TIBU, Colombia -- After nearly 10 years of fighting anti-government rebels, Julio Cesar Arce strode onto a muddy field one recent day and joined 1,400 fellow paramilitary fighters in a ceremony marking the largest voluntary disarmament in his country's violent history.
Handing in guns, smashing radios and tossing tents and uniforms into a roaring bonfire, the men helped destroy their own tools of war at the edge of the dense jungle in far northern Colombia, where they had fought for years.
Julio Cesar Arce, 27, plans to raise fish, chickens and pigs now that he has left paramilitary life behind.
(Kevin Sullivan -- The Washington Post)
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Post correspondent Scott Wilson discussed Alvaro Uribe's victory in Colombia's recent presidential election and the future of U.S. involvement there.
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"I couldn't do it anymore. Living with war is the most powerful reason for wanting peace," Arce, 27, a self-confident man with a military haircut and flashy sunglasses, said as he sat outside his nearby home. A father of three, he said he planned to start a new life raising fish, chickens and pigs with 45 comrades who are also laying down their guns.
The Dec. 10 ceremony has been widely seen as a sign that Colombia, convulsed for more than four decades by civil conflict that takes some 3,000 lives each year, might finally take a significant step toward peace.
The event was part of an agreement in July 2003 between President Alvaro Uribe and the country's main paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials AUC. The group agreed to completely disarm by the time Uribe's term ends in 2006.
"This is an historic day," Luis Carlos Restrepo, the government's high commissioner for peace, said during the ceremony after the fighters handed over their weapons. "Today we can say with conviction that the peace of Colombia begins."
Despite those hopeful sentiments, however, critics in Colombia's legislature and human rights community warned that the paramilitary forces could still rearm. They said the disarmament did not guarantee that the rebels would fully dismantle their operations or halt the massacres of civilians of which they have been accused.
"The government seems pleased just to allow the paramilitaries to make promises," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, the top Latin America specialist with Human Rights Watch. "There are more than enough reasons to be skeptical."
Even Arce, who said he was tired after years of clandestine combat and two serious bullet wounds, warned that the paramilitary groups could easily rise again if the guerrillas they have been fighting for more than a decade aren't disarmed as well.
"I don't want to live that life again," he said, pointing to heavy scars across his stomach and knee. "But if we feel we are forced to, we will."
Paramilitary groups formed in the late 1980s to help police and the military battle guerrilla groups, most notably the 18,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Although the paramilitary fighters operate outside the law, they were launched with the tacit support of many officials, along with business interests such as wealthy ranchers who have been targeted for years by Marxist forces.
In recent years, the government has accused the paramilitary forces of massacring civilians they suspected of cooperating with the guerrillas, as well as murdering politicians, labor leaders and others who crossed them. In addition, Colombian and U.S. law enforcement officials said the paramilitary groups and the guerrillas have become criminal organizations that fund themselves through drug trafficking. Colombia supplies as much as 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in the United States.
The United States has sent $3.3 billion in aid -- for defense, security and economic and social programs -- to Colombia since 2000. Many Colombian officials said the Bush administration has played a key role in pressuring the paramilitary leaders to negotiate by demanding their extradition to face U.S. drug-trafficking charges.
"Extradition has motivated this whole process," said Rafael Pardo, a member of the Colombian Senate and a former defense minister in Bogota, the capital 300 miles south of here.
