COLOMBIA: Uribe’s Explosion

By Constanza Vieira Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Oct 23 2006 (IPS) - Colombian President Álvaro Uribe’s furious response to a car-bomb that blew up in a military installation in the capital was, for many, a spontaneous outburst against the FARC guerrillas, who he blamed for the attack. But perhaps it was a coldly calculated response, merely part of his overall strategy.

Just 24 hours after the explosion, the right-wing Uribe made it clear once again that he had no intention to ease up on his all-out offensive against the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). His hard-line stance was what catapulted him to his first term in office in 2002.

The president was speaking at the site of last Thursday’s explosion, which left 23 people injured and caused 171,000 dollars in damages in a complex in northern Bogotá that houses a military university and the army’s central intelligence office.

His remarks shocked the families of civilians and military personnel held hostage by the FARC, some of whom have been in the hands of the guerrillas since 1997. The insurgents are holding the politicians, soldiers, police and three U.S. military contractors captive with the purpose of eventually swapping them for some 500 imprisoned rebels.

But Uribe said Friday that he would order a military rescue of the hostages.

The mere idea horrifies the hostages’ families. “The chances of success for a rescue mission carried out by force are zero,” said Spanish reporter Salud Hernández.

Shortly before the May 28 elections in which he won a second consecutive term, Uribe gave signs that he might begin negotiations of a humanitarian hostages-for-prisoners exchange, a proposal that has overwhelming public support, according to opinion polls..

For years the families of hostages like former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who holds dual French-Colombian citizenship, have been pressing the Uribe administration to engage in negotiations of a swap, which he had consistently refused to do.

After Uribe’s second term started on Aug. 7, the administration reported that it had made preliminary contacts with the FARC on the possibility of an exchange. But on Sept. 24, the guerrillas denied that was true.

The FARC leadership said “It would be regrettable if the government was only trying to win time to try to further encircle, with new battalions, brigades and paramilitaries,” two municipalities in the southwestern province of Valle del Cauca, which the guerrillas see as a good place to demilitarise in order to negotiate a prisoners-for-hostages swap.

And although the guerrillas provided a videotape proving that 12 of the politicians held hostage are alive, they said the government was making it impossible for them to smuggle out similar “proof of life” tapes on the other hostages.

In the videotape, the captives appeared to be angry at both their captors and the government, as well as “skinnier, more tired, and more desperate,” said one family member.

On Oct. 2, Uribe instructed his peace commissioner, Luis Carlos Restrepo, to immediately begin making contacts with the FARC towards an agreement on the conditions necessary for preparing a safe haven where negotiations for an exchange of prisoners for hostages would take place.

But the president went even further, saying he would be open to eventual peace talks that would culminate in the creation of a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution, which both the FARC and the paramilitaries are calling for.

Peace talks between the FARC and the administration of Uribe’s predecessor, Andrés Pastrana, collapsed in early 2002, when the government sent troops back in to a Switzerland-sized area in southern Colombia that had been demilitarised for the talks, which began in 1999.

FARC controls an estimated 35 percent or more of the national territory, mainly in rural, sparsely populated areas.

During Uribe’s first term, Restrepo negotiated a controversial partial demobilisation process with around 30 paramilitary leaders, many of whom are drug lords.

One condition set by the president for talks on a humanitarian swap was that they would not imply any weakening of his “democratic security policy,” which is based on more actively engaging the civilian population to support the military in the counterinsurgency war, through strategies like setting up vast networks of civilian informants.

On Oct. 9, the government backtracked after the FARC sent a message to the three branches of the state outlining seven conditions for engaging in peace talks after a humanitarian exchange was carried out.

The rebels also listed 13 issues for political debate that would imply far-reaching social reforms, a purge of the security forces, and the return to small farmers of land and other property they have lost in the armed conflict. (Some three million people have been forcibly displaced by the four-decade civil war).

In their letter, the FARC leadership stated that Plan Patriot, a major counterinsurgency offensive launched in 2003 with heavy U.S. military support, was a failure and had been unsuccessful in killing or capturing any of the insurgent group’s 31 top military leaders.

Thanks to Washington’s support, Uribe has expanded the troops in the field by 30 percent, created elite counterinsurgency units, stepped up intelligence, and strengthened the Colombian military’s air combat missions, which are overseen by U.S. military advisers, IPS was informed by sources who will remain anonymous.

Colombian journalist Germán Castro Caycedo has also reported that the missions are coordinated by U.S. advisers.

On Oct. 9, Uribe once again complicated things by insisting on the condition that a humanitarian exchange would only be possible with guarantees that the insurgents released from prison would not rejoin the ranks of the guerrillas. He had not previously mentioned that condition, which proponents of a swap consider an obstacle, this time around.

In the meantime, a string of scandals have cast doubt on the highly touted success of the paramilitary demobilisation process and exposed the participation of the security forces in human rights violations, corruption and drug trafficking.

In late July, a car bomb killed a slum dweller and injured 19 soldiers in the capital. Six other bombs were intercepted before they went off. The explosion was immediately blamed on the FARC.

However, the government ordered the army chief to admit that the bombs had been placed by army officers to simulate an attack by the insurgents.

This month, a few minutes before the bomb went off in the military installations in northern Bogotá, the eight security cameras in that part of the complex simultaneously stopped functioning, according to the Noticias Uno television news programme.

In his speech Friday, Uribe abandoned what he described as the “moderate” terms that he said his government had been using in order to facilitate talks with the FARC. In the space of 25 minutes, he said the words “terrorists” and “terrorism” 36 times, while describing the insurgents as “cowards” who want to be “international starlets.”

Moderate terminology “creates confusion among the citizens,” “disorients the security forces” and “makes it easier for terrorists to pose as political figures,” said Uribe, who cancelled any international support for a humanitarian swap and called instead for more military support.

“Someone around here doesn’t want peace,” said Hernán Peláez, the director of the comedy radio programme La Luciérnaga, who pointed out that the government this week would push a new “war tax” in Congress, aimed at bringing in 3.6 million dollars in revenue over the next four years.

The reassertion of the government’s hard-line stance towards the guerrillas came just prior to an Oct. 24-26 visit to Colombia by a delegation from the U.S. State Department headed by Under Secretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns.

The U.S. government is publicly opposed to any humanitarian swap, although it has itself tried to make discreet contacts with the FARC, even offering reporters money for helping to establish contact.

The issues to be discussed during the State Department visit include the maintenance of social and military aid to Colombia, the protection of human rights, and advances in the process of social reinsertion of demobilised paramilitary fighters, the Colombian Foreign Ministry reported.

Just before he ended a two-year stint as chief of the U.S. army Southern Command last Thursday, General John Craddock said “The Colombians are winning” the armed conflict.

In response to reports that the State Department wants to begin to reduce U.S. military aid to Colombia, which has totaled 4.7 billion dollars since 2000, Craddock agreed that funding should be gradually decreased. “It makes sense,” he said.

The George W. Bush administration would like to cut funding in half by 2010. But analyst Daniel García-Peña said that if the Democrats win back the legislature in the November elections, the reduction in funds for Colombia “would not be so gradual.”

The Colombian government hopes that as a result of Burns’ visit, “aid will not diminish, but on the contrary will increase, if possible,” Foreign Minister María Consuelo Araújo said Monday.

On Sunday, 1,500 troops were sent into the country’s central Andes mountains in an operation aimed at rescuing the hostages.