The Return of the FARC We All Know: Just Plain Murder

   

Colombian Forensics Team Scours Through Blast Rubble in Ituango Source:  Reuters

They have done it before. And so long as they exist, the horrible truth we must all face is that they likely will do it again.

The FARC and murder are still synonymous. Forget the cautious and protective advocacy of so-called human rights organizations and other NGOs on behalf of these narcoguerrillas. Forget the political spin of their pro-Chavez apologists who try to tell us the FARC have a popular base of support in Colombia rooted in an ever-present problem of endemic poverty that the developed world cannot grasp. And especially forget the FARC's own statements in which they attempt to cast themselves as the last group of romantic guerrillas still standing after all these years.

The FARC are just plain murderers.  Last Thursday night in Ituango, a small town located in the north of the Department of Antioquia, they reminded anyone who may have forgotten.  While local residents celebrated an annual fair they call Ituanguinidad, i.e. "being Ituanguan," an explosive device placed in a trash can in the vicinity of several local shopping stalls exploded, killing seven and wounding approximately fifty others.  The region has been the focus of recent efforts on the part of the Colombian military to eradicate FARC-managed coca cultivation, which immediately identified the perpetrators.  Antioquia Police Commander Colonel Luis Eduardo Martinez affixed responsibility for the attack to the FARC's 18th Front and stated that it was committed "in retaliation against the campaign to eradicate illicit crops."  Colombian authorities have detained and charged one Jhon Jairo Ortiz, known by the alias El Pajaro (the bird), and charged him in the attack, accusations which he has denied.

It also may be worth adding that several top FARC commanders have been killed this year, including Raul Reyes and Ivan Rios, which might be encouraging the narcoguerrillas to retaliate.

Source:  Reuters

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe traveled to Ituango afterwards, along with Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos and Luis Alfredo Ramos, the Governor of the Department of Antioquia, to meet with the townspeople personally.  Uribe spoke to local reporters on the scene, saying "we must have solidarity with the community and support it.  And reaffirm the steel will we have in the defeat of terrorism."  He announced that he would enlarge the local police authority in the vicinity and that the Colombian government would pay an indemnity to the families of the victims in an amount equivalent to about $5,400 U.S.

International Reaction

In a year in which Colombia's struggles with the FARC have been much in the news, the aftermath of the Ituango attack has resulted in uncharacteristic expressions of solidarity with the country and its people.  Human Rights Watch issued a press release that was outstanding for its very rare mention of the FARC with no simultaneous allusion to the Paras, the usual tactic HRW has followed when addressing -- and subtly supporting -- the narcoguerrillas.  HRW did not fault the Colombian government for inattentiveness to the population because they recognized that officials in Bogota previously had issued a warning to the citizenry in Ituango that they might be at risk from a FARC attack.  The office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations in Bogota issued its own statement of condemnation, and even went so far as to describe it as typical "of a war crime."  But in perfect keeping with the twilight zone perspective of the UN, the commissioner requested that the FARC Secretariat "assume publicly the full subjection of its organization to respect humanitarian norms and to teach its members the order to fully respect their humanitarian obligations."

A much more meaningful step was the action Interpol took in response, in which they issued an order for the capture of Rodrigo Granda, the "Foreign Minister" of the FARC, who has enjoyed international immunity for over a year, permitting him to travel abroad frequently.  Henry Cobas, speaking for Interpol in Bogota, stated that they were working "through Interpol channels" to coordinate the capture and extradition of the FARC leader whose seizure in Venezuela and transfer to Colombia in 2004 provoked an international incident between the two countries, leading to the arrest and imprisonment of Venezuelan Lieutenant Colonel Humberto Quintero, who remains a political prisoner in Chavez's jails to this very day for the "crime" of arresting Granda.

Perhaps Humberto Quintero's case deserves another look?  Forgive me, for I diverge from the subject at hand.  I was thinking of justice.

My Comments

Though there appears to be some movement in international opinion to marginalize the FARC recently, and especially in the wake of events this year such as the release of the Interpol report on the Reyes laptops and the daring rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and the 15 other FARC kidnapped hostages, I am still disappointed that this event has not been publicized more prominently.  We're still largely dependent upon news sites and those very few blogger-heroes who keep an eye open, like Martha Colmenares (¡Que Dios te bendiga Martha!), and a couple of others.

The time has come for everyone to demand an end to the atrocities of the FARC.  It's just plain and simple murder, nothing more.

StJacques
   

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Nancy Pelosi and the Politics of Poison

   

Bush	Pelosi	Uribe

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's recent decision to refuse to schedule a vote on the U.S.-Colombian Free Trade Agreement has placed American trade and security policy within the center of the political landscape for the current election year.  Pelosi has justified her position publicly by reason of what she describes as Colombia's failure to make significant headway in addressing the problem of the paramilitaries in that country, who are still in a process of demobilization following a 2004 agreement to disarm and disband implemented by the Colombian government and monitored by international human rights groups.  Included among these is the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States, who last month released their report for 2007 on Colombia, in which they observed that the Colombian government had demonstrated "its commitment to pacification," though they also expressed concerns about the need for greater protection of witnesses testifying against former paramilitaries, within a legal process necessary for victims and their families to receive awards for damages and reparations, as well as presenting evidence that not all paramilitary groups had disarmed and there was even the possibility that some could be reforming.  But the sum total of all evidence regarding paramilitary violence in Colombia is that it has dropped off dramatically since the 2004 accord, which the IACHR has noted.

A second issue Pelosi has raised, along with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, is that violence against labor union leaders in Colombia has not been addressed to their satisfaction.  This presentation has never been made forcefully to the American people, and for good reason as George Will has pointed out, given that the level of violence is so low that the life expectancy of labor union members in Colombia is above that of the general population.  Any honest and informed observer of the process should be able to say that the real motivating factors behind Pelosi's decision to deny a vote on the U.S.-Colombian Free Trade Agreement are two; she is keeping the Democratic Party marching in step with the trade protectionist positions of organized labor during an election year when they need labor's financial support and political activism and she is providing political cover for Barack Obama, who opposes the agreement and would be put under the microscope if the matter came up for a vote.  Hillary Clinton apparently opposes the agreement also, but her position has been ambiguous.

This is not the first time Nancy Pelosi has used her influence within the House Democratic Leadership to prevent an important debate from proceeding before the eyes of the American people.  While still House Minority Leader in September, 2005 she played the leading role in preventing a full-fledged congressional investigation into the handling of the disaster response to Hurricane Katrina, insisting that only the actions of the federal government could be investigated -- read "investigate the Bush Administration but cover the rear of Louisiana's then Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco" -- and no such inquiry has ever been held.  I live in Louisiana and within a week of Katrina's landfall I knew, along with many other Louisianans, that an open investigation would not show our state and Governor in a good light.  Inevitably the world would have known that the State of Louisiana had turned back private rescue efforts, that Governor Blanco's hesitation to call up the National Guard went so far as to extend beyond the outbreaks of post-storm violence and looting, that the State of Louisiana either did nothing or consented outright to the closure of a federal highway bridge leading into downtown New Orleans and therefore had a hand in isolating those who were stranded, and that from as early as the Tuesday after the storm Governor Blanco's own Department of State Homeland Security chief had refused permission to both the Red Cross and Salvation Army to travel to the Superdome and Convention Center to relieve the suffering saying the two sites might become "magnets," an outrageous remark that has never been explained.  What happened in New Orleans after Katrina may have been -- I actually would argue "was" -- the most significant civil rights crime in America since the era of legalized segregation and Pelosi refused to let the Congress investigate it or to have the facts discussed in front of the American people.  This was poisonous betrayal of the most vulnerable among us, pure and simple, but it gained political advantage for Pelosi in her drive to wrest control of the House of Representatives away from the Republicans, and she obviously has not forgotten the lesson.

Pelosi Also Played a Major Role in Preventing an Open Discussion in Congress of the post-Katrina Abandonment of Displaced New Orleanians

We can only hope that the venemous nature of political manipulation we have seen from Nancy Pelosi will be replaced by a more open and honest exercise of legislative leadership. This appears doubtful at present, so in the meantime we can only call it what it is openly.

It is poison, pure and simple.

StJacques
   

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