BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) â€" Thousands of former combatants in Colombia's long-running dispute who surrendered their weapons to the government have given detected a downside to municipal life: unemployment.
From both sides of a aged conflict lines, former worried militiamen and revolutionary rebels are being lured into jobs as kidnappers, drug runners and strike organisation for rising crime rings â€" a new confidence hazard that ranks among a biggest hurdles opposed President Juan Manuel Santos' government.
Former insurgent Sabas Duque, who uses a wheelchair since he was partially inept in a shooting, now helps run a Bogota seminar that teaches craft-making with papier-mache and fabric. But he knows copiousness of other ex-fighters who have left their jobs and drifted behind to gunslinging.
"It's easy and that's what we know how to do," pronounced Duque, 43.
Since 2003, about 54,000 fighters have concluded to give adult their weapons, many receiving income advantages and other assist in exchange. Most belonged to far-right militias that disbanded underneath a assent agreement with a supervision in that their leaders were offering reduced jail sentences.
The government is still providing assistance to about 32,000 of them, including during slightest 6,000 who found jobs. But a rest of a former fighters possibly died or have been diminished from a module for rapist behavior, according to a Colombian Reintegration Agency.
The monthly supervision check is about $170, mostly reduction than a entertain of what crime rings compensate a hired gun, analysts say.
The new groups flower on heroin trafficking and other crimes, and go by names such as Los Rastrojos (The Remains) and Las Aguilas Negras (The Black Eagles). They embody some ex-rebels though distant some-more former members of a worried army famous as paramilitaries.
Sometimes, former ideological rivals are teaming adult for mutual rapist benefit, authorities say.
"What we've beheld is that guerrillas, former paramilitaries and common criminals are removing together" to dedicate release kidnappings or extortion, pronounced Gen. Humberto Guatibonza, who heads a infantry anti-kidnapping unit.
The paramilitaries were initial shaped in a 1980s to urge ranchers and drug traffickers opposite insurgent extortion, and after developed into armed bands that mostly operated in unison with a military. At slightest 55 percent of a fighters who have disarmed came from paramilitary groups, officials said.
But tellurian rights groups contend many paramilitaries never disarmed, ignoring a assent agreement their leaders done with a supervision of former President Alvaro Uribe.
"The groups that have emerged after a demobilization of paramilitary organizations consecrate a biggest hazard to a order of law and a insurance of tellurian rights in Colombia," pronounced Christian Salazar, deputy for a Colombia bureau of a U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.
"These groups contend a clever participation in most of a country, and they're a principal source of violence," Salazar told reporters in early December.
Colombia now has during slightest 7 orderly rapist bands with a sum of 8,000-10,000 members, of that 20-25 percent are estimated to be ex-combatants, according to a consider tank Nuevo Arco Iris. The police, on a other hand, commend 6 groups and contend they have about 5,000 members.
Former paramilitary Duvan Barato, 38, has left behind to college to investigate psychology and is confident he has done a purify mangle from a days when he done a vital perfectionist coercion income from ranchers. But some of his former comrades-in-arms who warranted college degrees are struggling to land jobs.
The supervision provides pursuit training for participants in fields such as cooking and carpentry, and also offers conversing and calming preparation programs.
Barato and others have their fee paid by a government, and pursuit chain assistance is also provided.
But a organisation mostly face other challenges. Many are ostracized by co-workers and others who learn about their prior lives.
"They don't see us as people who can contribute," Barato said. "I've been fortunate. we haven't felt that rejecting and that stigma."
Duque, a former rebel, pronounced many ex-militants aren't obliged adequate to reason down jobs. Seven of them, including both former rebels and paramilitary fighters, left their jobs during a seminar where Duque teaches craft-making. He is a usually one left.
The country's categorical insurgent group, a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, continues to quarrel a supervision with an estimated 9,000 fighters, down from about twice that series in 2000.
Despite a problems, a governments of both Uribe and Santos have called a demobilization module a success. It met a idea of removing tens of thousands to disarm. Government officials repudiate any increases in crime rates in new years.
In fact, Colombia's murder rate has declined by some-more than half, from some-more than 70 homicides per 100,000 people during a commencement of a final decade to 33 in 2010, according to a new news on carnage by a U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.
The classification Pais Libre, however, says crimes including abduction are on a rise. The organisation pronounced there were during slightest 177 kidnappings reported in a initial half of 2011, adult from 131 during a same duration in 2010.
Some experts contend a flaws in a Uribe government's assent agreement with a paramilitaries enclosed a disaster to brand and aim midlevel commanders, not only their bosses.
"The midlevel commanders continue to be in a same business," pronounced Carlos Espitia, an researcher with a Bogota-based Institute of Studies for Development and Peace. In a investigate progressing this year, a classification found that when paramilitary groups partially pennyless up, some of a midlevel commanders went on to lead new rapist gangs and recruited former comrades.
They bring Pedro Guerrero, alias "Cuchillo" or "Knife," a former paramilitary commander who demobilized in 2006 though afterwards went on to form a absolute crime ring. He was killed by confidence army a year ago.
When some-more than 280 members of his squad surrendered to authorities in late December, prosecutors pronounced during slightest 15 of them were not only criminals, though former members of paramilitary groups.
Some of a experts advise that a weaknesses in a supervision bid could infer costly. In Central America, countries such as Guatemala and El Salvador are now terrorized by absolute drug organizations that engrossed fighters after a countries' polite wars of a 1980s ended.
For his part, Barato pronounced that if other prepared ex-fighters don't find jobs soon, they might finish adult training recruits for a new crime gangs.
"We're going to have demobilized infantry being armed once again," he said.
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