[marty419]

My dh just emailed me this article. Doesn't sound good....

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Guatemala recruits ex-soldiers to fight gang crime

07 Apr 2006 23:41:09 GMT

Source: Reuters


By Mica Rosenberg

GUATEMALA CITY, April 7 (Reuters) - Guatemala has rehired a battalion of former soldiers to help police combat rising gang violence, raising concern in a country that has struggled to rely less on its once all-powerful army.

More than 2,000 ex-soldiers began patrolling in olive uniforms this week alongside the civilian police force set up to take over law enforcement duties from the military after the country's 1960-96 civil war against leftist rebels.

They will mostly patrol crime-stricken neighborhoods in the capital, Guatemala City, where two rival street gangs active across Central America, Mexico and the United States are blamed for a wave of terror including rapes and beheadings.

Guatemala had over 5,000 violent killings last year, one of the highest per-capita murder rates in Latin America.

Many of the crimes are blamed on the street gangs or "maras," which grew out of Hispanic gangs in Los Angeles and then spread to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

"Never before in the history of our country has our society been so damaged by delinquency, organized crime, drug trafficking and gangs," President Oscar Berger told ex-soldiers lined up with firearms at a hiring ceremony this week.

The program will last for 10 months, after which the former soldiers will be contracted for another year or incorporated into the police force.

The move came after El Salvador's police chief said this week that military tactics could wipe out Central America's gangs in two months. Rights groups in the once war-torn region say extra firepower will not solve the problem.

A backlash against the gangs has often been brutal, with shadowy vigilante groups targeting members accused of robbery or extorting money from local businesses.

"Simply putting more men with guns on the street with little training is a short-sighted solution," said Sebastian Elgueta, Amnesty International investigator for Guatemala.

Most of the soldiers were discharged following 1996 peace accords between the government and leftist insurgents which sought to demilitarize the country after a civil war which killed 200,000 people, most of them poor Maya Indians.

Most of the killings were blamed on Guatemala's military and paramilitary groups.