Paramilitaries reemerge in pockets of Colombia

Increased activity among armed rightist groups coincides with reports of their links to top politicians.

By Caleb Harris | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

from the March 12, 2007 edition

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BARRANCABERMEJA, COLOMBIA - Sandra Gutierrez Torres has a dangerous job. She helps run a grass-roots human rights organization in Colombia's oil capital, Barrancabermeja, and last month her work may have cost the life of her sister.

Katherine Gonzalez Torres disappeared days after a new right-wing paramilitary group calling itself the "Black Eagles" e-mailed a death threat to more than 70 rights groups nationwide: "We will finish with you by means of your families ... your families will pay dearly."

Nothing has been seen or heard of Katherine since. Her family thinks that she's become a victim of a rising tide of organized violence in pockets of the country. The spike in attacks attributed to supposedly demobilized paramilitaries coincides with a growing scandal linking them to some of Colombia's top politicians.

It's unfortunate timing for conservative president Álvaro Uribe, who hosted President Bush Sunday and is hoping a Democrat-controlled US Congress will approve the Bush administration's request for $3.9 billion in new aid, mostly to help Colombia fight the drug trade over the next seven years.

The "para-politics" scandal has seen eight pro-Uribe senators jailed for links with paramilitaries. In late February, Foreign Secretary María Consuelo Araújo resigned after her brother, a senator, was jailed for paramilitary involvement, and her father and cousin, also pro-Uribe politicians, were similarly accused.

The same week, Uribe's former intelligence chief Jorge Noguera was arrested for allegedly supplying the names of human rights workers to paramilitaries.

'New generation' of paramilitaries?

The Black Eagles claim to be an offshoot of the United Self-defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a coalition of paramilitary groups that formed in the 1980s to help wealthy cattle ranchers, business owners, and drug mafias battle leftist guerrillas. They were supposed to have demobilized after a controversial "peace process" with the government began in 2003.

The chief of Colombia's paramilitary reintegration program, Frank Pearl, said last month that the government had "lost track" of 4,731 demobilized fighters. Former paramilitary chief Salvatore Mancuso stated last month that groups such as Black Eagles were rearming, and now number up to 5,000.

The same month, the Organization of American States Mission to Support the Peace Process (MAPP-OEA) reported that 22 new illegal armed groups were active in 10 departments across the country.

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