(Part one of two -- see also Getting in Deeper, published February 2000)

Transcription

1 1 $1.50 February 2000 The Colombian Dilemma After half a century of fighting, can a fragile peace process succeed? By Adam Isacson* At first, it sounds all too familiar. A Latin American country is plagued by inequality, rural neglect and militarism. A conflict includes Marxist guerrillas and right-wing death squads, spurring a refugee crisis. A struggling peace process gets tepid support from Washington. Amid rapidly rising U.S. military aid, concerns grow over the spread of instability to regional neighbors. For those who recall the Reagan Administration s adventures in Central America, much about Colombia can inspire eerie feelings of déjà vu. But the similarities do not run very deep. Colombia s decades-old conflict and the effort to end it are far more complicated than the violence El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua suffered during the 1980s. In fact, perhaps only the Middle East rivals Colombia s conflict for complexity. The hemisphere s fourth most populous country, Colombia has about onethird more people than all seven Central American nations put together. Colombia s land area is expansive enough to accommodate all of Central America twice over, with enough room left over to fit an additional four El Salvadors. Unlike the groups in El Salvador s FMLN and Guatemala s URNG, Colombia s three guerrilla groups fight separately (even confronting each other at times), violate human rights frequently, and are held in low esteem by most citizens. The paramilitary death squads operate in the open resembling pri- *CIP interns Chris Buck, Angélica Cotrino and Nancy Manson made several key contributions to this report s design and content. A Publication of the Center for International Policy (Part one of two -- see also Getting in Deeper, published February 2000) Images of peace and war. Clockwise from upper left: FARC leader Manuel Marulanda speaks with President Andrés Pastrana; thousands in downtown Bogotá demand peace; some of the 1.5 million Colombians driven from their homes in the past decade; FARC fighter after a November 1999 battle. vate armies more than shadowy groups of killers and are somewhat independent of the army. While the violence has forced millions from their homes, the overwhelming majority are not refugees but internally displaced persons, moving within the country instead of crossing borders, living in terror and receiving no significant aid. The government seeks to bring guerrillas to the negotiating table, though a series of peace processes over the past eighteen years offers few helpful models. With the exception of the United States, no foreign source

2 2 Colombia arms the combatants; instead, the drug trade pervades, corrupts and finances all sides. On deeper examination, this conflict the Western Hemisphere s oldest and most brutal bears only a passing resemblance to Central America. An old war re-escalates As in Central America, though, Colombia s conflict owes much to a history of social injustice and government neglect. At no time since the Spanish conquest has the Bogotá government exercised authority over much of the nation s territory. Since long before the emergence of guerrilla groups, Colombia particularly rural Colombia has resembled less a cohesive state than a patchwork of fiefdoms ruled by local bosses. The essential unit of power has long been the army brigade, guerrilla front, paramilitary self-defense association, or departmental political party. The rule of law the guarantee that justice applies to all without regard to wealth, political power or capacity for violence has been virtually nonexistent. The result has been a Hobbesian war of all against all in Colombia s countryside. Violence, which raged out of control at the turn of the last century, flared up again in 1948 the onset of a period known as la violencia and has not ended yet. As recently as the early 1990s, even many very able U.S. analysts viewed Colombia s disorder as a narco issue, dismissing the simmering conflict with Marxist revolutionaries as a cold-war anachronism doomed to fade away. Since then, however, the fighting has intensified alarmingly. While Central America was ending its cold-war conflicts and seeking to reconcile its societies, Colombia s two largest guerrilla groups, the FARC and ELN, were growing in strength, as were rightist paramilitaries. The FARC grew from about fifty fronts and 12,000 members in 1990 to sixty-one fronts and 17,000 members today; the ELN grew from about twenty-two fronts and 2,500 members to thirty fronts and 4,500 members; and paramilitary groups grew from several hundred members to about 5,000 today. The combatants links to the drug trade This growth owes less to the groups innate appeal than to their ability to finance themselves. Landowners, drug traffickers, and the military have generously supported the paramilitaries since they were founded in the 1980s. The guerrillas have long financed themselves through kidnapping, extortion and taxes on economic activity in areas they control. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, violence and unequal landholding pushed tens of thousands of peasants into Colombia s southern plains, a neglected, unpopulated Population: 39 million Land area: 440,000 square miles, about the size of Texas, New Mexico, and Arkansas combined Per capita GDP: $2,500 (1997) Security forces: 135,000 in Army, Navy (includes Marines and Coast Guard), Air Force; 105,000 in National Police Military budget: $4 billion, 4.2% of GDP (1998) swath of Amazon-basin jungle about the size of California. The Colombian government did not follow them, leaving these small landholders without basic services, credit, farm-to-market roads, or any semblance of a rule of law. The newly arrived residents of this zone found that no matter what crop they raised rubber, yucca, oil palm the cost of inputs and the cost of bringing the produce to market made financial losses inevitable. By the 1980s, though, many discovered that if they grew coca a crop more commonly found at the time in Peru and Bolivia they had plenty of buyers offering good prices and willing to haul it away themselves. By the mid-1990s, the FARC guerrillas who controlled this southern zone (a control gained more by filling a vacuum than by conquest) were taxing this mainly small-scale drug production, just as they charge levies on legal production in their zones of influence. By Colombian Army and U.S. Southern Command estimates, between one-third and two-thirds of FARC fronts and between one-eighth and one-quarter of ELN fronts benefit financially from the drug economy, mainly through taxation or payments for protection of drug laboratories. According to a U.S. intelligence assessment the New York Times cited in September 1999, Colombia s guerrillas, chiefly the FARC, gain between $30 million and $100 million per year from the drug trade, virtually all of which appears to get plowed back into their war effort. This generous new source of revenue financed the sharp growth in guerrilla groups numbers and fighting ability during the 1990s. It did the same for paramilitaries, who now admit that they also tax drug-crop cultivators in their own areas of influence. But paramilitary groups ties to the drug trade go still deeper. Though the term narco-guerrilla gets used far more often than narco-paramilitary, drug dealers have been a part of the rightist groups history since their creation. In the early and mid-1980s, after years of guerrilla extortion and taxation, many landholders in rural northern Colombia were willing to sell their properties at bargain prices. They had a ready set of buyers in the newly rich leaders of Colombia s young drug trade, who needed legal investments with which to launder their ill-gotten gains. In what some analysts have called a reverse land

3 There are three sets of actors in Colombia's longstanding conflict: guerrilla groups, paramilitary groups, and government security forces. The Guerrillas The FARC, or Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, emerged from leftist peasant selfdefense groups that organized during Colombia s rural violence of the 1950s. The group formed in July 1964, following a repressed revolt of Communist peasants in the Marquetalia region of Tolima department in central Colombia. While the group s strength has ebbed and flowed over the years, the FARC is currently at a historic peak. Financed through extortion, kidnappings, and taxes on drug cultivation, the group now has about 17,000 members and recently has handed the armed forces some humiliating defeats. The FARC s sixty-one fronts are Number-two FARC leader Mono Jojoy with number-one leader Tirofijo led by a seven-member secretariat, among whom two leaders are most prominent: Pedro Antonio Marín, alias Manuel Marulanda or Tirofijo ( Sureshot ), the group s paramount leader; and Jorge Briceño, alias El Mono Jojoy, its chief military strategist. Briceño is seen as the main hard-liner in the FARC, the guerrilla leader least supportive of the peace talks the group has held with the government since January The secretariat is also said to include a more moderate political faction willing to pursue dialogue. This faction includes Raúl Reyes, the group s de facto spokesman, and Alfonso Cano, regarded as its chief ideologue. The ELN, or National Liberation Army, has about 5,000 members. It was founded in 1964 by Cubaninspired intellectuals and radical Catholic clergy. The ELN has been weakened somewhat by the 1998 death of longtime leader Manuel Pérez, and by concerted paramilitary attacks, mostly on civilians, in parts of northeast Colombia regarded as ELN strongholds. The group frequently assaults the country s oil and energy infrastructure, though it also carried out two mass kidnappings in 1999, on a hijacked plane and in a Cali church. The group, now led by Nicolás Rodríguez, alias Gabino, says it is willing to begin talks with the Colombian government, with an agenda determined by a several month-long convention with civil society leaders. This has been delayed by an ELN demand that security forces first pull out of four municipalities in southern Bolívar department, a highly conflictive area. The EPL, or People s Liberation Army, is a 500-member splinter remnant of a Maoist group that signed a peace accord and demobilized in Active in a few areas of northern Colombia, the EPL carries out occasional terrorist attacks and kidnappings. The group s leader, Francisco Caraballo, is currently in prison. The Combatants Paramilitary Groups Right-wing paramilitary or self-defense groups began forming in the mid-1980s as an anti-guerrilla strategy. They expanded rapidly with assistance from the armed forces and funding from landowners (many of them drug dealers who laundered their profits by buying up farm and ranch land). The groups chiefly target civilians they regard as their enemies social base ; today, they are responsible for nearly 80 percent of all political murders and the majority of forced displacements. Paramilitaries were declared illegal in 1989, and official state policy demands that they be disbanded. They nonetheless operate with the support or acquiescence of local military personnel in many parts of the country (see box on page 6). Combat between the military and paramilitaries is exceedingly rare. Carlos Castaño Though somewhat decentralized, several groups have joined forces within the United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia (AUC), led by former Medellín drug cartel associate Carlos Castaño. While most active in northern Colombia, the AUC has made inroads in the south, particularly around Cali and in the FARC-dominated coca-growing zone. The AUC profits from the drug trade in areas it controls. We finance ourselves with what the coca growers produce, I have to recognize this, Castaño told the Colombian newsweekly Cambio in November I charge them a 60 percent tax on what they earn. The Armed Forces Colombia s Army has 120,000 members, though a law excluding high-school graduates from combat leaves only about 50,000 available to fight. The army is in crisis after several years of battlefield losses and widespread charges of corruption and human rights abuse. While steps have been taken to improve the force s human rights record, serious concerns remain about impunity for abusers, collaboration with paramilitaries and out-of-control intelligence units. Under Armed Forces chief Gen. Fernando Tapias, a relatively moderate officer, the army is undergoing a reform aimed at ending its largely defensive posture while increasing the number and readiness of combat troops. U.S. assistance is rapidly increasing, with three new counternarcotics battalions to be operating by late The105,000-strong National Police are under the jurisdiction of the Defense Ministry. As the lead anti-drug force, they have until recently received the bulk of U.S. assistance. Police Chief Gen. Rosso José Serrano has helped his cause by cultivating strong relationships with key Republican members of Congress. The 10,000-member Air Force and 5,000-member Navy have both counternarcotics and counterinsurgency missions. U.S. assistance to both is increasing. Army chief Gen. Jorge Enrique Mora and Armed Forces chief Gen. Fernando Tapias 3

4 4 A fifty-year-old conflict The assassination of populist leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán ushers in La Violencia, a period of rural violence between partisans of Colombia s two main political parties, the Liberals and Conservatives. La Violencia claims 200,000 lives in ten years. The head of the armed forces, Gen. Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, carries out Colombia s last military coup. Liberal and Communist peasant guerrilla groups form alliances for self-defense. The resulting grouping, calling itself Liberales Comunes, is the precursor for what is to become the FARC. Liberals and Conservatives end La Violencia by creating the National Front, a power-sharing agreement that excludes all other parties. The National Front arrangement lasts for sixteen years. The FARC is born after troops put down a Communist peasant uprising in the Marquetalia region of Tolima department in central Colombia. Cuban-inspired priests and students form the ELN, which launches its first actions in the San Lucas Mountains of southern Bolívar department in northeast Colombia. The Maoist-inspired EPL forms during the latter half of the 1960s. A second wave of guerrilla groups emerges, including the largely urban April 19th Movement (M-19), ANAPO, Quintin Lame, and other small movements. reform, a significant portion of landholdings in northern Colombia became concentrated in the hands of a small number of capos and cartel leaders. The drug lord-landowners, along with remaining farmers and ranchers, adopted a new approach to the guerrillas intimidation tactics, setting up well-paid vigilante self-defense groups. With military-style weapons and uniforms, these groups were created with heavy input from Colombia s armed forces. Though the paramilitaries attacked civilian populations far more frequently than guerrillas, the Colombian Army trained, equipped, and operated alongside them until 1989, when they were declared illegal. Little or no effort was ever made to enforce this ban, however, and the groups relationship with the armed forces, though pushed underground, remains strong today. The most prominent paramilitary leader is Carlos Castaño of the Campesino Self-Defense Group of Córdoba and Urabá (ACCU). Castaño, a former associate of Medellín cartel boss Pablo Escobar, has brought several of the larger regional paramilitary associations together under his loose direction within the United Self- Defense Groups of Colombia (AUC). A human rights emergency The armed groups growth meant that paramilitary massacres and intimidation normally of defenseless civilians perceived to be the social base of guerrilla groups had become a daily occurrence by the mid-1990s. Mean- President Julio César Turbay implements a Public Security Statute giving the military much wider latitude for action. Human rights violations skyrocket, but guerrilla groups suffer few important losses. Areas of greatest armed group activity President Belisario Betancur initiates the first peace process, negotiating a cease-fire with several groups. Landowners and the military begin forming paramilitary self-defense groups to combat the guerrillas. M-19 guerrillas take over the Palace of Justice in downtown Bogota. Several justices die as the military storms the Palace. The Betancourt peace process is over. The FARC creats a political party, the Unión Patriótica. Over 2,000 members are killed over the next eight years. President Virgilio Barco initiates a new peace process. Paramilitaries continue to grow with government support. Presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán is killed by Pablo Escobar s Medellín drug cartel. Urabá Catatumbo Magdalena Medio The M-19 and several other groups agree to demobilize and participate in the creation of the progressive 1991 constitution. Talks with the FARC and ELN fall apart, and the government of President César Gaviria pledges total war. President Ernesto Samper is implicated in a drug-money scandal. Relations with the United States sour. Guerrilla and paramilitary groups, fueled by charges on the drug economy, expand rapidly and violence escalates. Putumayo Meta Amid growing citizen clamor for peace, Andrés Pastrana is elected and launches talks with the FARC. U.S. military aid grows exponentially. Map image 1999 Microsoft Corp.

5 while the FARC s newfound strength allowed it to deal the Colombian military several humiliating defeats. The violence now takes over 3,000 lives each year, at least two-thirds of them civilian non-combatants, and displaces over 300,000. Fighting is at its fiercest in northern Colombia, where paramilitary groups are strongest and civilians are most often targeted. The most conflictive parts of the north are Urabá, a banana-growing region near the Panama border; the Magdalena Medio, a section of the Magdalena River valley in north-central Colombia near the oil town of Barrancabermeja; and Catatumbo, a drugproducing region near the Venezuelan border. The FARC generally holds sway in the southern jungle and coca region, though Castaño s AUC has made inroads. Some of the most intensely contested areas in the south are Meta department, at the edge of the Amazon plains southeast of Bogotá, and Putumayo department, in the far south near the Ecuadorian border. Putumayo, the site of much coca production, hosts a recently created U.S.-funded Colombian Army counternarcotics unit, and is a chief destination of a proposed U.S. military aid package for 2000 and 2001 (see CIP s publication Getting in Deeper). The paramilitaries, which routinely use massacres, extrajudicial executions, and forced disappearances as battlefield tactics, are now responsible for over three-quarters of all human rights violations (see box on page 6). Guerrillas, responsible for about twenty percent of political killings, routinely execute or massacre civilians whom 5 they regard as their opponents, and carry out numerous indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations at times with inaccurate makeshift bombs that claim many noncombatant victims. The Colombian security forces, hunkered down in a defensive posture and fighting only in response to guerrilla attacks, have seen their share of abuses drop from half of the total in the early 1990s to about two percent today. Though military leaders are fond of citing this twopercent figure, it fails to take into account continuing cooperation with paramilitary groups. Official policy calls for combating the right-wing groups, but military-paramilitary collaboration is common at the brigade and battalion levels. This cooperation rarely involves soldiers and paras openly working side-by-side on maneuvers against civilian populations. Instead, the security forces share intelligence with paramilitary counterparts, quietly provide transportation, vacate zones where abuses are to take place, and look the other way while they occur. This arrangement allows the military s hands to appear clean amid an exceedingly dirty war. The two percent figure fails to take into account widespread impunity for known military abusers. Though four particularly notorious generals have been fired recently for cooperation with paramilitaries, prosecutions particularly of higher-ranking officers are rare and quite dangerous for the prosecutors involved. The oft-cited two Areas of greatest drug cultivation Areas of greatest internal displacement, 1998 Map image 1999 Microsoft Corp. Map image 1999 Microsoft Corp.

6 6 Responsibility for human rights violations A shrinking military share......but behind the percentages, complicity continues Source: Colombian Commission of Jurists Political Killings percent also leaves out the shadowy role of military intelligence, concentrated in the Bogotá-based 13 th Brigade, which is widely suspected of eavesdropping on activists, academics and journalists, issuing threats, planning kidnappings, and carrying out assassinations. It is especially tragic that some of Colombia s most acutely threatened people are those who dare to work to end or to humanize the conflict. The country has been shocked and saddened by a relentless series of attacks on peace activists and human rights defenders (see box on this page). Many of Colombia s most brilliant and effective human rights workers, scholars, journalists, labor leaders and jurists can now be found overseas, forced to leave their homes by threats and intimidation. This senseless campaign of attacks does more than just weaken its victims organizations and movements. It also Some government officials claimed that the military s ties to paramilitary groups were severed and cited the low percentage of violations credited to state forces acting alone. However, the percentage does not reflect state forces that routinely assisted paramilitary atrocities. Indeed, cooperation between army units and paramilitaries remained commonplace... Repeatedly, paramilitaries killed those suspected of supporting guerrillas, then delivered the corpses to the army. In a process known as legalization, the army then claimed the dead as guerrillas killed in combat while paramilitaries received their pay in army weapons... The debate over percentages also leaves unaddressed continuing criminal activity by military intelligence, which government investigators linked to a string of high-profile killings and death threats, including the August murder of humorist Jaime Garzón. Although the brigade that centralized military intelligence was reportedly dismantled in 1998 because of human rights crimes, government investigators believe intelligence agents continued to threaten, kidnap, and kill. -- Human Rights Watch World Report 2000 ( Human rights defenders and peace activists: the most dangerous jobs Colombia s conflict is only occasionally fought on battlefields. In fact, civilian non-combatants are the most frequent targets of the violence. In an especially cruel twist, some of the most threatened Colombians are those who defend human rights and actively work for peace. Though they oppose violence and take no sides in the conflict, non-governmental activists, journalists, academics, and others who seek to end or humanize the war find themselves under immense threat. Among the many high-profile attacks that have shocked the country in the last few years: - The October 1996 murder of Josué Giraldo of the Meta Civic Committee for Human Rights (almost all human rights workers in the southern department of Meta have been killed). Josué Giraldo - The May 1997 killing of Mario Calderón and Elsa Alvarado of the Jesuit-run Center for Research and Political Studies (CINEP) by armed men who burst into their Bogotá apartment. - The February 1998 murder of Jesús María Valle Mario Calderón of the Medellín-based Héctor Abad Gómez Human Rights Committee. - The April 1998 assassination of lawyer Eduardo Umaña in his Bogotá home. - The February 1999 kidnapping of four workers from the Medellín-based Popular Training Institute by Carlos Castaño s AUC paramilitary Elsa Alvarado Sen. Piedad Córdoba Jesús María Valle Eduardo Umaña closes whatever political space is available for the many Colombians who hold reformist views but favor neither Marxism nor violence. By keeping Colombia s peaceful left from participating in the political system, threats and attacks in fact benefit guerrilla groups by making them the only viable option for many who seek change. A regional problem? While guerrilla takeover or failed state scenarios are decidedly farfetched, the out-of-control violence easily makes Colombia the most unstable country in the Andean ridge. This is an unhappy distinction in a region that has rather suddenly become one of the world s most troubled. Colombia s neighbors are in only slightly better shape, with enormous problems of their own. Economic turmoil has overwhelmed Ecuador and Venezuela, contributing to a January 2000 coup in Quito and the election in group. The four were later released. - The February 1999 murder of two workers from the Bogotá-based Committee in Solidarity with Political Prisoners. - The May 1999 AUC kidnapping of Piedad Córdoba, head of the Senate s human rights committee. She was later released. - The August 1999 murder of television humorist Jaime Garzón, who lampooned the military and had acted as a go-between in peacemaking and kidnapping-resolution efforts. - The September 1999 killing of former peace negotiator Jesús Bejarano on the grounds of the National University in Bogotá, where he was a professor. - The kidnapping and presumed murder by the AUC of peasant activists Edgar Quiroga and Gildardo Fuentes in November Jaime Garzón - The December 1999 shooting of National University professor Eduardo Pizarro, a renowned peace analyst. Pizarro survived the attempt. The campaign of terror against human rights defenders has not only spread a climate of fear; it has also made it difficult to get information about Jesús Bejarano state involvement in human rights abuse. Many parts of the country have now been cleared of the few brave individuals who had denounced abuses. One such informational black hole is the Putumayo region of southern Colombia, the destination of much U.S. military aid. Eduardo Pizarro

7 Panama (175 miles) Ecuador (320 miles) Caracas of Hugo Chávez, a populist former coup plotter whose democratic credentials remain uncertain. Peru s semi-dictatorial president, Alberto Fujimori, hopes to expand his term by five years in this year s elections amid an advanced deterioration of democratic institutions. Panama is in its first year on its own, with no armed U.S. presence on its soil and complete responsibility for the management of its canal. While it is highly unlikely that, in the memorable words of Indiana Republican Rep. Dan Burton, the entire northern tier of South America could be lost to narco-guerrillas and traffickers, Colombia s turmoil does affect its troubled Andean neighbors. The border areas Colombia shares with Panama, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and (to a lesser extent) Brazil have played host to refugee flows, guerrilla and paramilitary incursions, kidnapping and extortion, and infrequent combat. While not fundamentally threatening its neighbors stability, the spillover of Colombia s violence has led to a greater military presence in border areas and has soured relations between the Pastrana government and some regional leaders. Venezuela s President Chávez has voiced support for Colombia s peace process but has angered Colombian officials with overtures to the FARC and ELN. Meanwhile, Venezuela stations between 15,000 and 20,000 troops along its border, at 100 border posts and two large bases known as theaters of operations. Peru s Colombia s borders While Colombia s neighbors do not view the conflict as an immediate threat to their security, occasional spillovers of instability -- fighting, kidnapping and extortion, and refugee flows -- do create additional problems for already-troubled states. Reactions have ranged from troop deployments to assistance for peace efforts. The United States, meanwhile, maintains a regular military presence in the area. Just across the border from Panama is Urabá, one of Colombia s most highly conflictive regions. FARC and paramilitary violence occasionally spills into armyless Panama s densely jungled Darién region. Over 7,000 refugees have crossed this border since Though the impassable Darién shields the Panama Canal, concerns emerged after a FARC attack in Juradó on December 12, 1999, two days before the canal handover ceremony. Like Panama, this border is a route for smuggling weapons into FARC-held areas. Over 12,000 refugees have crossed since Its border conflict with Peru over, Ecuador is sending troops to Sucumbíos department, where the U.S. and Ecuador have carried out several joint military exercises. The U.S. maintains a counter-drug forward operating location at Manta. A U.S.-supported Colombian Army counternarcotics battalion is based in nearby Tres Esquinas. Venezuela (1,300 miles) Guerrilla extortion of Venezuelan landowners brought a big military presence to bases in Guasdualito and La Fría. Over 18,000 refugees have crossed since 1995, including 600 sent back from Casigua after fleeing paramilitaries in June The Serranía de Perijá is a poppy-growing region straddling the border. The FARC killed 3 U.S. activists in Arauca in March Aruba and Curacao host a U.S. military antidrug forward operating location. Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, a critic of Pastrana s peace strategy, has sent 4,000 troops to the border to protect against guerrilla incursions, which in fact are relatively infrequent. A new U.S.-supported Colombian Navy Riverine Brigade is based at Puerto Leguizamo. Map images 1999 Microsoft Corp. The U.S. military has a semi-permanent training presence at Iquitos, and maintains a ground-based radar site in Leticia. Refugee flows are lighter in this largely unpopulated zone. Peru (675 miles) Fujimori has been harshly critical of the Pastrana government s peace effort most notably in a February 1999 speech at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington and has deployed 4,000 troops to the border area since early Many of these troops had been stationed at the Ecuadorian border before the two countries 1995 conflict was resolved, and many observers view Fujimori s invocation of a new external threat as an appeal for domestic support in advance of the 2000 elections. In Panama s unpopulated Darién region, where the FARC had taken rest and relaxation for years, the 1990s paramilitary offensive across the border in Urabá has increased violence and refugee flows. Panama, which formally abolished its army in 1994, has increased its police presence in the border area to over 2,000, while some have called for re-militarization to protect the canal a long walk away from the border through the roadless Darién from Colombia s violence. Ecuador s government, caught up in its own political and economic crisis, has stationed 3,000 troops near the border. Meanwhile the United States maintains some military presence in the border zones at radar sites, newly established counterdrug forward operating locations in Aruba, Curacao, and Ecuador, a Peruvian riverine operations school in the Amazon port of Iquitos, and through numerous Special Forces joint training deployments. 7

8 8 Talking peace Despite the escalating conflict, human rights crisis and concerns for regional stability, there is some reason for guarded optimism. As their country s conflict spun out of control in the 1990s, Colombian citizens did not remain passive or intimidated. In the past few years, movements calling for a national peace process and promoting locallevel conflict resolution have proliferated impressively. While civil society played almost no role in past negotiations with guerrilla groups, national organizations get much of the credit for ushering in the peace process that began in 1998 and continues today (see boxes on this page and page 9). These groups strong push for a negotiated solution has given the Colombian state the political cover it needed to take the difficult step of initiating talks with guerrilla groups. Street protests, assemblies, votes for peace, direct negotiations with armed groups, and other tactics revealed the Colombian people s deep exhaustion with the fighting, making the search for a negotiated settlement a central issue in 1998 presidential elections. Conservative party candidate Andrés Pastrana, who made peace a centerpiece of his platform, was elected partly because FARC leaders indicated during the campaign that they were most open to negotiations with a Conservative government. Pastrana followed through quickly on his promise to pursue talks with the guerrillas, traveling to the mountains of Colombia while still president-elect for a meeting with FARC leader Manuel Marulanda. By October 1998 Pastrana had secured a FARC commitment to talk peace, a feat he accomplished largely by agreeing to a controversial guerrilla pre-condition: the pullout of security forces from five municipalities in the southern departments of Meta and Caquetá (see map on page 4). This zone was considered FARC-held territory long before the November 1998 troop withdrawal; military units of less than company strength rarely ventured more than a mile from their base in the largest town, San Vicente del Caguán (pop. 15,000). The 16,200 square-mile clearance zone (about twice the size of El Salvador) has hosted all subsequent talks between government and FARC representatives. The talks began on January 7, 1999 with a ceremony in San Vicente del Caguán. The unexpected absence of FARC leader Marulanda who claimed that security concerns kept him away from the event augured the difficult year ahead. Though chief government negotiator Víctor Ricardo and other government representatives met frequently with FARC counterparts, the talks made little substantial progress in their first year. A FARC demand that the government break army- Hope for peace? In a non-binding ballot during municipal elections, 10 million Colombians vote for a peaceful end to the conflict. Thousands of Colombians take to the streets to demand peace. The protests are the largest in Bogotá in decades. Newly-elected President Andrés Pastrana travels to rural Colombia to meet with FARC leaders. The ELN signs an agreement in Mainz, Germany, with forty Colombian business and civil-society leaders. The accord commits the ELN to finding a peaceful solution to the conflict, particularly through a convention with civilsociety and government leaders at some future date. A group of labor, business and civil-society leaders meets with paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño. The resulting Nudo de Paramillo Accord expresses paramilitary support for an eventual peace negotiation and for an end to attacks on civilian populations. Civil-society groups host a Permanent Assembly for Peace in Bogotá. The event draws more than three times the expected number of participants. Security forces pull out of five municipalities in southern Colombia so that talks with the FARC may occur. The clearance zone, where the FARC are the only armed presence, hosts all subsequent talks with the government. At a meeting in Cartagena of the hemisphere s defense ministers, U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen signs an agreement for closer U.S.-Colombian military cooperation. At the Colombian government s request, U.S. diplomats meet in Costa Rica with FARC representatives. Formal peace talks begin between the government and FARC. Tirofijo, however, fails to appear at the opening ceremony. The FARC freezes the peace dialogue until April 20. Talks will not continue, a guerrilla communiqué states, until the government acts against paramilitary groups. Peace discussions begin in Caracas, Venezuela between the government and the ELN. ELN leaders demand a demilitarized zone similar to that granted to the FARC. The government refuses, and talks with the ELN go nowhere. Over the next several months, the ELN carries out several mass kidnappings and attacks on energy infrastructure. Three U.S. indigenous-rights activists are murdered by FARC guerrillas in the eastern state of Arauca. The FARC admits to the crime but refuses to turn over the killers. The U.S. government cuts off all contact with the FARC. President Pastrana meets with FARC leader Marulanda for six hours. Pastrana leaves the meeting believing that Marulanda agreed to an international verification commission in the demilitarized zone, a commitment that the FARC denies having made. Disagreement over verification delays the talks from July to October. FARC and government officials agree on a joint agenda for formal negotiations, a stage that past talks with the FARC were unable to reach. Minister of Defense Rodrigo Lloreda abruptly resigns, citing disagreement over Pastrana s handling of the peace process with the FARC. In Colombia s worst civil-military crisis in years, dozens of generals and colonels turn in their resignations, which are not accepted. A five-day FARC offensive further dampens Washington s enthusiasm for the peace process. U.S. Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey proposes $1 billion to fight the drug war. President Pastrana visits the United States to promote the Plan Colombia, a $7.5 billion proposal to end the conflict, curb narcotrafficking, and revive Colombia s economy. As talks with the FARC re-start, up to 12 million Colombians take to the streets to demand an end to the fighting. Several peace and human rights groups organized this nationwide protest against kidnappings and the conflict. The FARC announces a holiday cease-fire, calling off military operations until January 10, The Clinton Administration proposes a $1.6 billion, twoyear package of assistance for Colombia. FARC leader Marulanda pays a surprise visit to the site of the talks and voices optimism about imminent formal negotiations.

9 Major civil-society peace initiatives REDEPAZ (Network of peace initiatives) Created in 1993 as an effort to coordinate the many peace proposals emerging at the local and regional level. With UNICEF, Redepaz organized the Nobel Peace Prize-nominated Children s Mandate for Peace in 1996, in which 2.7 million children cast a symbolic vote for an end to the conflict. During municipal elections a year later, 10 million people cast votes for a Citizen Mandate for Peace, a nonbinding ballot measure expressing support for a negotiated end to the conflict. National Conciliation Commission Since 1995 the Catholic Church and other civil society organizations have presented peace proposals and carried out active conflict-resolution efforts with armed groups. Permanent Assembly of Civil Society for Peace An effort begun in 1996 by the National Conciliation Commission, the Permanent Assembly met in Bogotá in 1998 and Cali in Both gatherings drew nearly 5,000 people. The Permanent Assembly, together with other groups, organized an October 1999 protest in which up to 12 million Colombians said No Más to the fighting. National Peace Council Created by law in 1997, the council is a civil society advisory body for government peace policy. It was created in an attempt to make peace a permanent state policy, beyond the initiative of a single presidential administration, and to improve communication between the government and civil society. President Pastrana has rarely convened the council. paramilitary linkages froze the talks between January and April 1999, and a dispute over international monitoring of the clearance zone brought an impasse between July and October Large-scale FARC offensives in July, November and December in which the Colombian military actually scored key victories cast a pall over the process by spreading doubt about the guerrillas will to pursue a peaceful solution. Doubts about the FARC s sincerity were compounded by allegations of human rights violations and other excesses in the demilitarized zone. For its part, the Colombian government has faced criticism for managing the peace process in a very closed fashion, allowing very little input from civil society and even key government officials viewed as outside President Pastrana s inner circle. Though they normally do not suggest other courses of action, some critics have also attacked the government for making what they regard to be naive concessions to the guerrillas. The process has nonetheless advanced farther than previous attempts to talk with the FARC. In May 1999 both sides agreed on a twelve-point agenda, providing a structure for formal negotiations (see box on page 10). Negotiators are to reach agreement on a specific set of reforms, such as agrarian policy or the military s role, before moving to the next a structure familiar to those who recall the Salvadoran and Guatemalan peace processes. During 1999, however, the talks difficult progress kept them from passing from procedural questions to the substantive phase of negotiated reforms foreseen in the twelve-point agenda. 9 Signs of a possible turnaround have surfaced in early The year began with the guerrillas declared Christmas truce, a twenty-day cease-fire that was the FARC s first since Shortly after talks resumed on January 13 Marulanda made a rare appearance at the site of the dialogues, where he voiced optimism that the substantive negotiations would soon begin. Both sides agreed to start the negotiating agenda with a discussion of the country s economic model, and at the beginning of February three FARC leaders paid an unprecedented visit to Scandinavia to learn about those countries mixed economies. President Pastrana has made substantially less progress toward dialogue with Colombia s other armed groups. Both government and civil-society representatives have met several times with ELN leaders, most recently in Havana and Caracas, with no significant breakthroughs. The ELN hopes to develop its negotiating agenda through a nine-month convention with civil society leaders, but the Colombian government has resisted the group s demand that its convention take place in a separate ELN clearance zone. While government representatives say they are open to the idea, they disagree with the rebels chosen zone of southern Bolívar department, a part of the highly conflictive and strategic Magdalena Medio region in northeastern Colombia. Once an ELN stronghold, southern Bolívar has lately been overrun by paramilitaries, FARC units, and drug producers. A rash of high-profile ELN attacks followed the government s denial: an April 1999 airplane hijacking, the kidnapping of a Cali church congregation in May, and bombings of hundreds of electrical pylons, forcing power rationing in major cities. Though Carlos Castaño has told reporters that he is interested in negotiations, Colombian government policy dictates that the paramilitaries are not to be treated as political actors in other words, Bogotá will negotiate with them the terms of their disarmament, but talks would not pursue an agenda of social reforms. The challenges ahead The road ahead for Colombia s peace effort will be difficult and long. The process has been underway for more than a year, and by now all observers realize that it will likely take several more. Nearly all also agree, though, that Colombia s conflict cannot be won, and that the present process is the country s best chance to avoid an almost unthinkable plunge into further bloodshed. The challenges ahead are daunting. The FARC has made clear that it will not consider a cease-fire until a substantial number of agenda points have ended with agreements. For the foreseeable future, then, both sides will continue the difficult task of talking peace amid regu-

10 10 lar fighting. While most peace processes end with the disarmament of opposition groups, both of Colombia s guerrilla groups are very reluctant to turn in their weapons and attempt a new existence as political parties. Their reluctance is somewhat justified by the sad examples of Colombian guerrilla groups that demobilized in the past, only to fall victim to the ongoing campaign against the country s peaceful left. The Patriotic Union, a political party that the FARC established in 1985, did well in elections, but by 1992 a systematic campaign of assassination had claimed the lives of between 2,000 and 3,000 party leaders and members. The M-19 guerrilla group, which became a party in the early 1990s and helped write Colombia s 1991 constitution, lost many of its leaders and exists today only as a marginal political force. The success of the peace process will also depend on all sides ability to overcome their own divisions. A fracture is widely acknowledged to exist within the FARC leadership between a political wing that is willing to pursue the group s goals through negotiations, and a military wing focused on furthering its battlefield gains. Colombia s political establishment is similarly divided between those willing to make compromises to end the fighting and hard-liners who would yield very little. Colombia s civil-society peace movement suffers from its own divisions as well. Despite many earnest and welldesigned efforts to coordinate strategies, civil society remains an amorphous mass unable to speak with one voice. Consensus does not go much further than agreement that a political solution is the best way out of the conflict, and that civil society must somehow participate. Two of the most divisive areas of disagreement are how (or whether) to incorporate paramilitary groups in the process, and whether a peace agreement would be acceptable if human rights abusers are granted amnesty. The United States relationship to Colombia s peace process is another big factor, one complicated by Washington s overwhelming emphasis on counternarcotics and a spreading belief that guerrilla groups are a regional security threat. U.S. support was beyond question at the outset of Pastrana s peace effort; in December 1998 U.S. diplomats even took the bold step of meeting with FARC representatives at the Colombian government s request. Since then, however, Washington s rhetorical support for the peace process has been undercut by officials public second-guessing of President Pastrana s strategy, by a refusal to meet again with the guerrillas following their March 1999 murder of three U.S. indigenous-rights activists, and by an aid proposal that would add about $1.3 billion in new military and police The agenda for negotiations with the FARC 1. A Negotiated Political Solution 2. Protection of Human Rights as a Responsibility of the State 2.1 Fundamental rights 2.2 Economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights 2.3 International human rights treaties 3. An Integrated Agrarian Policy 3.1 The democratization of credit, technical assistance, and market access 3.2 Redistribution of unproductive land 3.3 Recuperation and distribution of land acquired through drug-trafficking and illegal enrichment 3.4 Stimulating production 3.5 Integral ordering of territory 3.6 Illicit crop substitution and alternative development 4. Exploitation and Conservation of Natural Resources 4.1 Natural resources and their distribution 4.2 International treaties 4.3 Protection of the environment based on sustainable development 5. Economic and Social Structure 5.1 Revision of the economic development model 5.2 Income redistribution policies 5.3 Expansion of internal and external markets 5.4 Stimulating production through small, medium and large-scale private enterprise 5.5 Cooperative support for the economy 5.6 Stimulation of foreign investment that benefits the nation 5.7 Social participation in economic planning 5.8 Investment in social welfare, education and scientific research 6. Judicial Reform, Fighting Corruption and Drug Trafficking 6.1 Judicial system 6.2 Control institutions 6.3 Mechanisms to fight corruption 6.4 Drug trafficking 7. Political Reform To Broaden Democracy 7.1 Reform of political parties and movements 7.2 Electoral reforms 7.3 Equal opportunity for the opposition 7.4 Equal opportunity for minorities 7.5 Mechanisms for citizen participation 8. Reform of the State 8.1 Congressional reform 8.2 Administrative reform to improve the efficiency of public administration 8.3 Decentralization and strengthening of local power 8.4 Public services 8.5 Strategic sectors 9. Respecting International Humanitarian Law 9.1 No child involvement in the conflict 9.2 Land mines 9.3 Respect for the civil population 9.4 Respect for international agreements 10. The Armed Forces 10.1 Defense of sovereignty 10.2 Protection of human rights 10.3 Combating self-defense groups 10.4 International treaties 11. International Relations 11.1 Respect for non-intervention and free self determination 11.2 Latin American regional integration 11.3 Foreign debt 11.4 Treaties and international state agreements 12. Formalizing the Agreements 12.1 Democratic instruments to legitimize the agreements assistance over the next two years. U.S. policymakers, not known for their long attention spans, have meanwhile been voicing impatience at the talks slow progress. The role of the rest of the international community also remains unclear. European countries and Colombia s South American neighbors are on the whole more supportive of the peace process and less interventionist in their approach than Washington. Most are currently playing quiet, though often constructive, roles. The United Nations could play a very important mediation role, as it did for Central America s peace process, but neither the FARC nor the Colombian government has so far shown much enthusiasm for its involvement. The UN is nonetheless making crucial contributions through the Bogotá field offices of its High Commissioner for Human Rights and High Commissioner for Refugees, while the appoint-

11 For more information On the Internet: - The Peace Process in Colombia, by the Center for International Policy: - Visit the web pages of the organizations listed at right... In Spanish: - Colombia En Paz, site of several pro-peace NGOs: - CODHES, organization researching internal displacement: - UN High Commissioner for Human Rights field office: - Presidency of Colombia, with a good peace process page: - Embassy of Colombia in Washington: - Colombian Army: - FARC: burn.ucsd.edu/~farc-ep ELN: - Paramilitaries (AUC): - El Tiempo newspaper: El Espectador newspaper: El País newspaper: Cambio magazine: Semana magazine: ment of Norwegian diplomat Jan Egeland as the secretary-general s first special representative for Colombia is a very promising development. Peace in Colombia remains a long way off, and the coming months and years will bring new disappointments, frustrations, and atrocities. While what lies ahead may make the Salvadoran and Guatemalan processes look easy, the news is not all bad. The mere fact that civil society is participating and that this participation is growing is very encouraging, as it was an ingredient missing from past peace talks. Another new element is a more engaged New publications from the Center for International Policy Just the Facts 1999 Edition A civilian s guide to U.S. defense and security assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean By Adam Isacson and Joy Olson A project of the Latin American Working Group in cooperation with the Center for International Policy 252 pp. December 1999, price $18.95 (Paperback) Just the Facts provides more information than ever before available about U.S. military aid to Latin America and the Caribbean, and is an essential resource for anyone trying to understand the United States complex military relationship with the hemisphere. This book details dozens of programs and activities that the U. S. government carries out with the region s security forces, including arms transfers, training programs, exercises, deployments, counternarcotics operations, military bases, and a surprisingly wide variety of military-to-military contact programs. Just the Facts offers an up-to-date look at the defense and security assistance package going to every Latin American country. The study also provides a thorough overview of the security assistance process, explaining complex laws and procedures in plain English. The book is a useful tool for scholars, activists, government oversight personnel, and citizens worldwide seeking greater transparency and fuller knowledge of the United States defense and security activities in the hemisphere. The new edition s most surprising findings concern the scope of the U.S. military s overseas training activities. In 1998, the study finds, the United States trained at least 9,867 - and possibly many more military and police personnel from Latin America and the Caribbean. The majority of this training takes place outside of the United States, with more that half carried out by Green Berets, Navy SEALs and other Special Forces units. The School of the Americas, the famous symbol of Cold War-era U.S. training of Latin American militaries, today accounts for less than 10 percent of all trainees. In all, Latin American personnel attended 104 U.S. military training institutions in Meanwhile, the presence of U.S. troops remains high, with nearly 50,000 deploying to the region in 1998 and more expected in Other U.S. organizations working on Colombia policy: - The Latin America Working Group, 110 Maryland Ave NE, Box 15, Washington DC 20002; (202) , - The Washington Office on Latin America, 1630 Connecticut Ave NW, 2nd Floor, Washington DC 20009; (202) , wola@wola.org, - U.S.-Colombia Coordinating Office, 1630 Connecticut Ave NW, 2nd Floor, Washington DC 20009; (202) , agiffen@igc.org, - Human Rights Watch/Americas, 1630 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite 500, Washington DC 20009; (202) , - Amnesty International/USA, 304 Pennsylvania Ave, SE Washington DC 20003; (202) , aimember@aiusa.org, - Colombia Support Network, PO Box 1505, Madison WI 53701; (608) , csn@igc.org, - U.S. Committee for Refugees, 1717 Massachusetts Ave NW, Suite 701 Washington DC 20036; (202) , - Resource Center on the Americas, 3109 Minnehaha Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55406; (612) ; info@americas.org, international community, both governmental and nongovernmental, that will pressure for humanization of the conflict, offer technical and economic assistance, and play a conflict-resolution role. Also new is the presence of a government in Bogotá that has proven its willingness to make sacrifices and politically unpopular moves to bring its opponents to the table. Despite the formidable obstacles it faces, then, there is cause to be optimistic about Colombia s peace process, to believe as many do that this will be the process that eventually ends the fighting. CIP thanks the Compton Foundation and the General Service Foundation for the generous support that made this report possible. National Insecurity U.S. Intelligence After The Cold War Edited by Craig Eisendrath A Project of the Center for International Policy 296pp. January 2000, price $34.50 (Hardback) The distinguished contributors to this book present a wide range of perspectives from which to assess our intelligence system. Their decades of public service command tremendous respect. Their views break new ground and demand the attention of the White House and of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. This book should be required reading by all congressional committees concerned with intelligence policy, surveillance, and appropriations, and by all Americans. from the Foreword by Senator Tom Harkin In National Insecurity ten prominent experts describe, from an insider perspective, what went wrong with the U.S. intelligence system and what needs to be done to fix it. Drawing on their expertise in government administration, research, and foreign service, they propose a radical rethinking of the United States intelligence needs in the post-cold War world. In addition, they offer a coherent and unified plan for reform that can protect U.S. security while upholding the values of our democratic system. Contributors: Roger Hilsman, former Assistant Secretary of State, advisor to President Kennedy, and author of The Cuban Missile Crisis; Melvin A. Goodman, former division chief and senior analyst at the CIA s Office of Soviet Affairs; Robert E. White, former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador and Paraguay and president of the Center for International Policy; Robert V. Keeley, former ambassador to Greece, Zimbabwe and Mauritius; Jack A Blum, chief investigator for Senator Church s Senate Foreign Relations Committee and for the Senate investigation of the Iran- Contra scandal; Kate Doyle, analyst at the National Security Archives; Alfred W. McCoy, author if The Politics of Heroin; Robert Dreyfuss, a journalist who publishes regularly on intelligence matters; Pat M Holt, former chief of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and author of Secret Intelligence and Public Policy; and the editor.