Posted on 11/27/2002 1:06:28 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
BOGOTA, Colombia -- President Alvaro Uribe's announcement that his envoys are meeting with outlawed paramilitary leaders to explore peace talks reflects deep turmoil within the right-wing militias as well as a newfound confidence in the Colombian army, analysts said Tuesday.
Blacklisted as terrorists by Washington and with their top commanders facing drug-trafficking charges in the United States, the paramilitaries are mired in crisis and may see negotiations as their best option, these observers said.
The meetings with the paramilitaries may also signal that the Colombian government finally trusts its armed forces to battle Marxist guerrillas on their own.
For two decades, paramilitaries have waged a dirty war against the rebels and their civilian supporters, sometimes in cahoots with Colombian army officers. During much of that time, the nation's undermanned armed forces suffered a series of humiliating military defeats.
Eduardo Pizarro, a Colombian scholar and visiting professor of sociology at Princeton University, called the government-paramilitary discussions "very serious."
"It won't be easy," he said. "But the demobilization of the paramilitaries would be an extraordinary event."
A handful of Colombian presidents have launched peace talks with guerrilla armies in futile attempts to end the nation's 38-year civil war.
But until now, they have refused to negotiate with paramilitary groups, which formed in the 1980s to protect drug traffickers and cattle ranchers from the rebels. The conventional wisdom was that once the guerrillas disarmed, the paramilitaries would fade away.
Eventually, the popular perception of paramilitary groups shifted from unsavory allies in the war against leftist rebels to a national security threat in their own right. Today, there are 10,000 paramilitary fighters, and many are deeply involved in drug trafficking.
Uribe, who confirmed Monday that exploratory talks with the paramilitaries have taken place, has offered few details.
But the current edition of the Bogota news weekly Semana says government peace commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo and five Roman Catholic bishops have met at least three times in the past month with paramilitary warlord Carlos Castaño and other militia leaders.
Still, many stumbling blocks remain before the two sides get anywhere near the negotiating table in an official peace process.
For one thing, Uribe insists talks cannot begin until the paramilitaries agree to a unilateral cease-fire and stop killing civilians. Another possible tripwire is the fate of Castaño.
He faces 26 arrest warrants in Colombia on crimes ranging from assassinations to civilian massacres. In September, U.S. officials indicted Castaño and two other paramilitary commanders on charges of shipping 17 tons of cocaine to the United States and Europe.
"These guys are terrorists and narco-traffickers, and, from the U.S. point of view, they should be tried as criminals," said Myles Frechette, who served as Washington's envoy to Colombia in the mid-1990s. "The fact that they are engaged in peace negotiations is neither here nor there."
Frechette suggested that negotiations could be carried out with unindicted paramilitary leaders and warned that huge sums of U.S. aid to the Bogota government could be jeopardized if Colombia fails to throw the book at Castaño.
Others believe Castaño is the key to a peace accord and that, with the U.S. indictments hanging over his head, he is all the more anxious to negotiate.
Castaño controls the largest right-wing militia bloc, which includes about 70 percent of Colombia's paramilitary fighters. His group has a reputation of being more politically astute and less involved in narco-trafficking than other paramilitary fronts.
"Castaño knows that the paramilitaries are divided and demoralized and that within the next year, they could break apart into units controlled by autonomous warlords," Pizarro said.
But political analyst Leon Valencia believes it is unlikely Castaño will call off his war unless he is guaranteed leniency on the charges against him.
In the broader interest of promoting peace, officials could offer Castaño a sweetheart deal. If, for example, Castaño provided U.S. authorities with valuable information on Colombian drug traffickers, he could receive a relatively short sentence on the narcotics charges, Valencia speculated.
The Colombian judicial system, for its part, often gives notorious criminals what amounts to a slap on the wrist. Earlier this month, Gilberto Rodriguez Orejeula, one of the leaders of the Cali cocaine cartel, walked free after serving just seven years behind bars.
"What do you do with unsavory people?" asked Gabriel Marcella, who teaches strategy at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania. "It's an ethical quagmire."
The fact that Uribe -- who was elected in May on a hard-line, antiguerrilla platform -- is willing to consider peace talks with the paramilitaries also reflects a shift in the balance of power on the battlefield, observers said.
In the late 1990s, many Colombians believed the paramilitaries were all that prevented the rebels from marching into Bogota.
But with the help of more than $1 billion in U.S. aid, the Colombian army has undergone a major overhaul and regained the initiative against the rebels. The paramilitaries remain key players in the war but have lost some of their popular support because of widespread human rights abuses.
"Five years ago, the paramilitaries were indispensable," Pizarro said. "Today, they are no longer necessary."
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