This is what they mean by foreign aid…

I was always somewhat amused by the gardener and her friends, buying the story that Honduras was awash in paramilitaries and mercenaries, ready to swash and buckle their way through the countryside in support of the ousted legitimate government.

Well, I take it back… there are mercenaries running around Honduras… just not on the side the gardener thought.

Honduran landowners have reportedly hired former Colombian paramilitaries as mercenaries to protect them against possible violence stemming from government tensions, a UN panel said today.

The UN working group on mercenaries said that it has received reports that some 40 former members of United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia, or AUC*. The US government classifies the AUC as a terrorist organisation.

They will protect properties and individuals “from further violence between supporters of the de facto government and those of the deposed President Manuel Zelaya,” it said.

Separately, a 120-person group of paramilitaries from several countries in that region was reportedly created to support the coup in Honduras, the panel said.

Honduras is a party to the international convention against the recruitment, use, financing and training of mercenaries, the group said.

(AP, via The Guardian)

Of course, the present regime doesn’t feel particularly obliged to follow international conventions… or even it’s own laws, particularly.

* For those with trouble telling the Colombian gangsters-slash-paramilitary-groups apart without a scorecard, AUC is the RIGHT-WING group, best known in the United States for having been hired by the United Fruit Company to kill union organizers (and by the Italian Mafia to smuggle cocaine).  Several member of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s political party, his family (and some same himself) have connections to this gang.