We are starting a project that will attempt to document the pros and cons of the Colombian Free Trade Agreement. The project is housed here.

CNN is reporting that the Colombian Army may have used the International Committee of the Red Cross symbol on at least one of the personnel involved in the rescue. The Colombian government has vehemently denied the accusations. According to the article in CNN.com, such a use of the ICRC symbol would be a violation of the Geneva Conventions since it could pose a threat to humanitarian workers in other conflicts.

If these claims turn out to be true, it could significantly erode the credibility and political goodwill aquired by the Uribe administration and the Colombian military after the success of the operation to rescue the 15 hostages. It could also further complicate the release of the remaining hostages still held by the FARC, particularly if future hostage negotiations involve the ICRC.

follow up: the day after CNN’s story was published, President Uribe admitted that one of the members of the rescue team had used the ICRC symbol on his clothing. Uribe claimed that the soldier disobeyed orders by wearing the symbol.

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.

El Tiempo today reported the arrest of Salvador Arana Sus, the ex-governor of Sucre. Arana, the alleged founder of paramilitary groups in Sucre is thought to have played a role in the murder of Edualdo Diaz, see the post Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

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.

The Interamerican Commision on Human Rights expressed concern over the extradition of the 14 paramilitaries, claiming the extraditions would put a freeze on ongoing investigations of crimes committed by paramilitaries. The extradited paramilitaries were being investigated under Colombia’s “Justice and Peace Law” for the massacres of tens of thousands of civilians and links to Colombian politicians and institutions.