[News] Colombia: Mercenaries freed, FARC carries forward fight for liberation

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.fightbacknews.org/2008/08/tom-burke-colombia-analysis.htm

<http://www.fightbacknews.org/2008/08/index.htm>August 2008

Colombia: Mercenaries freed, FARC carries forward fight for liberation

Analysis by Tom Burke

The Bush Pentagon and State Department are crowing after a raid in 
which 15 prisoners of war, including three American mercenaries, were 
freed. What they are not telling you is that the Revolutionary Armed 
Forces of Colombia (FARC) were preparing to unilaterally release the 
prisoners in early July 2008.

The FARC moved the prisoners of war from three separate jungle camps 
to one location, planning to transfer them by helicopter and release 
them to French and Swiss government envoys. It was a simple plan that 
would have given the FARC a platform to demand freedom for 500 FARC 
fighters in Colombian prisons. For FARC negotiator Ricardo Palmera 
and rebel Sonia (Anayibe Rojas Valderrama), held as hostages in U.S. 
jails, the raid and the refusal of the U.S. and Colombian governments 
to negotiate is bad news.

During its 44 years of fighting a guerrilla war in the countryside of 
Colombia, the FARC has unilaterally released prisoners a number of 
times, including seven months ago. These prisoner releases provide a 
rare opportunity for the FARC to present their political views and 
talk about pathways to social justice and peace in Colombia. At the 
prisoner release ceremonies, the FARC message sharply contrasts with 
the typical media distortions and censorship about them. In recent 
times, the U.S. strategy is to criminalize the FARC, to make it 
impossible for the FARC to negotiate with the Colombian government 
(or anyone else) and to deny the legitimate struggle of the peasants 
and workers.

The U.S. wants war without end. Bush wants victory, not prisoner 
exchanges and negotiations. The U.S. is frustrating all attempts at 
talks, while intensifying the war in Colombia. During his testimony 
in U.S. court, FARC negotiator Ricardo Palmera explained he was 
kidnapped by U.S. intelligence in Ecuador on his way to speak with a 
U.N. envoy three years ago. In January 2008, the FARC successfully 
released prisoners to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, but only 
after the U.S. and Colombian military spoiled the first attempt. In 
March this year, the U.S. was behind a high tech missile and bomb 
attack killing FARC Commander Raul Reyes and 24 others inside 
Ecuador. Raul Reyes was planning the next high profile prisoner 
release with ranking government officials from Ecuador, Venezuela and 
France. The U.S. tries to kill every effort.

The U.S. behavior is cold, hard and calculated. The U.S. is at war, 
no negotiations. The U.S. cannot stand for anyone to recognize the 
legitimacy of the FARC. The Bush officials were shaking with rage 
when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said the FARC should be granted 
international legitimacy known as 'belligerency status.' For the same 
reasons, the U.S. government was flabbergasted when U.S. prosecutors 
were forced to repeat Ricardo Palmera's trials. Most of the American 
jurors believed Palmera over the U.S. government, leading to mistrials.

In the recent prisoner handover, the FARC were willing to release 
Colombian soldiers, the wealthy reactionary politician and French 
citizen named Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. mercenaries. The three 
American military contractors were paid by Northrop Grumman to help 
kill Colombians. In the Washington D.C. trials of FARC leader Ricardo 
Palmera, it was revealed that Marc Gonzalves, Keith Stansell and 
Thomas Howes provided 'real time' information from their high-tech 
airplane to the Colombian military in its war against the peasant 
fighters of the FARC. This direct involvement by U.S. soldiers of 
fortune in Colombia's civil war is risky business. It shows the calm 
restraint of the FARC that the three returned to the U.S. in such good shape.

However, soldier of fortune Marc Gonsalves spoke strong words against 
the Colombian revolutionaries who are fighting to free their country 
from U.S. domination and war. Like the patriot-for-pay that he is, 
Gonsalves defensively repeated again and again the big lie of the 
Bush administration, "the FARC are not revolutionaries." Poor Marc 
Gonsalves - his big story of abuse involves his captors making him 
carry a heavy backpack in the jungle while marching tied together 
with other prisoners and under armed guard. Compared to the treatment 
the U.S. military gives prisoners of war at Guantanamo and Abu 
Ghraib, one would think Marc Gonsalves and the others might 
appreciate their good health and fair treatment in someone else's country.

The effect of the prisoner raid is that the U.S. seized the media 
spotlight away from the FARC. The fact the FARC was already releasing 
the prisoners is swept clean from U.S. news stories. This pleases the 
Bush White House to no end. Bush has just boosted Colombian President 
Uribe out of a sticky situation where the Colombian Supreme Court was 
questioning the legitimacy of Uribe's last election.

Despite Bush's support, President Uribe's regime is shaky due to his 
personal and political ties to narco-traffickers and corruption. An 
old U.S. intelligence report ties Uribe to the infamous cocaine 
trafficker Pablo Escobar. So does Escobar's surviving girlfriend. No 
matter to the White House, Uribe is their man. Uribe's rule consists 
of death squad terror for peasants, trade unionists, student 
activists and human rights defenders. In the countryside deadly 
chemical poison is sprayed on countless acres of land where FARC 
support is strongest, driving peasants off the land. Only Iraq has a 
bigger refugee crisis. Poor Colombians are forced into shantytowns 
around the big cities. Police and right-wing paramilitaries patrol 
the shantytowns in tandem. Repression is all around for working and 
low-income people.

For sections of the middle classes and the rich oligarchy in 
Colombia, the situation is one of combativeness as they mobilize to 
support Uribe and the violence of the Colombian state. The wealthy 
elite who rule Colombia and sell off its natural resources to U.S. 
corporations are perfectly willing to ignore the repression and the 
terror in the countryside. They are happy to have U.S. Southern 
Command conducting the war in their country, but they are careful not 
to speak too loudly about it. There are 800 U.S. military advisors, 
600 military contractors, and scores of U.S. Special Forces on 
Colombian soil to direct the dirty war.

The rich people who rule Colombia are bathed in the blood of tens of 
thousands of peasants, workers and leftists. U.S. taxpayers foot the 
bill to the tune of $5 billion. The Bush administration fully backs 
the corrupt, narco-trafficking, death squad government of President 
Uribe. Without this, the wealthy few who rule Colombia with a bloody 
hand would be chased from power, never to return. The Uribe regime 
would collapse in months. Death squad democracy would be history, 
revolution a certainty.

Nevertheless, due to the recent blows against the FARC leadership, 
American imperialists, Colombian reactionaries and fools of all 
stripes want to claim the FARC are collapsing or are 'finished.' 
Others who should know better, because they know how it feels to be 
hunted by assassins, are suggesting that the FARC should one-sidedly 
ignore the history of Colombia and surrender their weapons. This is 
wishful thinking. In Colombia, laying down arms is akin to suicide.

For those who want social change in Colombia, the electoral road ends 
in the cemetery. The Colombian state murdered more than 4000 members, 
candidates and elected officials of the left-wing party, the 
Patriotic Union, in the late 1980s. In 1987, Patriotic Union 
political leader Ricardo Palmera went and joined the FARC, dedicating 
his own life to continuing the struggle. In his U.S. trials, 
Professor Palmera said, "My choices were death, exile, or joining the 
fight in the countryside." In Colombia, those on the freedom road 
must carry arms if they are going to defend the people and reach 
their destination.

For sure, the FARC are reassessing their tactics in terms of 
releasing the small numbers of prisoners of war they still hold - 
mostly military officers. However, this is only one part of the FARC 
strategy. Mainly the FARC organize the masses of Colombian people to 
take control of their land, labor and lives to make revolution. It is 
slow, difficult, unglamorous work, but the FARC is a political 
organization and its strategy relies on the people. After 45 years of 
building the largest revolutionary army in the hemisphere, with 
tremendous growth during a period when much of the left was in 
retreat or capitulating to imperialism, the FARC is more political in 
its approach to making revolution than ever.

Millions of supporters of the FARC understand the long-term nature of 
the struggle for national liberation. The FARC is on a long march and 
expects to face both setbacks and advances. The goal is to wear down 
the Colombian state and its imperialist backers in the U.S. until 
conditions exist for the people to seize power. To the north, the 
American people do not like wars where Americans get killed, so the 
White House and Pentagon are limited in what they can do.

Plan Colombia is a U.S. war plan that brings poverty, misery and 
death to Colombians. In practice, Plan Colombia means more war, more 
repression and more drugs. Plan Colombia is the enemy of all people 
who want peace and justice. Like Bush and Uribe, the days of Plan 
Colombia are numbered. Plan Colombia cannot continue and the U.S. 
will soon need a new strategy or possibly go to war in Latin America.

The growing aggressiveness of the U.S. across Latin America is a sign 
of weakness, not strength. Bush and the U.S. empire are losing their 
grip. In Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, the people are rising and 
attempting to build new societies. The U.S. wants to put a stop to 
the people's movements and reverse their gains. If the FARC leads a 
successful revolution in Colombia, it is game over for the U.S. 
empire in that region. Like Iraq in the Middle East, Colombia is key 
to the U.S. strategy for dominating Latin America.

We should do everything in our power to expose the Bush 
administration and its war in Colombia. That is our responsibility.

The four trials of FARC leader Ricardo Palmera in Washington D.C. 
went a long way to exposing the phoniness of the War On Terror and 
the War On Drugs. The U.S. empire, with millions of dollars, could 
not defeat a lone revolutionary held in solitary confinement and 
denied many of the constitutional rights Bush claims to defend. 
Palmera beat the slick U.S. prosecutors on nine out of ten charges 
and the U.S. was forced to drop all the false drug charges. Professor 
Palmera is a good and decent man. He chose to do what hundreds of 
thousands of other Colombians have done before him, to pick up a gun 
and defend what is right, what is good and what is just. Palmera 
stands for the poor, against the rich, despite his own background.

We too should stand with Palmera, Sonia and the 500 FARC prisoners 
held by the proto-fascist Uribe. We should stand with all the 
Colombian workers and peasants yearning to be free from U.S. 
corporate dominance and U.S. military death and destruction. The U.S. 
is on the wrong side of the civil war in Colombia. We need to demand 
that the U.S. government and military pull out and bring all the 
troops home now! Stop Plan Colombia!




Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20080806/be6a74bf/attachment.htm>