In the Colombian jungle, a circus
 

Carlos Alberto Montaner

The anecdote is known only superficially. The communist narcoguerrillas of the FARC, in cahoots with Hugo Chávez, staged a big media circus to release three innocent prisoners kidnapped into the Colombian jungle several years ago. They planned to hog the headlines everywhere, but other terrorists -- more opportune, though equally sinister -- stole their thunder by assassinating Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. The publicity, therefore, will be greatly reduced. In any case, what were the objectives of the protagonists of this obscene spectacle, built on the exploitation of the suffering of the Colombian victims and their relatives? Let's begin with Hugo Chávez.

The Venezuelan sought to project his image and consolidate his status as leader of a zone of influence. It's part of his narcissistic psychopathy and also of his strategy. He presented the operation as a collective political triumph. This was an opportunity to appear at the head of a group of countries he plans to draw into his hallucinatory plans to create an international political bloc devoted to harassing the West. So, he quickly asked his allies to appoint people of some rank to demonstrate his power of convocation. Like all other capos, Chávez charges interest for the resources he lends. In some cases, his obligated debtors are the grateful recipients of election-time briefcases stuffed with petrodollars that circulate, like comets, throughout the region.

 Argentina sent former President Néstor Kirchner and Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana. Cuba sent Germán Sánchez, Ambassador to Caracas, known by the Venezuelans as “The Viceroy,” a skillful and hardened representative of the Cuban intelligence services. Ecuador chose Gustavo Larrea, former Interior Minister; Brazil sent Marco Aurelio García, a man very close to Lula and Castro; and Bolivia dispatched Deputy Minister Sacha Llorenti. With them, clueless, traveled French Ambassador Hadelin de la Tour-du-Pin, who is probably amused by this picturesque excursion through the tropics, perhaps convinced that he is the kind agent of a charitable act, or a secondary character in a García Márquez novel.

To the FARC, the release of two women and a boy born in captivity has six objectives:

• To demonstrate flexibility and to improve their uncomfortable image as murderers and drug traffickers.

• To force the hated government of Uribe to grant them a certain legitimacy.

• Permission, though temporary, to set up a “no-fire clearing.”

• The introduction in the conflict of international factors that are favorable to them.

• The chance to support and please Hugo Chávez, their most valuable accomplice.

• And maybe the opportunity to take one step toward the tactic proposed by the Venezuelan -- to back a suitable candidate in the 2010 elections, as recently mentioned by Raúl Reyes, the FARC's political brain. In sum, to prepare to gain at the ballot box what they haven't attained after four decades of violence. After that hypothetical victory would come the predictable script: a new Constitution and the gradual and total dismantling of the democratic mechanisms of the republic.

What nobody can explain is what a personage like Nicolas Sarkozy is doing in such a dangerous neighborhood and in such disreputable company. From Sarkozy, the President of France, one expects more serious behavior. He must know that the Council of the European Union, for very good reasons, has declared the FARC to be terrorists, a multifarious band of thousands of people engaged in extortion, drug trafficking, kidnapping and murder, whose declared goal -- and this is a serious aggravating factor -- is to create a collectivist, Soviet-style bedlam once it occupies Nariño Palace.

How consistent is a diplomacy that only a few weeks ago was warning about the dangerousness of Iran and today walks into the Colombian jungle hand in hand with Ahmadinejad's staunchest ally? How is it possible that the same France that in Europe contributes, loyally and effectively, to the hunting down of ETA, in Latin America is so naive as to dance to the tune played by the Colombian narcoterrorists? 

Of course, one is happy for the release of the hostages and for their relatives, but one mustn't forget for a moment that this operation -- staged by Chávez and the FARC -- is not meant to foster peace in Colombia but to weaken even further the precarious stability of Uribe's legitimate government and to contribute to the demolition of the fragile democracy that survives (nobody knows how) in that tortured country.

Anyone who knows the fauna of the region and harbors no illusions can also understand the irresponsible behavior of Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador and Bolivia (I don't know why they didn't invite Daniel Ortega to this witches' sabbath), but France should be much more than a disorderly and chaotic republic governed at the point of a banana. France should be something else.

December 30, 2007

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