A Colombia Follow-Up: FARC, Paramilitaries, and Cocaine in the Rural Areas

Following up on my observations and thoughts on Colombia the other day, today the NY Times has this article up on cocaine production and FARC/paramilitary violence in Colombia's rural areas. Suffice to say, despite Uribe's recent efforts to show how successful he's been against the FARC, it's far from a victory by any stretch of the imagination (even wingnut imaginations). The article offers is an important reality check on those who are getting overly hopeful for Colombia (something I fear I may have inadvertently taken place in by not qualifying enough how ambivalent my hope for Colombia is now; things still look better than they have in a long time, but that doesn't mean they are better).

In addition, Simon Romero, the article's author, brings up the drug trade and its ties to the struggle. I suggested that, even if the FARC were to disappear, there's no good reason to believe the cocaine production and the violence tied to it would drop, and the article seems to back that up: "while the FARC’s share of the cocaine trade has declined, Colombia’s share of the world cocaine production has remained stable at about 60 percent. That means opportunities for new players like Colombia’s resurgent right-wing militias [my italics] and small-scale armed gangs taking the place of disassembled cartels."

Which leads us to the U.S.'s involvement in Colombia. It's been repeated so often that it may sound like a tired argument, but it's worth repeating once again: the "War on Drugs" does not, cannot, and will not work as long as it focuses strictly on production. When fields are attacked, they are either quickly replanted and/or pushed into more remote regions where it's easier to conceal your production. Additionally, the U.S. has made no secret in its willingness to pump lots of money into Colombia to fight "terrorism" (and, since Bush became president, maintain one of its few friends in the region in the figure of Uribe). However, given how close some top-level Colombian officials are to the paramilitary groups, the tie of U.S. foreign aid to Colombia is not hard to follow. I have no doubt that some of the U.S. funds end up in the hands of Colombian paramilitaries who are directly involved in the drug trade. Thus, while the U.S. is on the one hand spending millions and millions of dollars to combat drug production in Colombia, it is at the same time offering money to governments (both present and past) that are in bed with paramilitaries who are increasingly producing drugs. And even the farmers who are simply growing cocaine for survival aren't ignornat peasants; they are finding new ways to produce, all while the demand in the United States (where almost all of Colombia's cocaine goes) does nothing to force them to turn to other, more legal crops. So the United States ends up throwing money away by trying to combat the production of cocaine, while failing to address issues of demand or even reconcile how they can tacitly (and perhaps covertly) support groups involved in the drug trade even while combatting the drug trade.

These two pictures of the continuing local violence in rural areas and drug production are indeed depressing, and serve as an important reminder of how far Colombia has to go. Do things look better than they have in a long time? Sure. Does that mean that they are even close to improving? Absolutely not. And it indicates how many other problems Colombia will face, even if the FARC were to collapse. So while we can be thrilled that hostages have been released and that FARC has sustained true losses, it is still, as Erik said, a group that is often little more than an organization of criminals and thugs. As depressing as it is, the problems Colombia is facing run far deeper than a "revolutionary" group involved in a 40+ year civil war, and the country is still far, far away from the day when these types of conflicts can come to a close.

The Developing Crisis between Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela

To be up front, I am not a specialist in international relations, and in terms of Latin America, I am nowhere near as studied in Colombia/Venezuela/Ecuador as I am in Brazil or the Southern Cone.

That said, the new developments between Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela are rather intense, and have I think a real chance to get worse. Late last week, Colombia announced it had killed Raul Reyes, FARC's "number 2" (although, as Boz points out, this is a simplification of a complicated command structure in the FARC). As the story develops, it appears that Colombia actually invaded Ecuadoran airspace, and the Colombian military crossed into Ecuador without permission to kill Reyes, who was in Ecuador's national territory. In response, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador has sent troops to the Colombia-Ecuador border, withdrawn his ambassador from Colombia, and expelled Colombia's ambassador from Ecuador. Hugo Chávez has also shut down Venezuela's embassy in Colombia, and sent troops to the Colombia-Venezuela border, threatening war if Colombia tries to invade Venezuela, even to attack members of the FARC or the ELN. And while Colombia has apologized to Ecuador, Ecuador says the apology is insufficient, while Colombia claims it has found evidence in the camp of the 17 FARC members that Ecuador was in contact with FARC. Suffice to say, things are, at the moment, rather tense.

I don't really know what the implications of all this will be. Certainly, the relations between Chávez and Uribe can't get much worse, and have been drastically declining since Uribe inexplicably (and, although it all worked out OK, rather indefensibly) kicked Chávez out of the delicate hostage negotiations in November). Plus, both Chávez and Uribe stand to gain from the bump in approval ratings in their respective country that such national disputes often engender (some are saying Chávez in particular could benefit given his allegedly lagging status in Venezuela, but I simply have virtually no faith in any of the polling mechanisms in Venezuela, given the extreme partisanship, pro- or anti-Chavista, that runs throughout many "non-partisan" organizations there).

But the Ecuador element is more troubling. Correa has yet to prove himself to be somebody who acts without just reason, so the fact that he has taken this this far already shows how serious he feels it to be. While national soveriegnty and the control of borders used to be sufficient enough an argument for war or a highly-charged national response in its own right, today it seems a bit differnet, given the nature of guerrilla tactics and less immediate antagonism to such border-violations (witness the lack of outcry when Turkey entered Iraq a few weeks ago to go after Kurdish PKK "terrorists"). I get the sense that many may say, "So what? So Colombia went a couple miles into Ecuador to get some "terrorists." What's the big deal?" Given the way the world has globalized not just in terms of economy, but also technologically, culturally, and even politically, the respect for national borders doesn't strike me as being as strong as it may once have been. This is in no way aided by the fact that, sometimes national territory means virtually nothing to major world powers (the U.S.'s support of Contra bases in Costa Rica and Honduras) while other times, national borders must be protected at all costs (the Malvinas War).

But territorial issues have always been sensitive in Latin America, from the independence movements to today. One simply has to look at the ongoing battle over the northern third of Chile, won in the wake of the War of the Pacific, which deprived Bolivia of its one outlet to the ocean and which Peru and Bolivia still insist belongs to them even today, over 120 years after the war itself. Wars of this type were not uncommon in Latin America, having affected the territorial control of Bolivia, Paraguay, and even Ecuador itself, which lost land to Peru in a war in 1945, and over which eruptions flared again in 1995. One can see how Colombia's invasion of Ecuador's border could be more than a little upsetting to Ecuador.I think Colombia's charges that Ecuador was in contact with the FARC are a weak defense, at least until it becomes clearer to how deep these contacts ran. Colombia itself only mentioned "possible" connections betwen FARC-Ecuador, and I find it unlikely that Ecuador was really closely tied to FARC. If such contact did exist, it doesn't necessarily mean Ecuador was being overly friendly.

I'm not convinced yet this will erupt into some regional war. I think cooler heads have to prevail, though, and given Uribe's brashness in invading Ecuador, and neither Uribe nor Chávez is exactly a calm, patient, diplomatic figure. War benefits nobody here, though (save maybe for the FARC, who can use the war as a breather to regroup). There still hasn't been much said from other Latin American countries on the issue; Lula is asking his Minsiter of Foreign Relations for more information, but the president of Brazil's Câmara has already said that, if necessary, Brazil should try to use its role in the region to avoid crisis as a neutral moderator (i.e., representing neither Colombia nor Ecuador nor Venezuela). Hopefully, things will calm down. Still, war is not out of the question, and it will definitely be worth seeing how the events play out between these three countries (and the rest of the region) over the next few weeks.