Colombia rescues Ingrid Betancourt
and three Americans held by the FARC

From: New York based Americas Society/Council of the Americas
 cminerlegrand at as-coa.org

July 2, 2008—The Americas Society and Council of the Americas hail Colombia’s rescue of 15 captives, including Ingrid Betancourt and three Americans, held by the FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerilla group. The rescue is a victory not only for all the captives and their families, but also for the institutional strength of a government besieged by the FARC for over 40 years.

The rescue of Betancourt, a former Colombian presidential candidate captured in 2002, as well as of three American military contractors taken in 2003, is a decisive strike against the FARC and an important step toward the continued reassertion of the rule of law and state authority.

“Over time, President Uribe has considerably weakened the territorial control of the FARC. By rescuing four of its highest profile hostages, he has significantly reduced the FARC’s ability to bargain internationally,” said Susan Segal, President and CEO of AS/COA.

The United States must do all it can to support nations such as Colombia, which has proven itself a willing and able partner and a leader in the region. At AS/COA’s 2008 Washington Conference on the Americas, Colombia Minister of Defense Juan Manuel Santos emphasized Colombia’s transition to a model of democratic security, a transformation assisted in part through its partnership with the United States. With this historic event, Colombia has again demonstrated its determination to actively shape its future.

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Americas Society (AS) is the premier forum dedicated to education, debate, and dialogue in the Americas. Its mission is to foster an understanding of the contemporary political, social, and economic issues confront Latin America, the Caribbean, and Canada, and to increase public awareness and appreciation of the diverse cultural heritage of the Americas and the importance of the inter-American relationship.

Council of the Americas (COA) is the premier international business organization whose members share a common commitment to economic and social development, open markets, the rule of law, and democracy throughout the Western Hemisphere. The Council’s membership consists of leading international companies representing a broad spectrum of sectors including banking and finance, consulting services, consumer products, energy and mining, manufacturing, media, technology, and transportation.

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Wednesday, July 2, 2008, a Press Release From The Council on Hemispheric Affairs - The Washington DC based COHA.

BREAKING NEWS: COLOMBIA - INGRID BETANCOURT LIBERATED FROM FARC - FREE AT LAST
FARC Must Now Begin To Think About Its End Game.

In recent weeks, COHA has issued a number of communiqués to the press that have explored various aspects of Colombia’s domestic and regional policies. This material, in addition to that which is available on its website, can be obtained by contacting COHA’s office at  coha at coha.org or calling 202-223-4975. To contact COHA director Larry Birns, please call 202-215-3473.

FARC’s Fatal Blow
In yet another blow to Colombia’s leftist guerrilla group Las Fuerzas Armadas de Colombia (FARC), former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and fourteen other hostages were freed in a brilliant military operation on 2 July 2008. Betancourt was taken captive six years ago and was, for the duration of that time, the FARC’s highest profile hostage. Among the other detainees rescued are three American defense contractors and members of the Colombian security forces.

According to Colombia’s hardline Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, whose star is very much in ascendancy in a movie-script fashion, Colombian intelligence forces managed to infiltrate the FARC’s Secretariat and intercept the transfer of key hostages from one area of the country to another. The operation, termed jaque, after the Spanish word “check,” as in “check mate,” was the culmination of a year’s worth of preparation. The rescue of the hostages represents a huge victory for the Uribe government and yet another in a series of crucial defeats for FARC forces. It may also signal the successful impact of the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been pumped annually into the Colombian military by the U.S. under Plan Colombia. Such funds already have been used to persuade hundreds, if not thousands, of FARC fighters to demobilize and certainly provided a strong motivation for the murder of Ivan Ríos (for which his renegade personal bodyguard was rewarded $2.5 million).

FARC’s Precarious Future
With Betancourt’s release, the FARC has lost its highest profile hostage and now is in a very precarious position for negotiation and may have to bow to the demands of the Colombian government. Hopefully, its recent fate will be a clear signal to the FARC that Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez was correct when, on June 10 of this year, he urged “Enough of so much war, it is time to sit down and talk of peace. […] The guerrilla has passed into history.”

Recalling the abrupt decline of Peru’s Shining Path guerrilla movement after the 1992 capture of its leader Abimael Guzman, it is unlikely that FARC will be able to survive in its present form given the natural death of its leader, Manuel Marulanda, and the series of crippling blows it has experienced at the hands of the Colombian army. Undoubtedly, Colombia’s military has been assisted by the CIA and the hundreds of U.S. armed forces advisors and trainers now in the country.

Political Implications
Uribe has benefited immensely from the rapid decline in the FARC’s vitality and relevance. Only time will tell how Uribe’s military exploits and his astronomical approval rating will affect the possible de-legitimization of his 2006 run for office. It will also be interesting to see if Betancourt, immensely popular during her run for Senate and the presidency, will present a very strong challenge to the president if she decides to run for office either in a possible re-run election or the official elections slated for 2010.

It is true that Uribe’s hawkish democratic security policy has resulted in significant progress for the country. Homicide and kidnapping rates have fallen dramatically and Colombians have resumed many of their ordinary activities without fear of suffering violence caused by the conflict. His popularity is a result of these advances, however, this success may unfortunately lend credibility to those who have supported Uribe’s iron-fist approach and substantive program from the beginning: members of the Bush administration and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. The danger in attributing Uribe’s accomplishments to U.S. foreign policy achievements in Latin America is that it reaffirms strategies that are overly simplistic and ill-informed. It should not be ignored that upwards of twenty percent of Uribe’s legislature is currently under investigation for its links to paramilitary groups, who are historic human rights violators. Even Uribe himself has been accused of links to the illegally armed groups. Mindless U.S. support of a regime that tacitly allowed such groups to function should not be applauded nor should the hundreds of trade union leaders that have been murdered during the Uribe presidency be forgotten.

Additionally, cocaine’s effect on the trajectory of the conflict cannot be underestimated. In the 2008 World Drug Report, the United Nations reported that coca cultivation in Colombia increased 27% in 2007. Assistant secretary of State Thomas Shannon attributed these statistics to the growing sophistication of coca cultivators. This is certainly true for many aspects of the conflict. For every bit of progress that the Colombian government makes, various actors will try to stay one step ahead, driven by vast cocaine profits which provide an incredibly strong incentive for the continued destabilization of Colombian institutions. No matter what the ultimate fate of the FARC, it will be quite some time before Colombia can claim victory for the quality or depth of its democracy.

This analysis was prepared by Research Associates Erina Uozumi, Jessica Bryant, Elizabeth Reavey, Chris Sweeney, Michael Katz, and Aviva Elzufon.

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But also in the news:

Banana-gate: McCain Backer’s Firm Pleaded Guilty To Funding Anti-FARD Terrorist Group In Colombia.The co-host of a recent top-dollar fundraiser for Sen. John McCain oversaw the payment of roughly $1.7 million to a Colombian paramilitary group that is today designated a terrorist organization by the United States. Former Chiquita CEO oversaw $1.7 million payoff to right-wing paramilitary group.
Posted by Nico Pitney, Huffington Post at 8:00 AM on July 2, 2008.

Carl H. Lindner Jr., the billionaire Cincinnati businessman, was CEO of Chiquita Brands International from 1984 to 2001, and remained on the company’s board of directors until May 2002. Beginning under his tenure, Chiquita executives paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (known by the Spanish acronym AUC), which is described by George Washington University’s National Security Archive as an “illegal right-wing anti-guerrilla group tied to many of the country’s most notorious civilian massacres.”

Following a Justice Department indictment last year, Chiquita admitted to illegally funding the paramilitaries and agreed to pay a $25 million fine. Chiquita’s payments to the AUC began in 1997 and lasted seven years; roughly half of the funds came after the group was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department in 2001.

According to the Justice Department, the payments “were reviewed and approved by senior executives” of Chiquita, who knew by no later than September 2000 “that the AUC was a violent, paramilitary organization.”

Late last week, Lindner co-hosted a $25,000-per-person fundraiser for McCain and the Republican Party in the wealthy Indian Hills neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. The event raised about $2 million; Lindner also serves on McCain’s Ohio Victory Team.

While Lindner was CEO of Chiquita, the company began sending money to the AUC through its shipping subsidiary Banadex. A report by the Organization of American States states that Banadex also engaged in arms trafficking, helping to deliver 3,000 Nicaraguan AK-47 rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition to the AUC in 2001. According to federal prosecutors, when company officials realized the arrangement was illegal, they switched to making the payments in cash.

“We believe they saved people’s lives,” a Chiquita spokesman told Time magazine last year, alleging that the company was simply trying to avoid violence against their employees.

Chiquita’s funding of violent paramilitaries does not end with the right-wing AUC. The fruit giant “had been making similar payments to the leftist FARC and ELN guerrillas” since 1989, also on Lindner’s watch. Those payments ended in 1997 as “control of the company’s banana-growing area shifted” to the AUC, according to the Associated Press.

McCain, who is currently visiting Colombia to promote free trade, has described FARC as “one of the worst” terrorist groups and accused his opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, of being unwilling to support Colombian President Uribe’s anti-terrorist efforts.

That the Arizona Republican is raising funds from a man whose company once paid that very same terrorist group seems likely to sully his charge.

Aides to the Senator did not return request for comment, though they have repeatedly argued that the campaign does not have direct connections to companies represented by such fundraisers or advisers and, as such, should not be held accountable for their actions or presumed to be persuaded by their interests.

However, in the past, McCain has done favors on Lindner’s behalf. Last May, the Washington Post reported that in the late 1990s, McCain “promoted a deal in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest involving property part-owned by Great American Life Insurance, a company run by billionaire Carl H. Lindner Jr., a prolific contributor to national political parties and presidential candidates.”

Moreover, McCain’s chief political adviser, Charlie Black, lobbied for Chiquita on two separate occasions in 2001. According to records, Black was paid $80,000 to work on foreign trade issues.

Black, as the Huffington Post reported on Tuesday, has represented other controversial clients with operations in Colombia. From 2001 through 2007, his work brought his firm more than $1.6 million in lobbying fees from Occidental Petroleum, a company whose security arm was accused of bombing a Colombian village and killing 17 civilians in 1998.

[ED: The families of the victims of the paramilitary are suing Chiquita for arming the terrorists.]