The war behind the insults
Latin America
Mar 6th 2008
From The Economist print edition
The real enemy is the FARC guerrilla group and its Venezuelan supporter, not Colombia
THIS week it has seemed to the casual eye as if northern South America were on the brink of war. It began when Colombian forces bombed a camp just inside Ecuador, killing 21 FARC guerrillas including Raúl Reyes, a top commander. Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, chose to treat this as a casus belli. He broke off diplomatic relations and ordered troops to the border, warning Álvaro Uribe, Colombia's president, not to try anything similar against Venezuela. Ecuador's Rafael Correa, cautious at first, felt obliged to mimic his fellow leftist, breaking ties and moving troops up to his border.
So far the three leaders have fired nothing deadlier than epithets (“genocidal”, “liar” and “lackey” were the small arms of this verbal battle). Yet this is the most serious diplomatic conflict in South America for more than a decade. Political brinkmanship could easily tip over into shooting.
Its root cause is the FARC, a guerrilla army founded in the 1960s whose anachronistic Marxist language conceals its degeneration into a predatory mafia of kidnappers and drug traffickers. In the 1990s it came close to making Colombia ungovernable. Then three years of talks—during which the FARC kidnapped many of the hostages who now constitute its main weapon—showed that it had no interest in peace or democracy. Colombia's elected leaders turned to the United States for military aid to match the cash that American drug consumers were giving the FARC and other mafia armies.
Thanks to this aid and its own defence build-up, Mr Uribe's government has reduced the FARC, driving it deep into Colombia's jungles. But as long as the FARC's seven-man leadership remained at large, several of them apparently in camps across the borders, the guerrillas could claim to be winning—and so they have rejected genuine peace talks. That was why Mr Uribe authorised the bombing raid that killed Mr Reyes.
Was he right to do so? One objection is that Mr Reyes was involved in talks to free FARC hostages, including Ingrid Betancourt, a Colombian who also holds French nationality. But weakening the FARC is more likely to free more captives (including Ms Betancourt). A second complaint is weightier: Colombia should have sought Mr Correa's consent before acting. But would the Ecuadoreans have tipped off the FARC? Colombia claims to have recovered Mr Reyes's laptops and says their contents point to connivance (see article).
The Organisation of American States criticised Colombia, but did not condemn it outright as Ecuador wanted. Certainly Colombia should make a full apology. But in return it deserves greater co-operation from its neighbours. In a democratic South America there is no place for the FARC. But Mr Uribe has been better at security policy than at diplomacy. If some governments mistakenly see him merely as George Bush's proxy in their backyard, that is mainly because Colombia has failed to win wider sympathy for its beleaguered democracy.
Danger: one imploding Venezuelan
The biggest threat in the region is not Colombia but Venezuela. Mr Chávez has recently veered towards outright support for the FARC. Colombia alleges that the captured laptops show that he gave the guerrillas $300m (and also that the FARC is seeking uranium for a “dirty” bomb). Mr Chávez's mismanagement of Venezuela's oil boom has made him increasingly unpopular at home. His regime runs a risk of imploding. A cornered Mr Chávez might think of a border skirmish as the perfect distraction—and as justification for more repression at home. Even as they scold Mr Uribe, Brazil and other South American countries should warn Venezuela that it is destabilising the continent—and it is high time it stopped.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10808543
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.