| I've noticed over the years — and I doubt if it's pure coincidence — that countries with functioning civil societies don't have paramilitary forces running around their countrysides. That includes right-wing forces, left-wing forces, Islamist forces, and any other forces you can think of. When somebody says "paramilitary forces" you can translate it as "failed state." |
Five far-right paramilitary fighters, including an army sergeant secretly belonging to the illegal group, were killed in combat with Colombian security forces on Sunday, officials said. Army Commander Reinaldo Castellanos admitted that one of the dead militiamen was a member of the army, in the latest example of links between Colombia's security forces and right-wing squads set up by drug traffickers and cattle ranchers in the 1980s to combat Marxist guerrillas in the Andean country. Castellanos said the government was investigating the case. The battle took place near the town of Cucuta on the Venezuelan border.The paramilitaries have killed thousands of people in a war against leftist rebels and have earned international notoriety for massacring peasants, sometimes using crude weapons such as hammers and chain saws. Members of the armed forces have often cooperated with right-ring militiamen against their common rebel foes, although the government says aiding the paramilitaries constitutes treachery.