Drug traffickers change course

2.05.06

BOGOTA – (AP)—Two of Colombia’s notorious drug traffickers wanted for extradition by the United States are getting a chance to literally clean up their mess.

Salvatore Mancuso and Vicente Castaño, the leaders of a recently disbanded right-wing paramilitary force, on Thursday began gathering with 1,200 of their former fighters in an effort to manually pull up 17,000 acres of coca, the base ingredient of cocaine, authorities said.

The eradication effort is part of a pilot jobs program in the northern provinces of Córdoba and Antioquia, a former stronghold of the Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, said Juan David Angel, head of Colombia’s civil reinsertion program.

On Wednesday, the first contingent of 320 fighters arrived in Tierralta, 280 miles northwest of Bogotá, where they were briefed by Mancuso.

‘’Eliminating illegal crops, we’ll eliminate drug trafficking in Colombia,’’ Mancuso said in an interview with Caracol television.

Mancuso and Castaño are charged with shipping several tons of cocaine to the United States.

But despite the disapproval of U.S. officials, Uribe has suspended extradition orders for them and the rest of the AUC high command as part of a peace deal signed in 2003.

More than 30,000 AUC members have since laid down their weapons and sworn off violence in exchange for a partial amnesty and a monthly stipend of about $150.

Despite the assistance, many have found their violent pasts a barrier to finding work, and government officials acknowledge some have returned to crime.

Colombia’s paramilitary groups emerged in the 1980s to combat leftist rebels but turned to drug trafficking.

Much of the fighting in remote regions throughout the country was for control over the coca fields and the huge profit they draw when converted into cocaine and smuggled to the United States.

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