Alvaro Uribe Vélez will in all likelihood continue as president of Colombia after winning an historic second consecutive four-year term in this year’s election. Since the constitutional reform of 1910, Colombian presidents have been prohibited from seeking immediate reelection (though Alfonso López Pumarejo, president from 1934-1938 succeeded in gaining a second term in 1942). In mid November, Colombia’s highest court ruled that the Electoral Guarantees Law was constitutional. It was passed by Congress last year to allow sitting presidents to compete in the forthcoming elections. Despite a vehement campaign challenging the constitutionality of his run for reelection, opposition leaders of the Liberal party and in the leftist Independent Democratic Pole party (PDI) have since reconciled themselves to the ruling. Obviously genuflecting, along with the judiciary, to Uribe’s undeniably widespread popularity, former mayor of Bogotá Antanas Mockus put the best face he could on the situation by affirming that at least the Courts had “improved the Law by ensuring greater fairness among contenders.” The courts ruling does set limits on Uribe’s use of state funds and institutions in his campaign and prohibits him from broadcasting his speeches on the state’s official television channel. Not that it makes much difference. Even if his approval ratings have dipped a bit (to 72 percent at the start of November, down from 80 percent a month earlier) his numbers are still in the stratosphere. Uribe will likely crush any rival that is chosen to face him this year because he is easily the most popular Colombian president in decades, if not of all time.
Politicians critical of the Uribe administration on both the right and the left, have expressed fears over the unfettered power that Uribe would enjoy if he were to win the election next year. They worry that Uribe could end up controlling the central bank, the Constitutional Court, and the Public Auditor’s Office, and then perhaps become another all-powerful populist, a la Hugo Chavez. A huge majority of Colombian voters, however, don’t share their concerns. Even if the citizenry doesn’t all agree with his policies, they like and have confidence in him. They believe he works hard, is honest, and though it is decidedly flawed, offers a path out of Colombia’s decades-long multiple predicaments.
The FARC: Guerrillas Who Refuse to go Quietly
Uribe’s popularity is directly proportional to the FARC’s lack of it among urban Colombians. After his election in 2002, President Uribe abruptly ended peace talks with the leftist guerrillas that had proceeded steadily, yet unsuccessfully, under several recent administrations since the 1980s. Throughout his term in office, President Uribe has pursued a clear military strategy aimed to exterminating the guerrilla groups and flatly refused to negotiate with them. This hard line is clearly part of his popular appeal with many Colombians. He also has accused human rights activists in Colombia of colluding with the guerrillas, directly endangering the former’s personal security.
But despite its current unpopularity, over the decades the FARC (Colombia’s, and Latin America’s, longest-lived guerrilla movement, with around 15,000 men and women under arms) has demonstrated an amazing ability to survive and assert itself, even if it has never truly threatened the existence of the Colombian state as presently organized. Part of this success arises from its nimble organizational structure, based on a series of semi-autonomous fronts or frentes. This durability has been evident since 1983 when right-wing paramilitary vigilantes began their continuing brutal offensives against real, perceived, and potential guerrilla supporters. While it is clear that the FARC has been in “strategic retreat” since the beginning of the US-backed offensive known in Colombia as Plan Patriota, ironically, government efforts may simply have weeded out the weaker members and frentes, and have arguably created a stronger guerrilla force.
A Change in Command
In mid November, President Uribe replaced Gen. Carlos Alberto Fracica, the commander overseeing the anti-FARC campaign, given its disappointing results. While the military has seized some areas previously under rebel control and has weakened the FARC’s infrastructure, no member of the group’s seven-member ruling secretariat has been killed or captured. The FARC continues to succeed in pursuing its principle objective: its survival as a coherent fighting force. The FARC was organized in the mid 1960s, but emerged from guerrilla units that had been affiliated with the leftwing of the Liberal party since the late 1940s. The FARC therefore has survived, and at times flourished, during over 60 years of continuous irregular warfare in Colombia. It has amassed generations of expertise, enjoys almost a perfect terrain to carry out guerrilla operations, and because of the drug trade, can call on ample sustainable resources. The guerrillas have no real reason to demobilize, since history has shown that by turning in their weapons and returning to civic life, they will only become prime candidates for assassination by rightwing elements associated with the military. Some analysts such as Eduardo Pizarro Leóngomez, claim that the FARC already has been “strategically defeated,” but its cadres don’t seem to realize it. They are on the defensive, but very far from demoralized. Given their long existence, often under harsh circumstances, they are surely some of modern history’s most patient revolutionaries.
Uribe and the Paras
The flip side to President Uribe’s personal obsession with defeating the guerrillas is his relationship with the various paramilitary armies, a relationship that goes back many years to his term as governor of Antioquia. Given international pressure, especially from the U.S. Congress, Uribe has had to make a show of demobilizing the main rightwing paramilitary umbrella organization, the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC). Paralleling the guerrilla organizational structure, the AUC is really a collection of autonomous and regionally based blocs, or bloques. Critics of Uribe’s blue ribbon ”Justice and Peace” law, which lays out the mechanisms for the demobilization of the rightist terrorists, complain that it is riddled with loopholes. Demobilized combatants are not penalized for refusing to confess to human rights atrocities or illegally gained properties, including the many who have major involvements with drug trafficking. The new law is also woefully inadequate in arranging for adequate prosecutors to investigate AUC-inspired crimes, or stipulating sufficient time and other resources to carry out investigations. One international rights body points out that of 5,000 AUC combatants disarmed thus far, only 25 have been detained or charged, although it is universally believed that the AUC has been the prime factor in accounting for nearly five thousand civilian, victims of assassination per year.
Similar observations can be made regarding the demobilization in Uribe’s home department of Antioquia. The Uribe administration’s credibility regarding the demobilization process has been further undermined by a series of scandals involving the Colombian intelligence service, the DAS. Amid uproars over alleged embezzlement of funds and a fabricated “plot” to assassinate the President, DAS officials were secretly taped discussing plans to sell intelligence data to paramilitary leaders. The scandal erupted amid continued concerns that the government has been embarrassingly lenient with those paramilitaries who have disarmed. President Uribe accepted the resignation of the head of DAS, Jorge Noguera, and dismissed the agency’s deputy director, Jose Narvaez. In contravention to a general international consensus against such actions, the “Justice and Peace Law” also affords members of Colombia’s paramilitary units political status. Michael Frühling, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia, argued that it is “not a good idea to treat paramilitarism as a mere political misdemeanor.”
According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the law does nothing to address the role of the Colombian state in aiding and abetting paramilitary violence. Nor does it do anything to deconstruct the political and economic networks that continue to support the partially demobilized units. Added to this is the ominous claim by the paramilitaries that they control the votes of 35 percent of the members of congress. In order to gain this influence, they have cleansed entire regions of political forces opposing them. All told, they have killed tens of thousand of innocent civilians over the years with their offensives over the last two decades being responsible for internally displacing more than 3 million inhabitants, one of the highest such figures in the world. According to the Colombian government’s Contraloria at the present time the AUC has de facto control of over a million hectares of land.
The AUC’s Tangled Web
A big part of the military and many of the regional elites are quite content with the paramilitary model; they effectively destroyed all peace negotiations over the past 20 years that could have explored greater local democracy and land reform. Also, Uribe has not shown himself to be a serious planner regarding the kinds of demobilizations that would actually lead to a sustained peace. He manifestly remains close to the paras and their elite backers. For example, witnesses of the Mapiripan massacre of 1997, in which AUC paramilitary members killed more than 20 peasants, have accused its ranking official, Salvatore Mancuso, of planning the attack (he also has been implicated in many more murders). Yet President Uribe has refused to order Mancuso’s arrest, given his participation in the so-called “peace process” between the AUC and his administration. What is more, not all paramilitary commanders are playing along with Mancuso’s plan for demobilization; in November, responding to a threatened attack by government forces if paramilitary forces refused to disarm, paramilitary commander Roberto Duque warned a TV audience that his paramilitary units could return to the jungle, and could become as much of a problem as the guerrillas are. Furthermore, paramilitary combatants who supposedly had demobilized in late January of this year were recently killed in combat, like one known as “La Iguana,” of AUC’s South East Bloc.
Of course, paramilitary forces continue to threaten leftist politicians and activists with assassination. Colombian Congressmen Wilson Borja and Gustavo Petro of the PDI recently denounced a plot to kill them, allegedly ordered by Don Berna, a paramilitary commander involved in “demobilization” negotiations with the Colombian government. (While visiting the U.S., Colombia vice-president, Francisco Santos insinuated that the reports about the death threats were politically motivated, but the Colombian Attorney General, Mario Iguaran, later confirmed them). In October, death threats made against Manuel Rozental, an internationally recognized Colombian activist, caused him to flee the country. In late November, human rights lawyer Ernesto Moreno Gordillo, known for defending FARC prisoners, was gunned down in Bogotá.
The Drug Trade Funds All
The drug trade, which no one is overtly considering decriminalizing, continues to prosper and today funds a wide spectrum of actors. The Bush administration points to recent higher retail prices for cocaine (the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy claims that between February and September the price of a gram of cocaine rose 19 percent, to $170), and touts the increase as a sign of success for Plan Colombia, the U.S.-funded eradication program. White House officials argue that this trend demonstrates the success of aerial spraying in creating a shortage of cocaine (thus driving up its price). Yet drug policy analysts critical of the administration’s war on drugs scoff at the White House’s sanguine conclusions. Even the Rand Corporation, long a favorite fount of research for incumbent administrations, argued in 2003 that as the war on drugs has blossomed since the early 1980s, the price of the substance has continually fallen while the purity of the drug available on the street has continually risen. Like any commodity, the price of cocaine can fluctuate, but its demand remains decidedly inelastic, and the profits it generates make drug dealers (and those fighting in Colombia) as rich as King Midas.
Journalists Hugh O’Shaughnessy and Sue Branford’s Chemical Warfare in Colombia: the cost of coca fumigation covers familiar ground in documenting how spraying of coca crops is affecting poor peasant farmers. While largely ineffective in significantly cutting coca production, it is proving to be highly detrimental to humans and animal life, while contaminating the environment
Don’t Hold Your Breath for Peace or Justice
Ugly choices face Colombia, ranging from bad to worse. Peace and justice for the foreseeable future are not compatible in Colombia. Peace may be achievable, but justice is largely impossible. The criminal justice system in Colombia is completely broken, suffering from huge strains generated by years of fighting and decades of rampant corruption. Also the perpetrators of Colombia’s human rights nightmare, whether guerrillas, armed forces, or paramilitaries, still have their guns, money and powerful political connections. The factors contributing to continued conflict vastly outweigh elements that could lead to peace and reconciliation. On the peace side, there is some evidence of members of the regional elite desiring for a more modernized economic engagement with the rest of the world. If this means increasing their long-nurtured lines with the paras, then so be it. Parts of the military also see the downsides of the para alliance. On the continuation side: The U.S. remains the ultimate enabler; obsessed with pursuing a futile drug war and continuing to fight the Cold War (the guerrillas are simply communists, after all).
True, the huge majority of Colombians want peace. But as the population becomes ever more urbanized, the conflict becomes evermore removed from their concerns, given that it is tied to rural issues in distant parts of the country. Both the remaining groups, the guerrillas and the paras, are rural in orientation. Neither side needs or seems to care about majority opinion in the country..
Just as earlier attempts at peace were the right idea, in concept, although fatally flawed in its particulars, so is Uribe’s attempt at paramilitary demobilization. It’s the right idea, but doomed to fail because of its execution; it’s not real; at least it’s not aimed at the whole phenomenon of the paramilitaries; and does not even approach demobilizing the whole AUC; what is worse is that what Uribe is offering amounts to de facto impunity for its leaders; leaving them with their very ill gotten gains.
The Inter-American Court on Human Rights has repeatedly rejected any amnesty law that excludes the penal responsibility for crimes against humanity. For sure, the human rights community must, and will, keep the heat on, but it should be recognized that such efforts will largely fail in the short run. The very sad fact is, despite the widespread desire for justice in Colombia, there is no group or entity strong or willing enough to impose it when it comes to human rights violations – not Uribe, not the United Nations, not even the United States.
