Human rights group wary of Uribe's plan

SAN PABLO, Colombia (Reuters) --Men in this town on the banks of the wide
Magdalena River walk the sun-baked streets with guns stuffed in their waistbands.
Loudspeakers on lampposts near the main square alert neighbors when Marxist
guerrillas slip in at night from the nearby mountains.

Long forsaken by the government, hundreds of Colombian towns like San Pablo
have been forced to find their own ways to live with illegal armed groups fighting a
bloody 38-year-old war.

Now, Colombia's new president, Alvaro Uribe, is turning his attention to the
country's ungoverned reaches with a plan to create a secret network of civilians
who would feed tips to security forces on rebels and far-right paramilitary outlaws.

The idea might sound reasonable on paper, critics say, but fails to take account of
the shadowy alliances that many towns have formed with one or the other of the
illegal forces, alliances that have restored civic life and brought a degree of security
to residents. In the case of San Pablo, paramilitaries have stepped into the vacuum
left by the state.

Human rights groups warn that Uribe's plan, instead of bringing large areas of
Colombia's lawless countryside back into the fold, could end up consolidating the
power of the dominant armed group in a particular area.

They say the informants, described by a senior government official as the state's
"eyes and ears," could become snoops fueling vigilante violence in a country with a
long history of frontier justice and impunity.

Law of silence

"The paramilitaries have penetrated people's lives in San Pablo. There is law of
silence and people are afraid of talking against them. The informants will only give a
legal footing to what already exists," said Jackeline Rojas, an activist for the People's
Women's Organization, a local human rights group.

Uribe, who took power on Aug. 7 as rebels launched a mortar attack on the
presidential palace, has promised to double the number of professional soldiers and
police and strengthen state institutions, including courts and prosecutors in the
regions.

An additional plan to recruit 20,000 peasant soldiers to patrol villages has also
alarmed rights groups.

The war pits Marxist rebel groups against right-wing paramilitaries and the
U.S.-backed military. The conflict is increasingly fueled by money from the drug
trade and last year claimed 3,500 lives, most of them civilians.

San Pablo, a town of 30,000 people 185 miles north of the capital, Bogota,
highlights the dangers of adding informants to the mix in Colombia's intractable
conflict. The town once prospered on fishing, cattle and as a trading post, but the
economy is now dependent on the drug trade.

Its strategic position on the banks of Colombia's main river made it the epicenter of
a brutal territorial battle three years ago between the Cuban-inspired rebels of the
National Liberation Army, known as "ELN", and paramilitaries.

For decades, the towns along the Magdalena were strongholds of the ELN,
Colombia's second-largest rebel army, until they were driven out by paramilitaries --
a loose far-right confederation founded by landowners as anti-rebel vigilantes.

Paramilitaries control town

Today, not even San Pablo's mayor disputes the "paras" are in charge. Although
they do not patrol the streets, the paramilitaries keep tight military and social control,
partly through community organizations, human rights groups say.

In popular Colombian usage, the town has been "pacified." Massacres, such as the
killing of a group of suspected rebel sympathizers in the main square three years
ago, are no longer common, extortion demands on shopkeepers have disappeared
and rebel attacks on the isolated police station are rare. With the relative peace,
businesses have prospered and jobs returned.

But many neighbors are afraid to speak. In the town square, where the sour smell of
the river mingles with the loud music spilling from bars, eyes fix on strangers.
Rights groups say fishermen have found bodies in the river.

City officials and business leaders, many of whom have been declared military
targets by rebels, readily welcome the idea of informants. Shopkeepers are installing
loudspeakers on corners to denounce the presence of suspected guerrillas.

Community organizations such as Asocipaz, which led a fierce resistance against
plans by former President Andres Pastrana to hand control of San Pablo to the ELN
to start peace talks, are leading a drive to recruit informant volunteers.

San Pablo voted overwhelmingly for Uribe, but its leaders do not share his vision of
the informants' role. While Uribe has said informants will tip off the army about all
outlaws, San Pablo's leaders talk only of rooting out rebel infiltrators and make no
mention of informing against the paramilitaries.

"Security has a price -- the price of collaboration. They protect the town and the
town does not tell against them," said Rafael Ramos, president of the "No To The
Demilitarized Zone" association, a 9 mm pistol stuffed in his pants.

Asocipaz and No To The Demilitarized Zone officials deny claims by rights groups
they are linked to the paramilitaries.

Uribe, whose father was killed by rebels, has said he wants to generate a "critical
mass" against outlaws, but military analyst Alfredo Rangel said informants were a
cheaper way to strengthen the army than boosting professional troops.

"We all know who's who here. It's no secret paramilitaries control this area," San
Pablo Mayor Ezequiel Rodriguez told Reuters. "Uribe can talk in Bogota but here in
the provinces things are harder. Even the mayor must keep his mouth shut."

An hour's drive along a dirt road, the paramilitary presence becomes more open. In
the hamlet of Monterrey, paramilitaries dressed in camouflage trousers and black
T-shirts walk around in broad daylight, machine guns on their backs.

Visitors are greeted by a billboard reading: "Welcome to Monterrey. Territory of
Peace and Progress." At a roadblock, outlaws play cards and swat flies in the shade,
their rifles propped on banana trees. A painted skull glares out from the white walls
of a building where a warlord lives.

"This territory is at peace because of us. We have shed a lot of blood to take this
area and we are not going to give it back to the guerrillas." said Julian, a far-right
commander. "The state has no business here. That's what the paramilitaries are here
for."

    Copyright 2002 Reuters