Comments about Colombian president Andres Pastrana and Canadian support to the war.

Recently, Colombian president Andres Pastrana was in Spain. It seems like he went there with the firm intention of convincing european leaders to declare terrorists the FARC and ELN. Since the Choco massacre where hundreds died (and are still dying), his daily comments have been in relation to the FARC, the fact that they are terrorists and that they should be declared as such. This is of course in relation to the EU refusal to put the colombian guerrillas on its list of terrorist organisations. For some reason, Pastrana has made this his main issue.

Whatever reason Pastrana has to have the EU declare the FARC a terrorist group, it seems more like he's been campaigning for his own legitimity than for justice in his own land. The fact that most human rights organisations in Colombia have first and foremost critizised him for the events in the Choco has been put aside for the vision he's been forcing down the throats of colombians in his daily televised rants on the guerillas. Also, the fact that today unemployment, hunger, social security and war have brought the country to a far worse situation than when he came to power is something he wont want to admit responsibility for.

Colombians joke once in a while about frequent trips Pastrana makes around the world. Last week he was in Costa Rica, now he's in Spain. He's been spending more time abroad convincing others of what they ought to do than actually acting himself. And he just about always refuses any responsibilty about anything going on in the country. It looks a lot like he's been focusing on international public relations than anything else. Colombians feel betrayed by him because they elected him to work for peace, and now, after having broken off talks with the FARC, he's become Washington's most adament proponent in the war against terrorism. Of course this serves largely his own purposes since the colombian government has, historically, been considered one of the most corrupt and terrorist governments of the world. Its army is widely considered to be one of the worst human rights offenders, and it works along with paramilitary groups that regularly butcher people to death.

On that note, it's worth mentionning the amazing support given by the canadian government this week to its colombian counterpart. A special parlamentary human rights subcomity that visited Colombia last february yerterday published a report on the situation in Colombia. According to the country's main paper the subcomity "praises the progress in matters of human rights", and especially underlines that human rights abuses reported against members of the army are down. The report claims that "efforts are real and should be praised", this apparently meaning that the colombian government has done some great leap forward in human rights matters. Canadian envoys show how perspicacious they are. They rightly point at the fact that the army is not participating in massacres like it did in the past when it is known to have directly organised the deaths campaigns. Also, it is true that some military personnel are today facing long sentendes in jail; yet most military planners believed responsible for the massacres have been granted total impunity. In actuality, during the past few years, the colombian army has susbtancially reduced its activities and now keeps saying that it just doesn't have the money to operate. This strategy by which the army avoids participating in human rights abuses makes it possible for the paramilitaries to do the job. They are probably better paid, better organised and more murderous than the army ever was. But this is not something canadian government officials seem to have noticed.

While Pastrana is hammering out his monolithic message on who should be considered a terrorist and who should not, real facts tend to show how bad Colombia is getting. The UN's FAO just published a report mentioning that in Colombia 5.7 millions people eat one meal or less per day. Also, nearly 70% of colombians live in poverty while 10% of them live in utter misery. This is while members of the colombian elite import large quantities of luxury goods from around the world and have just about as much money stored away in banks abroad as is necessary to pay Colombia's debt. Colombia's social crisis is getting worse every year. According to UN figures, 2 million people are internally displaced (a conservative figure according to some), they are almost all leaving the rural areas to seek refuge in big cities and receive no help from the government. Si amid these troubles, the government's strategy seems to be oriented at getting all the international sympathy and aid it can gather. Pastrana, like a large part of the dominant wealthy colombians, seems to be totally sold out to foreign interests, largely US, and he looks like he's saying: "I'm as much a puppet as I can be…just give me some money and I'll keep playing the part."

And so, with no real solution at hand, ever since the peace talks were broken off, Colombia is getting deeper and deeper, entangled in a war with no end in sight. The situation seems more and more hopeless and, worse, the level of violence keeps rising. Last year 27 000 people were killed in this country. And one can add that only in the past month there must have been over a thousand deaths in combat areas. These were mostly members of the FARC and AUC paramilitaries (whose death toll goes largely unreported), but they are also paesants, indigenous, afro-colombians and social activists.

The level of the war rose right after the end of the peace negociations. How and what is going to happen now, nobody knows. More than anything, it looks like the army is going to keep pulling back and letting the paramilitaries take over. What happened in the Choco, and in several other parts of the country is a good example of that. The colombian army is becoming more and more bureaucratic and its soldiers are paid to guard the country's major infrastructures. While this is going on, the guerillas are having to defend more and more ferocesly the lands were they have total control.

The US, Colombia main backer and ally, has already said, through secretary of State Colin Powell, that they will seek a harder hand against terrorism. This means that they will expect the next president to rise the level of the war even more and seek a military victory. Will this be through massive aereal bombings and an even more massive number of deaths? The future will tell.