The news from Colombia this Thanksgiving morning is very bad. Last night President Álvaro Uribe called an end to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s three-month-old attempt to mediate hostage-for-prisoner exchange talks with the FARC.
Citing a phone call that Chávez placed yesterday to the head of Colombia’s army, Uribe de-authorized the Venezuelan president and Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba, whom he had named as government-sanctioned “facilitators” for the talks back in August.
Though it had been happening with frustrating slowness, this latest effort to free the hostages had offered more hope than any previous attempt. Now it is over, suddenly, and no other near-term possibilities seem to exist.
We are stunned and saddened by this latest in a long line of frustrations. Our sympathies go to the family members of the 45 hostages, whose hopes of seeing their loved ones have once again been dashed.
Where do things stand now? A few observations.
- The FARC gets much of the blame. The guerrillas once again deserve condemnation for precipitating the entire situation by cruelly holding hostages for so many years. They also come under fire for their continued rigidity at every stage in these initial conversations.
The FARC committed some grave errors during the process, two of them during the past ten days. The release of photos with mediator Sen. Piedad Córdoba, against her expressed wishes, dealt a severe blow in the arena of Colombian public opinion.
Then, perhaps more seriously, the FARC did Hugo Chávez an enormous disservice by allowing him to go on a long-planned trip to Paris with no proofs of life for hostage Ingrid Betancourt. Chávez, a politician like any other, must be furious with the guerrillas for forcing him to go before the expectant French public embarrassingly empty-handed.
- But not all of the blame. The Uribe government gets some of the blame too. After “authorizing” Sen. Córdoba and President Chávez, it did little to make their difficult job any easier. It can absolutely not be said that there was a joint Colombian-Venezuelan effort to free the hostages. Instead, President Uribe made a show of nominating the two “facilitators,” then washing his hands of the whole affair.
Sen. Córdoba traveled to Washington three times with no apparent support from the Colombian government – no financial support, no official accompaniment, no sign that she had any political backing from Bogotá. The Colombian government made clear that it would use the military to make it difficult for the FARC to participate in dialogues with the facilitators.
President Chávez and Sen. Córdoba certainly committed their share of mistakes, though these were largely cases of indiscretions and overreaching. Neither one is a discrete professional mediator; both are politicians known for their energetic tenacity.
Recent examples of these include Sen. Córdoba’s above-mentioned photos depicting a lighthearted moment with FARC members in Caracas, and President Chávez’s revelation in France of a possible future meeting with FARC leader Manuel Marulanda in Colombia, a topic he had discussed in confidence with President Uribe.
And then, of course, President Chávez’s inexplicable decision yesterday to place a direct phone call to Colombian Army chief Gen. Mario Montoya, above President Uribe’s expressed wishes.
Nonetheless, President Uribe’s decision to call off the talks as a result of that phone call has a whiff of pretext about it. Why would he call off the talks, instead of issuing a stern public warning, unless he was already looking for a reason to bring an end to a process that had clearly escaped his control?
A complicated process like this one will take a long time. It would require a great deal of patience, but the Colombian government showed little.
- The FARC must keep the “proofs of life” coming. The guerrillas said recently that they had issued orders to provide “proofs of life” – videos or photos of the hostages – as a gesture of good faith. President Chávez said in France that the guerrillas planned to issue these proofs before the end of the year. (We don’t know why this takes so long; one would think the guerrillas would be capable of posting such videos to YouTube in a day or two. But never mind that.)
The FARC absolutely must continue to provide these proofs of life according to that timetable, even in the absence of an official “process.” Seeing the hostages’ faces – in most cases, for the first time in four years or more – is one of the only positive developments imaginable that could get talks re-started.
By once again putting a “human face” on what has become a rather ugly process of jockeying for political position, proofs-of-life could have enough impact on public opinion to build the political will necessary to get back to the table.
If, on the other hand, the FARC responds to Uribe’s “de-authorizations” by rescinding its order to provide proofs-of-life, the result would be tragic – and would run counter to the guerrillas’ own interests.
- President Chávez and Senator Córdoba deserve our profound and heartfelt thanks. Yes, they committed some unfortunate mistakes. But both facilitators did their jobs with an energy, perseverance, patience and creativity that we should all praise and admire.
We wish that they were given more time.
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:58 am
It’s comforting reading a measured, unbiased analysis of this shameful situation, from a viewpoint that’s not contaminated with the fanatic, passionate, raunchy, vulgar vocabulary and attitude that native colombians are used to. Kudos to this writing
November 23rd, 2007 at 11:49 am
Also before the de-authorization of Sen. Cordoba and Chavez, Uribe dealt a blow to the process earlier in the week by stating that if Tirofijo came out of the jungle for the talks, he’d be assassinated. Obviously, Marulanda would not want to come out of the jungle to meet with Uribe, he may have done so with Chavez. Well not so anymore.
I did think that Uribe’s cut off was a bit over-done and harsh. Whether it was premeditated, I don’t know. The only reason I think it would be so is if Uribe was getting sick of the whole process, probably didn’t want to negotiate in the first place, and was just looking for something to cut off the process which would leave him blameless. Added, why would he cut off a process so quickly which had received such high levels of international attention, knowing he would be pleaded to allow the process to be continued immediately after? He didn’t seem like he really wanted to do the whole process, but at the same time, he would be king if he could pull it off. Imagine, making much of the country much less insecure, lowering the number of casualties in the war AND realizing a hostage exchange with the FARC (granted he would add demobilizing 31,671 paramilitaries, killing high # off FARC guerrillas, etc).
Who knows why Uribe cut it off. It is likely premeditated, as he was probably getting sick off the process and the attention the FARC was getting, amongst other things.
I agree that this does not mean that the FARC do not have to release a proof of life at least. International law says that they must release the hostages immediately. If the FARC wanted to deal a blow to Uribe, they would release the hostages, or at least a group of them, showing that they did not need Uribe or a process for an exchange. They could still talk with Chavez and Cordoba to see what may be possible, for any steps, nevermind just a release. Obviously and sadly, that will not happen. We will see what happens in the upcoming days, as Uribe is already being pressured domestically and internationally to get the process back on the little track it found itself. We will see if he does it, but after this summer’s tragedy, I sure hope he does…
November 24th, 2007 at 6:46 am
It is a really “desesperante” situation, one that would take all hope out of you… I agree with your point: Uribe was looking for a pretext to end the negotiation. Pity that Córdoba and Chávez were so naive to give a big one to him so quicky… Regards, Doppiafila
November 24th, 2007 at 11:26 am
Sad ineeed, especially for the hostages and their families. I agree that Uribe’s reaction was quite an exaggeration, possibly because he was already having second thoughts about the matter, but in any case Piedad Córdoba and Hugo Chávez should have been more careful and prudent in the first place, because at the very least they deserved to be reprimanded a fair bit. Not by terminating the entire process, however, which I do find regrettable and hope for its restart, though that is in turn quite uncertain at this point.
Kyle: How much of a blow that really was is hard to tell, considering that Marulanda had apparently already made that claim himself to explain his absence, which is what prompted Uribe’s reply, when he was essentially speaking before an audience of policemen, who would be expected to be urged to capture/kill Marulanda in the first place (however undiplomatic that still was in the midst of the talks).
Whether that means that Marulanda would be killed if he really took part in a meeting when and if Uribe himself eventually authorized one is still another matter, IMHO.
“Nosotros quisiéramos que la reunión que pueda tener ‘Manuel Marulanda’ sea la reunión con los fiscales y policías de la Patria; la reunión con las cortes de Justicia para que responda por 40 años de asesinato y de crimen.
Él manda razones. Y dice que no puede asistir a reuniones, que porque si sale de ese escondite le darían una matada. Pues intuye bien. Que no disimule. Él sabe que no tendrá que salir de ese escondite, que en algún momento allá llegará por él la Fuerza Pública a sacarlo y a presentarlo a los tribunales de la justicia y al pueblo, para que responda por 40 años de asesinatos en nuestra Patria colombiana.”
November 24th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
JCG: That is true, but Uribe should be smarter than to preach to the choir at a police meeting and not the overall importance of any comment on the agreement. I honestly do not think that Marulanda would be killed as well but that does not mean that Marulanda may take that as a way to deny any meeting with outside the jungle. If anything, it means that his desire for a despeje will be even stronger, probably with more restrictions that Uribe will definitely not agree with. It is not so much a matter of whether he will actually be killed but another reason to demand more out of the government. If anything Marulanda could always say that “Well, I didn’t come out of the jungle for this because Uribe said he’d submit me to justice, if not kill me.” It gives him another reason to deny action to move forward. The reality of it or not is another thing. The legitimacy of Marulanda’s claims is also another matter. Either way, it will have a distinct negative effect on the agreement.
Of course, takin out Chavez and Cordoba will have the worst, pending it is permanent.
November 24th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Mr Uribe should this, Mr Uribe should that. Mr Uribe is an individual who has been raised in a tough environment amongst armed dangerous people and hanky-panky ados. What can you expect from an individual that has shown his true colors well from the beginning of his constitutional mandate. Chavez has already spoken about having lost all trust in Mr Uribe. This is the end for the quest for a peaceful negotiation with the guerrillas. In a previous post I suggested Colombia was back to the pit, and no one seemed to believe, which is ok if one is fond of wishful thinking. But, reading Salomon Kalmanowitz today in the “El Espectador”, leaves no doubt Colombia is in deep in trouble, and no light at the end of the tunnel.
November 24th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Does anyone think that Sarko might be faking it when he urges Uribe to reconsider? How impressed could Sarkozy be by Chavez turning up in Paris without proof of life? Sarko’s not a clown-show type, he’s a serious man, he just crushed a leftist strike across the country when this was going on. Sarko knows shit from shinola.
It would have been one thing for Chavez to cancel the trip without proof of life or to humbly and honestly say he failed to get it when he met Sarko in Paris, but Chavez isn’t like that. Producing nothing for Sarko’s own eyes, Chavez kept insisting the guerrillas were telling the truth about the hostages being alive and “wanted” to believe them when they claimed the hostages were. He was selling snake oil and he knew it and Sarko knew it.
There’s a real possibility that the hostages aren’t alive with this action. I don’t understand the desperateness to believe. One of the American hostages, we know from an escaped hostage, has hepatitus. Maybe he died. Maybe they all died. FARC has had its cash stream cut and may not prioritize keeping its hostages alive, particularly when there are dupes like Hugo who will believe they are whether they are or not. That’s what proof of life is all about.
The French are real big on protocol and I thought the body language of most of the pictures signaled that Sarko had contempt for Chavez. Sarko refused to show up at Chavez’s press conference too, sending only a couple of insignificant underlings. Sarko made one request for Uribe to reconsider, and the Uribites veiled-ly reminded Sarko that they had a wonderful record of listening to the French as they did in the case of Granda. Then they said there would be no reconsideration of the issue. The French aren’t pushing it. It sounds to me like Sarko realizes he’s been taken for a ride, what does anyone else think?
November 24th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Kyle: Well yeah, I understand that his words can definitely be of use for FARC’s purposes, as you’ve explained. It may be too late to force him to change though, since many of his speeches seem to be a mix of pure emotion and conscious calculations of what his audience/electorate want to hear, which often provides political points internally but hurts the government diplomatically and in other ways.
Jaime Bustos: Maybe I’m not reading the same newspaper….Last I checked, Salomón Kalmanovitz is talking about the legalization of drugs in his recent column, after making a summary of the history and effects of the drug trade.
There’s no mention of Uribe or Chávez in it, and one has to make a leap in order to reach the conclusion that he’s saying there is no “light at the end of the tunnel”. He actually ends on a relatively positive note:
“Un gobierno demócrata en Estados Unidos estará abierto a cambios de política a favor de tratar el consumo de drogas como un problema de salud público y no criminal, aunque ningún político se atreve allá a sugerir la legalización. Pero desde acá abajo, donde nos ha hecho sufrir tanto, deben surgir las voces racionales que convenzan a la opinión mundial de que hay que cambiar de rumbo.”
Camilla: I believe none of us here are in any position to confirm whether any or all of the (”political”) hostages are dead or alive at this point. They could all be alive, they could all be dead, or split into different groups with different fates. We can speculate all day, but we have almost no data. In that case, being optimistic until proven otherwise is a valid option, just as valid as being pessimistic, for that matter.
As for the French government, perhaps its opinion of Chávez has changed for the worse, but I don’t think Sarkozy expected Uribe to terminate the negotiations so soon and so poorly. Having Chávez out of the picture, formally speaking, puts additional pressure on Sarkozy and Uribe, especially when the reason to do so isn’t good enough to convince many people.
November 24th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
I am sorry jfc, in the middle of my previous comment I digressed into another topic not directly related to Mr Uribe and Chavez’ last nefarious episode. But you’re right . my bad.
November 24th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
JCG: What would the FARC have to gain by witholding proof of life? It seems like a no brainer to give it. But Chavez is their hero, why would they want to make him look bad? They love Chavez and given Chavez’s drooly desire to cavort with Marulanda for pictures, in the same way he does with his other aging hero, Castro, it’s clear the feeling is mutual. The two of them love each other. Why would the FARC, then, not give Chavez something so elementary to the hostage release?
It’s possible they might have wanted to keep the phone lines open to Chavez for as long as possible so the two of them together could plot how to destabilize Colombia in all those long conversations and photo ops and cavort-fests supposedly about hostages I suppose. But it’s clear Chavez was humiliated in Paris. Maybe he didn’t think he would be humiliated in Sarko’s presence. Maybe he thought Sarko would easily buy the line of baloney he was selling them. But it would have been so much easier to have preserved the appearance of progress by handing over proof of life. I don’t understand why the FARC didn’t want to do that, they love Chavez and should want him to succeed.
November 24th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
The fact that they didn’t makes me think they are dead and there’s no point to preserving the farce of negotiations.
November 24th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Definitely there is a Colombian government shill “cavorting” around. And by the way, it’s no female
November 24th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Call me naive, but if Chavez is really plotting with Marulanda how to destabilize the Colombian government (unlikely, but possible) I guess he doesn’t need to meet directly with the guy, let alone with the world’s spotlight shining on him. Much better to have secret contacts.
November 24th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
I think the two feel the same way about things. It’s no secret that Chavez admires and looks up to Marulanda. He’s a revolutionary, he’s a ‘military’ man, he’s accomplished things, in Chavez’s view. Chavez goes wild in the presence of such men. Have you seen how he gets when he’s around Castro? It’s the same thing with Marulanda, whom he admires. With Fernando Araujo reporting from his FARC hostage experience that FARCsters would dance with glee whenever Chavez came on the radio, there’s little doubt that the feeling is mutual.
But the two probably aren’t in direct contact except through gobetweens. That’s why it’s likely that the FARC and Chavez want the negotiations to go on forever. How better to plot the destabilization of Colombia with Marulanda’s knowhow and Chavez’s money?
November 25th, 2007 at 2:48 am
I agree with Jaime Bustos that the theory of the “plot” isn’t worth taking seriously. I just thought it was nice to shoot fish in a barrel for a while. Now, moving on to more serious stuff:
Whether Uribe used the phone call as a pretext or not is rather immaterial. Either way his handling of the matter shows how unwilling he was to go along. For starters, I’m not a security expert but the requirement that Chavez could not talk to Army officials seems a bit unreasonable. Do you think that Uribe would object the same way if, say, Condolezza Rice had asked for the same? You’ll say that Uribe doesn’t trust Chavez the same way he would trust Rice but that’s exactly the point: he’s not willing to trust the mediator that, like it or not, could have access to the FARC. Second, like others have observed, even if this condition were reasonable it seems rash, not to mention impolite with the Venezuelan government, to pull the plug immediately from the mediation without even asking for an explanation first. Third, the government itself knows that the phone call incident was a flimsy base for such a step. Yesterday Restrepo was soft-pedaling this in the press conference shifting emphasis to what he saw as the main problem: that the FARC was using the process to obtain political advantages. Of course, it is unconscionable that the FARC drags its feet the way it does. Then again, it is unconscionable that it kidnaps in the first place. But just hectoring them is not going to change this fact. I think that Rangel, no friend of the FARC, nailed this one a long time ago (with regard to another impasse) when he pointed out that, unavoidably, the FARC will try to obtain political advantage from ANY conversation/negotiation/rapprochement/what-have-you with the government, especially if it involves an international scenario. If you can’t accept that, then you can’t accept peace talks, period. In any conflict, if you’re serious about peace-making, you have to accept that your opponent will try to score political points, just as you will do the same. Likewise, if you thump your chest from every rooftop, trumpeting the big package of foreign military aid coming from the US, it is a bit disingenuous to scream bloody murder because the FARC are trying to grow their own military apparatus (yes, this goes also for some in the Pastrana administration).
The FARC’s behavior is a disgrace, another link in a shameful chain of crimes and deceptions. But as much as we would like them to disappear, or at least to disarm, just hectoring them will not make it happen (and apparently bombing will not do either). No serious progress toward peace will be made under a government that becomes apoplectic at the very notion of a political process that brings the FARC from the cold.
November 25th, 2007 at 3:08 am
First of all, I don’t believe in hectoring FARC either, and neither does President Uribe. We believe in killing them. Strike to kill, not talk and negotiate for another 40 years. Directly confront the source of the pain. That belief is what got Uribe elected by a landslide that some leftists still can neither understand nor reconcile themselves to. It’s gotta be tough to be missing that big a piece of the puzzle.
Second, I don’t think Uribe was being unreasonable in calling off the talks. Chavez promised not to talk to Uribe’s generals and it was a reasonable request. (How would Chavez like it if Uribe was calling up Chavez’s generals? Hmm?) Chavez had no intention of keeping his promise and right there it was a red flag. Defying Uribe, Chavez got Montoya on the hooter, asked how many hostages were troops and thought he had opened a wedge to much deeper conniving. It was a silly piece of info he wanted, too, it could have easily been found on the Web or gotten from the PR office, so it was clear that this was about making contact to set the stage for acting behind Uribe’s back. Of course Chavez wants to get someone in the Colombian military to pressure Uribe to give FARC its Switzerland-sized (or well now, it’s New York-sized) land to regroup and plot more terror attacks. Uribe knows that that’s what they are up to because it happened once before. It’s one thing he can’t give. More than that, Chavez’s attempted contact was about finding out things the Colombian military knew to pass onto the FARC. In that regard, Chavez moved from mediator to agent of the terrroist group and was seeking to spy on Colombia’s military for FARC’s benefit. Uribe saw right through it, and was suitably alarmed enough to cut it all off at the knees. I think he was right to do it. If Chavez were serious, he’d have adhered to the ground rules instead of cavorting before cameras and doing FARC’s bidding. All he wanted was an opening to meddle and help for his pals in FARC. The whole thing was a failure because Chavez is not a disinterested party in this.
November 25th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Camilla:
If you actually want to “confront the source of the pain”, why don´t push for a land reform and end the war on drugs, the two main motivators of this conflict (sorry if the word offends you)? I am a leftists and I know perfectly the reasons why Uribe has won for a landslide. And I know the public has led to believe – by the guerrilla own actions and the way mass media presented them- that the only solution to the conflict is to “kill the bastards”. I also note that Uribe is a very skilfful populist politician, whose methods of being continually in compaign (say, the “consejos comunitarios”) grant hm the favor of the public of a polititian that is doing something for them (I guess it will require a more detailed and sophisticated analisis of mass pshychology, and the historical conditioning in Colombia, where people are educated to be subordinates of polititians and not citizens).
November 25th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Thanks Sergio. I honestly don’t think FARC would lay down its arms if there was some ‘land reform’ or drugs became free and legal. The organization is too vile and evil, it would fight no matter what.
Land reform, and there have been a lot of them throughout the whole history of Latin America, is just forcibly taking land away from one group of people and giving it to another. Innocent people will get ripped off because their investments and hard work will have made them ‘the rich’ and therefore attractive targets for ambitious politicians. That’s what’s happening in Venezuela and why milk has disappeared from store shelves – when you employ Zimbabwe methods, you get Zimbawe results. Second, one land reform achieves its ripoffs of the industrious, no investor will invest after that. Not only will earlier land owners be bitter, but the now-ripped-off land is not really secured by the system – a new politician will come along and reverse everything, so no reason to invest. This was the dynamic of the El Salvador civil war. It would be far better to strengthen property rights than ‘redistribute’ the fruits of industrious people’s hard work and give it to the less industrious.
But aside from that argument, the FARC will never be happy with land reform unless its cronies get the land, so right there, any land reform would be an unearned giveaway to FARC, a reward for its murders, which is what it wants. Otherwise it will keep fighting. There’s no other way to get rid of the FARC than to just kill it. Anyone who wants out of that lifestyle and hasn’t committed physical crimes should be allowed a way out, but that offer is already in place and none of the FARCs want to take it up, so killing them is all that is left.
The drug war is another argument, but I do not think legalizing drugs will work either. Anyone who gets addicted to drugs loses his free will and must have those drugs regardless of his income or knowledge that the drugs are not good for him. The nature of addiction is so bad that it makes zombies out of people and crime continues because a junkie always needs a fix then they become taxpayers’ expensive problem and their lives are ruined anyway. Nobody ever saw their life diminished by not having access to drugs. I understand the libertarian argument in favor of it, but I think it is too simplistic, and does not take into account human nature. I would rather the drug war continue until victory.
As for Uribe’s popularity, surely someone who goes to little villages and listens to people’s problems is better than Hugo Chavez, who just preaches to TV listeners for hours on end and takes only a couple of carefully screened calls from political operatives. I think he’s popular because people know he really goes all out for them, even though it exhausts him and he should take a vacation. It must make them feel wonderful to feel so connected to their president. I’ve seen the pictures in the paper of people jostling and fighting to get a glimpse of him. It’s because he’s so genuinely wonderful, not because they are brainwashed. I don’t understand why he is viewed so negatively by the left, he really cares about people and goes all out for them. He makes them feel connected to government, which had never cared about them in the past. Sure, it’s populistic, but he’s not dividing people against each other, as other populists do, he’s uniting them in a great common enterprise. What do you think?
November 25th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Here’s Uribe’s version of events, it makes sense to me:
http://web.presidencia.gov.co/sp/2007/noviembre/25/03252007.html
November 25th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Those who still stoop down to addressing the shill: “You can’t talk to a man, with a shotgun in his hand” — Carol King .
November 25th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Camilla:
About land reform.
You say land reform “is just forcibly taking land away from one group of people and giving it to another.”. Well, isnt that exactly what has happened in Colombia where millions of persons were murdered or terrorized to leave their propeties in rural areas so latifundists and paramilitaries coul have their land? Actually, I demand land reform because ALL the properties stolen in the last 50 years (3 million of persons in the last 15 years) MUST be returned. They are the ones who are innocent people whose land was stolen, not the poor latifundists and large land owners in Colombia, a country withe the largest inquelity in the distribution of land in the world.
Now, I do not expect that land reform will make the guerrillas quit fighting the war, But certainly it will destroy their social raison d´être, specially in zones where the military pressure has proven not to be enought to defeat the guerrillas (like La Uribe, one of the places where the FARC where born).
The same happens with the war against drugs. The war against drugs is what turns the buisness into a criminal enterprise, exactly as selling alchohol was a criminal enterprise during the prohibition in the US. End the war on drugs and you destroy the mafia (since it is not necesary anymore). And you destroy the mafia you destroy the people who benefit from it (namely, the guerrillas in this case). But the war on drugs must be ended simply because it is a violation on people civil rights: the goverment has no right and no buisness telling people if they use or not drugs, if they produce em and commercialize them. Period.
November 25th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
Camilla:
And concerning Uribe´s popularity:
1- I don´t think Uribe goes to “hear” about the problems of the people in villages and rural areas, I think Uribe goes there to look likes he cares, but more importantly to COMMAND people, from local civil servants and authorities, what to do. Concerning your other argument it is silly. Just because people love Uribe and “fight to get a glimpse” of him that hardly makes him a good or a decent politician (Godwin may root in hell, but that wasn´t the case with Hitler too?)
November 25th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Camilla,
In case you were wondering, i believe this is what Sergio was talking about in comment 21 above.
Sergio, please correct me if I’m wrong.
November 25th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Thanks Randy, a very interesting article explaining a terrible happening. It explains why most FARC soldiers are poor illiterate farmers. But what is happening to them looks more like individual crime to me and maybe coercive state ‘land reform’ (which will turn the place into Zimbabwe) isn’t the answer. Crime is easily corrected with law enforcement, you don’t need to confiscate all land including the land of innocent people indiscriminately. But the article is nearly four years old and in it the government insisted it was trying to do something about this crime. Given that this is Uribe’s government, would they have sat on their hands and done nothing in those four years? They haven’t sat on their hands on anything else, they’ve improved the governance and security situation significant and disarmed 40,000 paramilitaries in those four years. I wonder if the fact that the FARC is unable to get recruits and losing cash income from drugs and losing battles might have something to do with Uribe improving this root cause of the problem?
November 25th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
Chavez made his ’spit’ speech here:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i3-gy-m2ViT4af14BjcC-rOHaWrgD8T504300
Uribe has replied, blasting Chavez as wanting to take over the continent and warning that Colombia will never be conquered:
http://web.presidencia.gov.co/sp/2007/noviembre/25/08252007.html
Just out.
November 25th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
I’m in favor of ending the war on drugs and of implementing land reform, together with finding an essential political solution to the conflict.
But I don’t believe that FARC has the right to unilaterally demand and extort “results” out of the government, without making serious moves towards peace first. Both parties have to make sacrifices, not just one.
Also, does anyone expect the government, any government, to succeed at land reform while FARC is still fully operational and unrepentant? Show me how a land reform would work under those conditions, when that scenario would pretty much give rise to more paramilitarism instead.
In short, I believe a land reform is not going to be viable if you still have people shooting at each other in the countryside every day, the guerrillas included.
A post-war government would be in a much better position to even try any serious amount of land reform, IMHO, than one in the middle of war. That’s the trap I see in the so-called “peace with social justice” slogan. It creates conditions and demands that are almost impossible to fulfill while war goes on.
Returning to the subject at hand…it seems that Chavez and Uribe lost it today. Both of them have tossed aside their brains and are currently stroking their own egos, with terrible results for most of us caught somewhere in the middle.
November 25th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Given that this is Uribe’s government, would they have sat on their hands and done nothing in those four years?
There’s a more direct question you should be asking: did the people in the story get their land returned to them? if so, when? If not, why not?
It certainly appears that they haven’t been doing much as in March of last year, the International Crisis Group made the following recommendation:
jcg,
While I acknowledge your position with regard to land reform in the middle of war and believe your larger point, the government shouldn’t be effectively acquiescing in the AUC land seizures and should demand some firm dates for the return of the land. I have yet to see that they have done so.
BTW, I agree with 100% of your last paragraph.
November 26th, 2007 at 5:16 am
JCg
First at all, land reform should not be seen as a consetion to the FARC. I do not think land reform is part of a peace process with the FARC. I think land reform is a question of elementary justice and of enforcing property rights (you know, the property rights of the millions of peasants whose land was stolen by paramilitaries and landlords by gun point). I incidently think that a land reform will have a secondary effect: it will weaken the FARC social base, thus making its defeat more likely. So that is another good reason to make a land reform, even in the middle of the war (the real reason is the same reason Uribe use to have his policies of “democratic security”…to defend the rights of citizens. This time it happens that the citizens are poor peasants and not rich landlords and the local oligarchies)
November 26th, 2007 at 8:04 am
Some quick thoughts in no particular order:
1. Most but not all of the known hostages/kidnapees are alive. Life in the jungle is not easy under the best of circumstances and it’s clearly much tougher with the FARC keeping you in chains, as the young cop who escaped after nine years, related. Disease and depression out in the boonies will take their toll, as will the occasional escape attempt or shootout with Army patrols. Still, I’d guess most of the hostages are alive.
2. Something’s happening with Uribe. He’s shriller, more reflexive, more rigid and harder in his positions, and less presidential (read: more dictatorial) than he was at the beginning of his tenure. I have no idea as to whether this is all careful political calculation or simply symptoms of age, frustration, fatigue, and general burnout, or perhaps a combo of all of these factors. Still, it’s clear that Uribe shows much less patience and forebearance with any and all who oppose him these days.
3. Uribe’s hardening stances and lack of patience notwithstanding, he’s still quite popular with the electorate. In general, Colombia is a politically and socially conservative country which is heartily tired of the FARC and its shenanigans, and Uribe, as Colombia’s leader, expresses that conservatism and loathing of the FARC. While I do not agree with idea of a third term for Uribe as President – I think it’s bad for democracy as a concept – Colombia could very well keep this guy on as Prez because there doesn’t seem to be anyone as tough and willing to do the job (especially in combatting the FARC) as Uribe.
4. I agree with Adam’s posting and comments above: It’s tragic that the best chance in years of getting some FARC action has ended. FARC treachery and intransgience, Chavez and Cordoba blunders, Uribe’s undercutting the process – there’s certainly enough blame to go around.
The question now, though, is what, if anything, might be done to try (and try, and try…) again to get the negotiation process started again? Ackknowledging that the Colombian actors in all of this are recalcitrant and uncooperative to say the least, I think Sarkozy made a valiant and valuable attempt. Maybe he could try and again, and perhaps the next time, instead of an impetuous Chavez, Sarkozy might try to bring someone else in to work with FARC, such as Argentina’s President-elect, or Chile’s Bachelet. The thing is, people shouldn’t give up trying to get the surviving hostages out…..
November 26th, 2007 at 10:47 am
Randy Paul: The government could indeed do more. But as far as setting firm dates goes, it seems to be that the government expected the paramilitaries to voluntarily give some of their land up as part of the J&P process, without setting any such dates.
The problem is that the entire J&P process is horribly slow and full of improvisation. Plus it’s natural that the paramilitaries themselves will at best only want to return a minimal fraction of land, as long as they can get away with it, which is what is currently going on.
The government failed to create the necessary mechanisms to properly make and enforce such demands, probably willingly in part but also due to genuine incompetence and inherent corruption as well.
Btw, like Jan Egeland told SEMANA this week, it was probably a mistake for the UN to turn down the government’s offer of participating in the AUC process, supposedly because they wanted to keep the door open for a future FARC negotiation (which didn’t need to be mutually exclusive, I’d say, rhetoric aside).
Sergio Méndez: “First at all, land reform should not be seen as a consetion to the FARC. I do not think land reform is part of a peace process with the FARC.”
It’s not a matter of being “seen” as a concession by me or anyone else in particular, but rather of its being demanded and presented as such during the talks themselves. In addition…
“I think land reform is a question of elementary justice and of enforcing property rights (you know, the property rights of the millions of peasants whose land was stolen by paramilitaries and landlords by gun point). ”
That is quite true in principle, but the problems I see lie mostly with the practical application of said principle, not with its theory or its morality.
“I incidently think that a land reform will have a secondary effect: it will weaken the FARC social base, thus making its defeat more likely. So that is another good reason to make a land reform, even in the middle of the war (the real reason is the same reason Uribe use to have his policies of “democratic security”…to defend the rights of citizens. This time it happens that the citizens are poor peasants and not rich landlords and the local oligarchies)”
A couple of details aside, I have no problem with this, in principle, but I still don’t think you can realistically make too much progress towards land reform in the middle of war.
Some progress, yes, far more than what little we’ve seen and that much should indeed be attempted. But not most of what is necessary to truly change the structure of land ownership. So I think that secondary effect you point out would continue to be limited in scope, as a consequence.
Tambopaxi :
1. That’s what I personally believe too, but I’m willing to contemplate that more of them could be dead/alive/diseased than one can initially imagine. We really don’t know much.
2. I’d use the word authoritarian rather than dictatorial (none of which is a compliment) but I essentially agree.
3. That possibility is still, sadly, available. On the other hand, even his own supporters still have political ambitions of their own and many aren’t solidly behind a third election.
4. I honestly hope you are right and something like that can be done, but there’s really nobody else who received the same kind of respect that FARC still has for Chávez.
November 26th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Sarkozy’s motives in freeing Ingrid at any price are venal. His chief political rival, Dominique de Villepin, had been sleeping with her. He and the Chirac administration had been unable to free her. Sarko wanted to show them up by freeing them himself. He’s also under some political pressure domestically, but what’s going on in France is basically a political parlor game in high circles. Problem is, the safety and security of Colombia are at stake and Sarko has shown a reckless disregard for that. Uribe must be kicking himself to have fallen for such a political game from what he imagined was a natural ally.
I don’t think Ingrid is alive, either. FARC’s been killing hostages lately, like those 11 lawmakers. It has a vested interest in never seeing any of them ever rescued. If they are, FARC loses its extended power through fear. And it will never be a political force, not after the kinds of crimes it’s committed. It saw what happened to the IRA in Ireland when it came out of the figurative jungle and into the political arena – voters had little use for them. FARC also knows that victims’ families will always want to believe they are alive, so that wishful thinking effectively keeps them alive for the only reason they need to be alive, to keep the government they are at war with under pressure for a deal.
November 26th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Camilla, your basis for your argument that Ingrid is dead is that “[the FARC’s been killing hostages lately” which again is a weak argument, putting it nicely. The best we can do is speculate. To say that Ingrid is dead because the FARC has been killing hostages lately, which you have no proof is a consistent practice is a joke. Yes they did kill the 11 hostages, but note the flack that they took for it. I can say with confidence that the FARC isn’t off in the jungle going, “So who should we kill today?”
November 26th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
I’m already past the age when I thought I could convince people like Camilla of changing their world view. So I haven’t tried and am not about to start now. My point is very simple: all the evidence we have seen thus far suggests that, six years into his all-out effort, Uribe has not and will not be able to erase the FARC from the face of the earth. He might dent their military capabilities, perhaps even big time. But absolute surrender? Ain’t gonna happen. Since this is so, sooner or later Uribe or his successor (if he has any plans of allowing such a thing) will have to talk to the FARC. It then stands to reason that, the sooner the better and, sorry to break it to you, Camilla, but the talks, whenever and wherever they happen, will have to provide a political bridge to bring the FARC back from the cold. This means, the FARC will try to make political gains out of them. We shouldn’t pull our hairs over that, that’s exactly what peace processes are for. The alternative is to keep the war going with no end in sight, burdening the economy, disrupting lives and institutions based on the illusive goal of ridding the country of the very last FARC militant.
November 26th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
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