Peace in Colombia Up in Air as Militia Leader Vanishes

Some believe Carlos Castano dodged assassins’ bullets and is hiding out in the tangled tropics. Others believe his body is in an unmarked grave. A few have ventured that he’s in the United States, in a witness protection program, tattling on old allies.

Mystery has enveloped the fiery figurehead of Colombia’s brutal right-wing paramilitary forces, who disappeared after apparently being targeted for assassination by his own organization nearly two weeks ago.

But as officials and military analysts sift through conflicting stories, most agree that his disappearance consolidates power among other paramilitary leaders with deep roots in Colombia’s cocaine trade, complicating government efforts to advance peace talks with the faction.

Despite his violent background, analysts said, Castano was seen as a moderating force within the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, the paramilitary umbrella group known as the AUC.

Without him, commanders are likely to harden their stance at the peace table, especially in their push for immunity from extradition to the United States on drug charges.

What’s more, a renegade paramilitary commander warned this week that some militias had discussed going on the offensive, turning their guns and grenades on the Colombian government to force greater concessions in the talks.

That risk was underscored Tuesday when the government announced that President Alvaro Uribe had received death threats from paramilitary forces. Uribe acknowledged the threats in a terse statement and vowed to put an end to the outlawed militias unless they moved swiftly toward demobilization.

“The peace process with the illegal self-defense groups cannot advance amid cease-fire violations, vendettas, drug-trafficking business or clashes between criminal groups,” he said.

News of the apparent assassination attempt on Castano began filtering into the media nearly two weeks ago, when one of his bodyguards arrived at a hospital in a northern cattle-ranching province with a bullet wound to his leg. He told authorities that about 50 men had attacked Castano at a rustic hide-out but that the leader had escaped. Later, another injured bodyguard said Castano had been captured.

Salvatore Mancuso, an AUC negotiator, denied there was any attack, and suggested that Castano might resurface under protective custody in the United States.

Castano helped found Colombia’s paramilitary forces in the late 1980s to confront leftist rebels after a band of insurgents kidnapped and killed his father. Funded by drug traffickers and wealthy landowners, the militias became notorious for slaying thousands of people they suspected of collaborating with the rebels.

Castano’s influence began to crumble, however, when he called on commanders to distance themselves from the lucrative cocaine trade and suggested that he might accept extradition to the United States. American authorities are seeking Castano and two other high-ranking commanders for allegedly shipping tons of cocaine to the U.S.

Sergio Jaramillo, director of the Ideas for Peace Foundation, a think tank in Bogota, said Castano did not truly control or speak for the paramilitary forces and that his absence would strip the peace process to its core elements.

“Now it has come down to a hard-nosed, common-sense approach where we see what the real interests are,” Jaramillo said. “The paramilitaries will do everything they can to avoid jail terms and hang on to their wealth.”

Some negotiators with the right-wing group have balked at legislation that would carry five- to 10-year sentences for ex-combatants. Many paramilitary leaders also seem unwilling to part with the ranches, cars and luxury homes they’ve collected as overseers of Colombia’s busy drug corridors.

“With what they did to Carlos [Castano], they have crossed a line of no return,” a renegade paramilitary figure known as Rodrigo said of his former comrades. Rodrigo, who has refused to join the peace talks, claimed paramilitary commanders had recently debated whether to launch attacks against the government. He added that they “might try to impose conditions on the government using the veiled threat of force.”

Mauricio Romero, a political analyst at National University, agreed that the AUC power shift could lead to less predictable behavior. Faced with an American refusal to back off from its extradition requests and Colombian refusals to let fighters evade some form of punishment, he said, “some commanders could be getting a little desperate.”