Both the New York Times and The Miami Herald both ran editorials this week which share my feelings and position in this post. I think that the Times describes the bizarreness of Uribe's recent comments best:
The job of human rights worker is riskier than that of paramilitary leader. At least 17 were murdered last year, most by paramilitaries. Human rights groups need protection from the government and paramilitary leaders deserve hostility — not, as Mr. Uribe seems to think, the other way around.
Now according to this article in yesterday's Washington Post, Uribe's stance toward the miltaries is encouraging land grabs in advance of any peace:
Colombia's largest private paramilitary force is seizing farmland and houses at gunpoint in an effort to consolidate its hold on strategic regions across the country before beginning negotiations to disarm, according to military officials, Western diplomats and witnesses.The tactics pose a challenge to President Alvaro Uribe, who placed a central condition on the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as the AUC, when he agreed to begin discussions that could end in a measure of amnesty for its leadership. That condition was cessation of hostilities against the civilian population, which has suffered the most hardship in Colombia's four-decade-long conflict.
The paramilitary campaign comes during a peace process that began with a cease-fire agreement last December. The cease-fire was followed by eight-months of exploratory talks between the Uribe administration and AUC leaders, some of whom face drug trafficking charges in the United States. In July, Uribe formally committed his government to peace negotiations with the AUC after the group signed a pledge to disarm by the end of 2005. But negotiators have yet to agree on a timeline for disarmament.
The paramilitary actions, which include forced land sales and murders, are changing the military balance in regions where the government is considering demobilizing more than half of the group's estimated 20,000 troops and creating post-war economic opportunities for them, a $130 million effort that the United States has been asked to finance.
Across a wide swath of northwestern Colombia rich with banana, cattle and palm farms, paramilitary groups have been forcing farmers to sell prime land at a fraction of the market rate. The effort appears designed to build a buffer against guerrilla incursions, provide work for paramilitary troops and shield their profits -- much of them derived from Colombia's drug trade. The peace process is expected to result in new laws that would force paramilitary leaders to pay compensation to the group's many victims. [my emphasis]
It certainly appears that Uribe is either complicit in this or a complete idiot. How could he be unaware of these incidents:
Set among the steep hills of Medellin, Colombia's second-largest city, Comuna 13 became a showcase last year for Uribe's hard-line approach to the guerrilla insurgency. In October, just two months after taking office, Uribe ordered the army into its maze of narrow alleys and tunnel systems to root out militias using the neighborhood as a supply corridor to fronts in western Antioquia province.But a paramilitary unit known as the Nutibara Bloc, swarmed into the neighborhood soon after the army. In recent months, the unit has consolidated its hold, despite the cease-fire.
On the surface, life in the neighborhood is far better than it was when the guerrillas taxed shopkeepers, drilled holes through homes to make tunnels, and pressed teenagers into service. "People go out onto the soccer fields and basketball courts, and business is picking up," said Luis Armando Foronda, 36, whose store shelves are stocked with soaps, Colgate toothpaste, Yoplait and Alka-Seltzer now that he no longer has to give food and money to the armed groups. "The paramilitaries may be here, but it is only to help with vigilance."
But the change has a frightening side, according to residents who refer to the new arrivals only indirectly. Inside a cordon of troops from the army's Ospina Battalion and the National Police, hooded paramilitary troops have expelled residents from at least seven houses over the past three months, turning them into weapons stashes and headquarters, according to testimony given to human rights groups. At least 13 people have been reported kidnapped this year alone and are presumed dead. Last month, in the hills above the neighborhood, 16 bodies were found in common graves.
"The people were very pleased when the army arrived and stopped what was a brutal guerrilla presence," said Patricia Fuenmayor, the volunteer coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Group for Human Rights, which works in the neighborhood. "But now they are suffering similar things by the paramilitaries. The neighborhood is their domain, and the government is trying to keep this quiet."
Here in the Uraba region of northwest Colombia, elements of the AUC have been taking advantage of the chaotic state of local land records to buy up some of the richest farms in the area. The region is the center of Colombia's thriving palm oil industry, subsidized by the government as an economic development engine.
How can Uribe possibly think that this will bring peace to Colombia? He's made a pact with the devil and if he's not careful, he's going to have the devil to pay - literally.
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