Pubdate: Sun, 15 Oct 2000
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2000 Houston Chronicle
Contact:  Viewpoints Editor, P.O. Box 4260 Houston, Texas 77210-4260
Fax: (713) 220-3575
Website: http://www.chron.com/
Forum: http://www.chron.com/content/hcitalk/index.html
Author: John Otis

PART OF BLAME FOR COLOMBIAN PARAMILITARIES LIES IN PRIVATE SECTOR

BOGOTA, Colombia -- When Colombian legislators recently criticized state 
security forces for cooperating with the paramilitaries, Defense Minister 
Luis Fernando Ramirez replied that there is plenty of blame to go around.

"The military and the police are always singled out. But what about the 
businessmen and the civilians who are financing the paramilitaries?" 
Ramirez asked at a congressional hearing last month.

Critics accused the defense minister of trying to duck the issue. Yet 
Ramirez's comments received big play in the media, in part because 
Colombian society rarely addresses the issue of private-sector sponsorship 
of the paramilitaries.

The outlawed right-wing militias receive up to 70 percent of their income 
from the drug trade but also receive huge sums from ranchers, merchants and 
big businesses seeking protection from Marxist guerrillas.

"We depend on these groups for protection, because the (army and police) 
are so inept," Rodrigo Garcia, a cattle rancher in the northern state of 
Codoba, told the Bogota newspaper El Tiempo. In fact, the guerrillas have 
driven the police from dozens of towns and villages and control huge swaths 
of countryside.

The 130,000-man army is considered small for a nation the size of Colombia. 
Rather than pursuing the rebels, thousands of troops guard oil pipelines 
and electrical towers in an effort to prevent guerrilla attacks.

"Farmers are always coming to me, saying that the guerrillas have robbed 
(them of) their cattle or kidnapped their relatives or that they are being 
threatened," said Fernando Devis, president of the Colombian Farmers 
Association. "They go looking for the paramilitaries."

In a recent television interview, Carlos Castano, the leader of Colombia's 
main paramilitary umbrella group, said that he receives a constant stream 
of desperate visitors.

"It's not just regional leaders. It's the middle class, the transport 
workers, the rice and cotton farmers. The guerrillas are choking them off," 
Castano told Bogota's RCN television station.

"We tell them what a (paramilitary) front will cost and how many men will 
be needed," he said.

Although the paramilitaries have been extremely effective in their war 
against the rebels, experts point out that their actions have drained 
public support from the police and army by making them look comparatively weak.

The paramilitaries' ties to the army and police also provide the guerrillas 
with an excuse to denounce the Colombian government before human rights 
groups and the international community, Devis said.

Most observers say that the only solution is for the Colombian government 
to regain control of the countryside by upgrading the army, police and 
other state institutions. But such reforms will likely take years.

For now, Ramirez has proposed creating a special fund with private 
donations that would allow the army and police to react more quickly to 
guerrilla threats to ranchers and business owners.

"If those people who currently give money to the paramilitaries would give 
it to the police and army, then we will have a greater presence in the 
countryside," Ramirez said.

But Devis said that the plan would create a two-tiered system with 
well-financed security forces responding to the concerns of the upper class 
while ignoring the concerns of the poor.

"You can't have one army for the rich and one army for the poor," he said.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens