Título: Colombia Hard Right Álvaro Uribe was a Dark Horse
Fecha: 21/03/2002
De: Editor Equipo Nizkor
Para: Mario Rojas, Director de Tlahui
Colombia’s Hard Right Alvaro Uribe Velez was a dark horse. Then rebels
went on a bloody rampage and Uribe became the presidential favorite.
Will the hard-liner finally bring peace – or a deadly new escalation?
By Joseph Contreras, Newsweek International
March 25 issue — Alvaro Uribe Velez—slight and bespectacled—looks more
like a high-school
math teacher than a hard-charging ideologue. But there’s nothing wimpy
about his message: from the moment he declared his candidacy for
Colombia’s 2002 presidential election, the former state governor
promised to halt peace negotiations with the rebel Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC) and restore law and order. At first, his tough
talk didn’t garner much support. But after languishing in third place in
opinion surveys much of last year, he suddenly took the pole position in
January. Now Uribe commands an approval rating of 59 percent, and it
seems nothing short of an assassin’s bullet can stop the maverick
politician from winning the May election.
IN A BLOOD-STEEPED country, the rise of a right-wing hard-liner is
hardly surprising. But what is less clear is what Uribe’s victory will
mean for Colombia and its increasingly close military ties to the United
States. The Bush administration, fighting to increase American military
engagement in the war against the rebels, will likely welcome a more
resolute president in Bogota. As will most of his countrymen. “Ordinary
Colombians who have grown tired of guerrilla abuses see in Uribe a tough
leader with a firm hand,” says former national-security adviser Armando
Borrero.
But human-rights activists, civil libertarians and other critics see
something else: another threat to Colombia’s besieged democracy. They
claim the heir apparent has too cozy a relationship with Colombia’s
disreputable military, a coterie of shady associates, past and present,
with allegations of links to the drug trade hanging over them, and a
penchant for strongman tactics. “Many of [Uribe’s] backers support him
because they favor an authoritarian government,” says political analyst
Marco Romero of Bogota’s National University. “That makes many people
worry that his extreme-right-wing vision of public order may not jibe
with democratic principles.”
Uribe actually owes his unprecedented ascent to the guerrillas. Most
Colombians had already run out of patience with the faltering peace
process when the FARC unleashed a fresh offensive in January. They
sabotaged electric pylons, bombed a Bogota restaurant, killing four
policemen and a 5-year-old girl, and tried to blow up the main reservoir
serving the capital. In February, four rebels hijacked an airliner and
kidnapped a prominent senator. Uribe, 49, was already soaring in the
polls when a frustrated President Andres Pastrana finally called off
talks with rebels and ordered troops to retake the haven he had allowed
the FARC to occupy in 1998. For millions of voters, the total collapse
of peace talks vindicated Uribe’s hard line—and his run for the
presidency.
He had been written off by pundits when he left the ranks of the
mainstream Liberal Party to mount his one-man campaign. His rivals tried
to discredit him early on as the standard-bearer of the far right in a
country where ultraconservative politicians have seldom occupied the
presidential palace. But that criticism wound up working in Uribe’s
favor. Courting voters with the motto “Strong hand, big heart,” the
veteran politician from the city of Medellin cast himself as a foe of
Colombia’s political establishment who would put national security and
law and order at the top of his agenda. As the son of a wealthy
landowner killed by FARC forces in the 1980s, he said he never
understood how Pastrana could have granted the Marxist rebels a
Switzerland-size enclave without first extracting a ceasefire
agreement.
The Bush administration is increasingly concerned about the meltdown in
Colombia. In the final months of the Clinton era, the country became the
third largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. But the initial $1.3
billion assistance package was restricted to supporting the Pastrana
government’s anti-drug efforts and could not legally be diverted to
counterinsurgency operations. The U.S. Congress feared the money would
go to help right-wing paramilitaries that massacre suspected rebel
sympathizers, often with the support of elements in Colombia’s
military.
It was always a difficult distinction to maintain in a country where
both the FARC and the right-wing militias are directly involved in the
narcotics trade. But post-September 11, the Bush White House has pushed
to do away with the restrictions altogether.
The administration recently asked Congress to approve an additional $98
million for the training of a Colombian Army brigade that will defend a
key oil pipeline frequently targeted by guerrillas. Last week the
administration went a step further: spokesman Ari Fleischer disclosed
plans to seek more aid to help Colombia in “its unified campaign against
drug trafficking, terrorism and other threats to its national security.”
The Pentagon, for its part, continues to believe that the ultimate
political settlement with leftists will require a centrist leader. But
the view from Washington increasingly is that that can’t happen until
the FARC is defeated, or at least contained and demoralized.
More than 100 U.S. troops are currently stationed in Colombia, many of
them engaged in ongoing training of the Colombian Army’s three
counternarcotics battalions, and Uribe has called for increased American
military aid. He also wants to see Pastrana’s anti-drug Plan Colombia
broadened to include the fight against terrorism, kidnapping, massacres
and other endemic ills. “No country can ignore the kind of terrorist
attacks against a democratic society that are taking place in Colombia,”
Uribe told NEWSWEEK last week. “The state cannot allow [armed] groups to
kill citizens or take part in drug trafficking, and that’s why I’m
asking for more international help, beginning with the United States.”
Narcotics and terrorism will rank high on the agenda when President
George W. Bush sits down with the leaders of Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and
Bolivia at a summit in Lima later this week. (Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez was not invited because of Washington’s displeasure over his
harsh criticism of the U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan.) The
U.S.-backed anti-drug campaign is yielding mixed results in the Andean
region. According to Colombian police and United Nations figures,
coca-leaf production in Colombia fell by 13 percent overall in 2001,
thanks mainly to an aggressive aerial fumigation program that killed off
more than 190,000 acres of coca bushes. But there are strong signs that
coca and opium-poppy cultivation is booming in neighboring Peru, fueled
in part by Colombian drug lords who are feeling the heat of Plan
Colombia.
Uribe says he will turn it up. He points out that nearly 5,000 acres of
coca and opium farms were eradicated in his native state of Antioquia in
central Colombia during his three-year term as governor. But allegations
have been made against some of his associates and close political allies
that raise questions in the minds of many observers of Colombian
politics about his credentials as Washington’s next partner in the war
on drugs. A man known for his strong sense of loyalty, Uribe fiercely
defends the reputation of longtime friends like Pedro Juan Moreno, a
59-year-old Medellin businessman who was his right-hand man after Uribe
became governor in 1995. Two years later the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) seized three large shipments of potassium
permanganate—commonly used in the processing of cocaine—that had been
bought by Moreno’s chemicals company. The industrialist said the DEA had
acted on the basis of false information supplied by senior Colombian
police officials Moreno accused of waging a political vendetta against
him. Moreno was never indicted in the United States or Colombia, and
Uribe has consistently stood by his former cabinet chief, who also
happens to be a distant relative of the candidate’s wife, Lina Moreno. A
number of Colombian journalists have dredged up similar personalities
from Uribe’s past, but none has come close to derailing his runaway
victory.
An accomplished horseman and father of two sons, Uribe will never be
mistaken for an extremist thug. He began his career of public service at
the age of 24 in the Antioquia state bureaucracy and has been elected to
a series of offices ranging from city councilman to national senator.
Along the way, Uribe completed courses of study at Harvard and Oxford
and was awarded a British Council academic scholarship.
But there is a whiff of the arrogant about Uribe that surfaces from time
to time. In his book about the Colombian drug trade, “Whitewash,”
British journalist Simon Strong recounts a 1994 interview with the then
senator that turned sour when the reporter asked a question about one of
Uribe’s political proteges who had once enjoyed the backing of the late
drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. According to Strong, the senator stormed out
of the Bogota restaurant where the meeting was taking place. When Strong
later emerged, the journalist encountered a belligerent Uribe waiting
for him outside, surrounded by bodyguards as he waved his fist in front
of Strong’s nose and challenged him to resume the interview (in his
interview with NEWSWEEK, Uribe said he has never “intimidated” or
“threatened” any journalist).
The thin-skinned politician apparently hasn’t mellowed with time. Uribe
personally phoned the Bogota correspondent, Gonzalo Guillen, of Miami’s
Spanish-language newspaper El Nuevo Herald, two weeks ago to complain
about his investigation of Uribe’s past ties to the notorious Ochoa
clan. The Ochoas were major players in Escobar’s Medellin cartel during
its heyday, and Uribe has acknowledged his father’s long friendship with
the recently deceased patriarch Fabio Ochoa, but Uribe maintains he
parted ways with Fabio’s sons many years ago. Nevertheless, Uribe didn’t
appreciate Guillen’s inquiries and made his displeasure known by
pointedly asking whether the journalist lived in Bogota or Miami.
Of far greater concern to some Uribe critics is the candidate’s close
ties to the military and how they will shape his four-year term. He
kicked off his quest for the presidency by delivering the keynote speech
at a 1999 gala dinner honoring two former Army generals. But the
featured guests weren’t exactly run-of-the-mill career soldiers heading
into their golden years. Both Fernando Millan and Rito Alejo del Rio had
been cashiered by Pastrana for having collaborated with vigilante groups
and right-wing paramilitary units charged with committing massacres and
other atrocities in 1996 and 1997. As a result, the State Department
rescinded the generals’ U.S. visas, but that didn’t stop Uribe from
singing their praises in public. He is particularly chummy with Alejo
del Rio, a rotund native of Boyaca whom Uribe met as governor when the
general was commander of the 17th Army Brigade in northwestern
Colombia.
The candidate characterizes Alejo del Rio as an “honorable” man and
denies he ever violated anyone’s human rights.
Uribe’s opponents have also taken aim at his proposal to involve
civilians more directly in antisubversion operations to supplement the
country’s embattled security forces. For some Colombians, the notion
evokes memories of the sometimes ruthless peasant militias created in
Peru to neutralize the Shining Path guerrilla movement in the 1980s and
early 1990s. Uribe says he has no plans to arm the civilian
population.
But skeptics recall his role in promoting dozens of neighborhood
security organizations called Convivir, some of which evolved into armed
vigilante groups that work closely with right-wing militias.
Uribe’s alleged links to the country’s 8,000-strong right-wing militias
are harder to document. The so-called United Self-Defense Forces of
Colombia flourished in the rural areas of Antioquia when Uribe was
governor, and according to one respected Colombian human-rights group,
CODHES (the Human Rights and Displaced Information Bureau), most of the
nearly 200,000 people who fled Antioquia during his term were driven out
by paramilitary forces and Convivir groups. Uribe also allegedly ignored
warnings of an imminent paramilitary massacre in the village of El Aro
that left 14 people dead in 1997. He vehemently denies any relationship
to paramilitary warlord Carlos Castano and says his government will
treat the country’s right-wing militias just like the communist
guerrillas. But the paramilitary forces have been keeping a relatively
low profile since Uribe started to climb in the polls, and their
umbrella group issued a statement hailing the results of last week’s
congressional elections that brought victory to dozens of pro-Uribe
candidates.
Will Uribe’s tough tactics bring Colombia peace, even at the expense of
democracy? He has paid lip service to resuming negotiations with the
FARC, but only under conditions that guerrilla leaders have called
unacceptable, such as an unconditional ceasefire. The fighting will go
on, and could escalate if a President Uribe gives the armed forces carte
blanche to do whatever it takes to defeat the rebels. Given the current
mood of the country, that would meet with the approval of most
Colombians. “They’ve suddenly realized the FARC has pocketed all the
compromises made in the last 40 years,” says one U.S. official in
Bogota. Now most Colombians are ready to try a radically different
approach—even if, in the short term, it’s guaranteed to bring more
blood.
Source: Newsweek International
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