ^[1]

[edit] Early to Mid-1990s

Critics of the MORENA experiment saw it as an attempt at legitimizing paramilitarism and its abuses, as an extension of ACDEGAM, or as a copycat of El Salvador's ARENA. Separately and as part of an unclear series of events, contacts between the M-19 and the Middle Magdalena paramilitaries of Henry Pérez (allegedly murdered by Pablo Escobar in July of 1991) and Ariel Otero (allegedly murdered by other paramilitaries in January of 1992) allegedly led to a low profile demobilization of an undeterminate number of men in late 1991.

Several members of the M-19 guerrilla which were in the midst of demobilization themselves (including among them its commander Carlos Pizarro Leongómez, assassinated in 1990 under orders of Carlos Castaño Gil), had considered that it was necessary to attempt to reincorporate paramilitaries into society to achieve a true reconciliation. Apparently, the fact that most of the paramilitary's fight had been focused on the FARC, ELN and EPL helped to ease tensions somewhat. Supposedly the demobilization of the paramilitaries was ignored by the central administration and therefore eventually reversed itself, amid internal conflicts between the participants.

According to HRW, a different set of paramilitaries, including the "Los Tangueros" of the Castaño family, returned some weapons and possibly demobilized a number men, as a consequence of the demobilization of some 2,000 men of the EPL guerrilla in 1992, which by 1990 they had contributed to weakening in collaboration with military forces. The Castaños created a fundation known as "Fundación por la Paz de Córdoba", (Fundation for the Peace of Córdoba) or FUNDACOR, which provided some aid, land, cattle and money to hundreds of the former EPL fighters. [11]

At the same time, the fall of the Medellín Cartel and the death of Pablo Escobar in 1993 contributed to the further development of paramilitarism as a more autonomous actor in the Colombian conflict. After Escobar's submission to justice and subsequent escape from the La Catedral compound, the struggle divided existing paramilitary groups which had previously maintained ties with the druglord's organization. Some of them turned against Escobar and, together with his rivals in the Cali Cartel, members of official security forces and sometimes the victims of his earlier aggressions, helped to form "Los Pepes", for "Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar" (Persecuted by Pablo Escobar), a hit squad that attacked Escobar's remaining allies and relatives.

When the hit squad disbanded upon Escobar's death, a temporary power vacuum left each of the separate paramilitary forces mostly to their own devices. Fidel Castaño Gil mysteriously disappeared sometime between 1993 and 1994, and is thought to be either dead or in hiding. Carlos Castaño Gil, as told to Human Rights Watch, would have stated that, with his brother gone, one of the reasons that led to the reactivation of his paramilitary apparatus by 1994 under the "Autodefensas Campesinas de Cordoba y Uraba" (Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Cordoba and Uraba) or ACCU, was the continuation of the EPL's armed struggle by a dissident faction, in addition to the FARC's push into northern Colombia. Other analysts have argued that Castaño also sought to consolidate his influence over the drug business in the region. [12]

[edit] U.S. Involvement in guerilla policy

In 1990, the United States formed a team that included representatives of the U.S. Embassy's Military Group, U.S. Southern Command, the DIA, and the CIA in order to give advice on the reshaping of several of the Colombian military's local intelligence networks. The official reason for this restructuring was to aid the Colombian military in their counter-narcotics efforts.^[2]

Advice on the same subject had also been solicited from the British and Israeli military intelligence, but the U.S. proposal was eventually selected by the Colombian military.^[3] The result of these meetings was Order 200-05/91, issued by the Colombian Defense Ministry in May 1991.^[4]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) obtained a copy of the Colombian Armed Forces Directive No. 200-05/91.^[5] The order itself made no mention of drugs at all. The document stated that the Colombian military, "based on the recommendations made by a commission of advisors from the U.S. Armed Forces, "presented a plan to better combat what they called "escalating terrorism by armed subversion."

The document called for setting up intelligence networks made up of military personnel and "civilians or retired non-commissioned officers with sufficient experience and status" as agents and informants under the control of active-duty officers, with the goals of gathering intelligence for military commanders and coordinating with local military units . Order 200-05/91 also stated that the entire intelligence chain of command as well as the networks themselves must remain secret. Once the reorganisation was complete, all "written material was to be removed", with "open contacts and interaction with military installations" to be avoided by all active members of the intelligence networks.

Human Rights Watch concluded that the resulting military intelligence networks, organized and operating according to the US suggestions incorporated by Order 200-05/91, subsequently laid the groundwork for continuing an illegal, covert partnership between the military and paramilitaries. HRW argued that the restructuring process solidified linkages between members of the Colombian military and civilian members of paramilitary groups, by incorporating them into several of the local intelligence networks and by cooperating with their activities. In effect, HRW believed that this further consolidated a "secret network that relied on paramilitaries not only for intelligence, but to carry out murder".

Human Rights Watch argued that this situation allowed the Colombian government and military to plausibly deny links or responsibility for paramilitary human rights abuses. HRW stated that, far from diminishing violence, the military intelligence networks created by the U.S. reorganization appeared to have dramatically increased violence, citing massacres in Barrancabermeja as an example. ^[6]

Former civilian Defense Minister Rafael Pardo Rueda, who took office three months after the intelligence reorganization had already started, told HRW in 1996 that in his opinion the new structure "was not intended to incorporate illegal groups or to carry out illegal activities". Despite this, HRW pointed out that the text of Order 200-05/91 failed "to make any mention of Decree 1194 [which had made paramilitarism illegal in 1989] or exclude paramilitaries from the ranks of the new intelligence networks," leaving a document that could well be used as a practical "blueprint" for such activities.

In 1996, Human Rights Watch referred to US advice and Order 200-05/91 by stating that "[United States] recommendations were given despite the fact that some of the U.S. officials who collaborated with the [intelligence restructuring] team knew of the Colombian military's record of human rights abuses and its ongoing relations with paramilitaries". Although "not all paramilitaries are intimate partners with the military," HRW added that the existing partnership between paramilitaries and the Colombian military was "a sophisticated mechanism, in part supported by years of advice, training, weaponry, and official silence by the United States, that allows the Colombian military to fight a dirty war and Colombian officialdom to deny it." [13]

[edit] CONVIVIR

A February 11, 1994 decree of Colombia's Ministry of Defense and a law passed in the Colombian Congress led to the creation of the CONVIVIR, a national program of cooperative neighborhood watch groups, in response to growing guerrilla activity. Developing mainly during the administration of Ernesto Samper Pizano (1994-1998), the CONVIVIR groups quickly became controversial as it was considered to represent something of a revival of the Law 48 of 1968. Members of some former paramilitary groups transitioned into CONVIVIR, where they were joined by newer recruits and victims of guerrilla aggression, while others, such as the ACCU, remained operating independently. The governor of Antioquia, Álvaro Uribe Velez, whose father had been killed by the FARC during a kidnapping attempt in 1983, gained notoriety for his open support and promotion of the CONVIVIR at the time.

Reports argued that some CONVIVIR groups achieved results in providing security to communities and intelligence coordination to military forces, but apparently numerous members committed abuses against civilians, without a serious oversight over their operations and organization. In 1998, HRW stated that "we have received credible information that indicated that the CONVIVIR groups of the Middle Magdalena and of the southern Cesar regions were directed by known paramilitaries and had threatened to assassinate Colombians that were considered as guerrilla sympathizers or which rejected joining the cooperative groups". [14]

After much political debate, a November 1997 decision of Colombia's Constitutional Court stated that CONVIVIR members could not gather intelligence information and could not employ military grade weapons. Other restrictions included increasing legal supervision, and in early 1998 dozens of former CONVIVIR groups had their licenses revoked, because they did not turn in their weapons and withheld information about their personnel. Due to these measures, some gradually turned in their weapons and phased themselves out. 237 of the restricted weapons were returned to authorities by the end of 1997. Other members did not comply and later joined existing paramilitary groups. [15]

[edit] Late 1990s to Early 2000s

In April 1997, the creation of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) or AUC was announced, formally inaugurating what has been termed by analysts as the "second generation" of paramilitarism. [16] It is considered to be the result of Carlos Castaño Gil's efforts to achieve a measure of unity between most of the other paramilitary forces in the country. Several paramilitary groups did not join, but the AUC itself claimed to represent about 90% of existing forces at the time. Castaño's ACCU formally became the core of the new umbrella organization, while the other heads of paramilitary groups kept their own leadership positions, becoming part of a federated High Command of the AUC. It has been considered by observers that the FARC's advances as part of a 1996 to 1998 offensive eased the process of formal paramilitary unification. [17]

As a response, the AUC engaged in a renewed series of massacres and assassinations, often with the passive or active aid of elements of the Colombian government's security forces, according to human rights organizations. [18]

[edit] Massacres

Main article: Massacres perpetrated by Paramilitarism in Colombia

Many massacres are believed to have been perpetrated by Paramilitary groups in Colombia. Some of the most widely known are:

[edit] The Mapiripan Massacre

In Mapiripan, Meta department at least 30 people were killed between July 14 to 20. AUC members arrived in the town on July 14 and searched for people who were suspected leftist guerrilla supporters.[19] They went from house to house referring a name list of leftist guerrilla supporters that was prepared by informants earlier. Civilians were taken to the town center where they were tortured by paramilitaries before being killed. During the period of 5 days they stayed in the area, the paramilitaries killed around 10 civilians per day.^{[citation needed]} A victim named Antonio Maria Herrera was hung from a hook. Afterwards, paramilitaries quartered his body and threw the pieces into the Guaviare River.[20] The other victims were hacked with machetes or their throats and limbs were cut with a chainsaw after they were tortured.[21] Afterwards, the victims, some of them still alive, were thrown into the same river.^{[citation needed]} The local judge of Mapiripan Leonardo Ivan Cortes called the police and the army eight times during the 5-day massacre, but they did not arrived until the AUC paramilitaries had left.[22]

In March 1999 Colombian prosecutors accused Colonel Lino Sánchez of planning the massacre with Carlos Casño. Sánchez was the operations chief of the Colombian Army's 12th Brigade. He has received special training by the U.S. Army Green Berets on Barrancón Island on the Guaviare River. The training was finished very close to the time of the massacre [23]. The evidence showed that the paramilitaries landed unhampered at the San Jose del Guaviare airport which was heavily guarded by military personnel.[24]

[edit] The Alto Naya massacre

A second massacre took place at Alto Naya, Cauca department on April 12, 2001, in which an estimated 120 civilians were killed. Ninety paramilitaries participated in the killings.[25]

The paramilitaries surrounded the area and ordered the people to line up, they introduced them selves as "Calima Front" and their main objective is to kill any one who supported guerrillas. They had questions about the guerrillas and hacked the people by machete blows if they gave negative answers.^{[citation needed]}

Most of the bodies were found amputated by chainsaws. The victims included a 17 year old girl Gladys Ipia whose throat was cut and both hands amputated with a chainsaw, another woman's abdomen cut with a chainsaw, and the indigenous governor Cayetano Cruz had his body cut into two pieces by a chainsaw. 5,500 returned but 540 people are still displaced. Some of the villagers traveled to the Colombian Army’s Third Brigade an hour away. The villagers reported that paramilitaries were at that very moment slaughtering people in Alto Naya. But the soldiers replied, “We’ve heard this already, it’s a lie. We have no orders.”[26][27]

[edit] The Betoyes Massacre

Another massacre took place in Betoyes, Arauca department in early May 2003. Several people belonging to the indigenous Guahibo community were killed and over 300 people fled. Three girls, ages 11, 12, and 15, were raped. Another 16-year-old preganant mother, Omaira Fernández was reportedly raped. Her womb was cut open and the fetus was hacked up by a machete before the paramilitaries dumped their bodies into the river. An Amnesty International reported on June 4, 2003 that the Colombian army's 18th Brigade's “Navos Pardo Battalion” fully supported the AUC in carrying out the massacre. "During a similar attack by a group of armed men in Betoyes in January 2003, witnesses said that the AUC armband of one attacker slipped to reveal the words “Navos Pardo Battalion” printed on the uniform beneath." [28]

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Democracy Now!, Who Is Israel's Yair Klein and What Was He Doing in Colombia and Sierra Leone?, June 1, 2000.
2. ^ Author Unknown (November 1996). Colombia's Killer Networks: the Military-Paramilitary Partnership and the United States. Human Rights Watch. Retrieved on April 1, 2006. III: The Intelligence Reorganization Citing a Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Colonel (ret.) James S. Roach, Jr., then the U.S. Military Attache and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) country liaison in Bogotá.
   Stokes, Doug Why the End of the Cold War Doesn't Matter: the US War of Terror in Colombia. Bristol University Politics Department. Retrieved on February 27, 2006.
3. ^ Colombia's Killer Networks http://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/killer3.htm, note 70.
4. ^ Colombia's Killer Networks http://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/killer3.htm, note 71.
5. ^ Colombia's Killer Networks Appednix A http://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/killerapendixa.htm copy of the directive.
6. ^ Colombia's Killer Networks, III: The Intelligence Reorganization

[edit] See also

• United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia
• Carlos Castaño Gil
• Colombian Armed Conflict
• Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Cordoba and Uraba
• Paramilitarism in Northern Ireland (information on the loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, who like the AUC took up a vigilante role during The Troubles)

[edit] External links

• www.altocomisionadoparalapaz.gov.co
• AUC Official Website (in Spanish)
• UNHCR/ACNUR - Colombia: Grupos Paramilitares de Autodefensa (In Spanish)
• Center for International Policy - Colombia Program
• Colombia Journal Home
• Human Rights Watch - Colombia
• Human Rights Watch - Colombia: Las Redes de Asesinos de Colombia (In Spanish)
• UN High Commissioner for Human Rights - Colombia 2005 Report (Spanish and English)

[edit] References

• Chomsky, Aviva and Francisco Ramírez Cuellar. The Profits of Extermination: How U.S. Corporate Power is Destroying Colombia. Common Courage Press, 2005. ISBN 1-56751-322-0.
• Dudley, Steven. Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia. 256 pages. Routledge, January, 2004. ISBN 0-415-93303-X.
• Duzan, Maria Jimena and Peter Eisner (translator). Death Beat: A Colombian Journalist's Life Inside the Cocaine Wars. Harpercollins, 1994. ISBN 0-06-017057-3.
• Kirk, Robin. More Terrible than Death: Massacres, Drugs, and America's War in Colombia. 288 pages. PublicAffairs. 1st ed. edition, January, 2003. ISBN 1-58648-104-5.
• Leech, Garry M. Killing Peace: Colombia's Conflict and the Failure of U.S. Intervention. Information Network of the Americas (INOTA), 2002. ISBN 0-9720384-0-X.
• Mitchell, Chip. Along for the Ride: Colombia's paramilitaries are getting a pass, with a wink from Washington. The Progressive, May 2005.
• Pardo Rueda, Rafael. La Historia de las Guerras. Ediciones B-Vergara, 2004. ISBN 958-97405-5-3
• Pastrana, Andrés. La Palabra Bajo Fuego. Editorial Planeta, 2005.
• Ramírez Santos, Alberto (editor). Las Verdaderas Intenciones de los Paramilitares. Intermedio Editores, 2002.
• Ruiz, Bert. The Colombian Civil War. 271 pages. McFarland & Company. October 1, 2001. ISBN 0-7864-1084-1.
• Toledo, Rebeca, Teresa Gutierrez, Sara Flounders and Andy McInerney (editors). War in Colombia: Made in U.S.A.. 2003. ISBN 0-9656916-9-1.