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They dominate in Colombia an area three-fifths the size of Afghanistan. Like
the Taliban, they are not interested in governing for any particular purpose
through the levers of organized power. Terror will do fine, thank you, for
keeping the people in line.
Unlike the Taliban, however, the leftist
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are not perched unprotected on
a moon-like, hostile, barren environment but cozily ensconced in a protective
rain forest dotted with fertile land that feeds them.
Then again, like the
Taliban they live off illicit drug production. But, while the Taliban is at
the bottom rung of the drug traffic business-growing the opium-producing
poppy which others process and sell around the world-the FARC earn their keep
as armed thugs for the aristocrats of drug trafficking, the cartels who reap
the largest benefits by marketing cocaine in the United States and Europe.
The FARC lack the few rickety helicopters and tanks the Taliban "liberated"
in 1989 when the Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan-which, anyway, would
not be of much use in their environment. Instead, their 17,000-man army is
equipped with the best jungle-fighting weapons and communications technology
drug money can buy-better, by and large, than the Colombian army has. Early
in the year the U.S. Congress addressed this imbalance by passing a $1.3
billion aid package 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.
Furthermore, the FARC are not driven-or hampered-by an effort to enforce any
religious faith. Nor by ideology. Thirty-seven years ago the FARC began their
action on the basis of a Fidel Castro-inspired ideology, but ideology has
been lost in the mists of time. All the FARC are today is a mercenary bunch
devoted to turning Colombia into a vast hacienda they would own together with
the drug entrepreneurs, in which the Colombian people, among whom they have
little support, would be the peones.
This has spawned an opposing paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of
Colombia (AUC) that has done a lot of killing on its own of peasant farmers
and others whom they suspected of aiding the rebels-30 peasants and a
congressman last week.
Over time, several Colombian presidents have been carrying out negotiations
with the rebels, seeking to convince them to drop their arms and get involved
in the country's political life. Another group, the much smaller M-19, did
transform itself in 1990 into a political party because their leaders did
have political aspirations. But the FARC leaders, now bandits who have found
a way of living well as mercenaries at the service of the drug-traffickers,
are not interested in the tough and chancy task of running for office to end
up with a congressman's meager salary.
For three years, current Colombian president Andres Pastrana has been
negotiating with the FARC leadership unsuccessfully. He picked the same day
as the first U.S. air strikes on Afghanistan to announce he would continue
his unpopular peace talks with the FARC rebels-opinion polls data show almost
nine out of every ten Colombians think he has failed in them-and that he was
extending the right of the FARC to occupy a demilitarized enclave in the
country's south for another three months. The Switzerland-sized zone expires
again on Jan 20. It was the tenth time the president has renewed the enclave
since he granted it to the FARC in 1998 in return for peace talks.
It was an extraordinary concession, especially as it followed the FARC's
kidnapping and subsequent killing of former culture minister and popular folk
music promoter Consuelo Araujo, wife of the nation's solicitor general,
Edgardo Maya. One again, in an action Freud would surely have appreciated,
as chances of an agreement are thought to be greater, the FARC do something
to set the whole process back.
It is clear that nothing can be expected of negotiations unless the rebels
are faced with a crushing military defeat. But there any similitude with the
Taliban ends.
If the death of innocent people is a concern in the war against
the Taliban, this concern would be exponentially larger in any vigorous
military action against the FARC. Nevertheless, if Colombia is going to have
a chance of remaining a viable nation, which now it barely is, it is hard to
imagine how this could be without destroying both the FARC and the drug
traffickers who support them.
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