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CIAO DATE: 2/00
Colombia Alert: Peace Talks Off to Rocky Start
Hemisphere Focus: 1998-2000
January 25, 1999
Overview
The commitment of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), to resolve the 36-year civil conflict in Colombia is being called into serious question. By failing to show up for the formal launch of the much anticipated peace talks early this month, rebel leader Manuel “Sureshot” Marulanda not only snubbed President Andres Pastrana, but raised anew the question of how realistic the peace process really is. A mid-January threat by top FARC leaders to break off negotiations until the government cracks down on right-wing paramilitary death squads, whether a negotiating tactic or not, has further dampened prospects for meaningful progress.
A subsequent threat by the FARC’s military mastermind and heir-apparent to Marulanda, Jorge Briceno, to kidnap leading politicians to press its demands for a prisoner exchange prompted Pastrana to say he would break off talks if this action is carried out.
Marulanda, who has not appeared in public since his movement began in 1964, was said to have stayed away because the risk of assassination was too great despite massive security by both rebel troops and presidential security guards. Four representatives of the government and three FARC delegates were scheduled to continue meeting over the next month to try to hammer out an agenda for formal peace talks. The government will hold separate negotiations with the National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia’s second largest guerrilla group with about 5,000 members, beginning on February 13.
Colombians Prefer Peaceful Solution
Colombians overwhelmingly prefer a peaceful solution to what can only be called a civil war which has taken the lives of 35,000 people and costs an estimated 2-4 percent of GDP each year. However, over 50 percent of those questioned in a recent poll published in the Bogota daily, El Espectador, said negotiations would “go on indefinitely” while a quarter said they “would lead nowhere.” Of the 600 people polled, 59 percent said they did not believe the FARC had any real desire for peace.
Pastrana, inaugurated last August, has made peace with the rebels a priority of his government. “As head of state,” he said at the January 7 ceremonial meeting attended by a crowd of thousands, including the U.S. Ambassador Curtis Kamman and former Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, “I am here to express the voice of a country that wants peace, that seeks social justice and is ready to carry out politics as an exercise of the common good. Colombia cannot go on divided into three irreconcilable countries, where one country kills, the other dies, and a third, horrified, scratches its head and shuts its eyes.”
FARC Takes Tough Line
Marulanda’s speech, read by the commander of FARC’s southern block, Joaquin Gomez, gave no indications that the FARC is prepared to compromise on its key demands for sweeping agrarian reform, an end to most free-market economic policies, and a radical redistribution of the country’s wealth. The rebels denounced what they called betrayals of attempts at peace by the Colombian government in the past and criticized Pastrana for creating an American-backed intelligence unit in southeastern Colombia, with equipment that can vastly improve the government’s information about guerrilla troop movements.
Gomez also denounced the American infusion of weaponry and money into Colombia, which is scheduled to climb to $289 million this year from $89 million last year. The United States claims the aid is geared only toward eliminating drug operations in areas under rebel control. The FARC, however, called the anti-drug fight “another war horse used by some governments to hide the true ends of their counter-insurgency actions, to prevent the kinds of changes that the majority is demanding.”
The FARC was established as a pro-Soviet guerrilla force in the mid 1960s and is the oldest and largest rebel army in the hemisphere. Its now legendary leader, the 68-year old Marulanda, built the organization from a rag-tag band of about 40 men to an estimated 15,000 well-equipped, well-trained and well-financed fighters. Colombian defense officials say the guerrillas take in well over $500 million a year from drug trafficking (protecting cocaine laboratories and clandestine air strips used by drug traffickers), kidnapping and extortion.
In recent years the FARC and its ELN cousins have inflicted a startling series of defeats on the corruption-plagued, under-trained and under-supplied Colombian army. In one battle last summer FARC rebels killed or captured 125 of the 152 members of an elite counter-insurgency unit and made off with hundreds of automatic rifles, night-vision gear, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. The rebel groups now wield significant influence in roughly half of the country.
In order to perhaps appease both the United States and the Colombian government, the rebels have said they would eliminate the drug trade in areas they control as part of an eventual peace agreement. At the same time, they have also made clear that they have no intention of giving up their weapons.
U.S. Representatives Meet Rebels
In mid-December at the request of Colombia, U.S. government representatives, led by the Director of the State Department’s Office of Andean Affairs, met in Costa Rica with representatives of the FARC “to demonstrate our support for the peace process” and to press the group to account for kidnapped U.S. citizens in Colombia. “Our purpose was also to tell the FARC that U.S.-Colombian counter-narcotics efforts, including aerial eradication, are non-negotiable and will continue,” one U.S. official said.
Washington’s fears that the Colombian military is losing the war to the Marxist rebels has prompted the United States to step up its involvement with the Colombian armed forces, despite their history of human rights abuses. This marks a significant shift in U.S. policy toward Colombia, the third most populous country in Latin America, which supplies roughly 80 percent of the cocaine and 60 percent of the heroin sold in the United States.
Critics claim the policy change risks entanglement in the country’s civil war and is being made by default as the White House, the State Department and Congress are paying little attention to a situation that poses a greater immediate threat than Bosnia where top policy makers have been more engaged. U.S. officials, who recognize that the line between counterinsurgency and counter-drugs is becoming increasingly blurred, say they have little choice given the growing involvement in drug trafficking by the FARC.
Colombia Is Troubled Country
There can be little doubt that Colombia is one of the most troubled countries in the Western Hemisphere and could, in fact, cease to function as a unified nation. Government institutions are weak, and political legitimacy and capacity eroded steadily during the last few years of the Samper presidency. Pastrana’s emphasis on the peace process is a gamble, which will require the guerrillas to make a public case for their political legitimacy. He probably had little choice, however, given that the human and economic costs of the conflict have become intolerable for most Colombians. FARC’s year-end offensive in the north where more than 30 peasants and children were killed and some of the corpses beheaded seems likely to erode what little public confidence the rebel group may have garnered after months of trying to boost its political image at home and abroad
Further complicating the situation is the continued activity of right-wing paramilitary groups, which unleashed a series of attacks on the first day of the peace talks. Pastrana said additional troops would be deployed in four states where guerrillas and paramilitary groups are vying for control. He also promised to create a special intelligence unit to capture top militia leaders and dismantle their organizations. Disbanding the groups is one of the rebels’ main demands. Human rights groups have accused the Colombian government of assisting the paramilitary groups as part of an extra-official strategy to weaken the guerrillas.
Outcome Far From Certain
At this early point in the peace process it is not clear what is negotiable and what is not. Given their divergent agendas, it will be difficult for negotiators to reach any accommodation. One of the fears is that the rebels want autonomy in the area they now control, perhaps in return for a promise to wage their own war against illegal drugs. According to some analysts, the rebels’ main strategy will be to string out the negotiations as long as possible to consolidate their power in the demilitarized zone, the size of Switzerland, which was established at the demand of the guerrillas as a precondition to the peace talks.
Even though the rebels and the Pastrana government need to determine the terms of the process and any eventual agreement without undue outside pressure, the United States and the international community have legitimate interests at stake. The United States could not accept, for example, the creation of a zone of lawlessness or the breakup of the country into separate anarchic regions with no credible central government. The loss of Colombian democracy would threaten regional stability.
The continuation of the peace process is in the interests of both Colombia and the United States. In the event that that process fails, which seems more likely as time goes on, the United States needs to be prepared with a serious, sustained bipartisan plan to support the Colombian government in its effort against the insurgent movement.
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