FARC: Rights for Colombian rebels?
James W. Bodden
Honduras This Week
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‘El Comandante’ Chavez, buoyed by a fresh diplomatic victory in the Colombian prisoner for hostage crisis, launched a high-powered political bomb to the country’s conservative government: legitimize the narco-insurgency under the protection of the Geneva Conventions. The Venezuelan leader asked for a fundamental rearrangement of the guerrilla conflict’s narrative and the legal/operational framework under which the rebel forces function, “They must be recognized; they are insurgent forces that have a political project ... President Uribe, if you acknowledge the status of belligerent to the FARC, and the FARC accepts it, the protocols of Geneva would be enforced and the FARC would be forced to abandon kidnappings...”
Mr. Chavez has submitted his firm belief that the obstacle for achieving peace in Colombia’s fifty year insurgency is the nation’s head of state, President Alvaro Uribe, “The government that Colombia has today doesn’t want peace. I’m convinced that this conflict doesn’t have a military solution. We have to look for a political solution.”
His vision of a political solution would have FARC guerrillas negotiating from the vantage point of a recognized political force within Colombia, which raises the spectre of power-sharing agreements with narco-insurgents and general amnesty for those guilty of kidnappings, torture and terrorism.
In an official communiqué, the Venezuelan government outlined their grievances with the Uribe administration, as they attempted to position themselves as the only available option to negotiate a prisoner for hostage exchange, “The Colombian government is not committed to peace, but is obsessed by militarily overthrowing the insurgent forces and obsessed with war. Instead of making efforts to build a viable, sustained political solution to the lasting armed conflict, the Colombian government seeks any pretext to justify its militaristic logic.
President Uribe is not committed to a humanitarian exchange, but blindly driven to validate his arguments by war.”
Protection under the Geneva Conventions and its additional protocols would offer the FARC narco-insurgency political clout that many do not believe it merits. Analysts who consider the Marxist dinosaur a flimsy and loosely coordinated organized crime outfit, reject validating a fading Cold War ghost, kept alive by kidnappings and cocaine trafficking.
Mr. Chavez submits that offering FARC combatants the Geneva Convention’s protection will force them to abandon some of there more tasteless tactics; tactics, which in themselves grossly violate the same conventions the narco-rebels want protection from.
Under article 32 of the Third Geneva Conventions “A protected person’s shall not have anything done to them of such a character as to cause physical suffering or extermination ... the physical suffering or extermination of protected persons in their hands. This prohibition applies not only to murder, torture, corporal punishments, mutilation and medical or scientific experiments not necessitated by the medical treatment.” In September of 2007, FARC jungle rebels executed, at close range, a group of kidnapped Colombian legislators, their bodies desecrated, genitals blown off by multiple bullet blasts.
Article Three of the First Geneva Conventions, prohibiting the taking of hostages, is the more obvious example of the FARC’s violations of the laws of war. The guerrilla outfit has become adept at using kidnappings to fund their ongoing insurgency; thousands of Colombian’s have been taken hostage for ransom to fatten up the FARC’s treasury.
In Article Four of the Third Convention, speaking to the treatment and designation of POW’s, it defines who is covered under their protection, and it specifies that the rights of a prisoner of war are bestowed by his own actions and conduct, “Prisoners of war… are persons belonging to one of the following categories… Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory… being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates, having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance, that of carrying arms openly, that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.” The last two caveats for Geneva protection are problematic for the FARC, terrorism and assassinations as means of legal bellicose action have never been upheld, as they are historically contrary to the laws of war.
The jungle guerrilla’s recent history is chequered with violations to proper conduct in a state of war: On September 22, 2007 Colombian security forces were able to dismantle a FARC plot to detonate a ‘horse-bomb’ near a police station in the town of Anori. Days prior to the attempted bombing, the guerrilla had killed three peasants in the same community. In January 2007, the rebels assassinated a councilwoman from the community of San Vicente and her bodyguard. FARC enforcers shot dead two more council members on July 11, 2007. These killings are part of an insurgent assassination doctrine referred to as “Plan Pistola,” “The Gun Plan,” which targets government officials for extortion or murder.
A reasonable question is whether “The Gun Plan” doctrine is compatible with a military institution deserving the protection of the Geneva conventions.
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