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The Úsuga aren´t simple delinquents: an interview with Álvaro Villarraga Sarmiento
Marcela Osorio Granados / Sunday 24 April 2016
 

Álvaro Villarraga Sarmiento, a researcher from the Centre of Historic Memory and director of the Foundation of Democratic Culture, conducts a radiography of the illegal organization and calls attention to the need to understand the dimensions of the neo-paramilitary groups in the current social and political contexts of the country.

Five people dead, a blockade of 36 municipalities in eight provinces and a sea of doubts and fears, that was the outcome of an armed shutdown decreed by the so-called Usaga clan last week that succeeded in demonstrating, in just two days, the reach of its networks and the consolidation of the power base that it has been building over the last few years. Alvaro Villarraga Sarmiento conducts a radiography of the criminal group and explains why the Usaga can´t be considered to be just a band of criminals.

How much influence does the Úsuga clan currently have in the country?

The group, which calls itself the Gaitanist Self-Defence Forces of Colombia and is popularly known in many regions as the Urabeños and which the authorities refer to as the Úsuga clan, has a very high level of power at this time. After years of disputes with other inheritors of the former dominions of the paramilitary groups, particularly the Rastrojos, they have achieved a clear hegemony. It is now a powerful group, a mixture of legal and illegal elements and activities, it cannot be underestimated and it cannot be understood as a simple phenomenon of delinquents. It is a delinquency of such power that it maintains connections and alliances in politics, with a significant degree of support among social and economic networks and the ability to exercise a certain degree of control together with its allies at the local and regional levels.

Why do they present themselves as the Gaitanist Self-Defence Forces?

The Úsuga clan is a direct descendant of the paramilitary groups, that is something that is well known. They are groups that never demobilized completely, in this case reactivating their structures based in the provinces and regions of Atrato, Urabá and the south of Cordoba in the north of Colombia. Later they expanded towards Catatumbo, the Caribbean regions and along the Pacific coast, also establishing a presence along the middle reaches of the Magdalena River and on the Plains in the mid-eastern parts of Colombia. These facts demonstrate that we are not dealing with a limited phenomenon of criminal banditry but with an organized criminal structure that can now defy institutional power, co-opting and penetrating public and economic institutions and putting them to their service.

How many members are they estimated to have in the organization?

Any number you could mention would be an approximate estimation given the illegal nature and modus operandi of the group. In the report that we published at the Centre of Historic Memory at the end of 2015 we reviewed a variety of estimates from official sources as well as from organizations that have been investigating these types of groups suggesting that the group could have around 6,000 members. To be more specific, they do not operate in the same way that the guerrilla groups do, with permanent uniformed and dedicated formations constantly undertaking assigned military actions or other collective tasks. While they do maintain some sub-regional armed formations that possess a certain level of military capability, more generally the group consists of complicated clandestine networks complemented by informal associations and the contracting of independent individuals and groups such as assassins or local and regional criminal gangs that dominate specific activities such as the cultivation, production and distribution of cocaine or other illicit economic activities. They have also penetrated legal economic sectors and activities like taxi services.

You speak of relations with legal economies and institutional connections. Is there also active collaboration with the armed forces?

There has been a significant change between the para-militarism that existed before and that which exists now. We are no longer talking about the systematic national level of permissiveness, collaboration or inactivity of the armed forces that existed during the 1990s up until the demobilization of the AUC (the national umbrella structure of paramilitary groups) in 2005. These days such groups maintain systems of alliances with or corruption or intimidation of the authorities, particularly at the local and regional levels. However, there are also cases of local agents that establish long-term commitments and relationships with the groups.

Some say that during the recent armed shutdown that affected many regions in the north of Colombia the Úsuga clan used language with political overtones…

During the recent so-called armed strike or shutdown the group demonstrated a clear intention in its pamphlets and pronouncements. It appears that they are trying to send a message seeking political recognition. This is apparent in the use of phrases that make reference to sharing the processes and the dynamics of peace that are occurring in the country; they also argue in the pamphlets that they satisfy the conditions of territorial control, capacity for sustained military actions and possession of a unified and responsible command structure. This is particularly notable because these arguments form the basis for recognition as a belligerent group involved in an armed conflict, and from there some form of political recognition, according to the principles of international law. I don´t share this interpretation that the successor groups satisfy the conditions for political recognition of the type that has been accorded to the guerrilla groups. They are not armed groups formed with an inherent political character and objectives, as is the case with the insurgent groups (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC and the National Liberation Army, ELN). Rather, the groups that emerged following the demobilization of the paramilitary groups are an expression of illegal economies, with the resultant emerging sectors and alliances founded in inequality and the lack of conventional opportunities in order to get rich through illegal economic activities and the violent expropriation of goods and resources by way of systematic attacks.

So what should the government´s strategy be: combat or negotiation?

The government now has the opportunity and the necessity to reconsider its strategy of combating these types of groups to the exclusion of any other approach. The government is obliged to recover territorial control, combat illegal economies, and dedicate itself completely to eliminating the opportunities for illegal economies and armed groups to flourish. This will not be easy given the riches to be made and the niches of power that the armed groups have managed to occupy, traditionally the domain of the paramilitary groups during the course of the last two or three decades. While nothing should be excluded outright, what is certain is that the purely military strategy that has been utilized up to now, involving direct combat and persecution, has been defective and insufficient because it is not based on an adequate understanding of the dimensions of the phenomenon.

Because it is worth pointing out that the Úsuga clan are just a part of the problem…

Exactly. Underlying the existence of the current groups is the fact that the principal factors behind and causes of the paramilitary phenomenon have not been resolved. We are now in a more degraded phase of para-militarism that continues to afflict the country, although the groups themselves are weaker than they were before. While the media has adopted and popularized the phrase “criminal gangs”, the term is inaccurate and inappropriate as it reduces the topic to a phenomenon that pertains exclusively to the excesses of groups of delinquents seeking personal gain. However, over the last few years the groups that remain have become the principal violators of human rights on the country. They are committing more than 600 grave violations of human rights a year, clearly a factor that must not be ignored or underestimated. Apart from that, although we are no longer at levels near those reached during the late 1990s in terms of the number and scale of massacres committed throughout the country annually, it is very concerning that some categories of violations of human rights have not seen a reduction in frequency and intensity, and some have even increased during the existence of these new armed groups. For example, the number of forced displacements has not reduced and remains at an extremely high level, with close to 300,000 people violently displaced from their land and their homes each year.

Is there a direct relation between the consolidation of these groups and the recent denunciations of threats and attacks against leaders of leftist political parties and social movements as well as defenders of human rights?

We have to be clear about one thing: the doctrine of National Security is still being applied in the country. This is the doctrine of the internal enemy which involves attacking civilians –whether they are called Patriotic March (Marcha Patriótica), the Congress of the People (Congreso de los Pueblos), two leftist social movements, or people trying to reclaim land that they were violently displaced from– because they are considered to be connected to or collaborating with the armed insurgency in some way. We would like to think that this is no longer the case but unfortunately it continues to be supported by some sectors within the State. For example, the number of threats has increased. Regrettably, what has happened over the last few months is that as the momentum of the peace process has increased the threats against and assassinations of civil leaders, political activists and others close to the peace process has also increased in a manner that has clear political undertones and objectives. It is a grave fact for the country that the Patriotic March is saying that 120 of its members have already been assassinated. Members of the Congress of the People have also been assassinated, as well as representatives of people trying to reclaim land that they were violently displaced from, women and human rights defenders.

So can we talk about connections between the armed groups and political groups?

Many academic studies, reports by NGOs and other analyses of the topic have found that there is no doubt that these developments stem from the paramilitary phenomenon that resulted in the so-called para-politics scandal (in which many members of the national Congress as well as politicians at the provincial and local levels were investigated and prosecuted for links with paramilitary groups). Although the number of high level relations between paramilitary groups and senior public officials has declined, it must be acknowledged that there are still substantial levels of collaboration at the local and provincial levels as well as within State institutions more generally, and that substantial amounts of money derived from prohibited drugs and other illegal economic activities continue to be present and have a distorting effect throughout the political, social and economic activities of the country. Let´s not lie to ourselves, such groups and illegally obtained funds continue to elect governors and mayors and create and control political parties and groups. The judicial procedures that have occurred up to now have not been sufficient to resolve the problem. Also there are still many public officials that in effect inherited their posts from those that were prosecuted and imprisoned for para-politics, including their wives, children, and other relatives and close associates. That is the reality in Colombia.

Challenges for the government after the signing of peace agreement with the guerrilla groups: What is the principal risk that the new armed groups and structures represent to the prospect of a post-conflict era following the conclusion of peace agreements with the FARC and the ELN?

If the guerrillas agree to disarm and the peace processes reach a successful conclusion, the government will face an enormous challenge. The State cannot afford to fail institutionally as it did following the previous peace processes when it proved to be incapable of recovering control over the national territory. This time it is absolutely necessary that the nationally territory is recovered and not just in the geographic sense and from the point of view of the armed conflict against the guerrillas, but in terms of the vitality of the constitutional State based on the rule of law and a firm guarantee of the civil rights and freedoms of all Colombians, underpinned by cutting off the foundations of the illegal economies with socially oriented policies and effective plans for the substitution of illicit crops. They are enormous tasks, but they are the heart and soul of the peace process. We don´t want the disarmed members of the FARC and the ELN to face the same situation that was faced by the members of the M-19 and the EPL when they disarmed in the 1980s, following which they had to leave their homes and regional areas en masse because they were being systematically hunted down and killed. That can´t occur again, members of the guerrilla groups that agree to return to civilian life must have genuine and effective guarantees of their safety and civil and political rights that include the entire community and social networks to which they belong.

The preliminary agreements that have been reached during the peace process already provide a set of commitments on behalf of the State to provide such guarantees if they can be successfully implemented.

Statistics: According to the data of the National Centre of Historic Memory, illegal armed groups directly or indirectly derived from the demobilization of the paramilitary groups have a significant presence in 339 municipalities in the country (out of a total of approximately 1,100). The so-called Usaga clan is present in 119 of those, the Rastrojos in 76 and the Águilas Negras in 39.

Source
Los Usaga no son simples delincuentes: Álvaro Villarraga Sarmiento”, by Marcela Osorio Granados, El Espectador, 2 April 2016

Published in: SouthFront