A farce named farc

 

 

It has been a tradition in Broadway since its inception in 1750 that every musical or play that comes out of its stable has to be performed backstage, behind closed doors, before presenting it at other stages round the world. It seems, successive US administrations have taken a leaf out of Broadway's book. During the bitter Cold war with the Soviets, it tested its manoeuvres in its backyard before unleashing it on the enemy. The dress rehearsal was carried out in Central and South America.

All along, executives, who were appointed to keep an eye on the region, supported or opposed candidates at the time of elections in countries like El Salvador, Nicaragua and Bolivia apart from Venezuela in a manner that suited their interest. The result is that today the US has very few friends it can count on in the region. And if that was not enough, the US is again playing games of set pieces with its leftist opponents, this time with the help of Colombia. But it seems, this time around, Colombia has bitten off more than it can chew.

The three-pronged crisis in the Andes escalated as Ecuador broke off diplomatic relations with Colombia, and Venezuela expelled Colombia’s ambassador and other diplomats. The leaders of the three countries—President Rafael Correa, President Álvaro Uribe and President Hugo Chavez—swapped charges of treachery and deceit, ratcheting up tension in a dispute that began when Colombian forces hunted down and killed a Colombian guerrilla leader on Ecuadorean soil over the weekend. Venezuela and Ecuador sent troops to the Colombian border on Sunday in response to Colombia’s military raid on a rebel encampment in the jungle about a mile inside Ecuador. Colombian forces killed 21 guerrillas belonging to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, Colombia’s largest rebel group. In addition to killing a senior rebel leader, Raúl Reyes, Colombia said it recovered his laptop computer, whose contents were at the centre of several allegations.

It is not the first time that Colombia's cavalier attitude towards the sovereignty of its neighbours has created tension. In 2005 the kidnapping of a FARC commander on the streets of the Venezuelan capital Caracas, in which the Colombian government initially denied involvement, led to a 15-day diplomatic stand-off. But this week's crisis comes after a period of warming relations between Colombia and Venezuela, despite the ideological gulf between the rightwing Uribe and the socialist Chávez. General Rangel of Venezuela said that the manoeuvres were aimed at containing the reach of the United States. "It is not against the people of Colombia, but rather the expansionist designs of the empire," Gen. Rangel said, referring to the US, at a news conference. And, of course, the Bush administration has taken the bait. "We do think it's curious that a country such as Venezuela would be raising the spectre of military action against a country that was defending itself against terrorism," said Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman. "I think that says a lot about Venezuela," she added. Incidentally, America has always asked Colombia to show “zero-tolerance” towards FARC and its commanders. Colombia has religiously followed that command to the extent that it has violated the sovereignty of neighbours on more than one occasion.

Recently declassified documents obtained from America’s National Security Archive, Washington not only make a mockery of America’s zero-tolerance of terrorist organisations but also reveals how America, on more than one occasion, has struck tacit understanding with two warring parties showing scant regard for its friendship with "friendly" countries. Raúl Reyes, the senior Colombian guerrilla leader killed in Ecuador last weekend, held secret talks with US diplomats 10 years ago in Costa Rica, according to the declassified memorandum of conversation. The slain insurgent, Raúl Reyes, met secretly in Costa Rica in December 1998 with a US diplomatic mission led by Philip T. Chicola, then director of the State Department's Office of Andean Affairs. The meeting was particularly sensitive in that the guerrilla group represented by Reyes, FARC, was listed on the State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The FARC remains Colombia's oldest and largest rebel army. It reveals that some kind of negotiation channel was open between the US and FARC without the knowledge of Colombia, a US ally. Stressing "the absolute requirement for confidentiality," Chicola told Reyes that the US wanted to "to develop a channel of communication" with FARC: “I told the FARC representatives that while the (United States government) had no preconceived agenda or structure as to how the discussions might proceed, we wanted to use the meeting to describe our views on counter narcotics, the peace process and the practice of kidnapping and attacks on US interests in Colombia." Reyes further replied by noting the "historic importance he attached to the meeting," adding that "changing world and domestic circumstances" had brought the parties to the table.

Other documents suggest that US espionage operations targeting top Colombian government officials in 1993 provided key evidence linking the US-Colombia task force, charged with tracking down fugitive drug lord Pablo Escobar, to one of Colombia's most notorious "paramilitary" chiefs. The affair has sparked a special CIA investigation into whether US intelligence was shared with Colombian terrorists and narco-traffickers every bit as dangerous as Escobar himself. The documents reveal that the US-Colombia Medellin Task Force was sharing intelligence information with Fidel Castaño, paramilitary leader of Los Pepes, a clandestine terrorist organisation that waged a bloody campaign against people and property associated with the notorious narcotics kingpin. One cable describes a key meeting from April 1993 where, according to sensitive US intelligence sources, Colombian National Police director General Miguel Antonio Gómez Padilla said "that he had directed a senior CNP intelligence officer to maintain contact with Fidel Castaño, paramilitary leader of Los Pepes, for the purposes of intelligence collection." The no-holds-barred search for Escobar began in July 1992 after his escape from a luxury prison where he had been confined since surrendering under a special plea agreement with Colombian authorities.

The new collection also sheds light on the role of US intelligence agencies in Colombia's conflict—both the close cooperation with Colombian security forces evident in the Task Force as well as the highly-sensitive US intelligence operations that targeted the Colombian government itself. Key information about links between the Task Force and the Pepes was derived from US intelligence sources that closely monitored meetings between the Colombian President and his top security officials. While it is certain that the Task Force was exchanging information with Castaño and Los Pepes, we do not know how long the Task Force maintained these ties and whether the relationship was sanctioned—either tacitly or explicitly—by US participants in the Task Force, the Embassy, or at a more senior level of the US government.

Worse, documents also suggest that the US knew about Colombian military’s involvement in paramilitary attacks and offer a unique and intimate perspective on the institutional pressures that encouraged a wide range of cooperation with paramilitary forces-from the tacit acquiescence of senior commanders to the direct participation of field officers and their troops. One such case is the infamous series of paramilitary massacres in and around the towns of La Gabarra and Tibú in the summer of 1999.

Paramilitary from the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) moved into the lucrative cocoa growing region in May 1999 to "cleanse" guerrilla influence from the area, killing some 150 people in more than a dozen attacks over that next three months. In most cases, local military forces simply did not react to the paramilitary incursions. In the midst of this brutal offensive, the Colombian vice president's office “privately reported” to the US embassy that Colombian army soldiers "had donned AUC armbands and participated directly" in one of the massacres. "The string of mass killings since May without security force response is appalling," US Ambassador Curtis Kamman reported in a cable to Washington. "How did seven massacres occur without interference under the noses of several hundred security force members?" These revelations are not only shocking, but raise question on America’s commitment to fight terror in “all its forms”. This type of selective targeting and twisting of facts will not only dent its credential, but will also provide arsenal to President Hugo Chavez to fire more salvos against the “Empire.”