[NYTr] Colombian Hostage Negotiations Deserved More Time

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP) - Dec 4, 2007
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/4791


Negotiations for Colombian Hostage Release Deserved More Time

by Adam Isacson

With President Uribe's decision to cut off a negotiations process led
by Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, hope that the FARC guerrillas will release
long-held kidnapping victims has faded once again. Meanwhile, relations
between Venezuela and Colombia have sharply deteriorated.

Recent events can be traced back to June 2001, when the peace process
in Colombia was limping toward failure. Jorge Briceño, "military
leader" of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), made an
ominous public threat. "We have to grab people from the Senate, from
Congress, judges and ministers, from all the three powers [of the
Colombian state], and we'll see how they squeal," said Briceño.

Over the next two years, the FARC carried out a rash of high-profile
kidnappings, abducting dozens of legislators, government officials, a
presidential candidate and—after their plane went down in
guerrilla-controlled territory—three U.S. citizens working for a
Defense Department contractor. The hostages have languished in
Colombia's jungles ever since, along with military officers captured on
the battlefield.

Some kidnapping victims have spent nearly a decade in FARC custody, and
little is known about their health or their whereabouts. Eleven were
killed in June 2007, under circumstances that remain to be clarified.
An estimated 45 remain, as anguished relatives demand their release.

In the case of the "high profile" hostages, unlike their other
kidnapping victims, the FARC isn't demanding ransom in exchange for
release. Instead, the guerrillas are demanding that the Colombian
government exchange them for FARC prisoners, including two who have
already been extradited to the United States. Before even discussing
this exchange, however, the FARC first demands that the Colombian
government pull troops out of two municipalities—an 800
square-kilometer zone.

The government of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe has consistently
opposed creation of such demilitarized zones and refuses to meet these
preconditions. The FARC, in turn, has refused to consider any other
formula. Talks have gone nowhere, and the hostages remain captive. At
times breakthroughs have seemed possible, but each time families' hopes
have been dashed.

The latest letdown came at the end of November. Hopes for the release
of the hostages had been raised in August 2007, when President Uribe
authorized Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, along with Colombian
opposition Senator Piedad Córdoba, to serve as "facilitators" for
prisoner exchange talks with the guerrillas.

Chávez and Córdoba—both ambitious politicians from the left—proved to
be energetic, persistent advocates of dialogue. They met with the FARC
leadership, family members of the hostages, U.S. congressional
representatives, and anyone else they believed could move the process
forward.

President Uribe received praise for showing flexibility and reaching
out to political rivals. Family members expressed more optimism than
they had in years. Chávez's and Córdoba's efforts, widely viewed as a
"last best hope" for resolving the hostage crisis, moved slowly but
steadily forward, with FARC Secretariat member Iván Márquez appearing
in Caracas in early November to discuss the release of its kidnap
victims.

But hope unraveled quickly the week of November 19. While in France,
Chávez and Córdoba acknowledged that the FARC had not yet provided any
"proof of life" for Íngrid Betancourt—a French-Colombian politician
whom the FARC has held since 2002. Chávez also angered Uribe by
publicly revealing commitments the Colombian president had made in
private; Uribe retaliated by giving Chávez a deadline of December 31 to
finish his facilitation.

Then, on November 21, President Chávez's involvement in the talks came
to an abrupt end. Citing a phone call that Chávez had placed to the
head of Colombia's army, Uribe "de-authorized" the Venezuelan president
and Senator Córdoba and prohibited them from playing any further role.
Where Do Things Stand Now?

This latest effort to free the hostages had offered more hope than any
previous attempt. The abrupt end of the talks leaves no near-term
prospects for other similar initiatives.

The following are a few observations on the present situation:

    * The FARC gets much of the blame. The guerrillas deserve
condemnation for precipitating the entire situation by cruelly holding
hostages for so many years. They also warrant criticism for their
continuing rigidity at every stage of these initial talks.

      The FARC committed some grave errors during the process, two of
them during its last 10 days. Their release of photos showing a jovial
exchange with mediator Sen. Piedad Córdoba, against her expressed
wishes, dealt a severe blow to the integrity of the process in the
arena of Colombian public opinion.

      Then, perhaps more seriously, the FARC did Hugo Chávez an
enormous disservice by allowing him to go on a long-planned trip to
Paris with no proofs of life for hostage Ingrid Betancourt, whose
ordeal is regular front-page news in France. Chávez must have been
furious with the FARC leadership for forcing him to go before the
expectant French public embarrassingly empty-handed.

    * The Uribe government is also to blame. After authorizing Sen.
Córdoba and President Chávez to mediate, it did little to make their
difficult job any easier. There was never really a joint
Colombian-Venezuelan effort to free the hostages. After President Uribe
made a public show of nominating the two facilitators, he gave them no
support, effectively washing his hands of the whole affair.

      Sen. Córdoba traveled to Washington three times with no apparent
support from the Colombian government—no financial support, no official
accompaniment, no sign that she had any political backing from Bogotá.
What's more, the Colombian government made clear that it would deploy
the military to make it difficult for the FARC to participate in
meetings with the facilitators.

    * The mediators made mistakes but not fatal ones. President Chávez
and Sen. Córdoba certainly committed their share of mistakes, though
these were largely instances of indiscretions and overreaching. Neither
one is a discreet professional mediator; rather both are politicians
known for their energetic tenacity.

      These errors included Sen. Córdoba's above-mentioned photos
depicting a lighthearted moment with FARC members in Caracas, and
President Chávez's revelation in France of a possible future meeting
with FARC leader Manuel Marulanda in Colombia—a topic he had discussed
in confidence with President Uribe.

      Then there was President Chávez's violation of protocol by
placing a direct phone call to Colombian Army chief Gen. Mario Montoya,
against President Uribe's expressed wishes.

      Nonetheless, President Uribe's decision to call off the talks as
a result of that phone call has a whiff of pretext about it. Why would
he terminate the talks, rather than issuing a stern public warning,
unless he was already looking for a reason to end a process that had
clearly escaped his control?

      A complicated process like this can take a long time and require
a great deal of patience, but the Colombian government showed very
little.

Moving Forward

    * Presidents Chávez and Uribe must cool down the rhetoric. The
"firing" of Chávez has triggered the worst crisis in
Colombian-Venezuelan relations in decades. Although the two leaders are
polar opposites in ideological terms, they had previously avoided
direct attacks. No longer; since November 21 Chávez has called Uribe a
"liar" who "spit" in his face, and announced a "freezing" of bilateral
relations including the recall of Venezuela's ambassador. Uribe,
meanwhile, has accused Chávez of fomenting a "terrorist, Marxist" FARC
regime in Colombia.

    * The FARC must keep the "proofs of life" coming. The guerrillas
said recently they had issued orders to provide "proofs of life"—videos
or photos of the hostages—as a gesture of good faith. President Chávez
said in France that the guerrillas planned to issue these proofs before
the end of the year. On November 30, the Colombian army claimed that it
captured three FARC members in Bogotá with five videos of the
kidnapping victims. Relatives of the victims thanked President Chávez
and Sen. Córdoba for having pressured the FARC to provide this evidence
that their family members were still alive.

Seeing the hostages' faces—in most cases, for the first time in four
years or more—is one of the only positive developments imaginable that
could get talks re-started. By once again putting a "human face" on
what has become a rather ugly process of jockeying for political
position, such evidence could have enough impact on public opinion to
build the political will necessary to get back to the table.

President Chávez and Senator Córdoba deserve our profound and heartfelt
thanks. Although they committed some unfortunate mistakes, both
facilitators did their jobs with energy, perseverance, patience, and
creativity.

If only they had been given more time.


[Adam Isacson is director of the Demilitarization of Latin America
program at the Center for International Policy (CIP,
www.ciponline.org), and has coordinated CIP's demilitarization efforts
since 1995. He works in conjunction with the Americas Policy Program at
www.americaspolicy.org and other organizations on related Colombia
issues. ]