Colombia's Paramilitaries: Chasing Guerrillas or Drug Money?

Paramilitary fighters: Looking for guerrillas or drug money?

The skull of the victim of a paramilitary massacre.

Colombia's infamous paramilitary groups slashed a murderous trail thru Colombia during the 1980s, '90s and early 2000s. But, while they were commiting horrors including chainsaw massacres and the forced displacement of entire towns, the 'paras' justified their behavior as necessary to combat the threat of the left-wing FARC and ELN guerrillas, which dominated large parts of Colombia and had ambitions to overthrow the government.

But a new analysis by a Colombian NGO suggests that, more than beating back communism, the paras' main goal was making money from the drug trade.

The organization, 'Ideas for Peace,' studied 531 Colombian municipalities with paramilitary presence and found that in only 100 were the guerrillas a "legitimate menace." In 152 of these municipalities there were no guerrillas at all, according to the report.

But most of those municipalities did have illegal drug plantations.

That made the study's authors ask what the paramilitaries were after, if not drug money.

Of course, it's long been known that the paramilitaries enriched themselves from the drug trade, just as the guerrillas did and still do. Drug money even created a schism amongst the paramilitaries as the old guard, led by Carlos Castaño, opposed participation in narcotrafficking.

A protest against paramilitary violence.

The paras' apparent focus on narcotrafficking also implicates the Colombian military, which long collaborated with the paras, sometimes shielding them from guerrilla attacks while they massacred civilians.

The new report coincides with a court's reopening of an investigation against ex-Pres. Alvaro Uribe for allegedly helping found a paramilitary organization in Antioquia Department back while he was the department's governor from 1985 to '87. The court's decision was only preliminary, and was based on testimony by two imprisoned ex-paramilitary leaders, who've confessed to involvement in crimes including mass murders and whose veracity is questionable. According to their testimony, 600 hundred cattle had been stolen from the Uribes' ranch. In response, Uribe and his brother held meetings on their ranch in which they organized a self-defense organization, which eventually morphed into a paramilitary organization. The self-defense group killed the guerrillas who had allegedly stolen the cattle as well as the traders whom they sold them to.

Uribe denies any involvement with paramilitarism, but suspicions and accusations have dogged him throughout his career.

Paramilitarism, one of the darkest chapters in Colombia's long armed conflict, suposedly ended when the groups demobilized around 2005, but their crimes will likely haunt the country for a long time.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours