Strategies for Peace in Colombia

Thanks for giving me this opportunity to speak. There's been a lot in the news lately about Colombia, especially regarding a large aid package, mostly from the United States, called Plan Colombia. The centerpiece of the plan is the creation of three mobile helicopter brigades, receiving training and equipment from the United States. The purpose of the brigades will be to drive the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) from a demilitarized zone created two years ago, in an effort to stimulate peace negotiations. The government of Colombia appears to be preparing a counteroffensive to retake the region, where the FARC are based and where there are also several hundred thousand subsistence farmers growing coca, the plant used to make cocaine.

The helicopters are heavily armed and armored, but their primary use will be to transport troops. After the brigades have cleared an area of guerrillas, crop dusters will come in and fumigate the area with glyphosate, a chemical sold in the United States by the Monsanto Corporation also known as "Round Up". That's the plan envisioned by Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, Representatives Benjamin Gilman, John Mica, Dan Burton, Mike DeWine, Jesse Helms, and other conservatives in Congress. They describe these anti- drug operations as if nothing else were going on in the region where they're concentrating their fumigation efforts.

The other thing that's happening in the Putumayo region of Colombia is that right wing "self-defense forces", also known as paramilitaries, are moving in to conduct counterinsurgency operations against "subversives" – people suspected of aiding the guerrillas. The Colombian army has had a long association with paramilitary groups, many of which were organized and equipped by the Colombian military and still enjoy their protection. Last week, Colombia dispatched 6,000 soldiers to the region, and there are tens of thousands of foreign soldiers stationed along Colombia's borders, including those of Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, and Venezuela.

There's a lot that could go wrong with this plan, to say the least. The United Nations told Ecuador to expect some 30,000 refugees. 3000 people have already fled across the border into Ecuador. The situation is deteriorating, and is likely to become much worse once the so-called "push into southern Colombia" is underway. These operations are going to begin sometime this month.

I'd like to describe three kinds of strategies for peace in Colombia. Those are strategies for Colombians, strategies for North Americans (as we're known south of the equator), and strategies for the international community, namely the United Nations.


Colombian strategies

Colombians can use a human rights process as a way to begin the peace process. Revenge and retribution are driving the conflict. This is the result of generations of massacres, assassinations, disappearances, kidnappings, terrorist attacks – many Colombians find it hard to be neutral with all this going on. The brutal tactics of the guerrillas and paramilitaries have the psychological effects of inspiring hatred, fear and revenge, and in my opinion these are the most significant social factors behind the conflict. This is where human rights activists come in – by insisting that all sides adhere to the basic laws of war set out in the Geneva Conventions, with the main point being not to attack civilians, not only can we help prevent the worst atrocities imaginable, but also give people less cause for revenge.

One very basic agreement would be for the guerrillas to stop kidnapping, and for the government to dismantle the paramilitary groups. This proposal puts two of the most serious issues on the table for discussion.

Most of the kidnapping is done by the guerrillas. The FARC has two kinds of prisoners. Some are captured soldiers and policemen, who could be condsidered prisoners of war. The others are simply wealthy people taken hostage because they are worth a lot of ransom money. One of the FARC's demands is a prisoner exchange. I think that exchanging captured soldiers could be a mechanism to build peace, but the innocent hostages they are holding are in another category. They should be immediately released.

The government of Colombia could take steps to dismantle the paramilitary groups. The leaders of these groups are often well known, and the Colombian government should arrest them. With all of the law enforcement assistance we're giving the Colombian National Police, I'm surprised they've made so little progress investigating the leaders of these groups. It appears that the "push into southern Colombia" by the US-trained mobile helicopter brigades will be accompanied by paramilitary operations, which have intensified in the region in the last few months.

Worse still, the leader of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, Carlos Castano, has worked for the Drug Enforcement Administration as an informant, and still appears to enjoy US protection. It was recently reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer that the DEA worked with the Los Pepes death squad to assassinate Pablo Escobar's associates in an effort to get him to surrender.

Castano is wanted on various murder charges in Colombia, but has never been captured. His location is well known, and he often gives interviews to the news media. As recently as August, DEA agents allegedly contacted Castano through an informant, seeking his cooperation in the war on drugs. At a press conference during Bill Clinton's visit to Cartagena shortly afterwards, Barry McCaffrey promised to investigate these allegations, but nothing has been reported in the media since. General McCaffrey leaves his post in January, and I hope he can conclude the investigation by then.

If the guerrillas released their hostages, and the government began dismantling the paramilitaries, I think these would be major accomplishments for Colombia.

There is already an official peace process in Colombia. The guerrillas and the government have regular meetings, but they have not yet begun to address the issues, and no progress whatsoever has been made.

The FARC has a ten point political agenda, including various political reforms, nationalization of strategic industries, agrarian reform, and a reorganization of the tax structure, with 50% of the national budget invested in social welfare. The government has not made a counterproposal, and they should do so in a public statement if they are not able to meet with the guerrillas in private. I think that the ball is in the government's court.

One interesting approach to peace in Colombia lies in the movement to form "peace communities". These are towns that have made public declarations of neutrality. Unfortunately, neither the guerrillas nor the paramilitaries respect these declarations, and the government of Colombia offers no protection. These people deserve extra protection, because of their expressed neutrality.

No one has proposed a good end game strategy for Colombia. I don't know how the guerrillas will be able to demobilize in exchange for political concessions - they would probably be assassinated if they disarmed. A decade ago, a part of the FARC formed a legal political party called the Union Patriotica. They expressed much the same political views as the FARC, but tried to work through the normal political process. They were doing fairly well in the 1988 elections, until about 100 of their candidates were assassinated. Over 3000 members of the party were assassinated in all. Needless to say, this influences the thinking of the FARC and I think it will be difficult to convince them to disarm. I can't think of a solution to this problem.

One last point I would like to make about the peace process in Colombia concerns the terms "peace" and "justice". The FARC say they're fighting for "peace with justice" – in other words, no peace until there is justice. Barry McCaffrey also says he's seeking a "just peace" – it's the same Orwellian terminology for war. I'm sure Barry McCaffrey and the FARC have different definitions of what they mean by "justice". The message for them is that the end does not justify the means – often it's the other way around, the means determine the end.


US and UN strategies

The military aid we're giving Colombia could instead be used for positive change in Colombia. The human rights conditions in Plan Colombia – which President Clinton waived for national security reasons, could be a good mechanism for reform. These include suspending military officers from duty when there's credible evidence they've violated human rights, and prosecuting them in civilian courts. President Pastrana could order the army to stop fighting for jurisdiction in human rights cases, but he has not.

Another condition waived by President Clinton required the government of Colombia to aggressively prosecute the leaders and members of paramilitary groups in civilian courts. Since these conditions have to be re-certified on a regular basis, we must ask President Clinton not to waive the human rights conditions on the Colombia aid, when Colombia comes up for re-certification again later this month.

The FARC have proposed manual eradication of coca plants as an alternative to the spraying operations. There is support in the Colombian government for this idea, but unfortunately, the United States' has said that fumigation is not negotiable. The United States should consider the FARC's proposal, and other alternative development proposals that could lead to peace.

One of the things about Plan Colombia that stands out is that it's an offensive, rather than a defensive plan. We should insist that the helicopters we're providing only be used in defensive, not offensive operations. That's the important distinction – offense versus defense – not the debate in Congress about counterinsurgency versus counternarcotics operations. They should be under the command of the United Nations to ensure that they are used to enforce peace.

I'd like to see UN peacekeeping forces sent to the region, to defend threatened towns from attack by either guerrilla or paramilitary attacks. There is a responsibility to protect the people living in these areas, who are under attack from all sides. This is the opposite of what the US proposes, to launch a counteroffensive against the FARC, which threatens everyone in the region even more.

I can imagine UN troops in armored vehicles stationed in towns, with a rapid response network, using the helicopters in Plan Colombia. This would be a good use for the military aid.

This kind of intervention would have to be made by the United Nations. The United States would never be able to get away with it. Military intervention by the United States would be seen by rural Colombians as Yanqui imperialism, and Colombia could be facing an even larger insurgency next year, as the people living in the conflict zone take up arms in self-defense. The FARC are prepared to arm them. The UN already has a very visible presence in the Colombian peace process, and the UN is generally viewed as being neutral. Calling the Blue Helmets of the United Nations may sound somewhat alarming, but I think this is one of the most realistic options of any of the things I've mentioned.


Martin Luther King

I'd like to conclude with the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Stockholm, December 11, 1964, which combines both of the concepts of nonviolence and human rights:

"Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."


Paul Wolf



Talk given at the Community Church in Chapel Hill, December, 2000