The Washignton Post
Editorials
Wednesday, January 16, 2008; Page A14
Ally to Kidnappers
Venezuela's Hugo Chávez endorses Colombian groups known for abductions, drug trafficking and mass murder.
ON THURSDAY, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), an organization that in the past decade has kidnapped more than 750 people who remain missing, released two captives into the custody of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. The FARC, which decades ago discarded the Marxist ideology it wielded in the 1960s for the mercenary causes of abduction and drug trafficking, is anything but an altruistic movement, so many wondered what it would get in exchange for the propaganda coup it handed Mr. Chávez.
The shocking answer arrived the next day: In a four-hour address to the Venezuelan Congress, Mr. Chávez described the FARC and another Colombian group, the Army of National Liberation (ELN), as "not terrorists" but "genuine armies." He claimed that they possessed "a Bolivarian political project that is respected here," a reference to his own, half-baked "socialism for the 21st century." And he demanded that they be recognized as lawful belligerents by the United States and Latin American and European governments that now classify them as terrorist organizations. In short, Mr. Chávez was endorsing groups dedicated to violence and other criminal behavior in a neighboring Latin American democracy, and associating his agenda with theirs.
It was encouraging to see the revulsion this statement instantly produced in Latin America, where terrorism has caused incalculable damage. But the message the FARC channeled through Mr. Chávez was really aimed at Europeans and Americans. Some in Washington, London and Madrid, where kidnappings are rare, are happy to embrace Mr. Chávez -- former congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II, for example, can be heard in radio advertisements touting his alliance with the Venezuelan leader. The FARC may think it can similarly find allies. Filmmaker Oliver Stone is already sold: He recently called the FARC "heroic."
The answer to this logic was provided by the press office of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, who has been waging what is, in fact, a heroic battle against the brutal gangs that for decades have plagued his country. "The violent groups of Colombia are terrorists because they finance themselves through a business that is lethal to humanity: drug trafficking," the press office said. (The FARC exports hundreds of tons of cocaine annually, and an increasing portion of it passes through Venezuela.) "The violent groups of Colombia are terrorists because they kidnap, place bombs indiscriminately, recruit and murder children, murder pregnant women, murder the elderly and use antipersonnel mines that leave in their wake thousands of innocent victims." All these assertions have been well documented by Western human rights groups that are otherwise hostile to Mr. Uribe's government.
No wonder even governments allied with Mr. Chávez, such as those of Argentina and Ecuador, recoiled from his appeal. Latin American leaders who until now have seen in Mr. Chávez a crude populist who buys his friends with petrodollars are faced with something new: a head of state who has openly endorsed an organization of kidnappers and drug traffickers in a neighboring, democratic country. "You can't be legal in your own country and accept illegality in another," said Guatemala's newly elected president, Álvaro Colom. Venezuela's neighbors now must calculate how to respond to a leader who has violated that fundamental rule.
Help Colombia
Álvaro Uribe gets blamed for the success of his own reforms.
Thursday, March 15, 2007; Page A18
MUCH OF President Bush's tour of Latin America was haunted by what his administration has failed to accomplish during the past six years. In Brazil, the shadow was the absence of progress on trade between the United States and Latin America's largest country; in Mexico, the absence of immigration reform. The mood of the president's stop in the third-largest country on his tour, Colombia, was somber, too -- but, oddly enough, because of his policy's success, not its failure.
Since the beginning of this decade the United States has invested nearly $5 billion in Plan Colombia, a broad attempt to reduce drug trafficking and violence through military aid, economic development and drug eradication. From the beginning, skeptics in Congress have grumbled that the program was too focused on military measures and that it did not go after the right-wing paramilitary groups that were often linked to the military.
Now, at last, the paramilitary network in Colombia and its military and political alliances are being exposed and uprooted. Last year some 30,000 members of the right-wing groups demobilized under an agreement with the Colombian government; their leaders have been imprisoned and are testifying about their activities in exchange for reduced sentences. This flood of information, combined with parallel investigations by the supreme court and attorney general, has led to the arrests of eight congressmen and the former head of the security police, the indictment of a state governor and the resignation of the foreign minister, whose brother and father were linked to paramilitaries. For the first time, military officers are being turned over for prosecution in civilian courts.
Most of this redounds to the credit of Álvaro Uribe, Colombia's president, who pushed through the demobilization plan despite criticism that it was too weak. Mr. Uribe is immensely popular in Colombia because he has greatly reduced homicides and kidnappings while overseeing rapid economic growth. Yet in Bogota on Sunday, Mr. Bush found himself obliged to defend Mr. Uribe against criticism that the exposure of the right-wing networks reflects poorly on his government.
The critics might have a point if Mr. Uribe had tried to shield political allies from the investigations. Instead he has urged that the probes go forward and has apologized for his faith in officials who proved compromised. The revelations come at an awkward moment for Colombia, with Congress considering Mr. Bush's request to extend Plan Colombia for several more years, at reduced levels of aid, and a free-trade agreement with Colombia. Yet Mr. Uribe has not flinched.
Sure enough, opponents of trade agreements and those who reflexively resist U.S. military aid to Latin America are citing the paramilitary revelations as a reason not to support Mr. Uribe. In fact they prove that Colombia's president can deliver on his promise to reform the country's political system and extend its authority to a long-lawless countryside. If Congress wishes to see those changes continue, it should approve the new Colombian aid plan as well as the free-trade agreement.
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