strongest branch and holds important enforcement powers, the president is still subject to several constitutional checks and balances common within democratic systems. Despite the strength of the executive at the national level, the greatest weakness of the Colombian government was its inability to demonstrate a strong political and military presence in the provinces. After the formation of the AUC and under President Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002), Colombia witnessed a significant increase in paramilitary violence. This happened as Pastrana attempted peace negotiations with FARC and the ELN. In comparison to the previous presidency Pastrana’s presidency saw, on average, over 1,000 more murders, over 1,000 more kidnappings, 200 more terrorist attacks, and an over tenfold increase in the number of internal refugees each year. (Kline, 2015, 52). Yet, this loss of control was not at all due to high executive constraint at the national level. It was a result of Pastrana’s personal lack of focus on paramilitaries, which, when combined with weak state presence in the provinces, allowed for the expansion of paramilitaries in a power vacuum. Mauricio Romero, who studied the growth of paramilitary organizations during negotiations, suggests three
reasons for the increase in the size and strength of paramilitaries under Pastrana: "First, regional elites disagreed with the peace processes and challenged them publicly, while being silent about violence against the popular sector. Second, drug traffickers who had become landowners promoted private groups to attack suspicious civilians. Finally, the armed forces rejected the negotiations with guerillas, publicly opposing them and privately using counterinsurgency tactics against civilians as auxiliaries of the guerrillas" (Romero, 50-51). Romero concludes that the military and regional leadership’s disagreement with Pastrana’s peace process produced a scenario in which drug dealers and local elites exploited the lack of a common and visible central authority to build paramilitary networks (Ibid, 52). As a 74-year-old survivor of an AUC massacre put it, “We don’t have a government in this country anymore. Carlos Castaño is our president (Wilson, 2001).” Indeed, the most significant factor contributing to the growth and increased brutality of the AUC was the government’s lack of tight control over the military. According to a 2001 Washington Post article, Castaño claimed that about
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