In Colombia, Peace Talks With Paramilitaries Don't Quell Fear

The peace process opened quietly and unceremoniously last week, when the government posted a joint statement on its Web site announcing formal talks with a core group of about 13,000 illegal paramilitary fighters, known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC.

Funded by wealthy landowners and helped along by proceeds from Colombia's thriving cocaine trade, the right-wing AUC has been locked in battle with two main rebel armies for more than a decade.

Details of the talks were sketchy, and even the government's peace commissioner, Luis Carlos Restrepo, sounded a cautionary note.

During his first news conference since formally launching negotiations Tuesday evening, Restrepo spoke about what the difficult process feels like. "I'm traveling at 11 p.m. along a narrow road. There's a cliff on one side. It's foggy, and I can only see 10 meters in front of me. I don't know what's coming next. We're taking it step by step."

Analysts say success hinges on the government's ability to establish control over vast, lawless regions currently under paramilitary control.

Others fear that Marxist rebels may take over drug crops and gun-running corridors as the paramilitaries move out or that paramilitary leaders who are responsible for gruesome massacres may be granted immunity from prosecution.

Created in the 1980s as a network of private armies to battle rebel extortion and kidnapping, the paramilitaries are responsible for some of the worst atrocities in Colombia's lengthy civil conflict.

As President Alvaro Uribe sees them, they "filled a vacuum that the state, gravely, had abandoned. Their disappearance demands that the state strengthen itself and recuperate the institutional empire." Indeed, in the absence of government troops and strong institutions, paramilitaries and rebels often preside over disputes in areas under their control -- from complaints of wife beating to squabbles over land -- creating what Uribe has called "feudal" states.

The president spoke from the turbulent eastern savannas of the Arauca region during a trip meant to display government control over the most remote and battle-scarred corners of this Andean nation. Yet the trip helped to illustrate the government's uphill battle against illegal armed groups.