Held hostage by the FARC for 10 years, he is pictured above in the proof of life video released in November 2007. In the video below taken during Operation “Jaque” which led to his rescue along with 14 other hostages, Lieutenant Malagón did not know there was a rescue underway and like the other hostages and their FARC captors, thought he was being transferred to another site. Lieutenant Malagón is heard saying
listen, I have only one thing to say, I’ve been chained up for 10 years, I am Lieutenant Malagón of the glorious National Army of Colombia, …
We salute Lieutenant Malagón as well as the other hostages from the Colombian military and police freed in Operation “Jaque”.
Yes, we’re back. The plane, carrying flowers from Bogota to Miami, went down near the town of Madrid in the department of Cundinamarca killing two men on the ground. The flight crew survived. So one has to ask, was this an accident or the work of the FARC? Is it possible that the FARC have aquired ground to air missiles? Surely the Colombian and U.S. governments will fully investigate the cause of the crash. Preliminary reports indicate that one of the engines caught fire.
Nevertheless, the FARC will certainly try to strike back at the Colombian and U.S. governments after being humiliated in hostage rescue operation “Jaque”, which led to the liberation of 15 hostages including the three American contractors and Ingrid Betancourt. Having lost their most prized assets, which were the key to their hopes of landing a humanitarian accord that would have involved an exchange of hostages for guerrillas being held in the U.S. (”Simon Trinidad”, and “Sonia”) and other guerillas held in Colombian jails, the FARC now have few options left.
Winners and Losers in “Operacion Jaque”
Winners:
Alvaro Uribe: His already high popularity has skyrocketed even more. Parapolitica and Yidispolitica have not hurt his popularity. Talk about “teflon presidents”! Though some have written of how the operation did not involve a single bullet, and how these types of operations should serve as a model for combating the FARC, it was Uribe’s military policies which led to the lack of command and control among the FARC which permitted operation “Jaque” to succeed.
Juan Manuel Santos: The apparent heir to the Uribe presidency was eloquent on CNN’s Larry King show as well as on Colombian media.
The Colombian Military: deserves credit for having pulled off a daring operation.
Ingrid Betancourt: Appears to have started running for president of Colombia the instant she stepped off the helicopter.
Losers:
The FARC: clearly the big loser here. The operation showed the appalling state of command and control within the FARC since the bombing of the Raul Reyes camp.
Colombian and Latin American Left: who have been calling for a humanitarian accord. The FARC have no bargaining chips left, so a humanitarian accord appears unlikely in the near future. Moreover, Uribe is not likely to accept another “zona de distencion”, a demilitarized zone, which would allow the FARC to regroup and rearm.
The death of ‘Manuel Marulanda Velez’ is not likely to have a significant impact on the armed conflict between the FARC and the Colombian state. ‘Marulanda’ had been rumored to be in ill health and the FARC had surely planned for an orderly transition of leadership. Any internal power struggles would certainly have already been played out. It will be interesting to see who ‘Alfonso Cano’ brings into the secretariat. Semana reports that ‘Pablo Catatumbo’, a trusted aid to ‘Cano’, ‘Bertulfo’, military head of the Bloque Caribe, and ‘Pastor Alape’, a militant from the juventud comunista, are the three newest members of the secretariat (replacing Marulanda, Raul Reyes, and Ivan Rios, all of whom died in March, 2008). Nevertheless, Marulanda’s passing could lead to a loss of morale among the ranks of the guerrilla group he founded and could further deplete its ranks. The FARC will most likely continue to lay low and hope that Uribe is not reelected in favor of someone more likely to enter into negotiations over a humanitarian accord and the associated “zona de distencion”, a proposed demilitarized zone which would allow them to regroup.
The so-called farcpolitica scandal has more to do with the conflict between Uribe and the Colombian supreme court than with a smokescreen to divert attention from the parapolitica scandal and a growing scandal involving alleged payoffs and favors to congressmen for their vote in support of the constitutional amendment that allowed Uribe to be re-elected. Uribe has been in a heated debate with the Colombian supreme court over its investigation of links between members of his administration and paramilitary groups. By pressing farcpolitica, Uribe was attempting to force the Colombian supreme court’s hand. Had the court ruled not to investigate alleged ties to the FARC geurrillas by three members of congress (based on evidence that is yet to be released), Uribe could have employed his often-used tactic of associating his detractors with the guerrillas. The supreme court called Uribe’s bluff and went ahead with its investigation.
Today’s Washington Post had an interesting column from Marcela Sanchez about the extradition of the 14 paramilitary leaders to the U.S. Sanchez claims (correctly in my view) that “with the paramilitary leaders being prosecuted in the U.S., impunity seems today far less likely than ever before”.
The first one belonged to ‘Jorge 40′, the paramilitary thug recently extradited to the U.S., and implicated numerous Colombian politicians of having ties to the paramilitaries. No one questioned the veracity of the contents of Jorge 40’s laptop, and many of those whose names appeared in the laptop are now in jail awaiting trial for alleged paramilitary ties in the parapolitica scandal. Which brings us to the second laptop belonging to ‘Raul Reyes’, the member of the FARC secretariat who was killed in an attack by the Colombian military while camped on the Ecuadorian side of the border. This laptop implicates Venezuelan president Chavez of having ties to the FARC. Yesterday, Interpol released a statement confirming that the contents of Raul Reyes’ laptop had not been tampered with; yet Chavez, Correa, and Piedad Cordoba are insisting that the contents of the laptop have been fabricated. Piedad Cordoba was quoted as saying that one would be “very dumb” to believe the contents of the laptop. Chavez called the process surrounding the laptop a “circus of clowns”, and Correa’s foreign minister María Isabel Salvador said “the chain of custody [of the laptop] cannot be guaranteed”.
What we see here is an laughable double standard (doble moral) being applied to the contents of the two laptops by Chavez et al. Regrettably, Chavez has morphed from a democratically elected leftist president into a windbag demagogue and would-be dictator for life.
Today’s Washington Post editorial describes how Human Rights Watch first called for the extradition of paramilitary leaders to the U.S., only to criticize the extraditions now that Uribe has complied. Once again Uribe has proven himself to be a formidable chess player.
Alvaro Uribe’s decision to extradite Salvatore Mancuso, Rodrigo Tovar Pupo (Jorge 40), Diego Fernando Murillo (’Don Berna’), Hernán Giraldo (’Pablo Sevillano’) and Ramiro ‘Cuco’ Vanoy, to the United States, as well as the extradition of Carlos Jiménez, alias ‘Macaco’ last week is a dramatic development which changes the political landscape in Colombia. According to the International Herald Tribune, 14 high-level paramilitaries were extradited. The paramilitary leaders had previously submitted themselves to judicial processes under Colombia’s “Justice and Peace” law, and were extradited on the grounds that they were continuing their illicit activities from behind bars, and therefore violated the provisions of the law. The justice and peace law provides for lenient sentences in exchange for confessions of crimes committed and restitution to the victims, and was largely seen as a sham, effectively giving the paramilitaries impunity. What is unclear is whether the families of the thousands of victims massacred by these paramilitaries will ever receive restitution and justice. U.S. authorities have hinted that paramilitaries, who have been extradited primarily for narcotics trafficking, must still answer for their crimes against humanity.
By extraditing the paramilitaries, Uribe effectively removes the cloud of suspicion that he is sympathetic to the paramilitaries. This event will have far-reaching consequences, particularly with respect to the approval of the Colombian Free Trade Agreement by the U.S. Senate. Nevertheless, Uribe must still demonstrate that he is doing something about the harassment and assassination of Colombian union leaders and human rights activists by rearmed paramilitaries.
Today’s main editorial in El Tiempo had a clumsy bit of irony in its title “¡Llegó el teatro!” referring to the XI Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro de Bogotá, an annual theater festival about to kick off in Bogota. How can a festival ever surpass the grand theater that played out over the past week? An article by Tim Padgett in Time Magazine got it right….a war would have been too costly for all involved and Chavez and Correa were doing nothing more than a bit of good old-fashioned theatrical saber rattling.
As the story played out during the “Grupo de Rio” summit in Santo Domingo, which produced an agreement which essentially ended the diplomatic stalemate, the Colombian defense ministry announced that another member of the FARC secretariat had been killed, presumably by one of his own men. “Ivan Rios” the youngest member of the 7-man secretariat was killed by his security chief, after having been surrounded by the Colombian army and reportedly running out of food.
This deals yet another serious blow to the FARC leadership and one can only wonder if the FARC will retaliate in some manner against a “soft” civilian target at some point. Let us hope that instead they focus on pursuing a humanitarian accord. Today, Chavez openly asked FARC leader “Manuel Marulanda” to release one of the most high profile hostages, Ingrid Betancourt.
In 1988, Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega violated Honduran sovereignty when he attacked “Contra” rebel bases using several thousand Nicaraguan troops. The Nicaraguan Contras were being funded by the Reagan administration, and were waging a guerrilla war against Ortega and the Sandinistas out of bases in Honduras. The attacks killed dozens of contras as well as several Honduran civilians and destroyed the Honduran village of Suji. Yesterday, Daniel Ortega cut diplomatic relations with Colombia over the attack by Colombia against a guerrilla camp located in Ecuador.
How can Ortega’s action yesterday possibly have any credibility given his own history of violating Honduran sovereignty? Regrettably, Ortega appears to be as much a stooge of Chavez as Uribe is of Bush.
Since I have started writing this blog, rarely have I noticed any action taken by Colombian president Alvaro Uribe that was not meticulously planned for maximum political effect both at home and in Washington. From record drug seizures just as the U.S. Congress was about to debate another round of funding for Plan Colombia, to the capture of narcotics “capo” Don Diego, just days after the Washington Post published a story detailing high-level infiltration of the Colombian military by Don Diego’s Norte del Valle Drug Cartel, the Uribe administration is keenly aware of the political impact its actions have on pending U.S. legislation.
This weekend’s attack against a guerrilla camp just inside the Ecuadorian border that left “Raul Reyes” the number two leader of the FARC dead, was no exception. Indeed, on the morning of the attack, Uribe met with a U.S. congressional delegation visiting Colombia to discuss the Free Trade Agreement between the US and Colombia (he reportedly arrived late for the meeting, having been delayed by the morning’s events). The Colombian weekly Semana is reporting a new thrust by Uribe to push for a vote on the Free Trade Agreement, commonly referred to by its Spanish initials, TLC. Perhaps more significantly for Uribe, are the positive responses to the attack that have been made not only by the Bush administration, but by the two Democratic candidates Clinton and Obama. Such support is likely to have important payoffs in the future with regard to continued funding for Plan Colombia.
Within Colombia the attack against the FARC has further increased Uribe’s popularity and could spur renewed calls to amend Colombia’s constitution to allow Uribe to run for a third term. So the long-term benefits for Uribe are likely to outweigh the stinging criticism by Ecuador, Venezuela, and the Organization of American States for having violated Ecuador’s sovereignty.
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