Click
an area of the map for world news.
:
|
From the
January 2002 issue of
World Press Review
(VOL. 49, No. 1)
Colombia
New Front in the War on
Terror?
Robert
Taylor
World Press Review contributing editor
The Colombian
government’s unfulfilled efforts to negotiate a peace settlement
appear to be at a defining crossroads in the wake of the Bush
administration’s decision to target Colombian guerrilla
and paramilitary forces in its war on terrorism. “After
President George W. Bush’s...speech to announce the start
of the new crusade against terrorism, no one was left with any
doubt that this would have consequences in Colombia. But few
thought they would be felt so quickly,” said Semana
(Oct. 30).
“There is no possibility of American troops fighting the
guerrillas on Colombian soil; thus, intervention will not be
direct,” Semana said. “The first concrete effect
is that Plan Colombia will be utilized in the battle against
the guerrillas,” emphatically underscored when U.S. Ambassador
Anne Patterson “erased at a stroke the distinction made
until now between the struggle against drug trafficking and
the struggle against the insurgency.” At the same time,
Semana noted, Patterson’s call for the government
of President Andrés Pastrana to crack down on guerrilla
use of the current safe-haven zone as a “base for terrorist
acts” appears likely to narrow his margin of maneuver in
ongoing negotiations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC).
Francisco Santos, writing in El Tiempo (Nov. 4), argued
that apparent U.S. success in pressuring the Irish Republican
Army to lay down its arms does not guarantee a similar outcome
in Colombia. Santos stressed that “the FARC at no time
has touched on the subject of destroying arms, and the government,
in an effort to keep them at the table, has not pressured them
to do so.” Moreover, he added, the FARC’s political
objectives appear subordinate to “exclusive reliance on
the power of arms and the...business of drug trafficking.”
Most disturbing is the failure of both the guerrillas and the
government to define a clear vision of “what kind of country
we both desire,” which would make “the means to achieve
it easier to clarify.”
Political analyst and professor Jairo Libreros observed in Semana
(Nov. 3) that “diverse sectors of public opinion have
interpreted the American military offensive against terrorism
as the model for Colombia to follow unless the FARC gives credible
evidence of its genuine interest in politically negotiating
the longed-for national reconciliation.”
Looking ahead to the presidential succession in August 2002,
Libreros cautioned that failure to reach agreement on terms
for a cease-fire, demobilization, and disarmament would leave
the incoming administration faced with the stark prospect of
“escalation in the conflict to dimensions completely unknown
for the country.” The worst-case scenario, he added, would
be an interminable civil war without hope of resolution, raising
“the...specter that haunts Colombian political life...,
the more things change, the more they stay the same.” 
|
|
|
