COLOMBIA:Accounts of officially approved killings and cocaine trafficking are straining Colombia's relations with Washington, writes Juan Foreroin Medellin
Top paramilitary commanders have in recent days confirmed what human rights groups and others have long alleged: some of Colombia's most influential political, military and business figures helped build a powerful anti-guerrilla movement that operated with impunity, killed civilians and shipped cocaine to US cities.
The commanders have named army generals, entrepreneurs, foreign companies and politicians who not only bankrolled paramilitary operations but also worked hand-in-hand with fighters to carry them out. In accounts that are at odds with those of the government, the commanders have said their organisation, rather than simply sprouting up to fill a void in lawless regions of the country, had been systematically built with the help of bigger forces.
"Paramilitarism was state policy," Salvatore Mancuso, a top paramilitary commander, said last week in the city's Palace of Justice. "I am proof positive of state paramilitarism in Colombia."
In a scandal that began to gain momentum last autumn, investigators have revealed dozens of cases of government collaboration with paramilitary groups. But Mancuso's testimony, buttressed with remarks made in a prison interview by another top paramilitary commander, represents the first time that major players in the scandal have described in detail how the establishment joined forces with them.
Dozens of other top commanders are scheduled to testify before special judicial hearings in the coming days and weeks. Their testimony could help uncover the roots of the violence and drug trafficking that have plagued this country and commanded significant aid from Washington.
The administration of president Álvaro Uribe says it has moved aggressively to dismantle the paramilitary groups, and that its determination to do so has made the investigations possible.
The investigations, however, have resulted in a collective and painful catharsis for this country.
Ivan Duque, a strategist who helped formulate the ideology of the paramilitary coalition known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), said in an interview that the group had alliances with anyone of influence wherever it operated.
"Could these three groups - I'm talking about political people, economic people, the institutional people, meaning the military - operate without having contact with the chief of chiefs?"asked Duque, speaking from the Itagui prison in Medellin, which houses dozens of paramilitary commanders. "That's impossible. That cannot be."
Chosen by his fellow commanders to speak to two American reporters, Duque said last week that, now that the paramilitary commanders have decided to air their dirty secrets, it also was time for the elites who helped the AUC to come clean.
He said paramilitary groups had 17,000 armed fighters and more than 10,000 other associates, from cooks to drivers to computer technicians and informers.
"Men armed to the teeth," Duque said. "Could you really travel the whole territory so that no one could see them, notice them, that no one collaborate with them? That's why I talk of this county of hypocrisies, this society of lies."
Colombia's paramilitary movement began more than a generation ago to counter a growing Marxist guerrilla force. It quickly turned into an irregular army that committed widespread massacres and assassinations, funding much of its operations with cocaine trafficking. The attorney general's office estimates the paramilitary fighters killed about 10,000 people from the mid-1990s until the early part of this decade, when its commanders began negotiating a disarmament with Uribe's government. The group is on the US state department list of terrorist organisations.
Now, in a post-disarmament phase that requires commanders to reveal their crimes in exchange for lenient treatment, Mancuso and others have begun to speak.
Mancuso's testimony came in the midst of a difficult week for Uribe, whose administration has received $4 billion (€2.97 billion) in mostly anti-drug and military aid from Washington since his election in 2002. Authorities arrested more congressional allies linked to paramilitary commanders, and then Mancuso began his disclosures.
"Salvatore Mancuso spoke," the news weekly Semana said, "and the country's political sector trembled." Uribe remains highly popular in Colombia for lowering violence, but in Washington, Democrats are citing the recent disclosures in holding back support for a US free-trade deal with Colombia.
So far, authorities have charged 14 members of Colombia's congress, seven former lawmakers, the head of the secret police, mayors and former governors with having collaborated with paramilitary commanders. A dozen current congressmen are under investigation. Most have been close Uribe allies who supported a constitutional amendment permitting his re-election and approved the lenient law, known as Justice and Peace, that governs the paramilitary disarmament.
Though Mancuso testified earlier this year to ordering murders and collaborating with military units, his testimony last week was much more explosive. He spoke of working closely with three former generals, all of whom have denied ties.
Mancuso's disclosures - particularly about retired Gen Rito Alejo del Rio, known in the state of Antioquia as the "pacifier" of the Uraba region - are embarrassing for Uribe. Though Uribe's predecessor, Andres Pastrana, fired Gen del Rio for collaborating with paramilitary groups, and though the US rescinded his visa, Uribe has publicly eulogised him as an "honourable man".
Perhaps Mancuso's biggest impact came when he said that two current ministers in Uribe's government - vice-president Francisco Santos and defence minister Juan Manuel Santos - met top paramilitary commanders in the 1990s. The two men, cousins in a family that owns El Tiempo, Colombia's most influential newspaper, had acknowledged long ago having met the paramilitary members. Both said they did so to further peace in Colombia, not as part of a sinister plot, as Mancuso alleged.
Mancuso's allegations have prompted some commentators to note he has besmirched as many people as possible while still falling far short of accounting for all the crimes he has committed.