Colombia
Peace
Process
Collapses
While
Second
Presidential
Candidate
Decries
Failed
Drug
Policies
1/11/02
As Colombian President Andres Pastrana finishes out his term, he this week abandoned the slow-moving negotiations with the 17,000 leftist guerrillas of the FARC which have consumed his years in office, and the country is bracing for even higher levels of political violence as the Colombian armed forces maneuver menacingly around the rebels' Switzerland-sized safe haven. With peace talks at an end, the government has vowed to retake the zone. Meanwhile, another of the candidates moving to take Pastrana's place has decried the drug war as a failure. US observers of Colombia expressed grave preoccupation with Pastrana's move. "We are very concerned," said Jason Hagen, Colombia associate for the Washington Office on Latin America (http://www.wola.org). "The talks have been troubled for some time -- there's a lot of mistrust between the FARC and the government -- but we still believe peace negotiations are the only way out of this conflict," he told DRCNet. "If this process fails and the war gets much worse, it will be worse than anything Colombia has ever seen," said Adam Isaacson, senior associate at the Center for International Policy (http://www.ciponline.org). "The FARC and the military have been kind of holding back during the peace process. The last time the FARC and the government really went at it, back in 1998, there were bloody battles and gruesome human rights violations," he told DRCNet. "But back then, the FARC and the military were only two-thirds of their present size, and the paramilitaries were only about one-third as powerful as now. The FARC is capable of doing much more than kidnapping people and blowing up oil pipelines." The situation in Colombia, however, remains confused and fluid. On Wednesday, President Pastrana told the nation the rebels had abandoned the peace talks and gave them 48 hours to vacate the safe haven. According to Colombian press reports and the Associated Press, units of the Colombian military are making preparations to retake the zone. But the rebels deny having abandoned the peace talks, and Pastrana's own words to his countrymen sound like he is the one walking away. "Today I have to tell Colombians, with regret, but above all with realism and responsibility, that the FARC keeps placing obstacles in front of the peace process, making it impossible for us to keep advancing with the process," Pastrana said in a nationally broadcast speech. "The FARC has 48 hours, as agreed, to retire from the zone," he said, referring to the original timeframe for them to abandon the safe haven if talks failed. "He lied to the country and the international community when he said the FARC had asked for 48 hours... for the armed forces to enter the zone after not coming to an agreement," FARC peace negotiator and spokesman Raul Reyes told the AP. In a communique released Thursday, the FARC repeated that claim and denied that it had walked out of the negotiations. Just hours before Pastrana's Wednesday announcement, Reyes had told reporters the FARC hoped the talks would continue until at least January 20, the latest repeatedly postponed expiration date for the safe haven. On Thursday afternoon, it was unclear if the 48-period had begun, and by Thursday evening the situation became even more muddied. In another address to the nation that evening, President Pastrana announced that at the behest of the United Nations he was giving that group 48-hours to resurrect the peace talks he had buried the day before. This time, Pastrana gave a firm deadline. "A few moments ago, the special advisor to the UN Secretary General for the Colombian peace process, Mr. James LeMoyne, with the support of the international community, has asked of me a reasonable time to meet with the FARC," Pastrana told a confused nation. "I have accepted this request and have given them a maximum and unchangeable period of 48 hours to do so, that is, from this moment until 9:30 Saturday night." Pastrana has been under increasing pressure from the Colombian military, elements of popular opinion, and parts of the US government to abandon the three-year old peace talks. The US government's Plan Colombia, while officially aimed at drug trafficking, has involved the US in an expensive military and political campaign against the FARC, who, along with most other actors in the Colombian conflict, profit from the drug trade. "Some elements in the US government thought Pastrana was ceding too much to the FARC," said WOLA's Hagen, "that Pastrana was not being tough enough. They were disappointed because the US made special concessions to meet with the FARC and treated them as political actors, even though they are officially designated as terrorists." Neither Hagen nor Isaacson thought these latest moves would have a direct impact on Plan Colombia, except to make matters worse. "US drug control goals will remain the same," said Isaacson. "The question is would we get involved in backing a much larger war effort? My suspicion is yes, especially with this administration. Once they get their Latin America team in place, it's hard not to imagine dire consequences." Drowned out in the uproar over the apparent end of the peace process was independent presidential candidate Noemi Sanin's call for an international conference to address failed drug war strategies. Sanin, an outspoken politician who has rebuked the US for criticizing Colombian anti-drug efforts, is running in second place in recent polls. Current drug control strategies "are inadequate; drug trafficking keeps advancing, it keeps financing our conflict and creating an economy which is very damaging to democracy and its institutions," she told the Associated Press in a Tuesday interview. "We're not winning the war against drug trafficking -- not even close," the former foreign minister said. "And we're losing many battles." The need for change is urgent, said Sanin, because drug profits fuel the civil war. "If we could cut the veins of their drug-trafficking financing, the conflict would not be able to endure," she said. Sanin called for an international conference to look at new strategies for dealing with the drug trade, echoing a call made by Pastrana himself. She joins presidential candidate Colombian presidential candidate Luis Eduardo Garzon of the Social and Political Front in denouncing current Colombian drug policies (http://www.drcnet.org/wol/201.html#groundswell); Garzon went so far as to explicitly call for legalization. Leading presidential contender, Liberal Horacio Serpa has not addressed the issue. Presidential elections are set for May 26.
|
