Summary
Colombian President Andres Pastrana ended peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia Jan. 9, giving the group 48 hours to leave their demilitarized zone. The move will intensify the level of violence throughout the country, including in urban areas. It may also give a boost to the president before elections in May.
Analysis
Colombian President Andres Pastrana ended 3-year-old peace negotiations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia late Jan. 9, and gave the rebels 48 hours to vacate the demilitarized zone (DMZ) they have controlled since November 1998.
Pastrana left open a door to resume negotiations, but his decision to order the FARC out of the DMZ will probably trigger a rapid escalation of violence across Colombia as early as next week, speeding the spread of violence into the urban areas.
Escalating warfare between the FARC, the army and right-wing paramilitary forces will likely affect the outcome of Colombia's presidential elections in May. Increasing hostilities inside the country will also affect the Andean region's stability, creating unexpected security and political headaches for the Bush administration. As the Colombian conflict accelerates in the coming months, the chances that the United States will get more directly involved will also increase.
Colombian government and FARC negotiators met last week for the first time since October 2001. However, the meeting dissolved quickly when Gen. Fernando Tapias, commander of Colombia's armed forces, told the negotiators that the issues of military security around the periphery of the DMZ and aerial surveillance of the rebel-controlled area were "not negotiable," according to the EFE wire agency.
The two sides met again on Jan. 8 and 9, with FARC negotiators again demanding that the government dismantle military and security controls around the DMZ's borders. However, Pastrana's negotiators said the military controls would remain and urged the rebel leaders to accept government proposals that included a bilateral cease-fire and a commitment to end kidnapping and extortion. FARC negotiators rejected the government's demands and the talks collapsed.
Pastrana confirmed the talks were over on Jan. 9 and ordered the FARC to clear out of the DMZ in 48 hours. If Pastrana holds to this deadline, the Colombian military could launch an offensive as soon as Jan.12. The FARC likely will react with a wave of urban and rural counterattacks across Colombia to take pressure off rebel forces inside the zone.
Tapias has placed the country's armed forces on maximum alert, according to the Bogota daily El Tiempo, and is only waiting for Pastrana's order to launch an offensive. The general has 3,500 soldiers already deployed on the DMZ's peripheries, plus 4,500 soldiers of the Rapid Deployment Force (RDF) operating out of the Tres Esquinas military base at the confluence of the Putumayo, Caqueta and Orteguaza rivers in southern Colombia.
These ground troops will be transported and reinforced by an air fleet consisting of 35 Black Hawks -- 10 of which were delivered this week by the U.S. government -- plus fixed-wing OV-10 and Tucano aircraft, according to El Tiempo.
A national poll released Jan. 7 by the Caracol broadcast network reported that 95 percent of Colombians feel that another round of peace talks, if they were to occur at all, would produce nothing. Nevertheless, Pastrana's decision to terminate the negotiations and order the FARC out of the DMZ caught most Colombians by surprise.
The peace talks have been the cornerstone of his government since he became president in 1998. On Nov. 7 of that year, Pastrana ceded to the FARC control of an area in southern Colombia about the size of Switzerland. Located 190 miles south of Bogota, the rebel zone is home to about 100,000 people and includes the towns of San Vicente del Caguan, Mesetas, La Macarena, La Uribe and Vista Hermosa.
Since the zone's creation Pastrana has extended the legal deadline for dissolving the DMZ nine times, most recently in October 2001. The current deadline ends on Jan. 20, 2002.
Pastrana's decision to end the peace talks very likely will trigger a rapid escalation of hostilities between rebels, paramilitaries and the Colombian army. The FARC could also step up its strikes in urban areas, such as terrorist actions like bomb attacks and political assassinations.
Such an escalation could affect the outcome of presidential and congressional elections in May. Political candidates strongly aligned either with or against the rebels could be targeted for assassination. The FARC has already tried to kill right-wing presidential candidate Alvaro Uribe Velez several times during the past year, most recently two weeks ago.
So why did Pastrana choose now to scrap the peace talks after investing his entire government in the quest for a peaceful end to Colombia's 38-year-old civil war?
The president's hand may have been forced by a combination of factors, including unwillingness by the FARC to make any concessions at all, the voting public's nearly complete loss of faith in the peace process, the dynamics of this year's presidential campaign in Colombia and especially the growing political clout of the country's armed forces.
In the past three years, Colombia's military has become better- trained, better-equipped and more professional. It has also improved its human rights image significantly since 1998 while the FARC's image as a terrorist organization involved in drug trafficking has become more notorious.
Colombia's armed forces also have developed much closer ties with the U.S. military, driven by Washington's concerns about the regional security implications of Colombia's civil conflict, the progressive militarization of the U.S. war on drugs in Latin America and the deterioration of U.S. relations with Venezuela since Hugo Chavez became president of that country in 1999.
The candidate currently leading all presidential polls in Colombia is Horacio Serpa of the Liberal Party. Serpa was Interior Minister during the government of former President Ernesto Samper, who in 1994 was publicly accused by the Clinton administration of financing his presidential campaign that year with drug cartel monies.
Serpa has vowed, if elected, to scrap Colombia's free-market policies, "re-negotiate" Plan Colombia with the U.S. government and continue peace talks with the FARC. Under Serpa, the Colombian government's relations with Washington likely would deteriorate.
By ending the peace talks now, instead of extending the deadline for dissolving the DMZ yet again, Pastrana may be seeking to undermine Serpa's candidacy. A successful push by the military would certainly give Pastrana and his party a boost before the polls.
Pastrana is also giving the Colombian military an opportunity to demonstrate that it can inflict punishing losses on the FARC. Tapias and other senior military officers have been declaring for months that Colombia's armed forces can "defeat" the rebel group. In a few days, they may finally get the chance to demonstrate their capabilities, but the bloodshed likely will be horrendous.