Panama Caught up in FARC Crisis

[Joanne98]

Panama Caught up in FARC Crisis
With Quarreling Neighbors and its Own Guerrilla Camps, Panama Is In a Tough Spot... and US Involvement Threatens to Make Things Worse


By Okke Ornstein
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
March 7, 2008

PANAMA CITY: In 2001, I wrote on these pages that the Darién jungle province separating Panama from Colombia was a ticking time bomb. Over the years, however, I started to wonder if I had been wrong on that. All seemed quiet on Panama’s eastern front. But today, the time bomb can be heard ticking again and may be ready to go off.

Panama will not break diplomatic ties with its neighbor Colombia – as Venezuela, Ecuador and Nicaragua have already done – in response to the Colombian attack on Ecuadorian soil against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC in its Spanish initials).

Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa visited Panama yesterday and met with president Martín Torrijos. At a press conference afterward, Correa again sharply denounced the Colombian attack, but Torrijos did not follow suit.

The official position is that Panama’s ambassador at the OAS, Aristides Royo, is trying to play a mediating role between the different parties. Yet, other news suggests that there is more at stake.

The FARC has long had a presence in Panama’s impenetrable Darién jungle province that borders Colombia, with a camp that lies next to the poorly defined border. Historically, there has been an unofficial live-and-let-live understanding between the Panamanian government and the FARC rebels, with just occasional brushes between guerrilla groups and the Panamanian police (rebel armies seldom attack their banking centers). However, that relatively quiet situation has come under stress with the confrontation between a small group of guerrillas and the police at sea on February 22. A policeman was shot, the rebels captured, and arms, explosives as well as traces of drugs reportedly found on the rebels’ boat. Next, a communique surfaced, purportedly from the FARC, threatening kidnappings and assassinations of politicians should the rebels not be released immediately. The government claimed the communique was false, but raided an internet cafe from where it supposedly originated nevertheless.

Not surprisingly, various measures have been announced to secure the border with Colombia. But, given the terrain, that is an impossible task to accomplish with manpower alone. The United States has now jumped in and is “studying” whether it will equip Panama with sophisticated military hardware to monitor the border. But logic dictates just the hardware will not be enough; high-tech radar systems need experts to operate then, and Panamanian police would have to be trained to use them. That would at the very least suggest US military advisers coming to Panama – if they aren’t already here.
http://www.narconews.com/Issue51/article3029.html

I hate Bush's guts. He's going to start as many wars as he can before he leaves.

[angrycarpenter]

1. he throws weapons and money at a problem

rather than diplomats. No imagination.