Pubdate: Sun, 04 Mar 2001
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company
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Author: Juan Forero

WE'RE DOING BATTLE RIGHT AND LEFT, COLOMBIA INSISTS

BOGOTA, Colombia, March 3 - As President Andres Pastrana shops in 
Europe and America for more aid, he wants the world to know that his 
government is committed to fighting his country's right-wing 
paramilitary groups, not just its leftist rebels.

The message - often repeated in meetings with American members of 
Congress and in speeches in Europe - is that his administration has 
captured hundreds of paramilitary gunmen, is pursuing those who 
finance the groups and is severing ties between military units and 
paramilitary groups.

"Today, we have a frontal strategy against paramilitarism," Mr. 
Pastrana said in an interview. "I am combating them through 
conviction, not because the people are imposing it on us. It's 
because we care about the theme of human rights."

But to some American officials and human rights groups, who have for 
years accused the military of a tacit alliance with paramilitary 
groups, Mr. Pastrana's efforts have not gone nearly far enough. The 
paramilitary groups have nearly doubled in strength in the last two 
years and are now responsible for three out of every four deaths in 
the massacres of villagers the gunmen say are sympathetic to leftist 
rebels.

Experts on Colombia and local officials in places where fighting has 
occurred say that while the government has clearly taken a stand in 
some regions, there have been no detectable efforts to rein in the 
paramilitary groups in others. In some cases, outright ties between 
military units and paramilitary groups continue to exist, said 
American officials and other observers.

"I think that the high command, Pastrana and the Ministry of Defense 
are totally committed to getting a grip on this problem," said the 
American ambassador, Anne Patterson, in an interview.

"Where the problem arises, of course, is in the field, and there we 
get widely mixed reports about what's happening," Ms. Patterson said. 
"In some areas, clearly the local commander is taking really strong 
action against paramilitaries, has arrested them and gone after them; 
and in other places, there appears to be collusion."

Still, in recent months, Mr. Pastrana has begun a highly publicized 
campaign to demonstrate his commitment to dismantling the 
paramilitary groups (thought to number more than 8,000 members) and 
to preserve a lifeline of trade agreements and foreign aid.

Glossy reports, filled with charts and graphs showing operations 
against paramilitary groups, have been issued. Generals, who a few 
short years ago denied that the paramilitary groups even existed, now 
call their members terrorists who must be hunted down. In military 
briefings and presentations, the paramilitary groups are cast as 
enemies of the state, just like the rebels.

A Latin America expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in 
Washington, Cynthia Arnson, said that in her view, "a lot of the 
activity in Colombia is aimed at convincing people who would 
otherwise be opposed to the aid that the government is doing the 
right thing."

Yet many in Colombia and abroad are wary of the Colombian government's claims.

Gustavo Gallon, director of an internationally recognized human 
rights group, the Colombian Commission of Jurists, said the military, 
despite announcing 316 warrants filed against paramilitary members 
last year, has not made a single arrest against a top-ranked 
paramilitary gunman.

Nor has the military prevented paramilitary groups from spreading in 
the last three years from their northern base of operations to 26 of 
Colombia's 32 provinces.

"There are no significant or convincing actions against paramilitary 
groups," Mr. Gallon said.

Most troubling, paramilitary violence - massacres and selective 
assassinations - have risen dramatically, from 400 deaths in 1998 to 
1,560 last year, according to the government's figures.

Last year alone, paramilitary groups killed 577 people in 83 
massacres, accounting for 75 percent of the deaths, the Defense 
Ministry reported. The Commission of Jurists puts the numbers higher: 
160 massacres and 1,084 deaths in a one-year period ending in October 
2000. Eighty-two percent of the deaths were at the hands of 
paramilitary groups, the commission said.

"It's evident that there's an intense program of propaganda or 
publicity to show that they have intensive actions against the 
paramilitaries," said Mr. Gallon. "But the paramilitaries are causing 
most of the deaths in this country, with either the tolerance or the 
cooperation of state agents."

Run by Carlos Castano, the son of a cattleman who was killed by 
guerrillas, the paramilitary groups, called the United Self-Defense 
Forces of Colombia, sustain themselves by extorting money from coca 
farmers and cocaine traffickers and drawing support from cattlemen 
and business leaders. Paramilitary gunmen specialize in going after 
villagers suspected of collaborating with leftist rebels.

American officials say they will soon include Mr. Castano's group on 
the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.

Mr. Pastrana, who calls the paramilitary groups "a cancer that is 
gnawing away at the country," said fighting them is not easy. But he 
said important measures have been taken that demonstrate the 
administration's commitment, especially to breaking the bonds between 
military units and paramilitary groups.

He cited the government's dismissal of 388 soldiers in October, some 
for what government officials said were human rights abuses. Mr. 
Pastrana has also dismissed five generals believed to have committed 
abuses, American officials said. Last month, the government also 
announced the formation of a commission to track government progress 
against paramilitary groups.

And on Feb. 12, in the first known case involving human rights 
abuses, a military tribunal sentenced a general to 40 months in 
prison for having stood by as members of paramilitary groups 
massacred dozens of villagers in 1997.

"It's more than just public relations," said a high-ranking official 
in the Pastrana administration. "Some international organizations are 
putting in doubt what we're doing, and so what we're doing is putting 
the data out and saying, `these are the results,' to show that the 
Colombian state has the commitments to go after these groups."

Michael Shifter, an expert on Colombia at Inter-American Dialogue, a 
Washington research group, said the Pastrana administration deserves 
some credit for the measures it has taken. "They've been pretty 
tentative and pretty half-hearted, but they should be recognized 
because they're a step forward," he said.

American officials and human rights groups, however, say measuring 
the government's progress is difficult. The government, for instance, 
has failed to provide details about the charges filed against 
dismissed soldiers and police officials.

"What they're doing is trying to give the appearance of compliance, 
but in fact when you go back and look at the cases they're using they 
start to evaporate," said Robin Kirk, a researcher on Colombia for 
Human Rights Watch, an American group.

The State Department said there is cause for concern in its human 
rights report on Colombia, released last Monday, despite some 
improvements in the government's efforts.

"Members of the security forces collaborated with paramilitary groups 
that committed abuses," said the report, "in some instances allowing 
such groups to pass through roadblocks, sharing information, or 
providing them with supplies or ammunition."

Examples of the paramilitary groups operating openly, with state 
security forces in close proximity, are not hard to find.

In Puerto Asis, the largest town in the coca-growing province of 
Putumayo, the municipality's legal officer and human rights 
ombudsman, German Martinez, has collected testimony from residents 
who reported seeing military and police officials with known 
paramilitary gunmen.

In one, a Puerto Asis man said paramilitary gunmen forced him to 
drive them and their terrified prisoner, a young man accused of being 
a rebel, into the countryside last year. Upon reaching a military 
checkpoint, the soldiers greeted the paramilitary gunmen warmly.

"They said, `This is a guerrilla, and we're going to kill him,' " the 
driver recalled in an interview last month. "They said, `Brother, 
congratulations.' They held him up like a trophy." The man is 
believed to have been killed.
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MAP posted-by: Kirk Bauer