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Chávez upbraiding the FARC on Venezuelan TV yesterday.
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“Uribe has made a winning bet,” the Colombian newsmagazine Semana wrote last August, days after Colombian President Ãlvaro Uribe gave Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez the green light to mediate hostage-for-prisoner-exchange talks with the FARC guerrillas.
He delegates to Chávez the biggest headache of his second term [the hostage crisis]. If things go well for Chávez, the Colombian government will get credit for having sought the right facilitator. If they go poorly, the government doesn’t lose because it will confirm its position that the FARC are the real obstacle to an exchange.
Perhaps President Uribe truly expected that the FARC’s excruciatingly slow, stubborn approach to negotiations would frustrate even Hugo Chávez, thus strengthening his government’s harder line on talks (”If even Hugo Chávez can’t talk to them…”).
If so, it has certainly taken a long time for Chávez to show any signs of frustration. But he certainly did on Sunday. More than five weeks after publicly announcing that he would be playing a more active role in mediating hostage-for-prisoner talks with the FARC, Chávez had this to say yesterday on his weekly television address.
I believe that the time has come for the FARC to release all the people it has up in the mountains unconditionally. It would be a great humanitarian gesture. … Guerrilla wars have become history in Latin America. … This far along in Latin America, an armed guerrilla movement is out of step, and that has to be said to the FARC. … The FARC should know this: you have become an excuse, a justification for the Empire to threaten all of us. You are the perfect excuse.
These are not the words of a facilitator who believes that his efforts are bearing fruit. For a variety of reasons – chief among them the flap over the emails on Raúl Reyes’ computers – Hugo Chávez’s mediating role, for now at least, is diminished.
This is not good news, because Chávez was one of the leading candidates in the search for an interlocutor who could help win freedom for the guerrillas’ hostages. And now, because of evidence on the recovered computers allegedly indicating that they were too close to the FARC, many of the most frequently mentioned possible mediators – Ãlvaro Leyva, Carlos Lozano, Piedad Córdoba and others – are facing the preliminary phase of a criminal investigation.
With targeted efforts against top guerrilla leaders and generous treatment for rank-and-file deserters, the Colombian government is effectively closing off the FARC’s military options. At the same time, though, it is closing off the guerrillas’ options for a political solution as well.
Would-be facilitators are being warned off. The paramilitary leaders’ mass extradition sent a message to guerrilla leaders that the “Justice and Peace” law will not protect them if they desert. A (probably growing) faction in the Uribe government is clearly convinced that a military victory is at hand – that the war is in the home stretch. They contend that any negotiation now would break the momentum, giving the guerrillas an undeserved pause and a chance to negotiate more than just surrender terms.
For this faction, anyone promoting negotiations – even to free the hostages – is simply in the way. And the hostages – seven civilians, thirty-three military and police, and untold hundreds held for ransom – are as far as ever from freedom.
But there’s more. In the current mood, there is increasing reason to be concerned that a military rescue attempt could be in the works. Today, Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos revealed that Colombian soldiers recently saw the three U.S. citizen hostages bathing in a river in Guaviare. As military operations continue in Guaviare and Vaupés, where hostages are believed to be held, and as the Defense Ministry plans “humanitarian cordons” around sites where captives might be, today’s message was clear: “we know where the hostages are and we may be preparing to act.”
It is still a very long way from knowing the hostages’ whereabouts to carrying out a successful military rescue. Past attempts to rescue the FARC’s “exchange” hostages, breaking past rings of security in thick jungle, have failed horribly as FARC guards acted on orders to cold-bloodedly kill their charges at the first sign of a rescue attempt.
Something is about to break with the hostage situation. Let’s hope that the next shoe to drop is not a rash military rescue, based on an overconfident assessment that, with the FARC on the ropes, the outcome will be different this time.
Instead, let’s hope that freed hostage Luis Eladio Pérez was basing himself on solid information today when he said that “the country will soon hear the news” that the FARC are to release four more hostages unilaterally, including the son of “peace walker” Gustavo Moncayo.
In the very least, let’s hope that President Chávez’s advice might affect the FARC’s thinking, emboldening guerrilla moderates and setting much of the group on the long path toward civilization. If it does, the Colombian government should not view as obstacles or criminals those who would use their guerrilla contacts to prod them on this path.
June 9th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
1. Revocatoria del Congreso a través de un referendo de origen popular, fundamentada porque este fue elegido mediante una democracia de mercado que favorece las empresas polÃticas clientelistas, la compra de votos y conciencias y la financiación de las campañas electorales por los grandes grupos económicos, el narcotráfico y los grupos de poder armados.
2. El Referendo Popular debe convocar la elección de un Nuevo Congreso sobre la base de nuevas reglas del juego que consagren la democracia real, entre las que se incluye una reforma al sistema electoral que establezca la asignación de curules por el método de cifra repartidora, que obtenida utilizando la sucesión de números naturales, permita repartir todas las curules por el mismo número de votos en la misma circunscripción.
3. Se requiere reestructurar la Organización Electoral de cuyo funcionamiento justo y transparente depende la legitimidad de la democracia electoral. Por eso, modificaremos el método de elección de los 9 miembros del Consejo Nacional Electoral, de tal manera que sea realizada por una de las Cortes de la rama Jurisdiccional o en su defecto por el Congreso relegitimado. De cualquier manera esa elección deberá recaer en representantes de los 9 partidos o movimientos que hayan obtenido la mayor votación bajo el nuevo régimen electoral.
4. Propondremos al Nuevo Congreso una reforma constitucional que establezca una nueva justicia, universal, expedita, independiente, transparente y justa. Propondremos recurrir al constituyente primario para desde allà derivar la elección legÃtima de los principales órganos de la justicia, sin compromisos y lealtades con los electores en el Parlamento, como sucede en la actualidad.
5. La descentralización polÃtica, fiscal y administrativa debe consolidarse, creando capacidad en las regiones de definir de forma autónoma las principales estrategias de desarrollo, aprovechamiento y uso sostenible de sus recursos, y las principales decisiones tributarias y de gasto.
6. Eliminación autónoma nacional de la producción y tráfico de narcóticos. La lucha por eliminar el narcotráfico en Colombia será una decisión prioritaria, irreversible, autónoma y soberana del gobierno y la sociedad colombiana.
7. La consolidación la economÃa, se desarrollará mediante dos subprogramas: Programa Nacional de Agricultura Productiva y El Programa Nacional de Cultura Productiva.
8. Convocatoria a la Asamblea Nacional Constituyente de la Colombia Nueva. Este evento fundacional social debe ser el resultado final de las negociaciones de paz que el gobierno, encabezado por Ingrid Betancourt Pulecio, realizará con los movimientos insurgentes.
9. Plan Colombia y negociación para la paz. Haremos los cambios necesarios al funcionamiento del Plan Colombia para asegurar que sea un programa de promoción y no sólo de combate. Será urgente complementarlo con gestiones diplomáticas para la promoción de nuestras exportaciones y de nuestra producción nacional. Finalmente, en términos de la paz en Colombia, nos comprometemos con la negociación y una paz justa. La violencia sólo trae violencia, pero la negociación improvisada y desde la debilidad tampoco da resultados.
Ingrid Betancourt’s plan for modernizing Colombia and ridding it of the political jackals (the same families over and over again) that have mismanaged it and have now made it beholden to a foreign power
you’ll notice how her first step involved dissolving Congress and calling for a national referendum to figure out how to put in effect true democracy….even now after what? 40% of the Colombian Congress is under investigation or in jail for ties to death squads they refuse to get rid of their corrupt Congress
this is why there is no true interest in freeing the hostages on the part of the government… remember how they killed the guy who was at the head of this process a few months ago, aided and abetted by the Bush gangsters
June 9th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
It is indeed frustration that Chavez has with these psicological game. He no longer has the consideration of the FARC since he has become part of a propaganda scheme led by the hidden hand of the US. As the corruption investigation was closing in on narco president Uribe, the media sudenly chose to create a new media theme. The freedom of the hostages. How about the political prisoners rotting in the infamous Colombian jails?
June 10th, 2008 at 10:24 am
I feel like I’m reading something surreal from Adam this time. So many premises are wrong, here.
The one that leapt out at me was: ‘FARC computer flap’. FLAP??????? Did you really say ‘flap’? How could you use words so trivially? Like it was this little $300 million plus oil earnings gaffe?
There was a live conspiracy between a sovereign state and a group of cutthroat drug-dealing communists to bankroll a bid to overthrow an authentic democracy in the hemisphere! This isn’t a flap that will go away like some nonsense with a White House press secretary or errant congressman, this is a real problem that needs to be resolved. Hugo Chavez was trying to overthrow the government of Colombia. Nothing can move forward till that is resolved.
Adam, meanwhile, hasn’t been reading the news about Piedad Cordoba – her deep involvement with a sovereign leader seeking to overthrow her elected president, and her strategic talk to FARC to not release Ingrid Betancourt, a two-faced double-dealing that is downright scary. This is someone with some big moral flaws here and a willingness to commit treason. Yeah, let her explain it all in the dock.
There’s even more I don’t agree with but will have more time later.
June 10th, 2008 at 11:28 am
The FARC are on the brink… the writing is on the wall. I know that they have overcome past obstabcles, but the current FARC crisis seems insurmountable. So many critical elements are ligning up against the group. So I say that now more than ever is the time to act in a concertive, decisive manner.
I don’t agree with Adam at this point… his approach would almost certainly give the FARC hardliners the breathing room they need now… I mean to say that now we should hold talks and reach some type of negotiated settlement, perhaps hand over Florida and some other areas as demilitarized zones… I don’t see the wisdom in that.
I am not saying that your promoting negotiations is in the way… I just don’t see the logic in any such approache at this time given their repeated past failure. This same realization led to the current Uribe approach a couple of years ago after the Pastrana debacle…and I think it has worked.
Credit has to be given where credit is due… Uribe, whether or not you agreed with his approach, changed the dynamics on the ground. And at this juncture, he’s seems poised to write the concluding chapter in a Colombian story wrought with guerrila warfare, narco king pins and so much violence.
June 10th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Chris I certainly agree with much of what you say but in the last paragraph you mention that at this juncture Uribe is writing the last chapter of .. narco king pins …” and that is a blatant misinterpretation from your side, being Uribe himself one of the narco king pins in the Colombian chessboard.
As for guerrilla being almost over, I would rather describe it as having suffered an efficacious undermining of its basis. Not likely to be over while memories of extermination and holocaust survive in peasant’s minds.
June 10th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Chris, the writing has been on the wall for the FARC for a long time now. Politically, the decline began 15 to 20 years ago, when their “fundraising” caused them to act predatorily on the very population whose support they needed. Militarily, the end began in 2000-2001 – yes, under Pastrana, during the last peace process – when the Colombian Army figured out how to prevent them from carrying out the sort of large-scale military offensives (Patascoy, Las Delicias, El Billar, Mitú, Miraflores etc.) that characterized their “high water mark” of the late 1990s. And today they are being brought down mainly by low-cost measures like encouraging desertion and paying for information about leaders’ whereabouts.
The FARC will continue to decline, for the very reasons that Hugo Chávez brought up on Sunday. But the distance between decline and fall, your “concluding chapter,” will probably be measured in years – several years, and thousands of needlessly lost lives. The FARC’s death spiral could be very slow, bloody and costly.
That’s why it doesn’t make sense to close the door on the possibility of a political exit that could bring things to a speedier close. Yet you can hear the doors slamming in Colombia right now.
Also: one frequently hears the argument that the FARC will somehow get “breathing room” while dialogues occur. But any eventual talks on a humanitarian exchange would occur in a context of continuing hostilities. There would be no national cease-fire. The Colombian government will still have a free hand to continue dealing strong blows to the guerrilla leadership.
Camilla, as this blog has stated before, the FARC documents do indicate that something awful may have been going on. But the FARC leaders’ communications do not make clear, beyond a reasonable doubt, whether weapons or money were actually delivered, and at what level the Chávez government was approving of such a handover.
The notion of a country underwriting the violent overthrow of a neighbor is dead serious. That’s why the evidence needs to be strong. But apparently Colombia and the United States have calculated that the evidence is not strong enough yet to allow formal action, like going to the OAS or UN Security Council (even if they lose, the argument that this is a “breach of the peace” would require that Colombia at least make the effort), or putting Venezuela on the State Department’s state sponsors of terrorism list.
For now, the chosen strategy has been to embarrass and isolate Venezuela politically – a strategy that is proving effective. But if that is all that is going to come out of the Reyes files, then I feel perfectly comfortable with the word “flap.” (Flap, flap, flap.)
June 12th, 2008 at 1:44 am
Adam: We would have to agree to disagree on this. I don’t see this as a case that demands an ACLU courtroom standard of proof and permits any little technicality let Chavez get off ‘guilty as hell, free as a bird.’ I think you take a far too legalistic approach to this and think it better to let Hugo Chavez suffer no ill consequences if you can’t get him to admit himself that he supported FARC. Hugo isn’t that dumb.
“Not proven” is not the same as “not guilty” and European courts often make this distinction. You can’t pretend Hugo is an angel with only the purest intentions and the slate is blank and he needs to be given the benefit of the doubt on all things with what is pointing to him in the FARC computer. You can’t dismiss it as nothing and carry on like nothing ever happened just because it isn’t enough proof for a courtroom.
I don’t think nations need that kind of proof to know what is going on, and in any case, Hugo Chavez isn’t going to be a cooperative witness in this. The fact is, he has the intent and means to overthrow the Colombian government and what is significan to me is that FARC computer reveals way more than Chavez or Reyes ever thought would come out. Nations have to make decisions based on imperfect data and intelligence. Otherwise, they would get eaten alive.
A flap this is not. It’s dead serious evidence.