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July 27, 2005

FARC hostages: the hard part is still far off

It’s been hard to figure out President Uribe’s strategy for freeing the fifty-nine hostages whom the FARC has been cruelly holding, for several years now, to pressure for a prisoner exchange. At times, Uribe bares his teeth, ordering the military to attempt armed rescues, refusing to negotiate with “terrorists” unless a cease-fire is declared, or insisting on negotiating only by e-mail. At other times, Uribe softens his bargaining position, making offers to release 50 FARC prisoners in advance, suggesting that negotiations occur at a foreign embassy in Bogotá, and even releasing 23 low-ranking guerrilla prisoners last December as “a show of good faith.”

Whether Uribe is playing an elaborate game of chess or merely improvising, two things are certain. His efforts haven’t succeeded in freeing any hostages. And – until yesterday, perhaps – none of his offers has accepted the FARC’s main pre-condition for talks: a demilitarized zone.

The FARC seeks the Colombian military’s exit from an area where talks are to take place, on the pretext that guerrilla leaders need guarantees of safety. More specifically, last fall the FARC asked for a temporary military pullout from two counties, Florida and Pradera in the southeastern corner of Valle del Cauca department, near Cali.

To agree to such a demilitarized zone carries a high political cost for Uribe. The military, which finds it humiliating to pull out of an area where the government is supposed to be sovereign, will complain loudly. Other observers will recall the bitter experience of Uribe’s predecessor, Andrés Pastrana, who demilitarized five counties between 1998 and 2002 for a peace process that failed. (Of course, Uribe has already done something like this: the “location zone” in Santa Fe de Ralito, where talks are taking place with paramilitaries, is a demilitarized zone. In his defense, Uribe can respond that Ralito is a far smaller zone than the FARC got, and that he granted it only after the paramilitaries declared a cease-fire. Declared, if not honored.)

Uribe had firmly refused the FARC request to demilitarize Florida and Pradera, or any other square inch of Colombian territory. Yesterday, though, it appeared that Uribe was giving in, at least partially, to this FARC pre-condition.

Peace negotiator Luis Carlos Restrepo said that President Uribe – using powers granted in a little-noticed section (chapter 11) of the controversial “Justice and Peace Law” [PDF format] – had instructed him to meet with the FARC immediately, wherever they want, and at the date and time they want, to talk about a prisoner exchange. When asked whether he had a demilitarized zone in mind, Restrepo answered in a roundabout way: “Call it what you want to call it, a security site, a mutual-confidence site, a meeting site. What is important is that it fulfills the function of giving them enough trust to sit and converse with the government about the issue of a humanitarian exchange.”

The FARC have been clear about what “gives them enough trust”: a temporary military pullout, ideally from Florida and Pradera. Though this is a very tough pill for the government to swallow, it does reflect the expressed will of most of the hostages’ relatives, and it is a less-bad option than an armed rescue attempt, as the FARC has shown no reluctance to kill hostages when such attempts are made.

But even if this step is taken, the real hard part still lies ahead.

• It will be very difficult for Colombia’s government to accept a prisoner-exchange agreement that allows guerrillas freed from Colombian prisons to return to the conflict. (The government of France has offered to receive any guerrillas freed through an exchange.)
  
  
• The agreement must include guarantees that the FARC will never again take hostages to pressure for an exchange. These will be nearly impossible to enforce, however: if the guerrillas take new hostages, the past few years have shown that there is little that the Colombian government can do about it.
  
  
• Both sides will have to take the difficult step of removing from the table some related, and emotionally charged, issues. For instance, there will be strong pressures to get a FARC guarantee not to kidnap for any reason, including ransom. The guerrillas, however, are unlikely to give up this brutal but lucrative practice just to free a few dozen prisoners. For its part, the FARC will demand, as it has done already, that “Simón Trinidad” and “Sonia” – two mid-level guerrilla leaders extradited to the United States on drug charges – be among the prisoners to be freed. There is zero likelihood that the Bush administration – which “does not negotiate with terrorists” – will give in to this demand, even if it means sacrificing the three U.S. citizens in FARC custody. If talks to free the fifty-nine hostages are to succeed, then, these larger, deal-breaking issues will have to be put off.
  
  
• The negotiations must not end with a prisoner exchange. The dialogue created through these talks should be seen as a first step toward more fluid communication, confidence-building, and movement toward more substantive negotiations.
  

Given all this, can "humanitarian exchange" talks work? Yes, but it won’t be at all easy. Satisfying these requirements is absolutely necessary if negotiations are to free the fifty-nine hostages without rewarding the FARC for their actions. But it will be an extremely difficult needle to thread.

Posted by isacson at July 27, 2005 05:47 PM

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