Uribe disarming Columbian warlords!!!

[whitesoxfan101]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060524/wl_nm/...ramilitaries_dc

 

Disarming warlords a test for Colombia's Uribe By Patrick Markey

Wed May 24, 5:23 PM ET

 

CHIA, Colombia (Reuters) - Rafael says his life as a Colombian paramilitary fighter left him with nothing but dead friends and seven bullet scars.

 

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So a year ago he traded fighting for farming at a ranch near Bogota in a program set up by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to demobilize illegal armed groups and prepare them to return to civilian life.

 

"We exchanged guns for shovels," said Rafael, 25, showing a bullet fragment lodged in his leg. "We've changed a lot of things, like the idea we can't live without the war."

 

Uribe, expected to win Sunday's presidential election, cites the demobilization of more than 30,000 paramilitaries as a key success in his campaign to coax illegal groups to end a four-decade conflict that has killed or displaced thousands.

 

But he has come under fire from rights groups who say he is too lenient with militia leaders accused of drug-trafficking and massacres, and critics question whether the government can stop ex-militia turning into powerful criminal gangs.

 

Uribe, a conservative lawyer whose U.S.-backed security crackdown against warring factions made him popular, is likely to win reelection on May 28 with voters ready to reward him for reducing kidnapping and violence in Colombian cities.

 

Still, the country's largest Marxist rebel group, the FARC or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, controls large rural areas where they battle the militia over control of Colombia's cocaine trade.

 

The U.N. estimates more than 2 million Colombians have been forced from their homes by the conflict -- second only to Sudan.

 

Under the demobilization program, combatants from left-wing rebel groups or rightist militia get short jail terms for crimes such as massacres, murder and drug trafficking in exchange for confessions and a commitment to peace.

 

The government provides psychological help, job training and financing for former fighters. Officials say only a very small percentage go astray, but they acknowledge they struggle to compete with powerful drug traffickers.

 

"While we have drug trafficking, there will always be a destabilizing element," said Juan David Angel, director of the government's reinsertion program. "If we give them $130 a month, a trafficker offers them $400 and they can leave."

 

DE FACTO AMNESTY?

 

As part of a truce around 30,000 members of the AUC paramilitary alliance have surrendered, including leaders sought by Washington for cocaine trafficking. Another 9,500 militia and rebels have joined the program as individuals after deserting their groups.

 

The AUC, which Washington brands a terrorist organization, was born out of vigilante groups set up by land owners and cocaine traffickers to fight off Marxist FARC rebels. Some AUC leaders have been blamed for massacres of civilians.

 

While the FARC has largely resisted surrender, some paramilitary leaders say they want to enter into politics after demobilization and analysts say they will seek protection from U.S. attempts to extradite them.

 

That worries international human rights groups who believe paramilitary leaders are being allowed a de facto amnesty for serious crimes and are maintaining their criminal networks.

 

"Paramilitaries in supposedly demobilized areas continued to commit violations, and evidence of links between paramilitaries and the security forces remained strong," Amnesty International said in its 2006 report this week.

 

Should Uribe win the election, his administration must strengthen the program to ensure that former fighters are genuinely re-integrated into civilian life, analysts said.

 

"There are lot of issues that have to be sorted out by the next administration if the demobilized are not going to end up where they were or in various criminal organizations," said Sergio Jaramillo, at the Bogota thinktank Ideas for Peace.

 

 

Err wait, wrong Uribe? Oh....

[LowerCaseRepublican]

Good to see some disarming. Neither the FARC/AZN or the AUC are really any good. AUC are f***ing nuts -- anybody who didn't agree with them were seen as potential threats. Their actions are absolutely atrocious.

 

If the government can get a true commitment to peace and end their buddy buddy commitment with certain paramilitary groups (like the AUC) then this could be a very positive step in the right direction. The AUC is one of the most brutal groups in Colombia. The fighting isn't so much political as it is trying to hedge their power in the drug game. But good to see them getting the steps starting to be taken.

[Balta1701]

So that's why he was beaned in the head yesterday.