Colombia Faces Hard Realities on Security and Justice

Photo Credit: Flickr user medea material

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s immense popularity stems directly from his notable security achievements. Since winning the presidency in 2002, Uribe aimed to address the country’s endemic violence through a policy he has labeled “Democratic Security.” Uribe and the military’s hard-line stance (strongly backed by the US) against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a left-wing guerrilla group that has waged a brutal insurgency since the 1960s, has achieved measurable results. Since the launching of the offensive, the FARC have been pushed out of major cities and deep into the countryside, several top leaders have been killed, and the size of the group has been cut in half. The military efforts culminated in a number of high-profile successes in 2008 that caused Uribe’s approval ratings to soar to 84 percent. Top FARC commanders Raul Reyes, Ivan Rios, and paramount leader Manuel Marulanda died due to attacks or medical conditions, and in July, Colombian commandos tricked the FARC into handing over 15 hostages including Ingrid Betancourt, a well-known French-Colombian politician. As a result of these efforts, the security climate improved dramatically as the number of homicides plummeted and kidnappings declined. In 2008, Colombia’s homicide rate dropped to 33 per 100,000 inhabitants, its lowest rate in 30 years. The dramatic decrease in urban violence was especially important in terms of improving both the national self-image and international perceptions of Colombia.

In addition to the intensified campaign against the FARC, Uribe attempted to decrease violence by demobilizing, reintegrating, and prosecuting the country’s paramilitary forces, officially known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). This process began in July 2005 with the enactment of the Justice and Peace Law, which set out guidelines for the demobilization of the paramilitaries in exchange for concessions. The original law met with national and international opposition due to its overly conciliatory approach towards the paramilitaries who had committed grave human rights crimes against the Colombian population. Colombia’s Constitutional Court amended the law in May 2006, and the revised version improved the rights of the victims by allowing them to participate in legal proceedings, requires that paramilitary members fully confess their crimes, and requires that seized assets, including stolen land, be used to recompense victims.  In its current form, the law provides rank-and-file AUC members the opportunity to reenter Colombian society and receive judicial amnesty in exchange for laying down their arms. In addition, it offers reduced prison sentences of up to eight years to paramilitary leaders in exchange for turning in their weapons, confessing their crimes, and offering reparations to the victims. Thus far the process has achieved the demobilization of 32,000 paramilitaries, and confessions have enabled authorities to recover 2,666 bodies from hidden graves. 

While Democratic Security can point to real achievements, stagnation appears to have set in, and backsliding is a real risk in both the offensive against the FARC and the Justice and Peace process. Military gains against the FARC insurgency have been much slower in 2009. Since Marulanda’s death, the FARC has reinvigorated itself in rural areas, and the Colombian army has failed to capture or kill any additional top guerrilla leaders in 2009. In addition, although Uribe has dedicated the past four years of his presidency to the demobilization of the country’s paramilitary forces, the country has yet to be rid of this scourge. Instead, reintegrated paramilitary members have continued to commit numerous violent acts. In addition, new illegal armed groups have sprung up in the place of the demobilized AUC. Most of these groups have direct ties either to groups that were formerly under the control of leaders now extradited to the United States or the various drug trafficking organizations operating in the country. As a result, 2009 has seen a spike in violence and crime. Homicides in Medellin have doubled since 2008, with more than 1,500 murders reported since January. The surge of crime in the city is linked to new conflicts and turf wars between narcotraffickers, ex-paramilitaries, and criminal gangs. In addition to ordinary civilians, human rights defenders have become especially at risk for violent attacks, especially in the northern areas of the country where paramilitary influence began and reached its greatest depths. Most recently, on October 29, Colombian human rights activist Ramiro Montes was killed by paramilitaries in Cordoba while en route to a meeting with a humanitarian mission sent to investigate displacements in the area. Finally, in still highly-contested areas like the southwest, indigenous Colombians have been subjected to a series of attacks by various armed actors.

Unfortunately, this new violence has emerged before Colombia has made significant headway in its attempts to come to terms with past bloodshed. The Justice and Peace (LPJ) process not come close to achieving an authentic, comprehensive process of truth and reconciliation. As noted in a previous post, victims’ rights have been consistently subordinated to Colombian leaders’ desire to claim victory in the conflict. In April, Colombian Senator Armando Benedetti, an uribista, delivered a scathing critique of the Justice and Peace Process. Benedetti highlighted the alarming statistics pointing to the failure of the process to prosecute paramilitaries and address the plight of the victims. For example, only 127 of the 3,257 paramilitary leaders accused of serious crimes have begun the process of giving confessions, and only four have finished the “open testimony” stage. Only one high-profile paramilitary leader, Salazar Carrascal, commonly known as “the Parrot,” has been convicted, and his conviction was later overturned because it failed to include all of his crimes. At the rate things are going, Senator Benedetti estimates that it would take 2,157 years to complete the judicial process. 

The reparations process is equally slow. The Attorney General’s office has reported that only 12 of the 3,257 paramilitary leaders have turned over ill-begotten assets to fund reparations to the victims. The goods include 70 pairs of used shoes and a television in poor condition. The assets amount to a value of $3.75 per registered victim. The restitution of stolen lands has been especially sluggish; paramilitaries have handed over just 6,600 hectares of land to the victim reparations fund and 60,000 hectares to displaced persons, meaning that only one percent of the lands have been returned to their rightful owners.

The disappointing results of the LJP process can be attributed to a variety of factors. The country’s justice system, which is plagued by “serious operational and financial bottlenecks,” is ill-equipped for a judicial process of such magnitude.  As Senator Benedetti explained, 125,368 victims had registered as of April, but the Ombudsman’s office, which is charged with assisting the victims, has only assigned 68 lawyers to handle their cases.  In addition, the Justice and Peace unit of the Prosecutor General’s Office has only 23 prosecutors working on the extremely complicated cases of paramilitary leaders, while the equivalent unit of the Attorney General’s Office has only 12 lawyers. In addition to the judicial backlog and overload, the persistent climate of violence has stymied the process, as paramilitary groups and new illegal armed groups have oftentimes threatened and harassed victims and witnesses. According to Benedetti’s presentation, 15 victims registered in the process have been killed while 92 have been threatened. A failure to devote more resources to investigation and protection has raised questions about the political will among ruling elites to fully and systematically confront the past. This suspicion was further raised by the May 2008 extradition of 14 top paramilitary chiefs to the US. While some subsequently expressed a desire to continue cooperating with the LJP process, others who possess great knowledge of horrific crimes have gone silent. Recognizing the risk that extradition will breed impunity, Colombia’s Supreme Court Court in August 2009 banned further extraditions of those engaged in the LJP process.

These developments highlight the fact that Colombia’s momentum has tapered off, even as Uribe seeks to make the success of Democratic Security the basis for an unprecedented third term. Thus far, neither the security lags nor the slow pace of the LJP process have significantly tarnished Uribe’s reputation. The most recent Gallup poll pegs his approval rating at a still-high 64 percent, and he dominates all hypothetical election matchups. However, citizens of both Medellin and Bogota have expressed concern about the urban security situation (Cali, Colombia’s third city, also famously violent, never saw its homicide rates decline as far as the other two) and international observers have increasingly noted the post-demobilization problems.  In some ways Uribe’s rhetoric has hemmed him in: he convinced Colombians that the FARC and, to a lesser degree, the AUC were at the root of Colombian ills. However, Colombia suffers from both deep-rooted social problems and the difficulties associated with being a top drug producer. Merely “defeating” the guerrillas and convincing the AUC to demobilize was never going to be sufficient absent a more integrated approach to security. In addition, one of the key post-conflict issues in any country is justice, and Colombia seems to remain a place where justice for victims remains a second order concern. As the reelection fight moves toward a climax, the attention of Colombia’s political class will remain distracted. But whether Uribe or one of his many rivals eventually emerges triumphant, Colombia will be faced with the reality that past performance is no guarantee of future success, and that ongoing security issues will require a rethinking of the Democratic Security strategy.

Comments

[micro sd]

we understand much more about the interconnectedness of the world in particular that grievances bred elsewhere can have catastrophic consequences half a world away, and that the ease of transport, international communications and personal movement between countries has made it easier than ever before not only to plot evil but to deliver it. We may not have seen the end of American unilateralism, but we can wave goodbye to isolationism.