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Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Peoples Army (FARC-EP)
The Cost of Unilateral Humanitarian Initiatives
By James Petras
16/03/08 "ICH" -- - President Uribe’s troop and missile assault,
violating Ecuadorian sovereignty came very close to
precipitating a regional war with Ecuador and Venezuela. During
an interview I had with President Chavez, at the time of this
bellicose act, he confirmed to me the gravity of Uribe’s
doctrine of ‘preventive war’ and ‘extra-territorial
intervention’, calling the Colombian regime the ‘Israel of Latin
America’. Earlier, during his Sunday radio program ‘Alo
Presidente’, in which I was an invited guest, he followed up
with an announcement that he was sending ground, air and sea
forces to the Venezuelan frontier with Colombia.
Uribe’s cross-border attack was meant to probe the political
‘will’ of Ecuador and Venezuela to respond to military
aggression, as well as to test the performance of US-coordinated
remote, satellite directed missile attack. There is no doubt
also that Uribe aimed to scuttle the imminent humanitarian
release of FARC prisoner, Ingrid Betancourt, being negotiated by
the French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, Ecuador’s
Interior Minister Larrea, the Colombian Red Cross and especially
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Kouchner, Larrea and Chavez
were in direct contact with FARC’s leader, Raul Reyes who, along
with 22 others, including non-combatants of various
nationalities, were assassinated in Ecuador by Uribe’s
American-coordinated missile and ground attack. Uribe’s military
intervention was in part directed at denying the important
diplomatic role, which Chavez was playing in the release FARC-held
prisoners, in contrast to the failure of Uribe’s military
efforts to ‘free the prisoners’.
Raul Reyes was recognized as the legitimate interlocutor in
these negotiations by both European and Latin American
governments, as well as the Red Cross; if the negotiations
succeeded in the prisoner release it was likely that the same
governments and humanitarian bodies would pressure Uribe to open
comprehensive prisoner exchange and peace negotiations with the
FARC, which was contrary to Bush and Uribes’ policy of
unrelenting warfare, political assassinations and scorched earth
policies.
What was at stake in Uribe’s violating Ecuadorian sovereignty
and murdering 22 FARC guerrillas and Mexican visitors was
nothing less than the entire military counter-insurgency
strategy, which has been pursued by Uribe since coming to office
in 2002.
Uribe was clearly willing to risk what eventually happened – the
censure and sanction of the Organization of American States and
the (temporary) break in relations with Venezuela, Ecuador and
Nicaragua. He did so because he could count on Washington’s
backing, which covertly (and illegally) participated in and
immediately applauded the attack. That was more important than
jeopardizing cooperation with Latin American nations and France.
Colombia remains Washington’s military forward shield in Latin
America and, in particular, it is the most important
politico-military instrument to destabilize and overthrow the
anti-imperialist Chavez government. Clinton and Bush have
invested over $6 billion dollars in military aid to Colombia
over the past 7 years, including sending 1500 military advisers
and Special Forces, dozens of Israeli commandos and ‘trainers’,
funding over 2000 mercenary fighters and over 10,000
paramilitary forces working closely with the 200,000-man strong
Colombian Armed Forces.
Notwithstanding these and other international considerations,
influencing Uribe’s extra-territorial ‘act of war’, I would
argue that the main consideration in this attack on the FARC
campsite in Ecuador was to decapitate, weaken and isolate the
most powerful guerrilla movement in Latin America and the most
uncompromising opponent to Washington and Bogotá’s repressive
neo-liberal policies. International politicians, including
progressive leaders like Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Rafael
Correa, who have called for the end of armed struggle, seem to
overlook the recent experiences of FARC efforts to de-militarize
the struggle, including three peace initiatives (1984-1990),
(1999-2001) and (2007-2008) and the heavy costs to the FARC in
terms of the killing of key leaders, activists and sympathizers.
During the mid-1980’s many leaders of the FARC joined the
electoral process, formed a political party – the Patriotic
Union. The scores of successfully elected local and national
officeholders and…5,000 of their members, leaders,
congress-people and three presidential candidates were
slaughtered. The FARC returned to the countryside and guerrilla
struggle. Ten years later, the FARC agreed to negotiate with
then President Pastrana in a demilitarized zone. The FARC held
public forums, discussed policy alternatives for social and
political reforms to democratize the state and debated private
versus public ownership of strategic economic sectors with
diverse sectors in ‘civil society’. President Pastrana, under
pressure from US President Clinton and later Bush, abruptly
broke off negotiations and sent the armed forces in to capture
the FARC’s high level negotiating teams. The US-funded and
advised Colombian military failed to capture the FARC leaders
but set the stage for the scorched earth policies pursued by
paramilitary President Uribe.
In 2007-2008, the FARC offered to negotiate the mutual release
of political prisoners in a secure demilitarized zone in
Colombia. Uribe refused. President Chavez entered into
negotiations as a mediator. The French government and others
challenged Chavez to ask for ‘evidence’ that the FARC prisoners
were alive. The FARC complied with Chavez request. It sent three
emissaries who were intercepted and are being detained by the
Colombian military under brutal conditions. Still the FARC
continued with Chavez request and attempted to relocate the
first set of prisoners to be turned over to the Red Cross and
Venezuelan officials – but they came under aerial attack by
Uribe’s armed forces thus aborting the release. Still later,
under increased risk, they were able to release the first batch
of captives. The French Foreign Minister Kouchner and Chavez
made new requests for the release of Ingrid Betancourt, a dual
French-Colombian national and former presidential candidate.
This was sabotaged when Uribe, with high-level US technical
assistance, launched a major military offensive throughout the
country, including a comprehensive monitoring program, tracing
communications between Reyes, Chavez, Kouchner, Larrea and the
Red Cross. It was this high-risk role played by Reyes as the
highest level FARC official involved in the negotiations and
coordination for captive release that led to his assassination.
Outside pressures for a unilateral release of prisoners caused
the FARC to lower their security. The result was the loss of
leaders, negotiators, sympathizers and militants – without
securing the release of any of their 500 comrades held in
Colombian prisons. The entire emphasis of Sarkozy, Chavez,
Correa and others demanded unilateral concessions from the FARC
- as if their own tortured and dying comrades in Uribe’s jails
were not part of any humanitarian consideration.
The subsequent summit in the Dominican Republic during the
weekend of March 8-9 led to a condemnation of Colombia’s
violation of Ecuador’s territorial sovereignty, but the Uribe
government, responsible for the invasion, was not actually named
or officially sanctioned. Moreover, no mention was made (let
alone respect shown) for the treacherously assassinated leader,
Raul Reyes, whose life was lost in pursuit of a humanitarian
exchange. If the meeting itself was a disappointing response to
a tragedy, the aftermath was a farce: a smiling Uribe, walked
across the meeting hall and offered a hand shake and perfunctory
apology to Correa and Chavez, while Nicaraguan President Ortega
embraced the murderous leader of Colombia. By that vile and
cynical gesture, Uribe turned the entire military mobilization
and weeklong denunciations by Chavez and Correa into a comic
opera. The post-meeting ‘reconciliation’ gave the appearance
that their opposition to a cross-border attack and the
cold-blooded murder of Reyes was merely political theater – a
bad omen for the future if, as is likely, Uribe repeats his
cross border attacks on an even larger scale. Will the people of
Venezuela or Ecuador and the armed forces take serious another
call for mobilization and readiness?
Less than a week after the Santa Domingo ‘reconciliation’
meeting, Chavez and Uribe renewed an earlier military agreement
to cooperate against ‘violent groups whatever their origins’.
Clearly Chavez hopes that by dissociating Venezuela from any
suspicion of providing moral support to the FARC, Uribe will
stop the large-scale flow of paramilitary infiltrators from
entering Venezuela and destabilizing the country. In other
words, ‘reasons of state’ take precedence over solidarity with
the FARC. What should be clear to Chavez however is the fact
that Uribe will not abide by his side of the agreement because
of his ties to Washington, and the latter’s insistence that the
Chavez government be destabilized by any or all means, including
the continued infiltration by Colombian paramilitary forces into
Venezuela.
Uribe could apologize to Correa and Chavez because the real
purpose of his military attack was to destroy the FARC
leadership, any way, any place, any time and under any
circumstance – even in the midst of international negotiations.
Washington placed a $5 million dollar bounty on each and every
member of the FARC secretariat, long before Chavez or Correa
came to power, Washington’s top priority – as witnessed by its
military aid programs ($6 billion dollars in 7 years), size and
scope of its military advisory mission (1500 US specialists) and
the length of its involvement in counter-insurgency activities
within Colombia (45 years) – was to destroy the FARC.
Washington and its Colombian surrogates were willing to incur
the predictable displeasure of Correa, Chavez and the slap on
the wrist by the OAS if they could succeed in killing the Number
Two commander of the FARC. The reason is clear: it is the FARC
and not the neighboring leaders, who influence a third of
Colombia’s countryside; it is the FARC’s military-political
power which ties down a third of Colombia’s armed forces and
prevents Colombia from engaging in any major military
intervention against Chavez at the behest of Washington. Uribe
and Washington have pressured Correa into cutting most of the
FARC’s logistical supply lines and many security camps on the
Ecuadorian-Colombian border. Correa claims to have destroyed 11
FARC campsites and arrested 11 guerrillas. The Venezuelan
National Guard has turned a blind eye to Colombian cross border
military pursuit of FARC activists and sympathizers among the
Colombian refugee-peasantry camped along the
Venezuelan-Colombian border. Uribe and Washington’s pressure has
forced Chavez to publicly disclaim any support for the FARC, its
methods and strategy. The FARC is internationally isolated – the
Cuban Foreign Ministry proclaimed the phony ‘reconciliation’ at
Santo Domingo to be a ‘great victory’ for peace. The FARC is
diplomatically isolated, even as it retains substantial domestic
support in the provinces and countryside of Colombia.
With the ‘neutralization’ of outside support, or sympathy for
the FARC, the Uribe regime – before, during and immediately
after the Santo Domingo meeting – launched a series of bloody
murders and threats against all progressive and leftist
organizations. In the run-up to a March 6, 2008 200,000-strong
‘march against state terror’, hundreds of organizers and
activists were threatened, abused, followed, interrogated and
accused by Uribe of ‘supporting the FARC’, a government label,
which was followed up by the death squad killings of the leader
of the march and four other human rights spokespeople.
Immediately following the mass demonstration, the principle
Colombian trade union, the CUT (the Confederation of Colombian
Workers) reported several assassinations and assaults including
the head of the banking employees union, a leader of the
teachers union, the head of the education section of the CUT and
a researcher at a pedagogical institute. All told, over 5,000
trade unionists have been killed, 2 million peasants and farmers
have been forcibly removed and their land seized by pro-Uribe
paramilitary forces and landlords. Former self-confessed death
squad leaders publicly have admitted to funding and controlling
over one-third of the elected members of Congress backing Uribe.
Currently 30 congress-people are on trial for ‘association’ with
the paramilitary death squads. Several of Uribe’s most intimate
cabinet collaborators were exposed as having family ties with
the death squads and two were forced to resign.
Despite international disrepute, especially in Latin America,
with powerful support from Washington, Uribe has built up a
murderous killing machine of 200,000 military, 30,000 police,
several thousand death squad killers and over a million
fanatical middle and upper class Colombians in favor of ‘wiping
out the FARC’ – meaning eliminating independent popular
organizations of civil society. More than any other past
Colombian oligarchic rulers, Uribe is the closest to a fascist
dictator combining state terror with mass mobilization.
The opposition political and social movements in Colombia are
massive, committed and vulnerable. They are subject to daily
intimidation and gangland-style murder. Through terror and mass
propaganda, Uribe has so far been able to impose his rule over
the working class opposition and attract mass middle class
support. But he has utterly failed to defeat, destroy or
disarticulate the FARC – his most consequential opposition. Each
year since he has come to power, Uribe has pledged massive,
all-out military sweeps of entire regions of the country, which
would finally put an end to the ‘terrorists’. Tens of thousands
of peasants in FARC-influenced regions have been tortured,
raped, murdered and driven from their homes. Each of Uribe’s
military offensives has failed. Yet he absolutely and totally
fails to recognize what some generals and even US officials
observe: the FARC cannot be militarily annihilated and at some
point the government must negotiate.
Uribe’s failures and the enduring presence of the FARC have
become a psychotic obsession: All territorial, legal,
international constraints are thrown overboard. Alternating
between euphoria and hysteria, faced with internal opposition to
his mono-maniac strategy of terror, he screams ‘FARC supporters’
at any and all overseas and Colombian critics. To Ecuador and
Venezuela, he promises ‘not to invade their territory again’
unless ‘circumstances warrant it.’ So much for ‘reconciliation.’
The period of humanitarian exchange is dead; the FARC cannot and
will not accommodate the requests of well-intentioned friends,
especially when it puts in risk the entire FARC organization and
leadership. Let us concede that Chavez intentions were well
meant. His pleas for a mutual release of prisoners might have
made sense if he had been dealing with a rational bourgeois
politician responsive to international leaders and organizations
and eager to create a favorable image before world public
opinion. But it was naďve for Chavez to believe that a psychotic
politician with a history of annihilating his opposition would
suddenly discover the virtues of negotiations and humanitarian
exchanges. Without question, the FARC understands better than
its Andean and Caribbean friends through hard experience and
bitter lessons, that armed struggle may not be the desired
method but it is the only realistic way to confront a brutal
fascist regime.
Uribe’s killing of Raul Reyes was not about Chavez initiatives
or Ecuador’s sovereignty or Ingrid Betancourt’s captivity, it
was about Raul Reyes, a consequential and life-long
revolutionary and leader of the FARC. The war-scare is over,
differences have been papered over, the leaders have returned to
their palaces, but Raul Reyes has not been forgotten – at least
not in the countryside of Colombia or in the hearts of its
peasants.
James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton
University, New York, owns a 50-year membership in the class
struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in Brazil
and Argentina, and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed
Books). His latest book is "The Power of Israel in the United
States" (Clarity Press, 2006).
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