Pubdate: Sun, 04 Mar 2001 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company Contact: 229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036 Fax: (212) 556-3622 Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Forum: http://forums.nytimes.com/comment/ 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. - --- MAP posted-by: Kirk Bauer