What FARC leader's arrest in Ecuador may mean for Panama

The January 2 capture of FARC guerrilla leader Simón Trinidad (the guerrilla name for Ricardo Ovidio Palmera) in Ecuador, given developments over the past two years in Colombia, must surely be taken as a warning sign by authorities in Panama. It’s not so much that Colombia’s leftist rebels will change their usual policy of not attacking this country, but rather that the odds have increased that FARC is hiding its leaders and money here.

Colombian President Álvaro Uribe came to office promising to get tough with FARC, and with US backing and a tacit alliance with the right-wing AUC paramilitary his government has gone on the offensive. In the less than two years since Uribe’s predecessor broke off peace talks with FARC --- whose negotiating team included Simón Trinidad --- the rebels’ hold on Colombian territory has diminished from about one-half to less than one-third of the country. (These areas, however, are sparsely populated, and home to less than 10 percent of the country’s population.)

However, despite the paramilitary massacres of suspected guerrilla supporters and the battlefield successes of the government forces, Latin America’s oldest rebel army remains very much intact. The FARC’s reaction to the offensive has been to cede territory without great resistance, and to shift many of its fighters from rural fronts into an urban underground organization. Prior to Trinidad’s capture it was also rumored that a number of FARC leaders had gone into hiding abroad, and the arrest in Ecuador --- according to a source cited by the AFP news agency made with the assistance of the CIA --- would tend to support that theory.

FARC has a long history of crossing into Panama --- rarely to stage attacks, but to rest between battles, go grocery shopping and conduct gun running operations. The Cerro Tacarcuna area of the Darien for years enjoyed a reputation as something of a FARC stronghold. So if in the face of a government offensive part of the FARC leadership is taking refuge abroad, Panama is a logical place for them to do so.

Despite the Bogota government’s attempt to portray Trinidad’s presence in Ecuador as a matter of the top rats jumping off a sinking guerrilla ship, the rebel setbacks probably do not indicate their impending definitive defeat. In fact Trinidad’s capture was a break in a string of political defeats for Uribe.

In a referendum late last year, Uribe was unable to gain approval of constitutional amendments that he wanted. The national legislature blocked his plans to change the law in order to permit him to seek re-election. In nationwide municipal elections, Bogota and much of the rest of the country went to the left. Even though Uribe retains a high degree of personal popularity despite his setbacks, the odds are good that he will leave office in 2006 having pushed the guerrillas back but without scoring the decisive victory that he’s been after. FARC is betting on that by laying low and waiting for Plan Colombia and the Uribe administration to run its course.

Laying so low as to have top leaders like Trinidad, said to have played the role of FARC’s chief financial officer, go into hiding abroad? So it seems, although a FARC press release maintained that he crossed the border into Ecuador on a mission to arrange a prisoner exchange.

Meanwhile, what might FARC do with its enhanced urban underground? There are a couple of clues.

First, notice that during the 2002 election campaign FARC took Green presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt hostage and still holds her. The Greens were and are representatives of only a small fringe of Colombian society, but despite all the territory that they hold or have held, the same thing can be said about FARC. The Green movement worldwide and in Colombia traces roots back through the left, but has broken with Marxist dogma and particularly the militaristic Leninist style of party organization. FARC wouldn’t still be holding Betancourt if they didn’t think that she represented a serious challenge to their claim to be the vanguard of progressive-thinking Colombians. Likewise, the guerrillas are more likely to view Bogota’s election of a leftist labor activist as its mayor as the rise of a potential rival rather than a victory for their cause. So might FARC eventually go on a sectarian rampage in order to draw the distinction between themselves and competitors for the loyalties of Colombians on the left end of the political spectrum?

Second, notice that although there is an alleged peace process between the government and the AUC paramilitary, in fact the AUC is still staging attacks. Also notice that three days after Trinidad’s capture, a “demobilized” AUC commander, Guillermo Echeverría, was gunned down in front of his family by unknown persons on the streets of Medellin. President Uribe has promised paramilitary and rebel groups that lay down their arms the right to operate as legal political parties, but back in the early 90s when FARC attempted to set up a legal political wing known as the Patriotic Union, thousands of its candidates and activists were murdered by government forces and predecessors of the AUC. Even if the AUC is genuinely interested in abandoning the armed struggle --- and there’s plenty of doubt about that --- FARC, which has been fighting for decades and has a long collective memory, may be unwilling to let them do so. An urban underground need not be so powerful as to threaten the very existence of the government in order to deny FARC’s old enemies the opportunity to retire and go about their lives.

It seems that Álvaro Uribe has not won and will not end Colombia’s long-running civil conflict, but that he has forced a change in its nature. The question for Panama now is whether and how the changes in our neighbors’ civil war will alter our own unwilling role in their troubles.

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FARC leader’s capture in Ecuador, Colombian war's changes may affect us

FARC leader’s capture in Ecuador,
Colombian war's changes may affect us