[R-G] High Stakes in the Andes

[Anthony Fenton]

High Stakes in the Andes
March 8th 2008, by Forrest Hylton - NACLA
http://www.counterpunch.org/hylton03062008.html

Sadly, the operation on March 1 in which the Colombian Armed Forces
shot and killed Luis Edgar Devia Silva, a.k.a. "Raúl Reyes," spokesman
for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), along with
sixteen other guerrillas in a camp across the Putumayo River in
Ecuador, was yet another case of the oft-mentioned "death foretold"
that characterizes the country's seemingly endless civil war.

Eerily, in a March 1 column, one of Colombia's most prescient political
analysts, Alfredo Molano, predicted that a giant storm cloud was about
to sweep across some portion of Colombia's borderlands. Molano
described how President Álvaro Uribe had brought the war with the FARC
to the Darien Gap joining Panama, the Catatumbo region of Northern
Santander shared with Venezuela, and the frontiers of Pasto and
Putumayo bordering Ecuador. In Molano's view, the fact that Uribe had
been politically cornered at home and abroad made a widening war across
national borders all but inevitable. As Justin Podur noted, domestic
and foreign pressure for a negotiated peace-that is, a political
solution to the armed conflict-has led to an escalation of the war by
the stronger, more violent party, along Israeli lines.

Since the end of 2006, Uribe has been beset by the parapolítica
scandal, in which some 77 political figures, including 14
congresspersons, nearly all of them staunch allies of the president,
are under investigation for ties to rightwing paramilitaries. The
scandal reveals how the president and the Casa de Nariño (presidential
palace) in Bogotá are tied to the country's regions, where power and
authority are delegated, hence most directly exercised. Indeed, most of
the para-politicos investigated are local office holders-governors,
mayors, legislators, etc. The bedrock of the paramilitary-politico
alliance was sealed in 2001 with the "Pacto de Ralito" in Córdoba
province. The pact led to the first and second election of Uribe with
solid-indeed fervent-paramilitary support in congress and the regional
state bureaucracies.

Parapolítica and the President

Politicians under investigation include Uribe's closest political ally
and second cousin, Senator Mario Uribe, who fell under suspicion after
former paramilitary chieftain Salvatore Mancuso testified to meetings
he had with the president's cousin to map electoral strategy in
Antioquia and Córdoba provinces. As Molano notes, what everyone knows
and has long talked about in those provinces-relations between the  
Uribe family, land deals and
landholding, rightwing politics, and paramilitarism-is but a step away
from becoming a matter of public record. As early as 1987 and as
recently as 2002, distinguished investigative journalists began looking
into (and in some cases uncovering) these connections. Uribe has
publicly lashed out at journalists digging into his past, forcing some
to flee the country amid ensuing death threats. Now, it would seem,
legal issues, and not merely personal honor, are at stake.

This explains, at least in part, Uribe's confrontations with the
Supreme Court, whose authority he has repeatedly attempted to undermine
in order to obtain "political" status for paramilitary commanders
looking to whitewash their criminal pasts. As Senator Gustavo Petro
highlighted in 2005 during debates about the "Justice and Peace" law
regulating paramilitary demobilization, there is reason to believe that
Uribe aims to protect family members from future prosecution with its
passage. During the parliamentary debates about parapolítica in March
2007, Petro named Antioquia under governor Uribe (1995-97) as the
birthplace of modern-day paramilitarism. Any investigation of its roots
would need to begin there.

Claudia López, co-author of the most comprehensive scholarly study of
paramilitary penetration of local and regional politics in Colombia
between 2002 and 2006, recently remarked on the extent to which,
especially compared to the Caribbean coast, parapolítica investigations
have stalled in Uribe's native Antioquia. This is to be expected, as
there is undoubtedly much to hide: Under Uribe's watch, paramilitary
activity-along with murders and disappearances of thousands of
suspected guerrillas-skyrocketed to record levels through close
coordination with the military and provincial government officials.

Though Uribe has made numerous tours of Europe and the U.S. in order to
sell peace with the paramilitaries and war with the FARC, the
parapolítica scandal has become his Achilles heel. A number of leading
Democrats and not a few Republican congresspersons are wary of a trade
agreement with Colombia, given human rights conditions and lingering
doubts about the president's ties to paramilitaries. In May 2007, Rep.
Nancy Pelosi, leader of the House Foreign Relations Committee,
reprimanded Uribe and sent him home empty-handed when he tried to
sidestep the issues in Washington. Because of ties to organized labor,
Hillary Clinton has kept her distance from him in this electoral
season, while Al Gore refused to attend an event in Miami last year
that Uribe was scheduled to attend. (Unsurprisingly, Bill Clinton has
been less circumspect, hob-knobbing with Uribe at an event called
"Colombia is Passion" in New York City in May.)

A bilateral "free trade" agreement with the U.S. has been one of
Uribe's chief goals since coming to power in 2002, but it appears
increasingly remote. European countries, meanwhile, are reluctant to
contribute funds for war with the FARC or peace with paramilitaries,
and their meager offers of development aid are of little import to him.

Chávez, Reyes, and the Hostages

Uribe has also been increasingly cornered by the foreign policy of
Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. In what constitutes the major
achievement by a Latin American statesperson in recent memory, after
months of negotiations (sanctioned by President Uribe), in January and
February of this year Chávez convinced the FARC to turn over six
hostages to his government-all of them former politicians who, upon
release, began agitating for the release of the rest of the prisoners,
particularly Ingrid Betancourt, a center-left politician with dual
French-Colombian citizenship.

Betancourt's family, together with human rights organizations and NGOs,
have mounted a relatively successful campaign of public awareness and
political pressure in France: President Sarkozy's government has
reiterated its commitment to free Betancourt, acknowledging the
positive role Chávez and the Venezuelan government have played thus
far. For Uribe, such meddling strengthens FARC diplomacy in Europe,
which is why he wanted Reyes dead. In Uribe's eyes, Reyes and the FARC
paved the way for Betancourt's family and European NGO's to damage his
image and undermine his policy of war as peace. In 2001, as part of the
FARC's "peace process" with former president Andrés Pastrana, Reyes
toured Europe and deepened existing ties to European governments and
NGOs. As recently declassified documents obtained by the
non-governmental National Security Archive demonstrate, in 1998 Reyes
established contact with a U.S. diplomatic mission in Costa Rica led by
Philip T. Chicola, then director of the State Department's Office of
Andean Affairs. For all intents and purposes, Reyes was the FARC's
ambassador.

For Uribe, then, Reyes was a rival, a competitor, and according to the
mafia rules that govern politics in Colombia, such people must die.
There were scores to be settled: it was Reyes and the FARC who, in the
mid-1990s, convinced allies in European government and society that
Uribe's security policies in Antioquia were unacceptable in terms of
human rights and international law. And it was Reyes and his pals (no
women were invited) who charmed European politicians and solidarity
groups in Europe in 2001. This set the stage for Uribe's damaged
credibility in Europe after 2002. Since then, Reyes has presented his
organization's position before the European Parliament: prisoner
exchanges that lead to a negotiated peace settlement. There is strong
support for such a policy in official European circles.

Reyes was not a charismatic leader, nor is Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda,
who has led the FARC since it was founded in 1966. The FARC does not
depend on charismatic individuals for its survival. More important than
Reyes or Marulanda to FARC coffers was Tomás Medina Caracas, alias
"Negro Acacio," a former public school teacher who became the first
FARC commander wanted for extradition to the U.S. after September 11,
2001, on charges of cocaine trafficking. At the time of Medina's death
in September 2007, much was made of the putative "blow" it represented
to the FARC, as Medina was the group's answer to Pablo Escobar,
managing cocaine routes and protection rackets through Venezuela,
Brazil, and the Guyanas. Since Medina's death, no one has mentioned him
again, and it would be surprising if his routes had been disrupted or
destroyed without proper media fanfare. At the time of his death,
seasoned commentators were quick to note that as a matter of policy,
the FARC have at least three people ready to take the place of someone
like Medina at a moment's notice. As Fernando Cubides has argued, the
FARC is an "armed bureaucracy."

Thus there is no shortage of trained personnel to keep the war machine
running, and it is unlikely that the killing of Raúl Reyes will make
much of a dent in its functioning, except in terms of negotiating the
release of the remaining hostages and laying the foundation for a
negotiated peace; in terms of politics rather than total war. This
explains the reaction of French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who
said, "It is bad news that the man we were talking to, with whom we had
contacts, has been killed. Do you see how ugly the world is?"

It may tempting to dismiss Kouchner's question, but his point may be
somewhat more subtle: namely, that Uribe killed Reyes in a deliberate
effort to block the French government from negotiating the release of
Ingrid Betancourt. Were Betancourt to be freed, Uribe would likely come
under international pressure to grant the FARC political status as a
pre-condition for a negotiated political settlement, and might have to
contend with Betancourt's efforts to build a broad anti-Uribe coalition
at home and abroad.

It is doubtful that the United States was directly involved in killing
Reyes, since Plan Colombia was specifically designed to give the
Colombian government the hardware, surveillance, and training to carry
out such missions on its own. The Bush administration, of course, has
greeted the death of a top FARC "terrorist" with glee, legal niceties
and political subtleties aside. Uribe does not appear to have asked
permission to pursue Reyes into Ecuador, but in light of past episodes,
he had little reason to fear a reprimand from Washington, and was
likely emboldened by past precedent. Whether Washington gives the green
light beforehand matters little, as long as Uribe's moves are
sanctioned ex post facto, as they were on March 4.

High Stakes in the Andes

Ecuadorian and Venezuelan government responses came quickly and
unequivocally: within 48 hours, both broke off all diplomatic ties with
Colombia and moved troops, tanks, and planes to their borders.
Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa explained that in addition to the
efforts of Sarkozy and Chávez, his government had been working on the
liberation of 12 hostages-including Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S.
mercenaries-at the time Reyes was assassinated. He added negotiations
were at an "advanced" stage. Chávez jumped in and labeled Uribe a
"criminal, mafioso, paramilitary" in charge of a "narco-government." In
one of his more restrained remarks, the Venezuelan president said, "It
is very serious that a country arrogates to itself the right to bomb
the territory of a neighbor and commit an incursion to take bodies,
violating many international laws. Think of the consequences, not just
for Colombia, but for your neighbors."

Predictably, Uribe engaged in an almost surreal effort to re-create the
atmosphere of the build-up to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The smoking
gun was Reyes' laptop, reportedly recovered at the scene. Head of
Colombia's National Police, Gen. Oscar Naranjo alleged that the FARC
had been plotting to get uranium for a dirty bomb: "When they mention
negotiations for 50 kilos of uranium, this means that the FARC are
taking big steps in the world of terrorism to become a global
aggressor. We're not talking of domestic guerrillas but transnational
terrorism." On March 4, the Colombian government announced that the
FARC was building a dirty bomb. All of this would seem to be a
transparent attempt to convince the U.S. government and the rest of the
world that the incident-and the region-can be neatly slotted into the
global "war on terror."

Though allegations have cropped up repeatedly, as ideologically needed,
since Chávez came to power in 1998, no one has ever documented illicit
ties between Chávez and the FARC; the Uribe government is apparently
now free to invent them. Another item recovered from Reyes' hard drive
purportedly demonstrates that the FARC received $300 million in
payments from Chávez as recently as February. To Gen. Naranjo, this
suggested clear proof of "an armed alliance between the FARC and the
Venezuelan government." A third item allegedly contains a thank-you
note from Chávez during his stint in prison after his failed coup
attempt in 1992. Given the advanced division of labor within the FARC,
it would be odd indeed if its ambassador kept such delicate-and, in the
case of the "prison letter" from Chávez, dated-information so readily
accessible. For good measure, the Colombian government also alleged
that recovered documents linked the Ecuadorian government to the FARC.

The Venezuelan government was not fazed. Vice president Ramón
Carrizales said, "We are accustomed to the lies of the Colombian
government. Whatever they say has no importance. They can invent
anything now to try to get out of that violation of Ecuadorian
territory that they committed." President Correa met with his cabinet
to inform them of his government's position: "They said we had a pact
with terrorists, and that is completely false. We are dealing with an
extremely cynical government."

Perhaps the most hopeful development to arise out of the whole morass
is the new multilateralism in South America: the regional powers, Chile
and Brazil, demanded an official apology from Colombia to Ecuador, and
were followed by Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru; all countries were eager
to find a peaceful solution through the Organization of American States
(OAS).

There is even more diplomatic unity against Uribe than there was when
he supported the U.S.-preferred candidate for Secretary General of the
OAS in 2005. That was the first time since the organization was founded
in Bogotá in 1948 under the watchful eye of Secretary of State George
Marshall that the U.S. candidate did not win. In dealing with Uribe's
incursion, South American countries may well make another end run
around the U.S. and Colombia through the OAS, and at the very least,
foreign ministers have agreed to conduct an investigation. Chávez has
proposed to revive the Contadora group of countries whose governments
helped broker peace agreements in Central America in the 1990s in spite
of U.S. government obstructionism. The latest violation of Ecuadorian
sovereignty could convince other South American countries of the need
for such a group.

Poster for victims' march: "Memory and Dignity for the Displaced, the
Murdered, the Disappeared, the Victims."

The protest march called for tomorrow, March 6, in Colombia and the
world to commemorate the victims of paramilitary and state violence
will be a test of the political temperature. A range of sectors have
promised to participate: trade unions, human rights groups, families of
the kidnapped and disappeared, women's and neighborhood organizations,
peasant, Afro-Colombian, indigenous, and student groups. If this push
for truth, justice, and a negotiated peace finds an echo in
multilateral diplomatic initiatives, Uribe could find himself cornered
yet again; a frightening prospect, unless progressive forces in the
hemisphere prove strong enough to contain him and his northern patrón.
Forrest Hylton is the author of Evil Hour in Colombia (Verso, 2006),
and with Sinclair Thomson, of Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present
in Bolivian Politics (Verso, 2007). He is a frequent contributor to
NACLA, where this essay originally appeared.
Source:

CounterPunch

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