The best overview I’ve seen of a controversy over victims and memory in Colombia’s conflict. President Juan Manuel Santos recently added Colombia’s Defense Ministry to the governing board of the Center for Historical Memory, an autonomous body that the military has verbally attacked in the past. The article reveals that the Center’s staff fear possible impact on the credibility of its future work as it prepares ground for a future Truth Commission.
Last week the Salvadoran gang, which was founded in the United States, showed up in rhetoric from Donald Trump, the Attorney-General, and the Secretary of Homeland Security. Silva brings up a lot of points about the gang that don’t get enough attention, including the important successes that U.S. law enforcement has had against it over the past 10 years.
An idea raised by Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández last July is slowly coming to fruition. Though it’s mostly just mechanisms for improved information-sharing, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador are working towards a tri-national unit to combat criminal groups that work across borders. The article notes that the countries’ different approaches to crime are an obstacle, as El Salvador and Honduras use their militaries much more freely. Neither Villatoro nor we have managed to get much information on the U.S. role in this effort.
This citation-filled report from Senate Homeland Security Committee Democrats explains why the per-mile cost of building a border wall is likely to be a multiple of what it was in the past. Even if this report’s grave projections are off by half, the wall’s cost would still be nearly double what Republican leaders are predicting.
With organized crime hounding honest officials out of the country and political will at the top flagging, illegal logging is rapidly getting worse in the country with the second-largest amount of Amazon-basin forest. “The United States has little to show for more than $90 million in forest-protection aid and other assistance to Peru,” as 80 percent of timber exports are illegal.
I’ve owned the domain defenseassistance.org for several years; I use it for side projects related to work. The largest by far is one I started in mid-2015: a “database of everything” related to U.S. defense and security relations with Latin America.
This mammoth resource is just about complete. So I just took away the little “this site is under construction” warning and moved it to WOLA’s web space. It now lives at defenseoversight.wola.org.
This is a cool site: it’s where I keep everything work-related, except things that other apps do better, like calendar and e-mail. I share most of it with the public, because why not. It’s also super-fast: I used a lot of javascript nerdery so you don’t have to sit around waiting for pages to load.
There are four immense sections. All are searchable, or browsable by topic, country, aid program, and U.S. agency:
Data Clips: Whenever I’m reading an official government source and I see something I didn’t know about security in Latin America, I take that bit of information and put it here. I tag it by country, aid program, topic, and U.S. agency, and add all the data about where I got it from. As of this afternoon there are 1,784 such clips. Click on any country or topic and you can get a briefing about it.
Reports Library: Finding out what our government is doing with Latin America’s security forces means getting our hands on official government reports. We keep them all here, and share them. (A private part of this section keeps track of what we’re doing to obtain them.) We have 173 reports in the library as of now.
Aid Programs:This part is brand new: we’re officially launching it next week. Many years ago, we set out to figure out all of the programs or “spigots” through which the U.S. government can give aid to foreign militaries. It turns out we identified 107 of them. Here they all are, explained, with the text of the laws that govern them and links to reports about them.
News: If you visit this site often, you know that every weekday morning I post links to security-related news coverage around Latin America. I use this part of the database to generate those posts. My database of news clippings going back to May 2015 is here: a ridiculous 8,643 articles. You can’t have the text of the articles—it’s important to respect copyright—but you can search for them and link to the originals.
There’s also two private sections that I use to keep track of contacts and research questions. The rest is public—and now it’s a new subdomain on WOLA’s website.
I’ll keep the information gathered until now at the old defenseassistance.org domain. But that site will have a big warning at the top instructing visitors to go to defenseoversight.wola.org, and it will be hosted on a much slower (and cheaper) hosting plan.
Photo from Presidency of Colombia. Caption: “President Juan Manuel Santos greets a FARC member during a surprise visit to the La Carmelita disarmament zone in Putumayo.”
Ex-presidents and peace process opponents Álvaro Uribe and Andres Pastrana had either a conversation or a brief contact with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Good Friday. They were guests of one of the resort’s members, and the Miami Heraldreports that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) may have helped arrange the meeting, or encounter, or whatever it was. The ex-presidents no doubt had at least a brief opportunity to express to Trump their opposition to the FARC peace accord.
Ex-president and sitting Senator Uribe sent a blistering missive to the U.S. Congress, and to much of the Washington community interested in Colombia, attacking the peace accord. The document included many false claims, which were rebutted by WOLA, by Colombia’s La Silla Vacía investigative journalism site, and by 50 members of Colombia’s Congress (PDF).
The dilemma of ex-FARC splinter or “dissident” groups is the subject of reporting by Verdad Abierta in Tumaco, Nariño, and Medellín’s daily El Colombiano, looking at the roughly 110-member “1st Front” in Guaviare.
FARC leaders are hinting that the disarmament process may be delayed as much as 90 days beyond the originally foreseen 6 months. They blame government slowness in complying with commitments. The government is reluctant to bear the political cost involved with granting such an extension.
The FARC is also hinting that it may want to allow its members to stay in the 26 disarmament zones after the 6-month (or perhaps 9-month) process concludes, or even to settle in them permanently.
President Juan Manuel Santos paid a surprise visit to one of those zones, in Puerto Asís, Putumayo, after visiting the site of a massive mudslide that killed hundreds in Putumayo’s capital two weeks earlier. VICEdocumented a visit to the site in Tumaco, Nariño.
Speaking of extensions, Interior Minister Juan Fernando Cristo said that, due to the legislature’s slowness in approving legislation to implement the peace accords, the government may seek to extend “fast track” lawmaking authority for another several months. The six-month authority expires at the end of May.
Colombian soldiers and police found a FARC arms cache in Putumayo. Opposition politicians called it a sign of guerrilla bad faith in the disarmament process. Maximum FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño said the guerrillas are working with the UN mission to collect 900 arms caches hidden around the country.
WOLA called for the UN’s post-disarmament mission to make guaranteeing human rights, and the security of human rights defenders, a central focus of its work. This should include a prominent and autonomous role for the Colombia office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
An essay in Semanalooks at the international community’s growing concerns about the Colombian government’s continued stumbles in implementing the peace accord.
Verdad Abiertaasks what will happen if the military’s thousands of “false positive” killings end up being tried by the special transitional-justice system established by the peace accords. Since many involved hiring criminals to murder civilians so that soldiers could win rewards granted for high body counts, these cases’ link to the armed conflict is tenuous at best.
As armas que abastecem à criminalidade do Rio de Janeiro entram pelas extensas fronteiras secas e fluviais do país e depois são contrabandeadas em veículos para dentro do estado
El asesinato de Gerson Acosta, gobernador del resguardo indígena que decenas de desplazados crearon en Timbío tras sobrevivir a la masacre que paramilitares cometieron en esa región limítrofe entre Cauca y Valle del Cuaca en 2001
La situación se agitó desde las primeras horas, cuando Santos, a través de un trino de una sola línea, habló del “fracaso” de la revolución bolivariana
Among those who signed the letter are retired Gen. James T. Hill, who headed the U.S. Southern Command from 2002-2004 and retired Admiral Robert Inman, who held senior positions in the intelligence services
Tres fiscales generales de Centroamérica expresaron el jueves su preocupación por un reciente anuncio del gobierno de Estados Unidos, en el que asegura que endurecerá sus acciones contra la Mara Salvatrucha (MS 13) y aumentará las deportaciones
Esta fuerza policial conjunta propuesta por Honduras, sería la respuesta del Triángulo Norte a la sofisticación de las operaciones de las pandillas y, a la vez, su alineamiento a las políticas de Estados Unidos
Mulvaney told The Associated Press in an interview that “elections have consequences” and that “we want wall funding” as part of the catchall spending bill
As tensions mount, the government is using its almost-complete control of Venezuela’s institutions to pursue its opponents. On Wednesday alone, 565 protesters were arrested nationwide
El presidente de la República, Nicolás Maduro, acusó al gobernador del estado Miranda, Henrique Capriles Radonski, de difamar a la revolución y al Ejercito, al indicar que son los responsables del asesinato de la joven Paola Andreina Ramírez Gómez
Behind the impassive faces of ordinary National Guards troops blocking protesters who chant “No to dictatorship!” during rowdy marches, similar anger sometime lurks
The tone he sets can only encourage abusive behavior among his officers further down the chain of command against immigrants, and also lead to the curtailment of Americans’ civil liberties and privacy
No meetings today. Today’s big project is moving my defense oversight database from my “drafts” domain (defenseassistance.org) to wola.org. No idea how long that will take. I’d also like to record a podcast about border security, but that might get pushed off to the weekend.
Estuvimos en un conflicto y, para salir de él, la memoria debe ser lo más sincera y transparente posible. Esperamos que, como ha dicho el Ministerio de Defensa, su presencia en la CNMH no nos lleve a incumplir
Mientras las víctimas reclaman que sea la justicia ordinaria la que siga juzgando a los militares implicados, entre los jueces hay versiones encontradas
Huvelle wrote that in allowing the trial, “there is ample evidence” to suggest that DynCorp and pilots that it briefed and managed “simply ignored (and sometimes mocked) the fact that plaintiffs from specific areas of Ecuador were complaining about the company’s sloppy spraying flights”
Governors, who like presidents serve one six-year term, control state legislatures, state auditors and state prosecutors — a dominance that gives them the power of a modern potentate
Mick Mulvaney, the budget director, and Marc Short, the White House legislative affairs director, are pushing congressional appropriators to include “billions” for their agenda in private conversations
Tens of thousands of protesters made an unsuccessful attempt to march to downtown Caracas as security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd
Esta es la quinta convocatoria a la calle hecha por la oposición en los últimos 15 días, en los que ha sido víctima de una escalada represiva por parte de los cuerpos de seguridad del Estado
Citgo Petroleum, a U.S. affiliate of Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, was one of the biggest corporate donors to events surrounding the swearing-in ceremony
A decree has placed a representative of Colombia’s Defense Ministry on the governing board of the Center for Historical Memory, a body of academics that has produced 92 reports since 2008 about what happened in the country’s conflict. Though a governmental body, the Center has had autonomy in how it chooses and carries out its investigations. This has brought strong support from conflict victims, but also strong criticism from the military. Critics, including victims’ groups, are concerned that the addition of a Defense official—who represents the military, one of the main parties to the conflict and the generator of many victims—may undermine this crucial autonomy. The Center’s longtime director, Gonzalo Sánchez, quietly protested the Defense Ministry’s addition, but later told the press that all government ministries have the right to participate in its governing board, the military has a lot of knowledge about the conflict that it should be encouraged to share, and that the Center’s autonomy won’t be affected.
The McClatchy news service, using information publicized by Human Rights Watch, reported that Gen. Jaime Lasprilla, a former head of Colombia’s army, has been in Washington as Colombia’s defense attache for nearly two years despite strong human rights concerns about his military record. A decade ago, when Gen. Lasprilla headed the Army’s 9th Brigade in the southern department of Huila, the unit committed a very large number of so-called “false positive” killings: murders of civilians that were falsified as combat kills to boost body counts.
Honduras
The U.S. Southern Command’s Diálogo publication discusses, and praises, the Honduran military’s “Guardians of the Homeland” program, which sends soldiers to schools throughout the country “reinforcing a sense of right and wrong and instilling morals and leadership principles among minors.”
Soldiers are now protecting seven bus companies’ stations and lines in Tegucigalpa. Bus companies are frequent targets of gangs’ extortion and attacks.
Mexico
Late last year, legislators from Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), working with heavy input from the armed forces, drafted an Internal Security Law that would make permanent the Mexican military’s “emergency” role in policing. Now, even the bill’s chief sponsor recognizes that the controversial legislation now appears unlikely to pass in the current legislative session, which ends April 30. The bill had encountered criticism from opposition parties in Congress, and especially from civil-society groups. A coalition of mostly Mexican groups (which included WOLA) put out a highly critical report (PDF) in late March citing the human rights cost that Mexico has paid since the military’s involvement in internal security intensified a decade ago. (There have been at least 3,921 confrontations between military personnel and civilians in Mexico since January 2007, when President Felipe Calderón increased the armed forces’ involvement in security.) More than 120 groups collaborated on an internet effort with a multimedia website, #SeguridadSinGuerra, to pressure the Congress to reject the law and place more emphasis on training better civilian police. Mexico’s usually docile human rights ombudsman’s office (National Human Rights Commission, or CNDH) also came out against the law.
The chief of Mexico’s Navy, Adm. Vidal Soberón, said that the military were only playing internal security roles, “it must be said, because in many cases police forces have been surpassed” by criminals.
The military responded angrily after a leading opposition politician, leftist former Mexico City mayor Andres Manuel López Obrador, opposed the armed forces’ involvement in policing and tied them to the 2014 Ayotzinapa massacre. The Army’s human rights director, Gen. José Carlos Beltrán, called a press conference to criticize “social actors” who present “slander and offenses,” and actually denied that the military commits human rights abuses. “Those who denigrate the labor of our armed forces denigrate Mexico,” said President Enrique Peña Nieto. López Obrador responded that he views the military as “the people in uniform,” and his critics should “calm down.”
During the past month, Mexican military personnel were deployed to help keep order in the states of Quintana Roo, Sonora, and Veracruz.
Marines allegedly killed a minor, a passenger in a civilian car that went through a roadblock, in Nuevo León not far from the U.S. border.
In the border city of Reynosa, a woman who had denounced that her husband died last year in Marine custody said she received death threats from a group of assailants “of military aspect” who rammed her car.
Nicaragua
The opposition-leaning daily La Prensa reported on the sudden and unusual retirement of two senior generals in Nicaragua’s army, who normally serve five-year terms in top command positions. A retired general told the paper that the firings owe to the armed forces’ politicization, “ever since the moment when there stoped being a high command able to say to [President Daniel] Ortega, ‘this is illegal, this can’t be done, this goes against the Constitution.’” Security expert Elvira Cuadra said, “Due to the way and the moment [the sudden retirements] occurred, what it shows is that things aren’t going well within the military institution.”
Paraguay
During the unsuccessful late-March attempt to change Paraguay’s constitution to allow President Horacio Cartes to run for re-election, local media questioned some irregular military deployments around the capital. These included the appearance of armored personnel carriers at Asunción installations, and the posting of guards and snipers around the Congress, where the amendment was being debated. Paraguay has been very vigilant about signs of military involvement in politics since the end of the dictatorship of Gen. Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989).
Venezuela
Faced with mounting protests, the government of President Nicolás Maduro launched “Plan Zamora Green Phase,” a “special civil-military strategic plan” to involve the military in preventing a “coup d’etat.” Defense Minister Gen. Vladimir Padrino promised the armed forces’ “unconditional loyalty” to the regime against “violent marches.” The government’s disproportionately forceful response to protests, however, has mostly been carried out by police, not soldiers.
Maduro also announced that the number of “Bolivarian Militias”—civilians armed with rifles to defend the regime—would expand to 500,000 (out of Venezuela’s total population of about 30 million).
Two investigative reports in the past month from InsightCrime (March 22 and April 28) look at drug-trafficking and other corruption in the armed forces.
Yesterday morning I thought I had no meetings scheduled, but a conversation with a member of Congress got moved to yesterday afternoon, which was great but it’s is the main reason I hardly posted anything here yesterday.
Today I’m meeting a Russian diplomat who asked to talk about Colombia (yes I know but not a big deal), doing an interview with a reporter about Colombia, and planning some of next week’s work with staff: next Friday April 28 is when the federal budget needs to be passed or extended to avoid a government shutdown. It’s also the last weekday before Trump’s 100th day, so there’s going to be a lot of desire to review “what just happened.”
In the afternoon I’m doing a final edit to the introductory essay to our defense programs project, making sure the 28-category table of contents I made yesterday is correct, and adding a bunch of border security research to the database. Based on that, I’d like to record a podcast about border security tomorrow.
“I think so, perhaps. I believe it could qualify for that,” Sessions said in an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. “There are rules that I guess the State Department does to establish that”
As the peace deal is slowly implemented, around 6,300 former FARC guerrilla soldiers wait in 26 zonas veredales — transitional camps — across the country
Hay alerta en 20 de los 30 municipios. Las Autodefensas Gaitanistas están en una lucha territorial contra el ELN, secuestros y asesinatos son el resultado de la pelea por el corredor del Bajo Baudó
Aunque Arrieta plantea restricciones importantes para reanudar las aspersiones aéreas, esta ponencia es una luz verde para continuar fumigando con glifosato
“Los dos expresidentes eran los invitados de un miembro de Mar-a-Lago este fin de semana, y hubo una breve conversación y un apretón de manos (con Trump)”
President Trump and two of his Cabinet members offered warnings Tuesday about the dangers posed by MS-13, a gang based in El Salvador that has offshoots in cities across the United States
“There is no reliable estimate of the cost of construction of the full border wall, but extrapolated estimates place the construction cost of the wall and associated technology and infrastructure at nearly $70 billion”
A group of 21 units from the Panamanian, Costa Rican, and Guatemalan militaries participated from March 6th to 30th in a Search and Rescue (SAR) course sponsored by U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Marchers around the country will demand the government present a timeline for delayed elections, halt a security crackdown on protests, and respect the autonomy of the opposition-led legislature
Those responsible for the criminal repression of peaceful democratic activity, for the undermining of democratic institutions and practices, and for gross violations of human rights, will be held individually accountable
Latin American governments need to apply strong pressure on the Maduro administration to address severe shortages of medicine and food in Venezuela that are causing Venezuelans to leave
Incarceration rates have increased for drug offenses in the countries studied, even as a widespread regional debate takes place on the need to explore alternative drug policies
In June, the State Department, along with Treasury, Commerce and DHS and our co-host Mexico, will host a conference focused on the economic and security needs of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala
I got a lot done yesterday: an article, a podcast, some interviews, and a planning meeting. Today, for some reason, I have no meetings scheduled, so I’ll be working at home in the morning, as my daughter’s school is closed this week.
There are a lot of “inbox” items and small commitments I’m behind on. In the afternoon, I’ll be in the office putting our defense programs project to bed. I also hope to post some content here throughout the day, and add a bit of research to our database.
EFE / Miguel Gutiérrez photo at SinEmbargo (Mexico). Caption: “CARACAS (VENEZUELA), 17/04/2017 – El presidente de Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, habla junto a miembros de la Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana (FANB) hoy, lunes 17 de abril de 2017, en la conmemoración del séptimo aniversario de la milicia en Caracas (Venezuela). Las Fuerzas Armadas de Venezuela ratificaron hoy su apoyo incondicional al presidente, Nicolás Maduro, ante lo que consideran una ‘coyuntura crucial’ debido a los ‘actos de violencia’ durante las protestas opositoras, parte de una ‘agenda criminal’ que amenaza la ‘paz y estabilidad’ del país.”
These regional leaders are part of a historic shift in Latin America toward more accountability and transparency in business, politics and the rule of law
La inclusión del Ministerio de Defensa en el Consejo Directivo del Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica causó rechazo entre las organizaciones de víctimas de la sociedad civil
To many drug policy experts familiar with this basic reality of the drug market, the conclusion is obvious: To kill the profitability of the drug trade, legalize the drugs
Rodríguez, 73, reported on crime and the police on Colectivo Pericú, a blog that covers current events in the northern Mexican state of Baja California Sur
Franklin Foer, “Mexico’s Revenge” (The Atlantic, April 18, 2017).
Now, with Trump’s angry talk and the Mexican resentment it stirs, the best hope for the persistence of this improved relationship is inertia
Las autoridades de Guatemala investigan los nexos locales que pudiera tener el capturado exgobernador del estado mexicano de Veracruz, Javier Duarte, detenido en este país centroamericano
Between November 2016 and March, Mexico’s refugee agency, COMAR, received 5,421 asylum applications, up from 2,148 over the same period in 2015 and 2016
El presidente venezolano Nicolás Maduro recibió este lunes la promesa de “lealtad incondicional” de la Fuerza Armada, a la que la oposición acusa de ser la única que sostiene al chavismo en el poder
El presidente de Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, anunció hoy que aprobó un plan para expandir a 500.000 los miembros de la Milicia Bolivariana, armados con fusiles para que se desplieguen en todas las zonas
In the short term, the colectivos and the military itself would be the criminal elements most impacted by a move by parts of the military to force Maduro’s hand
(This was just posted to WOLA’s colombiapeace.org site and will go up at wola.org in a little while.)
Álvaro Uribe’s Questionable “Message to U.S. Authorities” About Colombia’s Peace Effort
By Adam Isacson and Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli
Inaccurate=pink. Debatable=orange.
On Easter Sunday Colombia’s former president, Álvaro Uribe, wrote a blistering attack on Colombia’s peace accords with the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas. He sent it in English as a “message to the authorities and the Congress of the United States of America.” It went to every U.S. congressional office, as well as to Washington’s community of analysts, advocates and donors who work on Colombia.
Uribe, now Colombia’s most prominent opposition senator, is the most vocal critic of the peace process led by his successor, President Juan Manuel Santos. The ex-president’s missive leaves out the very encouraging fact that 7,000 members of the FARC, a leftist guerrilla group, are currently concentrated in 26 small zones around the country, where they are gradually turning all of their weapons over to a UN mission. One of the organizations most involved in the illicit drug business has agreed to stop using violent tactics for political purposes and to get out of the drug economy. The process currently underway is ending a bloody conflict that raged for 52 years, and holds at least the promise of making vast areas of Colombia better governed, and less favorable to illicit drug production.
Colombia’s peace accord implementation is going slowly, and faces daunting problems. There is a responsible, fact-based critique that a conservative analyst could make. Uribe’s document is not that critique. It suffers from numerous factual inaccuracies and statements that are easily rebutted. Its fixation on the FARC, a waning force, deliberately lacks important facts regarding other parties to the conflict and it does little to explain how the United States can help Colombia address post-conflict challenges.
Here is WOLA’s evaluation of several of the points made by Álvaro Uribe in this document, and evaluations of their accuracy. The vast majority of his claims are either inaccurate, or debatable.
Statement:
“Coca plantations were reduced from 170,000 ha to 42,000 ha, now there are 188,000 ha according to the lowest estimate.”
Inaccurate. Two sources estimate Colombian coca-growing: the U.S. government and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (working with the Colombian government). Their highest, lowest, and most current estimates of Colombian coca-cultivation are as follows.
Source
Highest before current
Lowest
Most current
U.S. government
170,000 (2001)
78,000 (2012)
188,000 (2016)
UNODC
163,300 (2000)
48,000 (2012-13)
96,000 (2015)
No estimate shows a drop from 170,000 to 42,000 hectares. Both show the lowest estimate in 2012, two years after Uribe left office. 188,000 hectares is not the “lowest” current estimate, it is the higher of the two. Using the 188,000 hectare (U.S.) figure yields an increase from a baseline of 78,000, not 42,000.
Nobody denies that Colombia’s post-2012 coca boom is a problem, but Uribe’s statement exaggerates its severity still further.
Statement:
“THE CAUSE OF THIS DANGEROUS TREND: The government has stopped spraying illicit crops to please the terrorist FARC.”
Inaccurate. First, the October 2015 suspension of “spraying illicit crops” with herbicides from aircraft is one of seven causes for the boom in coca cultivation, which WOLA explained in a March 13 report. (The other six are a decline in manual eradication, a failure to replace eradication with state presence and services, a drop in gold prices, a stronger dollar, a promise that people who planted coca would get aid under the FARC peace accords, and an increase in organized coca-grower resistance.) Giving all explanatory weight to the suspension of herbicide fumigation is misleading, as even the State Department recognized that the program’s effectiveness was “significantly reduced” by “counter-eradication tactics” like swift replanting and pruning sprayed plants.
Second, the suspension of aerial spraying had nothing to do with the FARC. Colombia’s Health Ministry pushed to end spraying with the herbicide glyphosate after a 2015 World Health Organization literature review concluded that the chemical is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” (In March 2017, California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment came to a similar conclusion.)
Third, the FARC-government peace accord (PDF) does not prohibit aerial spraying. It reads, “If crop substitution does not prove possible, the government does not renounce the instruments it believes to be most effective, including spraying, to guarantee the eradication of crops of illicit use.” And today, government personnel continue to spray coca fields with glyphosate from the ground, even though this may “displease the FARC.”
Statement:
“Manual eradication was reduced and it moves forward preferably with communities’ consent, that is, with FARC’s consent.”
Debatable. The equation of rural “communities” with “the FARC” exaggerates the FARC’s power—many if not most of these communities’ members are not FARC supporters (PDF). By implicitly tying them to what until recently was a violent, radical group, this formulation also marginalizes and endangers these communities’ residents.
Statements:
“FARC has designed its own justice.”
“FARC’s kingpins and their aides have been granted impunity”
Inaccurate. If the FARC were allowed to design its own justice, its members who violated human rights would be amnestied, and their denials of their crimes’ severity would go unchallenged. Also the transitional justice system established by the accords, the “Special Jurisdiction for Peace,” would include the full participation of international judges. Instead, FARC members accused of war crimes must provide full confessions, a full accounting of their assets, and carry out reparations to victims. An independent tribunal will issue sentences of up to eight years of “restricted liberty,” to be served in spaces the size of a small village or hamlet. If FARC members do not abide by the conditions stated in the accord, then they will be subject to ordinary justice that includes longer sentences in regular prisons.
The judges will be Colombian. The negotiations between the two parties on the issue of justice were greatly influenced by international jurists, the International Criminal Court, and the current state of practice within international law. Most importantly, the agreed-upon justice system prioritizes the recommendations that truth, justice and reparations prevail over jail time made by the over 60 victims who traveled to Havana to demand that the process respect their rights.
This is not “prison,” as Uribe points out, and the austerity of conditions in the restricted-liberty zones remains to be determined by the sentencing judges in each case. But it is far from impunity, and far from what the FARC would “design” for its members. Given the sheer number of cases of abuses that took place during five decades of conflict, this special jurisdiction for peace will ensure that emblematic cases are tried. This greatly contrasts with the current justice system, which is unable to produce quick and effective sanctions.
Statement:
“Judges will be appointed by people permissive with terrorism and akin to FARC’s alleged ideology.”
Inaccurate. The judges are being selected by a committee made up of a representative of the UN Secretary General, the European Court of Human Rights, the Criminal Chamber of Colombia’s Supreme Court, the non-governmental International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), and the Permanent Commission of the Colombian State University System. (The list of appointing bodies, agreed in August 2016, also included the Vatican, which declined to participate.) None of these institutions, or their representatives, can seriously be considered “permissive with terrorism” or sharing the FARC’s political views. Not only is this statement inaccurate, it stigmatizes judges in a manner that can undermine their security.
Statement:
“These sanctions are inadequate, they lack incarceration, and are inapplicable because those who are guilty will enjoy simultaneous eligibility for Congress or any other political post.”
Debatable. These sanctions are only modestly less “inadequate” than the 5-8 years in prison given to pro-government paramilitary leaders under a process developed under Uribe’s presidency. (The paramilitaries didn’t kidnap, recruit children, or lay landmines as often as the FARC did, but during their years of greatest activity they killed and displaced far more civilians.) It remains to be seen how austere conditions will be in the village-sized zones where FARC members will serve sentences for war crimes. It also remains to be seen whether sentencing judges will even allow FARC members to hold political office in locations outside their zones of confinement.
Statement:
“Narco trafficking is accepted as a political related crime for funding rebellion, with full impunity, eligibility and no extradition.”
Debatable. Narcotrafficking will be amnestied if it can be shown that the demobilizing guerrilla channeled all profits into the FARC’s war effort and did not profit personally. Demobilizing paramilitary group members were held to the same standard during Uribe’s presidency. Each demobilizing guerrilla must declare his or her assets, and if found to be lying, will be kicked out of the transitional justice system and face regular, criminal justice instead.
Statement:
“Simon Trinidad serves a sentence in the United States because of narco trafficking and the kidnapping of three American citizens, however, his accomplices enjoy impunity in Colombia.”
Inaccurate. FARC leader Simón Trinidad, who was captured in 2004, is in a U.S. prison for his indirect role in kidnapping three U.S. citizen defense contractors. He was not found guilty of narcotrafficking. FARC members who participated in kidnapping will not be amnestied, they will serve sentences in the transitional justice system.
Statement:
“Our Constitution has been substituted by the agreement with FARC. This amendment will be in place during 12 years.”
Inaccurate. The peace accord does not substitute for anything, as nothing in it suppresses or substitutes anything in Colombia’s constitution. For 12 years, the accord has a legal standing that prevents Colombia’s Congress from passing laws that might violate or undermine its commitments. That is a sound mechanism, and it’s hard to imagine any peace accord going forward without a similar protection, even if it may resemble a temporary constitutional amendment.
Statement:
“The NO VOTE won the Plebiscite.”
True with a caveat. Uribe’s U.S. audience should be aware that the “NO” victory was not overwhelming: the margin was 50.2 to 49.8 percent. More troubling was the remarkably low level of voter participation: 63 percent of eligible Colombians failed to vote on October 2, 2016. The majority of Colombians in regions currently impacted by the conflict voted in favor of the accord. Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities, who are disproportionate victims of displacement, violence and conflict, resoundingly voted in favor of peace.
Statement:
“The Government did not include substantial changes, and, with the non-understandable support from the Constitutional Court, did ratify the agreement through a proposition in Congress, in clear contradiction to the Plebiscite outcome.”
Debatable. After the original August 2016 accord was defeated by the October 2 plebiscite, Colombia’s government heard proposals from leading opponents, which it took to the FARC for several weeks of re-negotiation. The resulting November 2016 accord included over 500 changes. Substantial adjustments included severely restricting the size of zones to which FARC war criminals would be confined, requiring FARC members to declare all of their assets and provide “exhaustive and detailed” information about links to the drug trade, and requiring case-by-case consideration instead of blanket amnesty for drug trafficking. One change that Uribe and other accord opponents did not get was a revocation of the 10 automatic seats in Congress (5 in the 166-person House and 5 in the 102-person Senate) that FARC members will occupy between 2018 and 2026.
Uribe’s complaint that the government, the Constitutional Court, and the Congress overruled the Plebiscite outcome is, in fact, a recognition that three branches of government unanimously approved an accord that was significantly amended after losing the October 2 vote by a hair-thin margin.
Statement:
“the current Government has not gone as far as Maduro in Venezuela, but the inheritance will allow the possible weak or pro FARC Governments of the future to adopt the same path”
Inaccurate. The government of Juan Manuel Santos, which will be in office for one more year, has weakened neither free speech nor judicial independence: in fact, the Constitutional Court already struck down one of its first decrees for implementing the peace accords. It is not clear why Uribe thinks that Colombians might suddenly opt for a pro-FARC, pro-Venezuela political path. The latest bi-monthly Gallup poll (February, PDF) gave the FARC a 19 percent approval rating and 2 percent for Nicolás Maduro’s government in Venezuela. (It also showed Uribe’s own rating at 49 percent with +3-point net favorability, down from consistent measures over +40 during his presidency.) This statement is completely unfounded.
Statement:
“Colombia has poverty and unequal income distribution not because of the private sector, but because the lack of many more and robust private enterprises.”
Inaccurate. It is frankly odd to assert that Colombia’s poverty and inequality have a single cause. It is further bizarre not to include corruption and a weak rule of law among the causes. Meanwhile, the World Bank places Colombia in 53rd place, out of 190, among the world’s most business-friendly countries: not a stellar ranking, but not low enough to be the single explanation for poverty and one of the world’s worst rates of inequality (PDF). If anything, peace in conflictive regions would do much to improve security and opportunities for international investment in Colombia.
Statement:
“Only a few children have returned to their families out of more than 11,000 that were kidnapped.”
Debatable/Inaccurate. The statistic refers to all FARC recruitment of minors between 1975 and 2014. Obviously, the overwhelming majority of these children have long since grown up. Many deserted, were captured, or were killed by government forces. Some became guerrilla leaders. As of January, according to Colombia’s Defense Ministry, there were about 170 child combatants still in the ranks of demobilizing FARC; though turnovers to the Red Cross have begun, the process has been too slow.
Statement:
“Our secret services, some years ago, estimated at 40,000 the number of guns in the hands of FARC. The President of Colombia expressed recently that the organization was going to give up 14,000, however, FARC ́s members have announced that 7,000 guns will be let down.”
Debatable. There is no way to verify a statistic that comes from “our secret services,” but since the FARC are demobilizing about 7,000 fighters, a statistic of more than five guns per combatant seems laughably high.
Uribe’s statement doesn’t refer to FARC “militia” members: part-time, non-uniformed guerrilla supporters who operate mainly in urban areas. About 6,000 militia members—nobody knows the true amount—are expected to report to disarmament sites, where they are required to spend a few days registering and handing over whatever weapons they possess. This may increase the final weapons count beyond the 7,000 of which the UN mission is currently aware.
Statement:
“Nothing has been informed about the missiles and other dangerous weapons owned by FARC.”
Debatable. If the FARC have, or had, missiles, they did not use them during the conflict. The only evidence we’ve seen is in a 2012 video of a single unsuccessful use of a SAM-7 shoulder-fired missile.
Statement:
“Chavez and Maduro have been the supporters of terrorism in our country.”
Debatable. The Venezuelan government has done very little about the freedom with which Colombian guerrilla groups operate on the Venezuelan side of the common border. However, Colombian organized crime and paramilitary groups have also operated with great freedom in these poorly governed territories. Captured guerrilla communications indicate that FARC leaders discussed financial support with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, especially during a 2007 period when Uribe authorized Chávez to serve as a go-between in a failed effort to free guerrilla hostages. We don’t know whether any financial support was actually delivered.
In their contacts with guerrillas, Venezuelan leaders encouraged them to negotiate peace and to win power, as they did, through non-violent electoral politics. Venezuelan diplomatic and logistical support, too, contributed importantly to the success of Colombia’s peace talks with the FARC. If Venezuela was trying to promote “terrorism” in Colombia, why did it so robustly support peace negotiations?
Here’s a conversation with WOLA Senior Fellow Jo-Marie Burt, a professor of political science at George Mason University. Since 2012 Jo-Marie has closely monitored Guatemala’s judicial effort to hold military personnel accountable for crimes against humanity that they committed or ordered during the country’s 1960-1996 civil war. Despite some often severe pushback, prosecutors, investigators, and civil society are making progress.
Jo-Marie posts frequent updates about Guatemala’s human rights trials to the Open Society Justice Initiative’s International Justice Monitor website at www.ijmonitor.org/category/guatemala-trials/.
I should be reachable in the latter part of the afternoon. (How to contact me)
I’m getting a late start today, after staying up a bit last night working on a response to former Colombian President Uribe’s message to the U.S. Congress, a bit of unplanned work. That’s not done yet, so I’m working on it now.
I have an interview this morning, and a meeting to plan an upcoming trip to the U.S.-Mexico border. In the early afternoon I’ll be recording a podcast about Guatemala, which I hope to have posted to WOLA’s website by late afternoon. The rest of the time, I’ll be working on the Uribe response and the impending launch of our big military and police aid programs report.
WOLA just posted a new commentary that I drafted, which seeks to put into context the shocking recent U.S.-Mexico border migration statistics.
February and March saw the fewest migrants apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border since available records began in 1999. The arrival of Donald Trump and his anti-immigrant rhetoric clearly has something to do with that.
But Trump’s rhetoric also probably explains why there was a big surge of migrants, especially Central American families and children, in the months between the election and the inauguration. In this article, I predict that migration levels are likely to increase again, to some level that is higher than the current low, but lower than the late-2016 high. To see the reasons why, read the article.
Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, a rightwing politician who is the FARC peace accords’ most prominent opponent, had a meeting in Florida on Friday with Donald Trump. (Uribe was joined by his predecessor, Andrés Pastrana, who also opposed the 2012-16 FARC peace talks despite spending much of his presidency on an unsuccessful 1998-2002 attempt to negotiate with the FARC.) (Note as of 5:30PM EDT: CNN Español is reporting that this meeting didn’t happen, just a hallway encounter between Trump and Pastrana at Mar-a-Lago.)
The document is riddled with false or inaccurate statements (highlighted in pink) and debatable claims (highlighted in orange). I’m writing up a point-by-point response, but it’s taking a long time because there are so many of them. Stay tuned.
Rio’s bomb squad is one of the most technologically advanced in South America. In the cramped storeroom of its base in northern Rio, a state-of-the-art robot takes pride of place
La comunidad internacional se preocupa por la implementación de lo acordado en La Habana con la guerrilla. Alguien en el gobierno debería escuchar sus voces de alerta
En mayo se radicará la reforma electoral, con cambios radicales y profundos al sistema político
LeÓn Valencia, “La Jep Bajo Fuego” (Semana (Colombia), April 17, 2017).
Los duros ataques a la justicia transicional lo que revelan es la falta de voluntad de las elites políticas más directamente involucradas en el conflicto
El jefe guerrillero dice que en la Comisión de la Verdad deberán converger todos los relatos y todas las visiones en pos de una verdad sanadora y emancipadora
La Silla Pacífico leyó y resumió todos los oficios que muestran el paso a paso de la avanzada de los nuevos paramilitares en el Chocó tras la salida de las Farc
También le expresaron las inquietudes que tienen en torno al proceso de paz con las Farc, asunto en torno al cual los dos exmandatarios tienen amplios cuestionamientos
Assignment orders issued in July 2016 indicate Mexico’s federal security agencies were notified that the police officers were acting as bodyguards to Mr. Yarrington
The wall could seal some Americans on the “Mexican side” — technically on U.S. soil, but outside of a barrier built north of the river separating the two countries
I should be reachable in the latter part of the afternoon. (How to contact me)
I have a planning meeting in the morning and a car-repair errand after lunch. The rest of the time, I should be at a computer, starting the process of moving a gigantic database and new report from my personal staging site, defenseassistance.org, to WOLA’s domain. If that’s error-free, it shouldn’t take long, but these things are never error-free. I’ll also be giving a (hopefully) last edit to that report’s introduction and “landing page.” This morning, we should also be launching an analysis of migration statistics in the Trump period that I drafted last week.
I’m in Washington all week and look forward to doing a lot of writing, research, and meetings in Congress. By the end of this week, I hope to have:
Our huge report listing 107 U.S. military and police aid programs completely out the door. This weekend I finished what I think is the last bit of coding on the web version, and it’s time to move the entire thing to the wola.org domain.
A near-final draft of a report on our February visits to the Mexico-Guatemala border.
Two podcasts: a WOLA conversation about Guatemala on Tuesday, and a personal one by the end of the week.
The Southern Command’s annual overview of its activities, given in congressional testimony. Southern Command manages all U.S. military activity in Latin America and the Caribbean, except for Mexico and the Bahamas.
This report, required by House Armed Services Committee report language accompanying the 2016 defense bill, is a surprisingly rich source of data. It lists thousands of events in which U.S. (or U.S.-aided) personnel trained foreign police in 2015 and 2016.
Due to concerns that Defense Department security assistance programs “lack strategic direction, may not act in concert with other programs, and are not resourced for long-term sustainability,” the House Armed Services Committee asked the U.S. Government Accountability Office to report on each of these programs’ purpose, legal justification, and funding. This resulting inventory is useful, but out of date, as the 2017 defense bill brought major changes to these programs.
A draft memo obtained by the Washington Post, detailing plans for initial border wall construction, deportation procedures, plans for detaining apprehended migrants, looser hiring standards for Border Patrol personnel, and other items. (I turned it into a PDF for easier reading.)
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