The Foreign Service Journal, April 2006

enced by its close connection with narcotics trafficking, which, of course, has made it a special con- cern to the United States. The Narco Connection Some trace that connection back to the first such group, MAS (Muerto a Secuestradores, Death to Kidnappers), set up in December 1981 by the Medellin cartel to hunt down the M-19, an urban guerrilla group that had kidnapped a sister of the cartel’s Ochoa clan. But most recent paramilitary leaders are products of the time when that cartel col- lapsed following the hunt for and killing of its most noto- rious leader, Pablo Escobar, in 1993. Several members set up their own drug operations in the corners of his crumbling empire. Prominent among these was Diego Murillo (better known as Don Berna), who was for a time Escobar’s chief bodyguard; now in prison, he remains one of the most influential figures in the country’s drug trade and Medellin’s poor barrios. The Castaño brothers, Fidel and Carlos, broke from Escobar’s gang early on and participated in the effort to run him down. By most accounts, they are now dead, but in their last years of life sought to paint a picture of them- selves as valiant guerrilla fighters who protected honest rural people and only incidentally got involved in the nar- cotics trade. After Fidel’s mysterious disappearance in 1996, Carlos announced the formation of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia) and gained wide public attention as a leader who linked private self-defense units around the country into a significant national counter-guerrilla force. These groups were indeed proliferating and gaining strength, often able to afford high-quality armaments and hire retired police and military officers to do the training. But despite its name, the AUC was far from united. While some of its leaders were obtaining political power in some localities, their main activity was crime: not just drug-running, but kidnapping, extortion and theft of gasoline supplies, a particular specialty of gangs along the Magdelena River Valley. With all the competing paramilitary interests, few were surprised when Carlos Castaño also “disappeared” in 2003. The narcotraffickers have been careful to spread the wealth across the political spec- trum. According to a recent esti- mate by a local journalist, traffick- ers affiliated with the various para- militaries account for 40 percent of the drug trade and the FARC accounts for another 40 percent. In fact, the business is of such importance to both sides that there have been frequent reports of their operatives cooperating on specific drug deals. That would work out to roughly $1 billion for each side. But in general, the two sets of armed groups fight to protect their respective spheres of influence, such as prime coca cultivation zones. The Catatumbo, a former jungle reserve of the Montilliones Indians along the bor- der with Venezuela, for instance, has become a vast coca plantation that was fought over by various paramilitary groups, the FARC and even the ELN. Eventually, one of the best-organized paramilitary organizations, led by Salvatore Mancuso, became the main enforcer of a kind of rough peace among the coca growers there. In that and other cases, there was always the suspicion that Mancuso’s well-equipped units won with at least indirect help from the army, which was actively fighting the guerrillas. Human-rights activists have frequently observed that until they raised their voices in protest, instances of Colombian Army clashes with the paramilitaries were rare. The fiercest battles between the paramilitaries and the guerrillas have been over control of the best supply routes to ship narcotics out of the country and bring armaments in. In 2002, the FARC dealt successive, seri- ous defeats to the paramilitaries at Campamento in northern Antioquia and Bojaya in the Choco region. In the latter fight, 200 innocent civilians lost their lives in the crossfire. Unveiling Plan Colombia Colombia’s president during this period (1998-2002), Andres Pastrana, tried to negotiate with the guerrillas, but also took steps to strengthen his demoralized army and reached out for foreign assistance. Put off by accu- sations of human rights violations, Europeans were at first slow to respond and, when they did, made clear that they would emphasize the needs of the country’s poor and not its security problem. But by 1999, the Clinton F O C U S 36 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 0 6 The current version of paramilitarism is heavily influenced by its close connection with narcotics trafficking, making it a special concern to the U.S.