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December 1, 2005

Good ELN analysis

Last Sunday’s edition of the Colombian newsweekly Semana had a lengthy (1,900-word) and very informative analysis of the prospects for new talks with the ELN guerrillas. “Last week’s announcement that the [ELN’s] Central Command might meet with Álvaro Uribe’s government … appears to be the most important advance this government has made toward rapprochement with the guerrillas,” Semana contends.

The article offers the best current overview we’ve seen of the ELN’s current capabilities and possible interest in pursuing dialogues with the Uribe government. Here are some excerpts (just 1,000 words) translated into English.

On the ELN’s current military capabilities:

• The ELN has never been a war machine. Its most prominent armed actions have been sabotage and kidnapping, rather than direct confrontation with the security forces. Even so, one combat per day takes place with this group, according to the Defense Ministry. The majority are initiated by the security forces. In the last two years, this guerrilla group has suffered considerable blows to its most important fronts. In Antioquia, Operation Marcial, which took place two years ago, practically annihilated the Carlos Alirio Buitrago front that operated along the Medellín-Bogotá highway, and whose principal activity was kidnapping. From a high of 300 men, today the authorities calculate that the front now has 40.
• Despite their relative weakness, this is not a group that will be easy to dominate at the negotiating table. The ELN has been compared to the phoenix bird, repeatedly reborn from its own ashes. Despite the blows it has received, the desertions and the captures, the number of ELN combatants remains stable, according to the Defense Ministry’s statistics. It currently has approximately 3,500 members in arms. According to intelligence sources, while its financial situation does not at all resemble past bonanzas, its income from kidnapping, extortion, and its initial forays into narcotrafficking has been enough to survive, though not enough to fight a war.
• Mass desertions have been another factor of weakness. Months ago, an entire column of the Héroes de Anorí front, which operates in northern Antioquia, turned themselves in to the army. Ramiro Ruiz, “Edward,” the head of this group, said at the time that “what the Coce [Central Command] is doing in the Serranía de San Lucas [the ELN’s longtime rearguard zone, a gold-mining region in southern Bolívar department] is resisting and defending themselves with what little accumulated military and political power it has left. But the fronts are in retreat, isolated and hungry.” … Luciano (name changed) is a leathery ex-guerrilla who commanded a column in Santander. “We had no money. I told them that the only way to sustain this war was by getting involved in coca, like the FARC, but they didn’t want to.”

On the ELN and the drug trade:

• While it is widely held that the ELN has not involved itself in the narcotrafficking business, recent cases demonstrate that at least some fronts have indeed done so. It has happened for quite some time in Norte de Santander and Arauca [both in northeastern Colombia]. In Arauca, for example, 38 cocaine-processing laboratories tied to the Domingo Laín Front were found two years ago. Coca cultivations also explain the guerrilla group’s growth in southern Chocó, the coffee-growing heartland [Eje Cafetero], and in Nariño, along the border with Ecuador. For such a federalized guerrilla group, it is only a matter of time for narcotrafficking to extend to all of its fronts.
• However, kidnapping is still its main source of financing. … This is why whenever a cease-fire is spoken of, the ELN either seeks to exclude kidnapping, or tacitly asks that its structures be financed while the truce is in place.

On the ELN’s relations with the FARC:

• Juan Carlos Garzón, an analyst at the Security and Democracy Foundation, asserts that in many regions the ELN depends militarily on the FARC. That is the case in Nariño, Putumayo and Valle del Cauca [in southwestern Colombia]. It is well known that the [February 2005] attack on the Iscuandé base, on the Pacific coast, was a combined action between both forces, and the recent attack on a paramilitary encampment in the Cañón de Garrapatas, in Valle del Cauca, was also carried out jointly.
• While the ELN acts together with the FARC in some regions, it would not be easy for them to end up completely unified. “They are like oil and water,” says one military intelligence analyst.

On the ELN and human rights:

• But what has most weakened the ELN are its moral paradoxes. Though it has been seen as a less “hard” guerrilla group than the FARC, in practice it acts like the boy who cried wolf. In September they turned over the bones of Ancízar López, the political “patriarch” of the city of Armenia, who had died in captivity some time earlier. That same week they killed two priests on a road in Norte de Santander, an act for which they publicly apologized. But they made no commitment to cease carrying out such arbitrary acts. All this without mentioning that the ELN is the Colombian armed group that most frequently uses landmines.

On prospects for talks:

• The ELN will not grow militarily, will keep on behaving like a guerrilla group that launches small attacks and hostilities, and – as defined by the sixth plenary meeting of its commanders – will make a priority of “a broad national accord with diverse political and social forces to unite the fatherland against uribista war-mongering and re-election.” This would seem to indicate that the ELN, which has sailed between two currents – those of lead [as in bullets, or violence] and politics – have decided to choose the latter. They are interested in the elections, though it is not very clear how they would participate in them.
• It is known that behind the many letters which have been exchanged during the past few months, there have been serious offers from two European countries. One of these could be the site of the meeting [between government and guerrilla leaders], and eventually the details of financing a cease-fire could be agreed.
• However, the government has to act tactfully, and must not confuse this negotiation with the AUC talks. That pragmatic model of disarmament without political reforms, taking place behind the backs of public opinion, will not work. The ELN is in no hurry. If it has survived three years of the uribista offensive, it can survive more. It will neither abandon its demand that civil society be present at the table, nor will it cease to discuss a political agenda.

Posted by isacson at December 1, 2005 4:16 PM

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