In November 2006, Sergio Caramagna, the director of the OAS Mission to Support the Peace Process (MAPP/OEA), visited Colombia and successfully identified 14 neo-paramilitary organizations with a possible eight more. These groups he said consisted largely of narcotraffickers and paramilitaries who had refused to demobilize despite benefits offered by the government. However, there was also a small percentage of criminals who had previously demobilized.
While this number wasn't high, Caramagna asserted that it would grow if the government failed to increase the breadth of the JPL to include incentive structures for former mid-level leaders of the AUC, not just its most prominent members. These mid-level commanders are now leading neo-paramilitary groups like "Los Urabeños," "Los Paisas," the "Oficina de Envigado" and ERPAC.
Additionally, the government, despite it's willingness, wasn't doing enough to combat these new groups according to Caramagna. Peace Commisioner Carlos Restrepo seconded this, adding that the police force weren't provided with the adequate resources to mitigate the rise of the neo-paramilitaries.
In another cable dated October 24, 2006, significant elements of the JPL - a law which the then interior minister described in another cable as being "difficult to understand, even for Colombians," - were shown to be deeply flawed, the most prominent being the reintegration efforts.
In the cable, Reintegration Commissioner Frank Pearl cites coordination and implementation problems within government due to divided and overlapping responsibilities
Furthermore, Pearl added that financial resources for reintegration were distributed poorly with 80% being spent on monthly stipends and administration. This left an insufficient amount for the actual rehabilitation of the ex-paramilitaries.
Based on these facts, Under Secretary Burns urged better action and communication from the Colombian government with the U.S., acknowledging the disastrous implications if the newly demobilized failed to reintegrate ino society and returned to crime.
These fears materialised the following month with Caramanga's findings.
On Thursday, another Wikileaks cable revealed that in 2004, former President Alvaro Uribe predicted the rise of neo-paramilitary organizations from the ashes of the AUC.
However, this speculation negated the factor of his own government's failures within the JPL to successfully rehabilitate former AUC members.
Since 2006, neo-paramilitary groups have posed an ongoing challenge to Colombia's security forces. Political supporters of Uribe blame current Defense Minister Rodrigo Rivera for the violence, while the Liberal Party -- an opposition party during the two Uribe terms -- blames the violence on the past administration.
Colombia's justice and interior minister admitted Monday that the illegal armed groups now have increased control over large areas of the countryside and within dozens of cities and threaten to influence October's local elections.
@'Colombia Reports'
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