Colombia's road to peace: new militia threatens stability with bloodshed

[Judi Lynn]

Colombia's road to peace: new militia threatens stability with bloodshed

A new generation of paramilitary groups has become the main source of human rights abuses just as the country is working on a peace deal with two leftist forces

Sibylla Brodzinsky in Bogotá
Thursday 7 April 2016 06.00 EDT

All Lorenzo Upegui wanted to do was deliver the goods he was transporting from Medellín to Colombia’s northern coast. But the truck driver’s journey led him into the midst of a violent show of force by an armed drug-trafficking organisation known as the Usuga clan.

Gunmen on a motorcycle forced the 60-year-old to pull his 18-wheeler across the carriageway, blocking the road between the towns of Valdivia and Tarazá. Then they shot him in the head and left his body in the middle of the road.

Four policemen and an army captain were also killed and a handful of other trucks were torched during an “armed strike” imposed by the Usuga clan over the weekend, aimed at showing the extent of their influence and strength in north-eastern Colombia. Under threat from the group, shopkeepers kept their shutters down and schools and hospitals closed, and most people remained locked in their homes for two days.

The episode reflects one of the major challenges Colombia faces in trying to implement peace deals with the country’s two leftist guerrilla groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, and the National Liberation Army, or ELN, which are negotiating with the government.

The Usuga clan was born from a faulty demobilization – in this case an attempt in the mid-2000s to disarm a federation of rightwing militias known as the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC). While more than 30,000 fighters laid down their weapons, some units refused, regrouping as what are variously called “post-demobilization” groups, neo-paramilitaries or paramilitary successor groups.

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/07/colombia-peace-talks-farc-eln-guerrilas-usuga-clan

[Judi Lynn]

1. Colombia: Alert of Paramilitary Danger to Peace Efforts

Colombia: Alert of Paramilitary Danger to Peace Efforts

By Adalys Pilar Mireles

Bogota, Apr 7 (Prensa Latina) Colombian politologue Carlos Lozano expressed today optimism on the resuming peace talks with FARC-EP and the proximity of formal meetings with the ELN, but warned that paramilitarism is an enormous obstacle to peace.
In statements to Prensa Latina, the journalist and biographer of the talks between the Government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejercito del Pueblo (FARC-EP) assured that despite any disagreement, what is really important is that both parts returned to meet in Havana this week to express their opinions and try to concert positions.

It is obvious there are differences, the delegations have discordant points ov view, almost antagonic in some aspects, but I think that through talks and with political will they will be able to concert an agreement, stressed the director of Voz weekly. However, Lozano insisted that paramilitarism presents a threat to those efforts.

In these days -he recalled- we saw the effects of the so-called "armed strike" in several departments, perpetrated by the clan Usuga, a variant of that scourge, reality that the government denies because it argues that they are pretexts of the FARC-EP in Cuba to delay the signing of peace and inventions of the left in Colombia.

That band forced the inhabitants to close shops, educational institutions and paralyze the transport; they additionally put vehicles on fire and killed five persons, among other violent actions. In his opinion, those groups that the Executive calls criminal structures are arms of the old paramilitarism that in many cases have middle commands that were never put in jail and to their work in coordination with capos (narcoparamilitaries) imprisoned at present, he said.

More:
http://www.plenglish.com//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4767791&Itemid=1