Sunday, Jun. 13, 2004

The New Druglords

By TIM PADGETT with RUTH MORRIS | Santa Fe De Ralito

The paramilitary commander known only as 08 is lounging on the porch of a ranch house in the hamlet of Santa Fé de Ralito, in Colombia's northern Córdoba province. It's an area dotted with elaborate new mansions, and many of them, local ranchers say, belong to leaders of the bloodthirsty paramilitary groups known as the Colombian Self-Defense Forces (AUC). U.S. officials claim the mansions were built with the millions of dollars AUC members allegedly earn moonlighting as cocaine smugglers. But crew-cut 08, guzzling black coffee and smoking cigarettes, denies it all. "We've never been drug traffickers," he insists. And like other AUC leaders, he vows the group will never give up its wealth or submit to prosecution in the U.S. "We'll defend our freedom to the death," he says, a pistol slung from his hip. He leans back in a rawhide chair and calls his pet jaguar. "I don't like to keep her in a cage," he says as rifle-toting AUC soldiers in battle fatigues look on, amused.

The AUC, whose top commanders are finally expected to arrive for peace talks with the government this week, is a main combatant in Colombia's 40-year-old civil war, which has claimed more than 150,000 lives and is, the U.N. said recently, "the biggest humanitarian catastrophe in the western hemisphere." Legislation pending in the Colombian Congress, which the AUC rejects, calls for paramilitary members to be prosecuted in Colombia for the civilian massacres they've committed. But U.S. officials also urge the government of President Alvaro Uribe not to ink any agreement that exempts paramilitary leaders from extradition to the U.S. for drug trafficking. Unless the AUC's narcobosses are put behind bars, U.S. officials insist, the paramilitary fighters will become the new big cats of the Colombian cocaine trade, successors to infamous Medellín and Cali cartels.

They took a step in that direction in April, when protrafficking bosses — led by Diego Murillo, an ex-Medellín gunman, whom the U.S. calls a major trafficker — appeared to win control of the AUC. On April 16, Carlos Castaño, 39, who co-founded the AUC in the 1980s and in recent years urged it to give up the drug trade, disappeared after an attack near his Córdoba ranch. Murillo and the AUC's other chief, Salvatore Mancuso, deny involvement, as well as the drug-trafficking charges. But after Castaño's apparent elimination, says U.S. ambassador to Colombia William Wood, AUC members have "lost their disguise. Their character as narcoterrorists has been revealed."

The AUC started out two decades ago as a right-wing counter to Colombia's Marxist guerrillas, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. But after the 1993 death of Medellín boss Pablo Escobar, Colombia's drug cartels broke up into less powerful organizations. That created the opportunity for the AUC and the FARC to become more deeply involved in Colombia's cocaine trade. Both claim they only "tax" coca cultivation and cocaine traffic on their turfs. But collectively, the AUC and the FARC now earn over $1.5 billion a year from drugs, according to U.S. officials. Analysts say that could only result from moving the product themselves. The cash has allowed the AUC and the FARC to build well-equipped armies numbering as many as 20,000 members each, and has made them the de facto governments inside large swaths of Colombia. And their civil war no longer has much to do with ideology; it's far more about amassing wealth. But the AUC and the FARC wield power, and firepower, that a druglord like Escobar could only dream of. Should the groups eventually fill the more centralized cartel roles that the Medellín and Cali organizations once played, says one U.S. official, it could create "a catastrophic scenario" for the drug war in Colombia, where the U.S. has already spent some $2.5 billion since 2000. It could also further corrupt Colombia's weak military, which has strong ties to the AUC.

The strength of these groups makes peace talks all the more daunting. The FARC has yet to even approach Uribe's negotiating table. Top AUC commanders agreed in May to confine themselves, at least during the peace talks, within a 368-sq-km zone inside Córdoba province — but only because the government agreed to lift all arrest warrants against them for the time being. Meanwhile, Colombian police are on the look out for any sign of Castaño. In a radio interview before his disappearance, he lamented that drug trafficking was "destroying" his army. "Many [AUC] commanders have lost their way," he said. U.S. officials fear that those narcocommanders have found the AUC's future.