This week the government finally pushed through Congress a law aimed at setting the terms for the demobilisation of the paramilitaries (some 5,000 of a total of 20,000 have already demobilised).
Of the three illegal armies responsible for most of the violence, the right-wing paramilitaries have demobilised, and the guerrillas of the ELN talk of doing the same.
The 100,000 or so who had demobilised have had little success in finding jobs.
Rafael Pardo, a Liberal senator who broke with the president over the law, says that he thinks the paramilitaries have demobilised their counter-insurgency apparatus and moved out of drugs to avoid extradition but are moving, unchecked, into other crime rackets.Double standardsMr Uribe's defenders argue that Colombia is doing something which no other country has managed.
It also has to persuade the guerrillas that, once demobilised, they can take a full part in democratic politics, freely arguing for the reforms they now wish to impose through the gun.
In addition, a technical commission will be established to oversee the disarmament of Laurent Nkunda's troops and Mai Mai fighters; in theory, they will subsequently be demobilised or integrated into the national army, the Forces armées de la République démocratique du Congo (FARDC).
America considers them a terrorist group, and is seeking to extradite a number of their leaders to face extradition on drug-trafficking charges.But under a law passed two years ago by the conservative government of Álvaro Uribe, some 30,000 paramilitaries have disarmed and demobilised.
Six of them were killed.In 2006, after the paramilitaries demobilised and their leader was himself killed, the farmers dared to return.
Most of them have now demobilised under a peace agreement in which their leaders were offered reduced sentences in return for confessing crimes and compensating victims.
They are anxious to start rebuilding their lives, but Mr Afwerki is demanding yet more sacrifices from them or, rather, from their children.Despite repeated promises, most of the 200,000 young men and women called up to fight Ethiopia, out of a population of only 4m, have yet to be demobilised.
The chief villains were right-wing paramilitary groups, whose motive was in part to wrest territory from the left-wing guerrillas of the FARC.When a security build-up under Álvaro Uribe, Colombia's president from 2002 to 2010, reduced the FARC to smaller bands in remote areas, some 30,000 paramilitaries demobilised, formally at least.
