This weekend’s edition of the Colombian newsmagazine Semana ran a troubling article about how the Colombian armed forces are responding to increasing pressure on human rights, including several recent arrests and newly launched investigations into alleged abuses.

These detentions, the Prosecutor-General’s Office’s actions and the [Defense] Minister’s own declarations have the military in a state of high tension. The President has met with some retired generals who have expressed concern that after carrying out a war effort at a time when there was neither money nor resources, now they have to respond on their own before a justice system that does not evaluate the context in which they acted.

Another group of retired officers, among them Gen. Manuel José Bonnett, a former armed-forces chief, have visited media outlets with a similar message: “Society sent us to war and later punishes us without piety,” he says. Bonnett strongly criticizes the government for what he considers a surrender of the military justice system’s jurisdiction to the Prosecutor-General’s Office, ever since it investigated the Jamundí massacre [of a police anti-narcotics unit in 2006], which he believes should have been within the military justice system’s competence.

Other former soldiers go farther. A few weeks ago, an anonymous document circulated in which the prosecutors of the Prosecutor-General’s Office’s Human Rights Unit were accused of being an instrument of insurgent groups’ “judicial warfare.” Several officials in Acore, the retired officers’  association, have even accused prosecutors of roaming the jails looking for prisoners who might testify against high-ranking officers facing charges.

The dissatisfaction is also felt among active military officers. “They abandoned us,” says a colonel, while others say that it all owes to [Defense Minister] Juan Manuel Santos’ ambitions to run for President. The case against Col. Hernán Mejía [highly decorated officer accused of collaborating with paramilitaries] is perhaps the one that has most made evident the tensions and differences regarding human rights within the military institution. While some members of the high command consider that the Prosecutor-General’s Office’s actions must be respected as it investigates alleged homicide and paramilitary ties, others have quietly helped to carry out a media campaign against the Prosecutor-General’s investigators, whom they accuse of paying off witnesses.

The article concludes that there is a sharp division at the armed forces’ highest ranks regarding how much civilian human rights investigation is tolerable. One faction longs for the recent past, when there was little effort to hold the officers accountable to civilian justice or international standards. The other faction - which, Semana contends, includes Armed Forces Chief Gen. Freddy Padilla - contends that the political and international reality has changed, and that the armed forces must adapt.

This is no doubt a painful internal struggle for Colombia’s armed forces. Which faction ultimately wins the day will depend heavily on the attitudes of Colombia’s civilian leaders and international actors, particularly the United States. That is why it is so important that President Álvaro Uribe and Washington be unambiguously on the side of the reformers, and why both deserve the strongest criticism when they are not.

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