Plan Colombia and Beyond

« Paramilitary talks: the breaking point? | Main | San José de Apartadó and the U.S. human rights certification »

March 01, 2005

From paramilitarism to "hidden powers"?

One of the thorniest issues the paramilitary negotiations must untangle is the question of dismantlement: how to guarantee that the AUC doesn’t emerge from a “successful” dialogue in some other violent and threatening form.

The group of Colombian congresspeople led by Senator (and former Defense Minister) Rafael Pardo at least tries to address the dismantlement question. The legislation they are promoting would require demobilizing paramilitary members to confess to crimes and to reveal what they know about who commanded them and who supported them. The bill would require investigations of demobilizing paramilitaries to “seek especially to know the structure, formation, command and systematic patters that the suspect’s group has developed, in order to establish the diverse and varied misconduct carried out in the armed group’s name.”

While this is far from a perfect tool for eliminating paramilitary networks, it is far more than what many in the Colombian government – including peace negotiator Luis Carlos Restrepo and Vice President Francisco Santos – would ask. This faction would only require demobilizing paramilitaries to provide their names, towns of origin and similar contact information.

If Colombia passes a demobilization law that fails to dismantle paramilitarism, it doesn’t automatically follow that the paramilitaries will reassume their present form. The era of militarized self-defense groups – with thousands of members wearing uniforms with armbands and insignia, carrying heavy weapons, and living in remote encampments – would probably come to an end no matter what. This model of violent territorial control may now be obsolete in parts of Colombia where landowners, ranchers, drug lords and other monied interests have used paramilitaries to push out guerrillas (Córdoba, much of Antioquia, Cesar, southern Magdalena Medio).

To see what the future might look like if the AUC is not properly dismantled, it’s worth reading (or re-reading) Hidden Powers in Post-Conflict Guatemala [PDF file], a late-2003 report that Susan Peacock and Adriana Beltrán wrote for the Washington Office on Latin America. The researchers painted a grim, scary picture of Guatemala seven years after the 1996 peace accord: a country where levels of political violence are again rising, and many forms of political dissent are growing riskier, because of a shadowy network of traditional-landowning-elite types, narco-criminals, former military officers and paid killers. Most of the network’s trigger-pullers have combat experience, particularly as former members of Civil Self-Defense Patrols (PACs), which were Guatemala’s notoriously vicious version of the paramilitaries.

Three representative excerpts from that report:

The clandestine groups do not act on their own, but at the behest of members of an inter-connected set of powerful Guatemalans. The individuals and groups that make up this secretive, amorphous network are known as the hidden powers. They oversee and profit from a variety of illegal activities that they carry out with little fear of arrest or prosecution. These illegal activities often involve the improper exercise of influence in the state – skimming at customs, bribery and kickbacks, for example – and include connections to drug trafficking and other forms of organized crime. Along with their influence in the state bureaucracy, the hidden powers have relationships with most of the political parties and actors in Guatemala.

…

The abuses are clearly targeted. While many appear on the surface to be acts of common crime, the number and patterns of the cases point to a systematic targeting of civil society actors and others involved in “anti-impunity initiatives” – both those who seek justice for past abuses (human rights groups, forensic experts, judges, lawyers, and witnesses) and those who denounce present-day corruption by state agents. Those who fight for economic and social rights, particularly land rights, and for an end to discrimination against indigenous people, are also singled out for attacks.

…

The term hidden powers refers to an informal, amorphous network of powerful individuals in Guatemala who use their positions and contacts in the public and private sectors both to enrich themselves from illegal activities and to protect themselves from prosecution for the crimes they commit. It describes an unorthodox situation where legal authorities of the state still have formal power, but, de facto, members of the informal network hold much of the real power in the country.

This sounds like parts of Colombia today, and it sounds like the situation that many analysts are describing when they voice concerns about the country’s creeping “paramilitarization.” In the past two or three years, a period in which the AUC’s blocs have made little effort to conquer new territories, paramilitary power has grown in other ways.

The groups get their chosen candidates elected to the legislature, governorships and mayoralties (often by threatening opposing candidates). Salvatore Mancuso famously bragged after the 2002 legislative elections that the AUC had over 30 percent of the Congress in its pocket. They siphon funds from state coffers, including municipal and departmental healthcare and pension budgets. They are reportedly increasing their share of both legal and illegal commerce. And they continue to target human rights activists, union organizers, independent-minded journalists, and other would-be threats to the status quo. (For more on the subterranean rise of paramilitarism, see the reports that Colombia’s El Tiempo and El Espectador published on the same day last September.)

If the AUC negotiations do not stop this diffusion of paramilitary power throughout society, Guatemala’s present could be Colombia’s future. The way to avoid it is twofold: governance and dismantlement.

It will be difficult for the Colombian government to guarantee security in zones where paramilitaries are demobilizing: 375,000 soldiers and police can only stretch so far. But the same powerful interests that supported and nurtured paramilitary groups for the past twenty years are not about to see their tightly run communities and properties fall to the guerrillas. If the Colombian state fails to step in with a significant, well-funded presence – partly military but mostly civilian – these regions’ “hidden powers” will have a Plan B of their own, and they will have hundreds of demobilized fighters on whom they can call. The state, then, cannot fail to step in and govern zones that paramilitaries would vacate after a demobilization accord is reached.

That accord, meanwhile, must include a thorough effort to identify, investigate, and dismantle the AUC’s sources of financial and logistical support, as well as its formal and informal chains of command. Of course it will be impossible to uncover all that is hidden. But the Pardo bill at least takes a step in the right direction.

Is this enough to avoid a Guatemala outcome? Perhaps not; much will depend on the investigators’ aggressiveness and the government’s political will to devote resources to formerly paramilitary-held zones. And of course, it will also depend on the Colombian government’s Restrepo-Santos faction not getting its way with a weaker version of the “truth, justice and reparations” law.

Posted by isacson at March 1, 2005 11:24 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://ciponline.org/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/61

Comments

Post a comment