COLOMBIA: There are some questionable deals being done in the battle to tame paramilitarism, writes Hugh Bronstein in Bogota
Colombian president Alvaro Uribe's US-backed plan to disband right-wing militias has been hit by charges that he is too easy on paramilitaries and that drug smugglers are posing as fighters to win short jail terms.
A failure to capture warlord Vicente Castano, accused of killing his brother and fellow paramilitary founder Carlos, has intensified criticism of Mr Uribe, one of Washington's most important allies in Latin America. Supporters, however, say he has turned the tide against the militias and made the country safer.
Mr Uribe has put the demobilisation at the centre of his effort to end this Andean state's four-decade-old guerrilla war, in which paramilitary militias fight Marxist rebels over control of the world's biggest cocaine trade.
More than 31,000 paramilitaries have turned in their guns in exchange for benefits, including reduced jail terms.
But Colombian newspapers are filled with stories about drug smugglers who have gone so far as to "buy" militia groups, which then pressurise the government to offer demobilisation terms to their new "leaders".
"The original demobilisation law said that individuals could receive reduced sentences only for crimes related to their membership of an armed group. The government is now letting drug traffickers get around that rule just by claiming they had a loose connection to the paramilitaries," says José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch.
An example is that of accused drug smuggler Juan Carlos Sierra, whose only known link to the paramilitaries is that the government says he traded guns with them.
Last year the government said Sierra did not qualify as a paramilitary. It reversed itself this month, suspending his extradition to the United States.
Colombia has received billions of dollars from Washington, which has been channelled in part toward spraying herbicides on crops used to make cocaine.
"Uribe has extradited more drug smugglers than any other president and he has fumigated all the coca that Washington has asked him to," said political analyst Mauricio Romero. "This gives him some latitude with Washington to cut questionable deals, like the one allowing Sierra to demobilise."
Mr Uribe this month jailed most of the paramilitary leaders, following outrage that some were flaunting their ill-gotten wealth strolling around stylish shopping districts with fashion model girlfriends draped on their arms.
Prosecutors say that in 2004 Vicente Castano ordered the killing of his brother, fearing he was about to spill information about paramilitary cocaine operations. "If Uribe's call on paramilitaries to turn themselves in is anything more than a show, he will arrest and extradite those who have not complied, including Vicente Castano," Mr Vivanco says.
For all the criticism, many Colombians thank Mr Uribe for lowering crime rates and for negotiating the once dominant paramilitaries into a weaker position. He won re-election in May after his allies swept March congressional elections.
"The demobilisation has come to a turning point in that the government is starting to take control of it.
"The paramilitaries have lost a lot of their military power and, now that elections are over, neither Uribe nor Congress needs their support," Romero says. - (Reuters)