COLOMBIA:
Hostage-Prisoner Swap a
Mirage
By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTÁ - (IPS) -
"It is painful to die
without seeing my son
free," said 62-year-old
Pedro Manuel Pérez eight
days before he died of
leukaemia. His funeral
in the northern
Colombian city of
Riohacha put an end to
his 10-year wait for the
release of his hostage
son by the FARC
guerrillas.
Army corporal William
Pérez was 23 years old
when the FARC
(Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia)
attacked the El Billar
military base in
southern Colombia, in
March 1998.
In the attack, "62
professional soldiers
were killed, 31 managed
to escape, and 43 were
captured by the
guerrillas, including
officers and
non-commissioned
officers like our son,"
Pedro Manuel Pérez told
journalist Yosmery
Magdaniel, who sent IPS
the news of his death
last week in Riohacha.
The majority of the 43
military personnel
captured in El Billar
were rank-and-file
soldiers, who were
released by the
insurgent group in 2001
in a unilateral gesture
in the framework of
peace talks.
Today the group of
hostages held by the
FARC with the hope of
swapping them for
imprisoned rebels is
made up of 34 members of
the armed forces and
police, three U.S.
military contractors,
and three civilians,
including
French-Colombian former
presidential candidate
Ingrid Betancourt.
Since 2003, 13 civilian
and eight military
hostages have been shot
and killed in failed
military rescue attempts
and other circumstances,
and a military officer
died of health problems.
In addition, the FARC’s
chief negotiator on the
hostage issue, known as
"Raúl Reyes", was killed
in a Mar. 1 Colombian
military aerial bombing
of his camp across the
border in Ecuador, which
led to a rupture in
diplomatic relations
between the two
countries.
The positive news in the
hostage crisis was the
release of six former
politicians by the FARC,
and the escape of two
hostages in 2007: a
police officer and a
politician, Fernando
Araújo, who is now
foreign minister.
It was the dizzying
official negotiations
carried out from August
to November by
Venezuelan President
Hugo Chávez and
Colombian opposition
Senator Piedad Córdoba
that secured the
unilateral release of
the six civilian
hostages in January and
February.
But that was achieved at
the cost of a dangerous
confrontation between
the leftist Venezuelan
leader and his political
antithesis in the
region, rightwing
Colombian President
Álvaro Uribe, who
abruptly cut short
Chávez’s mediation
efforts.
Since Reyes’ death, "the
big problem is that the
FARC has not named a
negotiator," said
journalist Carlos
Lozano, director of the
Communist weekly
publication Voz, who was
named by Uribe on May 2
as a facilitator of
hostage talks, along
with conservative former
minister Álvaro Leyva.
"There is a great deal
of mistrust" in the FARC,
which means that
negotiating a
hostage-prisoner swap
"is a risky role to take
on," because the
guerrilla leaders’
communications equipment
can be used to identify
their location, added
Lozano in a public
dialogue on the hostage
crisis with former
minister Camilo González
Posso, director of the
Institute of Studies for
Development and Peace (INDEPAZ),
held last week in the
Bogotá offices of the
Friedrich Ebert
Foundation, a non-profit
German organisation.
Lozano and González
Posso both stressed that
military hostages like
Pérez, who have spent
the most years in
captivity in remote FARC
jungle camps, have been
basically forgotten.
In 2006, former U.S.
ambassador to Colombia,
William Wood, compared
them to the "terminally
ill." And the army has
reported that all of the
officers and
non-commissioned
officers seized by the
guerrillas have been
replaced.
This year, Colombia, the
third-largest recipient
of U.S. military aid in
the world, after Israel
and Egypt, will earmark
6.5 percent of gross
domestic product (GDP)
to military spending.
Nevertheless, Uribe, an
adherent of U.S.
President George W.
Bush’s "war on terror",
denies that Colombia is
in the grip of an
internal armed conflict,
referring instead to the
insurgents as
"terrorists."
If Uribe admitted that
the country was involved
in a war, said Lozano,
he would have to accept
that the origins of the
civil war date back to
the 1940s, and "would
have to conclude that no
military solution is
possible."
The search for a
humanitarian
hostage-prisoner swap is
just one of many battles
waged in Colombia’s
armed conflict, the crux
of which is the struggle
over land and areas rich
in natural resources,
from which hundreds of
thousands of peasant
farmers have been
forcibly displaced,
mainly by the far-right
paramilitaries.
The FARC has been dealt
"very strong blows" this
year, said Lozano. The
laptops that the
government says were
found in Reyes’ camp
have revealed FARC
military secrets, and
have provided thousands
of emails and internal
memos on the group’s
political and diplomatic
activities.
And just a few days
after Reyes was killed,
another FARC leader,
known as "Iván Ríos",
was murdered on Mar. 7
by his own men, who were
paid a 1.4 million
dollar bounty by the
government.
Demoralised by the war
and besieged by the
army, another
battle-hardened FARC
commander, "Karina",
surrendered earlier this
month and urged the FARC
leadership to end
hostilities and sit down
to negotiate.
But the biggest blow was
revealed on Saturday:
the death of FARC
founder and chief
"Manuel Marulanda", who
reportedly died of a
heart attack on Mar. 26.
In Lozano’s view, "a
guerrilla group is
prepared to deal with
the death of its
leaders." But, he added,
"it is obvious" that in
the face of the
sustained military
pressure from the Uribe
administration, the
territory under FARC
control has shrunk "a
great deal." According
to a 1996 German
intelligence report to
the Bundestag
(parliament), the rebel
group controlled 45
percent of the country
at that time -- mainly
sparsely populated rural
areas in the south of
the country.
But the FARC, Colombia’s
largest insurgency,
still has "the capacity
to react," and is not
"at the end of the end,"
as the military
maintains, said Lozano.
And "when we do get
there, there will still
be 10 more years of
war," warned former
minister González Posso.
The military bog-down is
reflected in conditions
set by the government
and the FARC in the
hostage crisis, on which
neither will budge.
Meanwhile, the hostages
are paying the price.
"I agree that
hostage-taking is an
error on the part of the
guerrillas. We have to
draw them into politics.
I don't believe in
armed, revolutionary
struggle as an option,"
said Lozano, who is also
a leader of Colombia’s
Communist Party.
He said he supports a
negotiated exchange of
hostages for prisoners
because "it is
altruistic and
humanitarian, which are
the fundamental
principles of the left."
Although he said "there
are no great reasons" to
be optimistic, he added
that "neither of the two
(government and FARC)
are closed" to the
possibility of a swap,
although "they lack
political will."
France and the families
of the hostages,
meanwhile, defend
Chávez’s involvement in
the mediation efforts.
Lozano, who is
considered the
best-informed Colombian
reporter on the hostage
crisis, said, without
elaborating, that
"things are moving," and
"I hope things will
continue going this
way."
But for INDEPAZ director
González Posso, a
humanitarian agreement
is like a mirage. "The
more we want it, the
more remote it becomes."
"I wouldn't go so far as
to say that a
humanitarian agreement
is dead, because
sometimes you’re wrong,
but the chances of
achieving one are at a
low point. The
prisoner-hostage swap
chapter is closing, and
has been caught in a
trap," he said.
González Posso believes
the FARC is not
principally seeking the
release of imprisoned
rebels, but is using the
question of a swap to
achieve, above all,
political returns by
demonstrating its
strength -- a view that
Lozano does not share.
"Nor does the government
care about securing the
release of the hostages,
because it puts a
military defeat of the
FARC ahead of (the
possibility of a
humanitarian accord).
Its main interest is to
win the war," said
González Posso.
And even if the two
sides did begin to
negotiate a swap in a
demilitarised zone --
the aim of the hostages’
families and the
mediators -- "they would
sit down to argue about
the same things they are
arguing about today," he
said.
Hostage talks have long
been blocked by Uribe’s
insistence that the FARC
is nothing but a gang of
terrorists, and by the
insurgent group’s view
of the president as a "narco-paramilitary
chief" -- a reference to
the paramilitary groups
that are heavily
involved in the drug
trade, act in collusion
with the army and have
supported pro-Uribe
candidates in elections
by threatening and
intimidating voters.
It’s almost as difficult
to attain a humanitarian
agreement for a
hostage-prisoner swap as
it is to achieve peace
negotiations, because
the correlation of
forces against the FARC
is growing stronger,
said González Posso.
The so-called
"humanitarian cordon"
ordered by Uribe in late
2007 "is the forerunner
to a military rescue" of
the hostages, said the
former minister.
The hostages’ families
are staunchly opposed to
any attempt to rescue
their loved ones by
force. The FARC
guerrillas guarding the
hostages have standing
orders to kill them if
the armed forces close
in on them. A number of
hostages have already
died in failed rescue
attempts, including a
provincial governor and
a former cabinet
minister.
In the "humanitarian
cordon," army troops are
ordered to track down
the hostages, surround
the rebel camps where
they are being held, and
inform Uribe, so that he
can call on the
international community
to send representatives
to convince the
guerrillas not to shoot
the hostages, and to
turn them over without
offering resistance.
Before engaging in
eventual talks with the
Uribe administration,
the FARC is planning to
deal a blow that is
"equivalent" to the loss
of Raúl Reyes and Iván
Ríos, González Posso
warned.
According to the former
minister, hostage talks
are not a real option in
today’s Colombia, as
long as a growing
majority of the
population believes it
is possible to defeat
the FARC on the
battlefield.
"Whatever alternative
there may be must lie in
the international
arena," he said,
referring to the support
for hostage talks
provided by Venezuela,
France and other
nations. |
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