Colombia Paramilitary Leader Dead, Rebels Say

This country’s Marxist guerrillas claimed Tuesday that they have killed their most formidable enemy, right-wing paramilitary leader Carlos Castano, in an attack on his mountain hide-out.

In recent years, Castano and his nationwide alliance of private armies, known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, have served as the nation’s most effective counterinsurgency force by terrorizing peasants into refusing to support the guerrillas.

The Monday morning attack was confirmed by Castano’s followers. But recent arrests of suspected paramilitary leaders--combined with the fact that no body has been found--have aroused suspicions that Castano’s death may have been faked to escape prosecution. Castano has had a $1-million bounty on his head for more than a year.

Castano and his brother, Fidel, began their ultra-right paramilitary movement more than a decade ago after their father was kidnapped and killed by guerrillas, who depend on ransoms for about half their income. The rest comes from “taxes” on cocaine and heroin production--millions of dollars in a country that supplies 70% of the world’s cocaine and 60% of the U.S. heroin market.

The Castano brothers united with other private armies in 1991 to form the national alliance. In 1995, Carlos took command of the alliance.

Since then, the private armies have seen their de facto alliance with the armed forces fray as Colombian officials have sought to distance their fighting forces from the brutality of the paramilitary groups.

Castano’s forces are notorious for arriving in villages with a list of names of suspected rebel sympathizers. Everyone on the list whom they can locate is killed, often after being tortured.

Castano, who was in his 30s, always maintained that he had never killed anyone outside of combat, but in a recent interview with a local newspaper he acknowledged, “You could say our methods are not in line with correct behavior, that we violated human rights, but that is the nature of the irregular war we are fighting.”

Last year, paramilitary groups were guilty of the vast majority of the 185 massacres and political killings that left more than 2,100 people dead in Colombia, according to figures compiled by Human Rights Watch.

Colombia’s atrocious human rights record has been the major barrier to U.S. military aid to fight rebels allied with the drug trade.

Castano’s reported death, slightly more than a week before President Andres Pastrana is scheduled to meet with rebel leaders in a bid to begin peace talks to end Latin America’s oldest guerrilla war, could further strengthen the insurgents by removing the force they most fear.

“This could leave the paramilitary alliance on the verge of a breakup,” security expert Alfredo Rangel said. “There is no other leader capable of replacing Castano.”

Paramilitary spokesman Max Alberto Morales said Castano is missing and that his base in northern Colombia has been razed. “The camp and the village have been totally destroyed,” he said. “The attack was very fierce.”

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country’s largest and oldest rebel group, said in calls to local media that Castano had been killed.