Pubdate: Mon, 25 Mar 2002
Source: Newsweek International
Copyright: 2002 Newsweek, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.newsweek.com/nw-srv/printed/int/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/747
Author: Joseph Contreras

COLOMBIA'S HARD RIGHT

Alvaro Uribe Velez was a dark horse.

Then rebels went on a bloody rampage and Uribe became the presidential 
favorite.

Will the hard-liner finally bring peace-or a deadly new escalation?

March 25 issue - Alvaro Uribe Velez-slight and bespectacled-looks more like 
a high-school math teacher than a hard-charging ideologue.

But there's nothing wimpy about his message: from the moment he declared 
his candidacy for Colombia's 2002 presidential election, the former state 
governor promised to halt peace negotiations with the rebel Revolutionary 
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and restore law and order. At first, his 
tough talk didn't garner much support.

But after languishing in third place in opinion surveys much of last year, 
he suddenly took the pole position in January. Now Uribe commands an 
approval rating of 59 percent, and it seems nothing short of an assassin's 
bullet can stop the maverick politician from winning the May election.

IN A BLOOD-STEEPED country, the rise of a right-wing hard-liner is hardly 
surprising. But what is less clear is what Uribe's victory will mean for 
Colombia and its increasingly close military ties to the United States. The 
Bush administration, fighting to increase American military engagement in 
the war against the rebels, will likely welcome a more resolute president 
in Bogota. As will most of his countrymen. "Ordinary Colombians who have 
grown tired of guerrilla abuses see in Uribe a tough leader with a firm 
hand," says former national-security adviser Armando Borrero.

But human-rights activists, civil libertarians and other critics see 
something else: another threat to Colombia's besieged democracy.

They claim the heir apparent has too cozy a relationship with Colombia's 
disreputable military, a coterie of shady associates, past and present, 
with allegations of links to the drug trade hanging over them, and a 
penchant for strongman tactics. "Many of [Uribe's] backers support him 
because they favor an authoritarian government," says political analyst 
Marco Romero of Bogota's National University. "That makes many people worry 
that his extreme-right-wing vision of public order may not jibe with 
democratic principles."

Uribe actually owes his unprecedented ascent to the guerrillas. Most 
Colombians had already run out of patience with the faltering peace process 
when the FARC unleashed a fresh offensive in January. They sabotaged 
electric pylons, bombed a Bogota restaurant, killing four policemen and a 
5-year-old girl, and tried to blow up the main reservoir serving the capital.

In February, four rebels hijacked an airliner and kidnapped a prominent 
senator.

Uribe, 49, was already soaring in the polls when a frustrated President 
Andres Pastrana finally called off talks with rebels and ordered troops to 
retake the haven he had allowed the FARC to occupy in 1998. For millions of 
voters, the total collapse of peace talks vindicated Uribe's hard line-and 
his run for the presidency.

He had been written off by pundits when he left the ranks of the mainstream 
Liberal Party to mount his one-man campaign.

His rivals tried to discredit him early on as the standard-bearer of the 
far right in a country where ultraconservative politicians have seldom 
occupied the presidential palace.

But that criticism wound up working in Uribe's favor.

Courting voters with the motto "Strong hand, big heart," the veteran 
politician from the city of Medellin cast himself as a foe of Colombia's 
political establishment who would put national security and law and order 
at the top of his agenda.

As the son of a wealthy landowner killed by FARC forces in the 1980s, he 
said he never understood how Pastrana could have granted the Marxist rebels 
a Switzerland-size enclave without first extracting a ceasefire agreement.

The Bush administration is increasingly concerned about the meltdown in 
Colombia. In the final months of the Clinton era, the country became the 
third largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. But the initial $1.3 billion 
assistance package was restricted to supporting the Pastrana government's 
anti-drug efforts and could not legally be diverted to counterinsurgency 
operations. The U.S. Congress feared the money would go to help right-wing 
paramilitaries that massacre suspected rebel sympathizers, often with the 
support of elements in Colombia's military.

It was always a difficult distinction to maintain in a country where both 
the FARC and the right-wing militias are directly involved in the narcotics 
trade.

But post-September 11, the Bush White House has pushed to do away with the 
restrictions altogether.

The administration recently asked Congress to approve an additional $98 
million for the training of a Colombian Army brigade that will defend a key 
oil pipeline frequently targeted by guerrillas. Last week the 
administration went a step further: spokesman Ari Fleischer disclosed plans 
to seek more aid to help Colombia in "its unified campaign against drug 
trafficking, terrorism and other threats to its national security." The 
Pentagon, for its part, continues to believe that the ultimate political 
settlement with leftists will require a centrist leader.

But the view from Washington increasingly is that that can't happen until 
the FARC is defeated, or at least contained and demoralized.

More than 100 U.S. troops are currently stationed in Colombia, many of them 
engaged in ongoing training of the Colombian Army's three counternarcotics 
battalions, and Uribe has called for increased American military aid. He 
also wants to see Pastrana's anti-drug Plan Colombia broadened to include 
the fight against terrorism, kidnapping, massacres and other endemic ills. 
"No country can ignore the kind of terrorist attacks against a democratic 
society that are taking place in Colombia," Uribe told NEWSWEEK last week. 
"The state cannot allow [armed] groups to kill citizens or take part in 
drug trafficking, and that's why I'm asking for more international help, 
beginning with the United States."

Narcotics and terrorism will rank high on the agenda when President George 
W. Bush sits down with the leaders of Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Bolivia 
at a summit in Lima later this week. (Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was 
not invited because of Washington's displeasure over his harsh criticism of 
the U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan.) The U.S.-backed anti-drug 
campaign is yielding mixed results in the Andean region. According to 
Colombian police and United Nations figures, coca-leaf production in 
Colombia fell by 13 percent overall in 2001, thanks mainly to an aggressive 
aerial fumigation program that killed off more than 190,000 acres of coca 
bushes.

But there are strong signs that coca and opium-poppy cultivation is booming 
in neighboring Peru, fueled in part by Colombian drug lords who are feeling 
the heat of Plan Colombia.

Uribe says he will turn it up. He points out that nearly 5,000 acres of 
coca and opium farms were eradicated in his native state of Antioquia in 
central Colombia during his three-year term as governor. But allegations 
have been made against some of his associates and close political allies 
that raise questions in the minds of many observers of Colombian politics 
about his credentials as Washington's next partner in the war on drugs.

A man known for his strong sense of loyalty, Uribe fiercely defends the 
reputation of longtime friends like Pedro Juan Moreno, a 59-year-old 
Medellin businessman who was his right-hand man after Uribe became governor 
in 1995. Two years later the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) 
seized three large shipments of potassium permanganate-commonly used in the 
processing of cocaine-that had been bought by Moreno's chemicals company.

The industrialist said the DEA had acted on the basis of false information 
supplied by senior Colombian police officials Moreno accused of waging a 
political vendetta against him. Moreno was never indicted in the United 
States or Colombia, and Uribe has consistently stood by his former cabinet 
chief, who also happens to be a distant relative of the candidate's wife, 
Lina Moreno. A number of Colombian journalists have dredged up similar 
personalities from Uribe's past, but none has come close to derailing his 
runaway victory.

An accomplished horseman and father of two sons, Uribe will never be 
mistaken for an extremist thug. He began his career of public service at 
the age of 24 in the Antioquia state bureaucracy and has been elected to a 
series of offices ranging from city councilman to national senator.

Along the way, Uribe completed courses of study at Harvard and Oxford and 
was awarded a British Council academic scholarship.

But there is a whiff of the arrogant about Uribe that surfaces from time to 
time. In his book about the Colombian drug trade, "Whitewash," British 
journalist Simon Strong recounts a 1994 interview with the then senator 
that turned sour when the reporter asked a question about one of Uribe's 
political proteges who had once enjoyed the backing of the late drug 
kingpin Pablo Escobar. According to Strong, the senator stormed out of the 
Bogota restaurant where the meeting was taking place. When Strong later 
emerged, the journalist encountered a belligerent Uribe waiting for him 
outside, surrounded by bodyguards as he waved his fist in front of Strong's 
nose and challenged him to resume the interview (in his interview with 
NEWSWEEK, Uribe said he has never "intimidated" or "threatened" any 
journalist).

The thin-skinned politician apparently hasn't mellowed with time. Uribe 
personally phoned the Bogota correspondent, Gonzalo Guillen, of Miami's 
Spanish-language newspaper El Nuevo Herald, two weeks ago to complain about 
his investigation of Uribe's past ties to the notorious Ochoa clan. The 
Ochoas were major players in Escobar's Medellin cartel during its heyday, 
and Uribe has acknowledged his father's long friendship with the recently 
deceased patriarch Fabio Ochoa, but Uribe maintains he parted ways with 
Fabio's sons many years ago. Nevertheless, Uribe didn't appreciate 
Guillen's inquiries and made his displeasure known by pointedly asking 
whether the journalist lived in Bogota or Miami.

Of far greater concern to some Uribe critics is the candidate's close ties 
to the military and how they will shape his four-year term. He kicked off 
his quest for the presidency by delivering the keynote speech at a 1999 
gala dinner honoring two former Army generals.

But the featured guests weren't exactly run-of-the-mill career soldiers 
heading into their golden years.

Both Fernando Millan and Rito Alejo del Rio had been cashiered by Pastrana 
for having collaborated with vigilante groups and right-wing paramilitary 
units charged with committing massacres and other atrocities in 1996 and 
1997. As a result, the State Department rescinded the generals' U.S. visas, 
but that didn't stop Uribe from singing their praises in public.

He is particularly chummy with Alejo del Rio, a rotund native of Boyaca 
whom Uribe met as governor when the general was commander of the 17th Army 
Brigade in northwestern Colombia. The candidate characterizes Alejo del Rio 
as an "honorable" man and denies he ever violated anyone's human rights.

Uribe's opponents have also taken aim at his proposal to involve civilians 
more directly in antisubversion operations to supplement the country's 
embattled security forces.

For some Colombians, the notion evokes memories of the sometimes ruthless 
peasant militias created in Peru to neutralize the Shining Path guerrilla 
movement in the 1980s and early 1990s. Uribe says he has no plans to arm 
the civilian population. But skeptics recall his role in promoting dozens 
of neighborhood security organizations called Convivir, some of which 
evolved into armed vigilante groups that work closely with right-wing militias.

Uribe's alleged links to the country's 8,000-strong right-wing militias are 
harder to document.

The so-called United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia flourished in the 
rural areas of Antioquia when Uribe was governor, and according to one 
respected Colombian human-rights group, CODHES (the Human Rights and 
Displaced Information Bureau), most of the nearly 200,000 people who fled 
Antioquia during his term were driven out by paramilitary forces and 
Convivir groups. Uribe also allegedly ignored warnings of an imminent 
paramilitary massacre in the village of El Aro that left 14 people dead in 
1997. He vehemently denies any relationship to paramilitary warlord Carlos 
Castano and says his government will treat the country's right-wing 
militias just like the communist guerrillas. But the paramilitary forces 
have been keeping a relatively low profile since Uribe started to climb in 
the polls, and their umbrella group issued a statement hailing the results 
of last week's congressional elections that brought victory to dozens of 
pro-Uribe candidates.

Will Uribe's tough tactics bring Colombia peace, even at the expense of 
democracy?

He has paid lip service to resuming negotiations with the FARC, but only 
under conditions that guerrilla leaders have called unacceptable, such as 
an unconditional ceasefire.

The fighting will go on, and could escalate if a President Uribe gives the 
armed forces carte blanche to do whatever it takes to defeat the rebels.

Given the current mood of the country, that would meet with the approval of 
most Colombians. "They've suddenly realized the FARC has pocketed all the 
compromises made in the last 40 years," says one U.S. official in Bogota. 
Now most Colombians are ready to try a radically different approach-even 
if, in the short term, it's guaranteed to bring more blood.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom