Colombian conflict spills over into Panama

President Torrijos gets a report on a visit to the Darien. Photo by the Presidencia

Information control games being played, as usual

Report two FARC guerrillas killed, one wounded by Border Service
by Eric Jackson, from other media

It took several days for the Panamanian government to confirm what this country's and Colombia's mainstream media had been reporting, and there are still gaps and incongruities in the various versions. However, it seems that the Colombian Army has been on the offensive against FARC's 58th Front, which operates in Colombia's Choco department, adjacent to Panama's Darien province, and that members of the rebel force have been crossing into Panama in search of food and maybe to flee their enemies.

For many decades, FARC has crossed over into Panama to go grocery shopping (among other things). But in the mid-90s the right-wing AUC paramilitaries, certainly in collaboration with the Colombian and probably the US governments at that time, started to attack Panama in reprisals against those who sold food to or otherwise lent assistance to FARC. Nowadays nobody who runs a rural kiosko on the Panamanian side of the border would admit having sold to FARC, and if they had done so they would be likely to describe it as a robbery. And indeed, robbery by people coming over from Colombia --- insurgents or not --- as well has by home-grown maleantes has long been a problem for people trying to do business in the border area.

And so it was that Anselmo Guainora, the presidentially appointed governor of the Embera-Wounaan Comarca, complained that starting on December 7 unspecified armed Colombians were crossing into Panama and robbing teachers and business owners --- that is, the few people with things to steal --- in Manene, which is on the Balsas River and is about 10 kilometers by jungle trail from the nearest border point. Guainora also told the ANSA news agency that people from villages between Manene and the border were also fleeing from an upsurge of violence in the area.

On December 11, there was a shootout in Panamanian territory. That something of this sort happened was quickly reported in the Colombian and Panamanian mainstream press. Several days later the Panamanian government officially reported that FARC rebels had crossed into Panama, that a National Border Service patrol came across a group of them, ordered them to stop and identify themselves, and when this order went unheeded they fired warning shots, which the Colombians returned. Two Colombians were killed and buried close to where the incident happened, another was seriously wounded and taken to Santo Tomas Hospital in Panama City, and afterwards Panamanian authorities found a FARC armband that identified the side of Colombia's civil conflict from whence the intruders hailed.

But a somewhat different set of stories is coming out of Colombia. On December 12 the COLPRENSA news agency cited Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos as the source of a version that what happened was the FARC's 58th Front attacking Panamanian forces not around Manene, but from inside Colombia. A series of other reports in the Colombian press had it that Colombian and Panamanian forces were in constant radio contact during the incursion (if it was that).

La Prensa has reported a Colombian government offensive against the rebels from at least six points along the border, and the Colombian newspaper El Espectador, citing Santos as its source, reported that Colombian troops had crossed over into Panama during the operation of which the shootout was a part, on the day after the incident. Santos characterized it as a Colombian action in support of Panamanian authorities.

Most Panamanians, like most Colombians, consider FARC to be a bunch of thugs. However, most Panamanians also have a similar opinion of the Colombian Army and the right-wing paramilitaries with which that army and Colombian President Álvaro Uribe have been historically allied. If there is any unifying concept among people here about what it means to be Panamanian, it's that we are not Colombian and are not part of their never-ending violence.

Any admission that Colombian government forces crossed into Panama with at least the tacit acceptance of the Torrijos administration would thus be politically toxic, including within the ranks of the ruling PRD. But the question has not been put to Torrijos because he carefully controls which journalists have access to him and doesn't tolerate those who ask embarrassing questions.