'Friend' in trouble

Published : Apr 06, 2007 00:00 IST

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in Bogota.-ALEJANDRA PARRA/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in Bogota.-ALEJANDRA PARRA/BLOOMBERG NEWS

PRESIDENT George W. Bush's visit to Colombia in the second week of March lasted only seven hours. It was meant to be a show of solidarity with his beleaguered Colombian counterpart, Alvaro Uribe, who is one of the U.S.'s closest allies in the region. Uribe was re-elected last year for another four-year term with a large majority. His apparent successes against left-wing guerillas and cocaine traffickers made him the U.S. poster boy in Latin America. "You are my personal friend and your country is a strategic partner of the United States," Bush told Uribe when the two leaders met in Bogota. However, in the last couple of months, things started going awry for the Colombian President when strong evidence emerged about his government's links with right-wing paramilitary groups, death squads and narco-traffickers.

The surrender of Salvatore Mancuso, a former top leader of the right-wing paramilitary group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), late last year opened a Pandora's box of scandals involving government officials. Mancuso confessed that he was involved in kidnappings, killings, torture and drug-trafficking. The AUC wrought havoc in the Colombian countryside and killed thousands of peasants. In his confession, Mancuso admitted that many top pro-government politicians and army officers supported the AUC's activities. Mancuso provided a court in Colombia with a copy of an agreement the AUC had signed with some top legislators, Governors and Mayors of the country. The document, known as the "Ralito Agreement", was basically a treaty of cooperation between the AUC and influential sections of the government.

The AUC, which began as a small vigilante militia in 1997, started working as a death squad for the government almost immediately after its creation. The AUC's actions were tolerated for a long time by both the Colombian government and its U.S. backers because it was a useful ally in the fight against the left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN) guerillas. However, the AUC's involvement in the drug trade and its targeting of civilians involved in trade union and human rights activities forced the U.S. to add the group to the State Department list of terrorist organisations. By 2001, the AUC controlled many of the municipalities in the country through strong-arm methods and the illicit money generated by narco-trafficking. Shockingly, the group won control of one-third of the country's national assembly.

Mancuso has admitted to having personally carried out more than 300 murders and trafficked narcotics worth millions of dollars. Under the amnesty law promulgated by the Uribe government, AUC leaders who surrender will only serve a maximum of eight years in prison, irrespective of the nature of the crimes they have committed.

Another serious charge against the Uribe government is that it has allowed the AUC to continue with its illegal activities while its leaders surrender and repent. Former soldiers of AUC cadres comprise a large section of the Colombian army. Human rights activists and opposition politicians allege that the massacres and atrocities carried out by the AUC had the tacit backing of the Colombian armed forces. Until the mid-1990s, the army routinely carried out mass killings of civilians suspected of harbouring sympathies for left-wing guerilla groups. Now evidence has surfaced showing that senior Colombian military officers regularly provided the AUC with hit lists.

The Colombian authorities have refused to extradite Mancuso despite a formal request by the U.S. Many left-wing Colombians have been extradited to the U.S. on various charges. Until now Washington has given great importance to its extradition strategy in its "war on drugs". Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace, on a visit to Colombia, praised the country's efforts to fight internal militias such as the AUC. During his visit to Bogota, Bush had warm words for Uribe's efforts to combat terrorism and the drug trade.

Just weeks before Bush's visit to Colombia, the country's Supreme Court ordered the arrest of six parliamentarians, including the brother of Foreign Minister Maria Consuelo Araujo, for their links with the AUC. Araujo, who has herself been implicated in links with paramilitaries, resigned on February 19. In the same week, former Intelligence chief Jorge Noguiera was arrested for supplying the names of human rights workers to right-wing paramilitaries. There have been suggestions from some quarters that the President himself could have links with banned right-wing groups. Uribe reacted harshly to criticisms from Opposition legislators, describing some "as terrorists in business suits". He was referring to former left-wing guerillas who gave up guns to join mainstream politics.

A few days before the Bush visit, the Colombian government announced that it would finally investigate the role of 69 soldiers involved in the brutal killings of civilians on February 21, 2005. The village of San Jose de Apartado had declared itself a "peace community" that was neutral in the ongoing struggle between the state and left-wing guerillas. According to Amnesty International over 160 of its 1,500 residents have been killed in the past 10 years. The residents blame the Colombian state for the attacks.

Colombia is the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the region and the third largest recipient in the world. This year the U.S. increased its aid budget from $728 million to $750 million. Despite the $4.4 billion in U.S. taxpayers' money that has been spent on the Colombian army in the past seven years, recent reports revealed that sections of the army had also been working for drug lords.

According to a United Nations annual report released on March 15, Colombian security forces killed innocent civilians and falsely labelled many of them as leftist guerillas slain in combat by dressing the corpses in fatigues. The report said that such killings with "characteristics of extra-judicial executions do not appear to be isolated incidents". The report added that the killings were prompted partly by the government's use of combat deaths as a yardstick to measure success against the left-wing guerillas.

John Cherian
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