High Stakes in the Andes

[Joanne98]

Sadly, the operation on March 1 in which the Colombian Armed Forces shot and killed Luis Edgar Devia Silva, a.k.a. "Raúl Reyes," spokesman for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), along with sixteen other guerrillas in a camp across the Putumayo River in Ecuador, was yet another case of the oft-mentioned "death foretold" that characterizes the country's seemingly endless civil war.

Eerily, in a March 1 column, one of Colombia's most prescient political analysts, Alfredo Molano, predicted that a giant storm cloud was about to sweep across some portion of Colombia's borderlands. Molano described how President Álvaro Uribe had brought the war with the FARC to the Darien Gap joining Panama, the Catatumbo region of Northern Santander shared with Venezuela, and the frontiers of Pasto and Putumayo bordering Ecuador. In Molano's view, the fact that Uribe had been politically cornered at home and abroad made a widening war across national borders all but inevitable. As Justin Podur noted, domestic and foreign pressure for a negotiated peace-that is, a political solution to the armed conflict-has led to an escalation of the war by the stronger, more violent party, along Israeli lines.

Since the end of 2006, Uribe has been beset by the parapolítica scandal, in which some 77 political figures, including 14 congresspersons, nearly all of them staunch allies of the president, are under investigation for ties to rightwing paramilitaries. The scandal reveals how the president and the Casa de Nariño (presidential palace) in Bogotá are tied to the country's regions, where power and authority are delegated, hence most directly exercised. Indeed, most of the para-politicos investigated are local office holders-governors, mayors, legislators, etc. The bedrock of the paramilitary-politico alliance was sealed in 2001 with the "Pacto de Ralito" in Córdoba province. The pact led to the first and second election of Uribe with solid-indeed fervent-paramilitary support in congress and the regional state bureaucracies.

Parapolítica and the President

Politicians under investigation include Uribe's closest political ally and second cousin, Senator Mario Uribe, who fell under suspicion after former paramilitary chieftain Salvatore Mancuso testified to meetings he had with the president's cousin to map electoral strategy in Antioquia and Córdoba provinces. As Molano notes, what everyone knows and has long talked about in those provinces-relations between the Uribe family, land deals and landholding, rightwing politics, and paramilitarism-is but a step away from becoming a matter of public record. As early as 1987 and as recently as 2002, distinguished investigative journalists began looking into (and in some cases uncovering) these connections. Uribe has publicly lashed out at journalists digging into his past, forcing some to flee the country amid ensuing death threats. Now, it would seem, legal issues, and not merely personal honor, are at stake.

This explains, at least in part, Uribe's confrontations with the Supreme Court, whose authority he has repeatedly attempted to undermine in order to obtain "political" status for paramilitary commanders looking to whitewash their criminal pasts. As Senator Gustavo Petro highlighted in 2005 during debates about the "Justice and Peace" law regulating paramilitary demobilization, there is reason to believe that Uribe aims to protect family members from future prosecution with its passage. During the parliamentary debates about parapolítica in March 2007, Petro named Antioquia under governor Uribe (1995-97) as the birthplace of modern-day paramilitarism. Any investigation of its roots would need to begin there.

Claudia López, co-author of the most comprehensive scholarly study of paramilitary penetration of local and regional politics in Colombia between 2002 and 2006, recently remarked on the extent to which, especially compared to the Caribbean coast, parapolítica investigations have stalled in Uribe's native Antioquia. This is to be expected, as there is undoubtedly much to hide: Under Uribe's watch, paramilitary activity-along with murders and disappearances of thousands of suspected guerrillas-skyrocketed to record levels through close coordination with the military and provincial government officials.

Though Uribe has made numerous tours of Europe and the U.S. in order to sell peace with the paramilitaries and war with the FARC, the parapolítica scandal has become his Achilles heel. A number of leading Democrats and not a few Republican congresspersons are wary of a trade agreement with Colombia, given human rights conditions and lingering doubts about the president's ties to paramilitaries. In May 2007, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, leader of the House Foreign Relations Committee, reprimanded Uribe and sent him home empty-handed when he tried to sidestep the issues in Washington. Because of ties to organized labor, Hillary Clinton has kept her distance from him in this electoral season, while Al Gore refused to attend an event in Miami last year that Uribe was scheduled to attend. (Unsurprisingly, Bill Clinton has been less circumspect, hob-knobbing with Uribe at an event called "Colombia is Passion" in New York City in May.)

A bilateral "free trade" agreement with the U.S. has been one of Uribe's chief goals since coming to power in 2002, but it appears increasingly remote. European countries, meanwhile, are reluctant to contribute funds for war with the FARC or peace with paramilitaries, and their meager offers of development aid are of little import to him.
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/3253

In other words, Uribe is starting a war to distract from his own political problems.

[bemildred]

1. Seems like he got an embargo instead. nt

[Joanne98]

2. Yeah! No way is he getting his trade deal now. LOL