Behind the Curtain

Colombia

BACKGROUND: FARC

Who Are They and What do They Want?

August 18, 2008

The recent success of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe against the FARC is being touted by conservatives as the best approach to take against terrorists, a good example of the “hard core” approach. But Colombia’s FARC are a special case, which may or may not apply to other situations in the future.

Who are the FARC? Where do they come from?

FARC is the acronym for the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces in Spanish and grew out of the violence and unrest staring in the 1950′s. These patterns of violence go back almost 200 to the founding of Colombia in 1830. Government was based on the institution of “clientelism” inherited from Spain, where large landowners held power over indigenous peasants as a regional aristocracy or private government.

Lack of law enforcement by the central government in rural regions made it difficult for the central government to collect tax revenues and distribute aid in the third of the country beyond its control. This closed political system was a major underlying cause initiating guerrilla activity and rebellion. Until the 20th century, urban elites were not affected by this struggle.

The last 50 years of violence is an outgrowth of specific security issues unresolved by the “La Violenza” in the mid-1950s, a civil war in which 300,000 lives were lost. Both ruling parties were wealthy and white, disagreeing violently over the role and influence of the Catholic church in politics. The rural poor, many Afro-Indian-Colombian, had little say in the government, and took matters into their own hands in their own communities. FARC is one such group.

Is Uribe’s hard-line Approach a good example for use again other terrorist groups?

Perhaps. When Uribe was elected in 2002 Colombia was not a “failed state” in the sense of Somalia with no functioning central government, but it had failed in the sense that there were large areas within its territorial boundaries where the central government was not in control, could not ensure security, and could not supply basic services such as roads, electricity, education, and health care.

These rural regions of Colombia were comparable to West Africa or the tribal regions of Pakistan, where the modern-day state never had a full impact or full allegiance of the population. Last year Uribe claimed that for the first time in it’s history, the Colombian federal government had control in every province and town in the county. Much of the success came from demilitarization of the “paramilitaries” who supported the government (and wealthy landowners) in the fight against guerrillas, reducing a three-way conflict to only two.

How did this all get started?

The opportunity for peace narrowed in the 1980s when rebel groups began to “tax” drug profits, and drug-trafficking increasingly became the rebels means of funding. In response, local landowners promoted growth of anti-guerrilla paramilitaries, who also participated in the drug trade as a way to gain funding and become independent of the landowners. Both of these groups challenged government control over the rural areas.

Though the Colombian government had always been weak and ineffectual, until the rise of drug-funded rebels and paramilitaries, it had no serious competition. From the 1980′s this weak state allowed establishment of organized crime based on drug-related revenues, which further weakened the state, and offered new political and economic opportunities for the poor. These groups were not considered a problem until the early 1990s when they they started killing politicians, judges, and journalists, taking the violence of the rural regions into the cities and attacking the wealthy elite. The existence of Colombia as a viable state was at stake. Read “Killing Pablo” by Mark Bowden for a view on how the government (with the help of the United States) regained control. Not pretty, but necessary.

What has been done to eliminate the roots of social unrest?

Initial efforts after “La Violenza” identified the impediments to peace as social injustice, unfair allocation of power, and a government seen as illegitimate by those who were disenfranchised. A new constitution in 1991 changed the governing structure reduced violence by moving conflict resolution into institutions. The coalition of guerrilla groups including M-19 who publicized their political views of government illegitimacy through extreme violence, participated in the constitutional restructuring process, and became a political party in the national and regional governments for several years.

Government functions were decentralized to the regional states: regional governments began collecting property taxes; mayors and governors were directly elected rather than appointed by the president; and regions took responsibility for education, health care, and environmental and consumer protection. According to Fukuyama (see his book State-Building) decentralization in the form of federalism moves political power into the community which is directly affected, which should “increase accountability and therefore the legitimacy and quality of democracy.”

The 1991 Constitution established a legal basis for full social rights with new institutions, moved areas of oversight from the Attorney-General to the judiciary, established new Senate and Congressional districts with increased minority representation at the federal level, and gave Congress the sole power to pass budget legislation. Grass-roots mobilization pushed the constitutional reforms ahead, despite efforts to derail it, driven by recognition that the current government did not include large sections of the population, ignored the overwhelming poverty and injustice, and overall no longer had legitimacy and credibility.

Creation of an Office of the Ombudsman established a government agency responsible to promote fundamental human rights, and act as the “advocate of the people.” In particular, this began to address the problem of protecting refugees and internally displaced persons. Methods of direct participation were established by various national referendums, initiatives, impeachments, and an “Open Town Hall.”

So why do the FARC continue to fight for social justice?

They don’t. But that recognition has come fairly recently.

A major initiative of direct negotiations and power sharing began in 1998 under President Andres Pastrana-Arango who promised to initiate a peace process with the remaining insurgents. To enable the start of negotiations Pastrana agreed to FARC demands for a demilitarized zone to be governed by FARC without government interference. Though considered an outrageous concession, it was an area already under defacto control of the insurgents, and though large (the size of Kentucky) contained only 100,000 people.

While talks continued over the next four years, the FARC had no coherence within their leadership to decide on strategy, goals, and objectives, and were not clear on what they required to agree to a comprehensive peace. The military wing of the FARC used the demilitarized zone as a safe area from which to launch raids on the surrounding countryside with continuing human rights violations, and to increase trade in narcotics and kidnappings, including the high profile hijacking of an airplane and capture of a Colombian senator.

Despite the political dialog, FARC had devolved into a group of bandits who used kidnappings, narcotics, and violence as a means to continue their way of life. Negotiations were conferring legitimacy on the insurgents that they did not deserve as they were flown to Europe as celebrities to meet with various European leaders and peace groups.

After three years of unsuccessful talks, 3^rd party representatives were called in to try and save the negotiations. Both a Papal Nuncio and a UN negotiator worked to broker peace in 2002, further bestowing a semblance of legitimacy on the insurgents but failing to achieve a final solution. By the end of Pastrana’s presidency in 2002 it was clear that this had been a breathing space for the FARC to rest and rebuild, rather than achieve meaningful peace and stability.

Pastrana’s major contribution was to delegitimize the FARC both in Colombia and internationally, and lay the foundation for the stronger options taken up by his successor. There was no longer any doubt that FARC claims for political change were hollow in the face of their continuing actions: extortion and kidnapping, assassinations, forced recruitment of child soldiers, disregard for international standards of humanitarian treatment, escalation of narcotics trafficking, and environment and developmental destruction of pipelines and processing facilities. When the European Union placed FARC on their list of terrorist organizations, the sham was over. Political ideology had evolved into transnational crime, which is now recognized by everyone, even President Chavez of Venezuela.

What are the results?

The years of violence created a flow of refugees, now estimated at close to 4 million. This humanitarian crisis in Colombia is second only to Sudan for the number of refugees and internally displaced persons produced, with none of the accompanying publicity. Most are women and children fleeing violence after a husband or father was killed.

At the same time the FARC are making more than a billion (with a ‘B’) dollars a year as the primary cocaine distributors world-wide. Leaders maintain luxurious safe-houses across the border in Venezuela. 700 hostages are the only thing standing between FARC and the Colombian army, supported by the U.S. military.

President Uribe has done an amazing turnaround these past five years, and Colombia is (and has been for many, many years) the United States’ closest ally. His weak point now may be his close relationship with U.S. president Bush and the conservatives in the current administration. Democrats are already delaying trade treaties to enforce more equitable labor laws and social policy. Those are good things: it may be true that there is still corruption in the Colombian government, and union organizers are killed while working. But the direction is positive, and the U.S. should continue to support Uribe even is progress in societal areas is not as fast as desired..

These other things will follow, but until Colombia can have peace and security in all regions of the country, it cannot happen.