HATE AND WAR

Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe last year called on the international community not to be taken in by “the crocodile tears of human rights frauds” and instead that international observers “come and see what is really happening” in his country. The self-declared “man of the right”, whose father was killed by FARC in a bungled 1983 kidnapping attempt, insists his nation’s 45-year civil war is winding down. The reality, however, is that he has simply pushed the conflict out of the major cities and into the countryside, where rural populations are now being terrorised by right-wing paramilitaries and new illegal armed groups, or “NIAGs” as they have come to be known.
Some 1,492 civilians were killed in the fighting between August 2007 and July 2008, while 380,000 more were forced to flee their homes last year to escape the ongoing hostilities. And although las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, to use their full name, have suffered a series of setbacks, including mass desertions and the capture of mid-level cadres, their organisation is nowhere near being defeated.
The Uribe administration has been condemned by human rights groups for the strategy it has employed to undermine the Marxist guerillas. Right-wing paramilitaries, who are responsible for the vast majority of Colombia’s human rights abuses, have been granted de-facto impunity through the Orwellian “Justice and Peace Law”, while fresh reports of atrocities committed by the security forces continue to abound.
Dozens of politicians from the pro-government coalition are meanwhile being investigated for their links to paramilitaries and NIAGs, which are taking over cocaine production as they spread over much of northern, south-western and eastern Colombia. And with 16,410 homicides recorded in 2008, it is wildly premature to declare Colombia’s problems are nearing resolution.
Against this troubling backdrop, FARC’s new leader Alonso Cano, who took over when founder Manuel Marulanda died of natural causes last year at the age of 80, has been focussing on “Operation Rebirth”, his plan to breathe new life into the brutal insurgency.
To understand the quagmire in which Colombia now finds itself, one must go back to the late 1990s when Plan Colombia, the multi-billion-dollar US aid package for the country, was drawn up.
At the time, the government of Andres Pastrana was facing a tough decision - either negotiate with FARC and go to war with the paramilitaries and drug cartels, or go to war with FARC and seek a détente with the other belligerent parties. At the start of his tenure Pastrana was leaning towards the first option, as became clear when he opened negotiations with the guerrillas, and the original version of Plan Colombia, which was designed in the Latin American country, reflected this. It was argued that FARC, despite its brutality, was at least based on a social justice doctrine and would therefore be more suited to a power-sharing agreement.
The United States, along with Colombia’s regional elites, was horrified by the prospect of a Marxist organisation attaining real influence in state affairs, however, and a new version of the plan, which would include a military offensive against FARC and concessions for the right-wing militias, was quickly drawn up.
When Uribe came to power in 2002, he stepped up the army’s assaults on FARC and determined that the insurgency would only be negotiated with once it had been brought to its knees. After seven years of sustained military pressure, “la guerilla” has indeed been forced to concede large areas of territory, while many thousands of its fighters have opted to take advantage of the DDR (Disarmament, Demobilsation and Reintegration) programmes which offer them the chance to return to civilian life. FARC’s membership is believed to have dropped from approximately 19,000 when it was at the height of its powers in early 2002, to a little over half that figure today.
Under the “Rebirth” plan, it has withdrawn from direct confrontations and is focussing on the deployment of snipers and anti-personnel mines, however. Smaller teams employing hit-and-run tactics have proved effective in keeping State forces occupied and thereby drawing them away from key strongholds and important drug trafficking routes, while cocaine production laboratories have been moved to locations high in the mountains, where thick forest and cloud cover make surveillance and attack all but impossible. In an effort to recover political credibility, the rebels have also carried out a series of unilateral hostage releases, and with annual revenues of between $600 million and $1 billion from the narcotics trade, it is safe to say they are not running short of economic resources.
Colombia’s army, under pressure from the government to demonstrate success in its campaign against the guerillas, has meanwhile taken to killing civilians and dressing their bodies in combat fatigues so they can be claimed as enemy casualties. Thus far, the most high-profile incident in the ongoing “false postives” scandal has been the murder of 11 young men from the Bogotá suburb of Soacha who were slaughtered early last year. Twenty-four army officers, including three generals, were subsequently dismissed over the massacre, before Army chief Mario Montoya also stepped down in a bid to quell the ensuing national outrage. The United Nations complains the Soacha incident was just the tip of the iceberg, however, and that extrajudicial killings continue on a day-to-day basis.
The International Crisis Group, a Brussels think-tank, reports that 1,100 “false positives” were recorded between 2002 and 2007, with the Attorney General investigating well over 1,000 members of the security forces for their alleged involvement.
And an uncontrolled military is not the only sector of the State apparatus that has attracted the judiciary’s attention. Since 2005 the “parapolitica” controversy has seen 80 members of Colombia’s Congress, almost all of them members of the pro-government coalition, face investigation for their alleged links to paramilitary organisations.
Political analyst Margarita de la Torre, of the Ortega y Gasset Foundation, affirms that paramilitaries, through a combination of blackmail and bribery, have achieved “total” control of Colombia’s political life: “The paramilitaries are now into everything, not just politics, but also macroeconomic policy, the government’s choices of diplomats… they are making changes to the constitution, designing new laws, they are creating new prerogatives for those who deal with them… the paramilitaries and the government have become one.”
In this context, it is perhaps unsurprising that new illegal armed groups, more often than not composed of former paramilitaries, have sprung up all over the country. The NIAGs have already shown they will not tolerate criticism from foreign quarters any more than they do from the people who live in areas they control: the embassies of Canada, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain and Norway have all received threats from a right-wing militia called the Black Eagles, mostly in response to their involvement in promoting human rights.
With Uribe making moves to change the constitution, in order to allow himself a third term as President, the drug cartels and right-wing death squads currently resting easy in the mountains and jungles of Colombia need not worry about being brought to justice any time soon.
Asked if there is any way out of this bloody predicament, De La Torre explains that “an end to the war is not in the interests of a number of very powerful blocs… it offers an excuse for the US to place seven military bases in the region, which in turn provides an excuse to bring other Latin American countries together… it offers visibility to (Venezuelan President) Chavez and (Ecuadorian President) Correa, and it gives Uribe an excuse to say he doesn’t need just eight, but 12 years in power... Uribe doesn’t want the war to end”.
Should the politician succeed in winning a third term in next May’s elections - and it looks likely that he will - a streamlined and more focused FARC is likely to be ready for him. The NIAGs and paramilitaries will meanwhile breathe a sigh of relief, just as countless thousands of normal rural families brace themselves for the next phase in a war that looks set to continue far into the future.