Suddenly, reparations in Colombia

Two years after the last Colombian paramilitary soldier laid down his rifle, capping a controversial demobilization process, not a single square foot of the millions of acres the right wing militias stole has been returned to the poor farmers and ranchers they displaced. Nor have any of the thousands of families of slain victims received a peso in compensation from the billions in ill-gotten gains the armed militia leaders were supposed to disgorge.

The Colombians frankly admit the reparation process is tied up in judicial proceedings against paramilitary leaders and that cases could drag on for years. So the government of President Alvaro Uribe this week unveiled an initiative to address victims' demands: a $4-billion reparations fund to be paid out over the next 10 years by the Social Action branch of the presidency.

Vice President Francisco Santos, who came up with the idea, said money would begin to go out "immediately" to some of the 170,000 who have filed court claims for loss of property or loved ones. "We understand the judicial process will take years," Santos said, adding that it will not preclude victims from receiving court-ordered restitution. "This money will strengthen the way to reconciliation."

He insisted in an interview that the unveiling had nothing to do with recent political events in Colombia, including a widening "parapolitical" scandal in which more than 60 lawmakers, most of them close Uribe associates, are being investigated or have been arrested for alleged dealings with paramilitary groups. There is also a rising chorus of complaints from the displaced, many of them former farmers now huddled in the city slums. Nor was it prompted by successful court action recently by victims' families to block extradition of paramilitary leaders to the United States until they first give up their assets. "We've been working on this for six or eight months,"  Santos said.

But others see the initiative as playing to a foreign audience: the Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress, which is closely watching the peace process in its capacity as steward of hundreds of millions of dollars Colombia receives from the U.S.-backed Plan Colombia aid package. Democratic leaders have become increasingly dissatisfied with Uribe's human rights record, a displeasure they expressed this month when they shelved the U.S. Colombia Free Trade Agreement, an accord President Bush described as a reward to Colombia for being a staunch ally in a region turning increasingly leftward.   

Gimena Sanchez of the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights watchdog group in D.C., said the Uribe administration should work harder to return the displaced to the land they've lost. "Given the international outrage on the lack of truth, justice and reparations, [Colombia] is trying to show that it is taking steps to address the concerns of the victims.," Sanchez said. But "in order to resolve Colombia’s woes and enable the internally displaced to return to their places of origin and become self-sustainable again, it is important to resolve the land issue."

-- Chris Kraul in Bogota

Photo, top right: Colombian paramilitary fighters; Credit: AFP/Getty Images

Photo, left: Vice President Francisco Santos; Credit: Center for International Policy