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Column 102714 Brewer

Monday, October 27, 2014
FARC cannot be trusted in
Colombia's changeless Peace
Talks
By Jerry Brewer
Attempts to end 50 years of conflict in
Colombia, since the latest peace talks
began in November of 2012 in Cuba,
show remnants of a charade by the
Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de
Colombia (FARC) guerrillas.
In what could be described as a
skillfully exploited situation by the
FARC, the Colombian government
continues to negotiate with the rebels
to end a conflict that is believed to
have killed more than 200,000
persons and internally displaced some
three million people. The battle has
been called Latin Americas longest-
running war.
High-ranking guerrilla commanders
joined the Colombian peace talks
taking place in Cuba last week.
However Ivan Marquez, the lead
negotiator of FARC, said that people
shouldn't hold high expectations for
the peace talks.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, US-
based social scientists held a negative
view of truces involving violent groups
and gangs, believing that those kinds
of agreements legitimized gangs,
reinforced the authority of their
leaders, deepened cohesion among
their rank and file, and actually
reproduced rather than reduce






violence. Their perceptions had much
merit.
FARC leaders are continuing to insist
on no jail time for their atrocities, and
the right to run for political office if
they are to demobilize and peacefully
reintegrate. Moreover, they have
consistently refused to disarm.
There is no doubt that the FARC has
taken advantage of previous
concessions by the Colombian
government to talk, disarm, and seek
peace. Colombian President Andres
Pastrana, in 1998, withdrew around
2,000 police and soldiers from over 16
square miles in southern and eastern
Colombia, turning over control of that
territory to the FARC as a gesture of
goodwill. The FARC however did not
comply with the peace accord efforts,
and took advantage of the government
by using the territory as a training
ground for recruits and future actions.
In the 1990s the FARC, via the leftist
Patriotic Union Party, continued to
wage war during peace talks with the
Colombian government. The
Colombian government consistently
cited the lack of commitment by the
FARC as to the process of talks, while
the latter continued its criminal acts.
It eventually became clear that the
FARC had much higher political
support. At his annual State of the
Nation address in the National
Assembly, on January 11, 2008, then
President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez
referred to the FARC as "a real army
that occupies territory in Colombia.
Too, he stated that the FARC were not
terrorists because they had a political
goal.
Colombian military forces, in March of
2008, seized thousands of rebel
documents and found FARC links to
Chavez. Details from computers, hard
drives, memory sticks and emails that
were seized held documents and
correspondence belonging to a high-
level rebel leader, Luis Edgar Devia
Silva (AKA Raul Reyes), who was
killed during the raid.
A report in 2013 indicated that Jose
Luis Merino, a leader of El Salvador's
Farabundo Marti National Liberation
Front (FMLN), a leftwing political
party, arranged a drug lords meeting
with the Colombian FARC on a flight
coordinated with Venezuelan
President Nicolas Maduro. This
alleged new evidence thusly reveals
that Maduro, Venezuelas current
president, when serving as his nation's
Foreign Minister, worked to improve
the FMLNs access to drug trafficking."
Back in 2010 the FARC had killed at
least 460 members of Colombias
security forces, while wounding more
than 2,000.
By early 2011 Colombian authorities
and news media reported that the
FARC and their clandestine sister
groups had partly shifted strategy from
guerrilla warfare to "a war of militias,"
meaning that they were increasingly
operating in civilian clothes while
hiding amongst sympathizers in the
civilian population.
In 2011 the Colombian Congress
issued a statement claiming that the
FARC had a "strong presence" in
roughly one third of the country, while
its attacks against security forces "have
continued to rise" throughout 2010
and 2011.
On July 20, 2013 as peace talks were
allegedly making progress, two rebel
attacks on government positions killed
19 soldiers and an unspecified number
of combatants. It was the deadliest day
since peace talks began in November
2012.
On November 13, 2013 the Colombian
Government uncovered a FARC plot to
assassinate former President Alvaro
Uribe. FARC gunmen had murdered
Uribes father, Alberto, at the family
ranch in 1983 during a botched
kidnapping attempt.
Previously there were statements
claiming agreements had been
reached, that included cooperation on
eradicating the illicit drug trade,
agricultural reform, and FARC's legal
participation in politics once a
comprehensive agreement was
finalized.
The truth is that FARC insurgents have
continually taken hostages and
murdered many civilians, including
women and children. Their justifying
rationale for the attacks and
assassinations, against the armed
forces, police and others, is cited in
their self-seeking ideological claims of
starting out as a grassroots-supported
guerrilla movement in the interests of
the repressed rural population.
And the FARC's spurious history of
taking advantage of previous
concessions, during talks with the
Colombian government, to disarm and
seek peace is well documented this
while professing peace but never
laying down their arms.

Jerry Brewer is C.E.O. of Criminal
Justice International Associates, a
global threat mitigation firm
headquartered in northern Virginia.
His website is located at
www.cjiausa.org.

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