Paper short abstract:

After 2006, when the last paramilitary block officially demobilized and laid down their arms a new era of uncertainty began for its members. Bereft of their arms, their monthly salary and their ideological convictions a new way of life for its members had to be found.

Paper long abstract:

In the 1990s and up to 2006 the paramilitary units in Colombia became highly organized below a national umbrella organization called AUC (=United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia). The government began a peace negotiation with the AUC sidelining the Marxist guerrilla in 2003, a process that officially finished in 2006 with the total demobilization of the AUC.

Since the peace process involved collective demobilisations, the individual combatants of the paramilitary formations were forced to accept the result of the negotiations. Whereas the city of Medellín developed a nationally admired project of reintegration of the former AUC members other regions were less euphoric or simply less affluent to accept the additional burden of former combatants suddenly reinserted into mainstream society.

The uncertainty of everyday life caught up with the demobilized paramilitaries rather swiftly, since after a standard period when they could count on help by the national or regional government, the overall economic situation frequently worsened, deadly feuds over drug routed degraded into massacres and after the scandal of “Narcopolitics” the political climate changed unfavourably. This led to diversified strategies of the former combatant who was trying to cope with making a living.

Basically three strategies were deployed by these men (and a few women): (re)entry into an illegal armed group, often at the service of drug lords (partly the very same as before demobilization), working for a legal security firm, or starting with “normal” civilian life. Nevertheless, the death toll among reinserted paramilitaries has been continuously high even for Colombian standards.