Colombia Expert: Hostage Rescue Will Cripple FARC | Newsweek International

Mirror Image
Mac Margolis 8/7/2009 12:00:00 AM
Once in a while, something big happens in Latin America. A few years ago, it was the rise of the political left. Since 2006, a dozen countries have held presidential elections, and, in contest after contest, left-wing nationalists and populists have come out on top. These weren't just mosquito republics or basket cases. Chileans elected Michelle Bachelet, an avowed socialist, and the Brazilians reelected Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the hirsute former union man who cut his teeth picketing multinational companies. "Latin America Tilts Left" and "How the U.S. Lost Latin America," yelled the headlines. And just the other day, economist Mark Weisbrot, of the Institute for Economic Policy Research, said confidently: "Left-wing governments have become the norm in Latin America." So much for the Washington Consensus, a decade of gringo diplomacy, and free-market reform.
Meddle Nettle
8/6/2009 12:00:00 AM
A sovereign state is, by definition, supposed to manage affairs inside its borders. But that's not always the case, especially when it comes to disputes involving guerrilla movements. After all, moral equivalency or not, one nation's terrorists really are another's freedom fighters, and foreign governments sometimes cross international borders to protect antigovernment forces elsewhere, reinforce ethnic movements, or simply to make their presence known. Last week, for example, documents revealed that Venezuela is still supporting the FARC guerrillas in Colombia.
The Bolivarian Brain Drain
Mac Margolis 7/1/2009 12:00:00 AM
For just a moment, in the early days of his presidency, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez looked almost like a healer. "Let's ask for God's help to accept our differences and come together in dialogue," he famously implored his conflicted compatriots in 2002. Instead what Venezuelans got was an avenger. The government is seizing privately owned companies and farms. Labor unions have been crushed. Political opponents are routinely harassed or else prosecuted by chavista controlled courts. And now after a decade of the so-called Bolivarian revolution, tens of thousands of disillusioned Venezuelan professionals have had enough. Artists, lawyers, physicians, managers and engineers are leaving the country by droves, while those already abroad are scrapping plans to return. The wealthiest among them are buying condos in Miami and Panama City. Cashiered oil engineers are working rigs in the North Sea and sifting the tar sands of western Canada. Those of European descent have applied for passports from their native lands. Academic scholarships are lifeboats. An estimated million Venezuelans have moved abroad in the decade since Chávez took power.
MILITARY
A Smarter Way to Fight
Michael Hirsh 7/12/2008 12:00:00 AM
Strange things are happening in the jungles of Colombia. After years of fighting a fierce, conventional war against the leftist guerrilla group known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's military accomplished a major feat earlier this month without firing a shot. The Colombians used a complex ruse to free 15 hostages, including three Americans and former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, eliciting international acclaim and comparisons to the Israeli hostage rescue at Entebbe. But what happened afterward—which hasn't been widely reported—was almost as remarkable, according to Colombian Vice Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzón. The Colombian Army cornered the hostages' captors, the FARC's notorious 1st Front—the latest success stemming from Bogotá's tactic of dropping its special forces into the jungle and keeping the weakened guerrillas on the run. "But we took the decision not to attack," Pinzón told NEWSWEEK, because the government wanted to convey it had a new "strategic concept." "We want to send a message to the FARC and to the world: not to exterminate the FARC but to welcome back anyone who wants to come into the system." Last week, to drive that point home, the Colombian military equipped helicopters with loudspeakers that began booming Betancourt's recorded voice over the jungle, saying "Hey, guerrillas … demobilize now … You'll recover your family, your honor, your liberty."
FAILED 'PLAN'
Joe Contreras
Until recently, the U.S.-backed war on drugs seemed to be paying impressive dividends in the sparsely populated department of Putumayo in southern Colombia. Five years ago fully half of all the coca cultivated inside Colombia came from Putumayo, and guerrilla units from the left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were directly involved in the region's flourishing drug trade. But an aggressive, U.S.-funded aerial-fumigation program has helped slash coca farming in Putumayo by more than 90 percent since 2000, and some territory in the department previously under FARC control has been recaptured by the Colombian military.
COLOMBIA'S HARD RIGHT
Joe Contreras
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.