[News] Uribe's Illegal Cross-Border Raid

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/gott03042008.html

March 3, 2008


Uribe's Illegal Cross-Border Raid


Colombian Deaths in Ecuador

By RICHARD GOTT

The deaths of Raúl Reyes and Julián Conrado, two 
senior figures in the Revolutionary Armed Forces 
of Colombia, the Farc, is clearly a serious blow 
to the guerrilla organization. It will also call 
a halt to the release of hostages held by the 
Farc in the jungle over many years, a process 
that had been proceeding slowly under the 
auspices of the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. 
Freedom in the short term for the former 
presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, in 
which the French president Nicolas Sarkozy has 
taken a personal interest, now seems unlikely, 
and many people believe that she is dying. Hopes 
of the imminent release of three US defence contractors have also been dashed.

By all accounts, the midnight attack on the camp 
of the Farc leaders, a mile inside Ecuadorean 
territory in the jungle region south of the 
Putumayo river, was a political decision taken by 
the Colombian president Alvaro Uribe to put an 
end to the peace process orchestrated by Chávez. 
Four Colombian politicians, held as hostages by 
the Farc for the past six years, were released 
last week and given a royal welcome in Caracas. 
Reyes had been among those who organized their 
freedom. Killed at the age of 59, twenty years 
older than Che Guevara at the time of his death, 
Reyes had long been more of a diplomat than a 
guerrilla commander, though he was often 
photographed in military fatigues and carrying a gun.

According to the Ecuadorean president Rafael 
Correa, the bodies of the Farc commanders and 13 
guerrillas were recovered in their pyjamas after 
being bombed while sleeping in a tent on the 
Ecuadorean side of the frontier. The Colombian 
air force, Correa claimed, had used advanced 
technology "with the collaboration of foreign 
powers" to locate the camp and "to massacre" its 
occupants. Uribe's government is a close ally of 
the United States and of Israel, whereas Correa 
belongs to the radical camp led by Chávez. 
Subsequent to the bombing, Colombian troops 
crossed the frontier into Ecuador frontier to recover the bodies.

Ever since 9/11, the United States has requested 
the Colombian government to refer to the Farc as 
a "terrorist" organization, a word also now used 
by the European Union. Yet the Colombian 
guerrillas are the most long-lasting of all such 
movements in Latin America, long pre-dating the 
current obsession with "terrorism". Their leader, 
Manuel Marulanda, first led the Farc in the early 
1960s and has survived into the 21st century, 
while Raúl Reyes has run the organization's 
political wing for many years. A well-known 
negotiator and promoter of the Farc's cause in 
meetings in Europe and Latin America, Reyes was a 
crucial collaborator in the recent efforts by the 
Venezuelan president and the Colombian senator 
Piedad Córdoba to release some of the Colombian hostages.

The Farc has witnessed many changes over the past 
forty years, but none of them have affected its 
ability to survive. One change has been the 
increasing production in Colombia of the raw 
material of cocaine and heroin, fueling the drug 
markets of the United States and Europe, that was 
once grown in Bolivia and Peru. Land in Colombia 
devoted to growing cannabis, coca and poppies has 
grown fivefold since the 1960s, and the Farc has 
long provided protection to the rural workers on 
these plantations, as well as exacting tribute from the drug barons.

Another change has been the growth of 
paramilitary organizations, first sponsored by 
the drug barons and then by the state, that have 
revived the pattern of civil war that has been a 
particular Colombian phenomenon since the 19th 
century. Coupled with the growth of the 
paramilitaries has been the US-designed Plan 
Colombia, a military aid package first agreed 
with President Clinton in 1999, that has made 
Colombia the fifth largest recipient of US aid in the world.

A third change has been the collapse of the 
Soviet Union, and the corresponding loss of 
influence of the Colombian Communist Party, once 
the principal political backer of the Farc. The 
death in 1990 of Jacobo Arenas, the talented 
Communist leader, left Marulanda and Reyes as the Farc's sole commanders.

Negotiations between the guerrillas and the 
government have been a feature of the past 25 
years, but an unfortunate experience in the 1980s 
turned the Farc into a reluctant participant. 
After a cease fire in 1984, the Farc was 
encouraged to establish a legal political party, 
the Patriotic Union, and to put forward 
candidates in the elections in 1985. The 
Patriotic Union was reasonably successful, 
securing six senators, 23 deputies, and several 
hundred local councillors. But the outcome was 
disastrous. After emerging into the open and 
putting their heads above the parapet, many of 
the UP supporters were singled out and killed. 
More than 4,000 left-wing activists and 
organizers were assassinated in the year after 
the elections. The guerrillas retired to their 
safe territories in the rural areas, and vowed 
not to make the same mistake again. Further 
negotiations took place between 1999 and 2002, 
but the government negotiators could not overcome 
this legacy of mistrust on the part of the Farc. 
When Uribe became president in 2002, he abandoned 
all such efforts and embarked on seeking an entirely military solution.

Last year, Uribe came under considerable pressure 
from within Colombia to make greater efforts to 
secure the release of the hostages, and this was 
backed by many governments in Latin America as 
well as by France. Hugo Chávez took up the 
challenge, and in spite of non-cooperation from 
Uribe, he was instrumental in moving the process 
on. The Farc will soon find new commanders, but 
the willful slaughter of Reyes and the other 
guerrillas in an illegal cross-border operation 
in Ecuador will put all peace negotiations on 
hold for a considerable time, which was clearly 
Uribe's purpose in ordering the strike.

Richard Gott is the author of 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1844675335/counterpunchmaga>Hugo 
Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution and 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0300104111/counterpunchmaga>Cuba: 
a New History. He can be reached at: <mailto:Rwgott at aol.com>Rwgott at aol.com




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