Peace with paramilitaries very unlikely, report says

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Tue, Aug. 02, 2005

COLOMBIA
Peace with paramilitaries very unlikely, report says

Human Rights Watch reported that Colombian government peace talks with paramilitaries are flawed and will fail.

BY STEVEN DUDLEY
[e-mail]

BOGOTA - The Colombian government's peace talks with illegal right-wing paramilitaries are fundamentally flawed and doomed to failure, Human Rights Watch said Monday.
(snip)

U.S. legislators are considering giving close to $130 million to aid the process, which the government of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe hopes will persuade paramilitary leaders to order their remaining 10,000 fighters to demobilize by the end of this year.

The paramilitaries were formed in the 1980s at the behest of large landowners, businessmen and drug traffickers to protect themselves from left-wing guerrillas. Now known broadly as the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, they have been blamed for the murders of thousands of civilians suspected of aiding the guerrillas.
(snip)

''The government's handling of the demobilizations has been totally superficial,'' Human Rights Watch Director José Miguel Vivanco told The Herald in an e-mail. ``It is focused almost exclusively on putting on a show of disarming purported troops, without even attempting to use the process to actually dismantle the structure of these criminal organizations.''
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/americas/12280621.htm
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[ixion]

1. this line is very, very revealing...

The paramilitaries were formed in the 1980s at the behest of large landowners, businessmen and drug traffickers to protect themselves from left-wing guerrillas...


That smacks of Ray-Gun, no?

[Judi Lynn]

2. I think you're right. Ah, the '80's, when Ray-Gun was kicking leftist butt

all over Central America, as well, through horrendous funding while they leveled entire villages. Same pattern, sadly.

Teachers, medical people, clergy siding with the people, and farmers, villagers, union workers. No wonder he started forgetting things. Who wouldn't want to forget? Sadly, they can't.

[julianer]

3. They are giving $130m

to encourage the rightist paramilitaries to disband at the same time as Iraq based 'security companies' are trying to recruit mercenaries from Colombia.

That's a bit of luck!