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On Feb. 10 the New York Times led its story on peace talks in Colombia with "President Andres Pastrana and the leader of the country's largest rebel group announced today a broad agreement aimed at restarting formal peace talks that have been suspended since November."
In the Washington Post the lead was "Breathing new life into Colombia's faltering peace process, President Andres Pastrana and the country's top guerrilla leader agree today to resume negotiations in a revived effort to arrange a swift cease-fire and bring and end to decades of civil war."
Take your pick. Which lead is more misleading? Both are. Indeed, you wouldn't have been able to find anything similar in a Colombian newspaper. Because there is no chance that peace can be negotiated in Colombia, certainly not without a broader war.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have been fighting for power for nearly four decades. They have little support among Colombia's people, but thanks to being subsided by the drug producers they protect, the FARC has grown into a 17,000-man army equipped with the best weapons and communications technology money can buy - better, by and large, than the Colombian army has. Small wonder, then, that the FARC now controls nearly a third of the country. Clearly the FARC threatens the stability and territorial integrity of Latin America's fourth-largest country.
Washington says that to fight the FARC is to fight drug trafficking and, by extension, street crime in America. A $1.3 billion U.S. aid package for that purpose is aimed principally at improving the Colombian military's equipment, mobility and training. The largest component is $385 million for 30 new Black Hawk helicopters to help ferry three U.S.-trained battalions into action.
Critics assert that U.S. military aid portends a counterinsurgency war of the kind El Salvador waged during the eighties and early nineties. Yes. But what they don't say is that for nearly a decade El Salvador has been a functioning democracy as a result of the peace treaty the guerrilla signed in 1992 after it became clear it was facing military defeat.
Another thing critics don't mention is that the negotiations that led to a peace treaty in El Salvador were possible because the guerrilla there had political aspirations, which they have satisfied since then by participating fully in the electoral process. This is what happened in Colombia with another guerrilla group, the M-19, which did have political aspirations and in 1990 transformed itself through negotiation into a political party.
The FARC are nothing more at this point than bandits who have found a way of living well as mercenaries at the service of the drug-traffickers. Could any of their leaders be interested in the tough and chancy task of running for office to end up with a congressman's meager salary? So nothing can be expected of negotiations unless the rebels are faced with a crushing military defeat.
Critics who say the U.S. aid would complicate peace talks are falling for the FARC's bluff. The FARC goes through the motions of negotiating with the government, but there is nothing that could be called a "negotiating process." Nevertheless, Colombia's President Pastrana, as many other before him, has made an effort to negotiate with the FARC, mainly to assuage foreign opinion, because Colombians, long frustrated by the lack of results, have lost faith in achieving peace through negotiations.
A couple of weeks ago, for the latest round of negotiations the theatrics escalated to previously unknown heights. Pastrana met in the rebel zone with the aging chief of the FARC, Manuel Marulanda-better known as "Tirofijo" (Sure-shot)- for negotiations that eventually produced nothing more than a declaration that they would renew negotiations.
As always, much nonsense has been written around this meeting. One, that Marulanda "is under considerable international pressure to resume peace negotiations," a piece of folly that appeared in the New York Times and has circulated through other media. But nobody bothers to explain the nature of the "international pressure" that can be exercised upon a guerrilla group that doesn't depend for its survival on anything that might come from abroad (except weapons, that many countries are anxious to sell them).
What can the international community do? Break non-existent diplomatic relations? Apply sanctions to their non-existent foreign trade? Or perhaps condemnation by the United Nations?
Marulanda agreed his group will return this week to the negotiating table, but not to discuss a real agenda, while the insurgents continue to attack remote towns, kidnap civilians for large ransoms and collect millions of dollars for protecting the illicit coca crops.
Claudio Campuzano (claudio-campuzano@hotmail.com) is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com