Colombia leader discloses talks with FARC rebels

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Los Angeles Times

Colombia leader discloses talks with FARC rebels

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, mindful of previous failed peace talks, cautions the discussions would advance only under certain conditions.

By Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times
August 28, 2012

BOGOTA, Colombia — President Juan Manuel Santos on Monday night said his government was in "exploratory discussions" to end more than four decades of conflict with Colombia's largest rebel group.

In a short televised address, Santos said the government had engaged in discussion with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, but he did not disclose details such as where the talks were held.

Meetings have been held in Cuba, according to news reports and speculation. Santos reportedly has sent security advisor Sergio Jaramillo to Havana to talk with FARC representatives.

Colombian government officials had not acknowledged peace talks with the FARC since 2002, when the so-called Caguan peace initiative launched by President Andres Pastrana collapsed in bitterness and recriminations.

Pastrana ceded the FARC a demilitarized zone the size of Switzerland from 1999 to 2002, but the rebels never fully cooperated, using the time and the zone, dubbed "FARC-land," to strengthen their military position.



Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-colombia-farc-20120828,0,3156171.story

[Comrade Grumpy]

1. It's hard to see anything coming of this...

...if both parties stick to their previous positions. The FARC wants a ceasefire as part of broad negotiations aimed at transforming Colombia; the government wants the FARC to unilaterally lay down their arms.

The FARC are real, live, peasant-based, Marxist-Leninist guerrillas. They want a socialist state.

Note in the last paragraph of the LA Times article posted above, it says the FARC used the peace initiative "to strengthen their military position." What do you think the Colombian and US governments were doing at the same time? Rapidly and aggressively strenghtening the Colombian army's military position.

[gbscar]

4. Those positions aren't necessarily destined to be absolute

The underlying idea of any negotiation is to reach a compromise between the parties.

Otherwise, all you're "negotiating" are the terms of an unilateral surrender, whether by the state or the insurgents, but neither side can be considered as actually defeated at this point. The conflict could presumably continue for decades with little or no radical changes in the balance of power, other than cycles of greater/lesser activity by the parties.

We don't really know if the current leadership of FARC/the government will be more flexible on certain points than they would have been previously, not only because different men and women are involved now, but also as a result of both positive and negative external and internal circumstances surrounding these events.

In short, FARC may not get everything they've historically wanted in terms of wide-reaching socialist reforms, which would be impossible to fully implement without having a left-wing government in power (and even then, they wouldn't be very easy to carry out in practice), but neither will the existing government get them to demobilize without giving something up in exchange (which, of course, would not be a very simple thing either). Everything depends on the details. There's no such thing as a "perfect" answer.

Whether or not this specific process is successful, I believe it's always worth giving peace a chance.

[Comrade Grumpy]

2. Good recent book on the FARC:

The FARC: The Longest Insurgency, by Garry Leech, 2011, Zed Press

[Judi Lynn]

3. Colombian army sergeant found guilty of killing children .

Colombian army sergeant found guilty of killing children .
Monday, 27 August 2012 13:04 Joey O'Gorman

A Colombian army official on Monday was found guilty of the murder of three children and the rape of one of them.

The judge found chief warrant officer Raul Muñoz Linares guilty of the 2010 attacks which happened in the municipality of Tame in the northeastern Colombian department of Arauca.

The tortured bodies of Yenni Torres Jaimes (14) and her two younger brothers aged nine and six were discovered less than 300 ft from an army base in October 2010. The children had been missing for four days.

Muñoz Linares was detained in late October for the murders and confessed to raping the girl but maintained he did not kill the children.

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/25743-colombian-army-sergeant-found-guilty-of-killing-children.html