FARC TALKS COMING SOON? SOME THINK SO

C O N F I D E N T I A L BOGOTA 004662

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/15/2016
TAGS: PGOV PREL PTER CO
SUBJECT: FARC TALKS COMING SOON? SOME THINK SO


Classified By: Ambassador William B. Wood
Reasons: 1.4(a),(b),(d)


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Summary
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1. (C) Peace talks with the FARC are possible in the next
few years, according to a group of ten (mainly leftist)
Colombian observers. Their surprisingly optimistic outlook
is based on a conjunction of factors: military pressure;
gains by the democratic left; narcotrafficking difficulties;
international condemnations; organizational and generational
shifts; and legal carrots and sticks. The commentators said
President Uribe has the skills, clout, and desire to coax the
FARC to the table in his second term. End Summary.

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Military Balance
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2. (C) The military balance has shifted significantly in the
COLMIL's favor, according to a number of these experts. The
number of public security forces (both COLAR and police) have
increased by 50% since 2002, with an emphasis on expanded
presence in rural areas where the FARC is focused. Colombian
budget increases and U.S. assistance have yielded significant
improvements in weapons, equipment, intelligence, training,
expertise, discipline, morale, and assertiveness. As a
result, under the Plan Patriota program the COLMIL has
retaken territory formerly ceded to the FARC as well as
control of vital routes of communication, mobility, and
supply. In the view of National Reconciliation and
Reparations Commission (NRRC) chair Eduardo Pizarro, Colombia
is now a formidable FARC opponent.


3. (C) The counterpart to COLMIL expansion is FARC
deterioration. A vital blow was the 2003 loss of its former
safe haven (despeje) as a secure base of planning, training,
and central command. Academic Fernando Cubides saw this as
the FARC's big mistake, a "strategic error," and a turning
point in the conflict. It forced the FARC to decentralize
its forces. Demobilized FARC commander 'Nicholas' explained
how the battle paradigm has changed: previously the COLMIL
would arrive, attack, and leave; now they fight deeper into
terrain, stay in place, and hold their ground. Pizarro
listed broken lines of command, communication problems,
indiscipline, lower morale, increased desertions, and higher
burden of militia recruitment as significant FARC challenges.
Recent FARC attacks have been few and aimed at isolated and
vulnerable units caught off guard; its sights have shifted to
softer targets, i.e. defenseless civilians and economic
infrastructure, in a reflection of its reduced offensive
capability. In March FARC leadership ordered fronts to
conduct aggressive attacks to disrupt legislative elections,
but the result was paltry. Security analyst Alfredo Rangel
said spikes in FARC violence will only be last gasps before
dialogue and simply attempts to gain a stronger bargaining
position.

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The Democratic Left
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4. (C) Leftist trends in the region, and the Polo
Democratico Alternativo's increased support in Colombia
(including the election of Bogota Mayor Lucho Garzon and
Valle Governor Angelino Garzon) will probably encourage the
FARC to engage in peace talks, according to former Peace
Commissioner Daniel Garcia Pena. Ex-guerrilla 'Nicholas'
made the same point about Garzon and Gaviria, explaining that
the worst slap in the face to the FARC is to show that the
left can have a political voice by democratic, nonviolent
means. It is an affront to the FARC, said 'Nicholas,' that
those like Gaviria who have opted for the legal route are
closer to power after four years than the FARC has come in 44
years.

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Cocaine Trafficking
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5. (C) Cocaine trafficking reportedly accounts for the
majority of FARC funding, and it is commonly cited as the
motive that will keep the FARC fighting indefinitely.
Pizarro highlighted the FARC's principal dilemma on drugs:
narcotrafficking is the lightning rod which attracted the
interest of the U.S. Plan Colombia's aerial spraying and
interdiction have increased the economic costs of
narcotrafficking, while Plan Patriota's incursions into coca
growing zones have inflicted greater guerrilla casualties.
Pizarro said recent U.S. indictments of 50 top FARC drug
traffickers will reignite the old debates within the
Secretariat about the correctness of drug trafficking.

SIPDIS
Interlocutors suggested the FARC leadership may be willing to
cast drugs aside in pursuit of their more primary political
aims. Former EPL guerrilla Alvaro Villaraga said coca has
had a big influence on the FARC, yet leaders are very
pragmatic about it as merely a business. NRRC member Ana
Teresa Bernal recounted that in talks at Caguan during the
Pastrana administration (septel) the FARC submitted a
proposal to the GOC for cessation of its coca cultivation and
for guerilla assistance in eradication.

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Isolation
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6. (C) Pizarro pointed out that previously the FARC could
point the finger at the other armed actors for human rights
violations (especially their arch-enemy paramilitaries) to
defend its own actions. With the others gone, the context is
no longer one of multilateral war with impunity on many
sides. Isolation puts FARC violence in greater relief. Now
90% of atrocities are attributable to the FARC, Pizarro says,
holding up a "mirror of barbarity" to the guerillas and
creating a "dramatic dilemma of legitimacy." Not only is the
FARC's self-image (and morale) hurt, said Pizarro, but so is
its image internationally and nationally. The E.U. has now
joined the U.S. in declaring the FARC a terrorist
organization, curtailing overseas sources of support and
sympathy. Popular support within Colombia is at its nadir,
estimated around 2-3%. In 2006 elections guerilla-endorsed
candidates lost even in FARC stronghold towns. In Pizarro's
view, trends such as these which are unfavorable to the FARC
are accordingly favorable to negotiations.

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Organizational Fault Lines
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7. (C) Former President Pastrana's Peace Commissioner,
Camilo Gonzalez, described the FARC Secretariat as "fanatical
Marxists" and asserted that middle cadres are doctrinaire
too, but he said the troops may not be so committed to the
insurgency's ideological aims. Urban recruits may be
politically aligned but are inexperienced and untrained in
warfare; the adjustment to mobile rural battle can be a shock
to their initial resolve. Altogether the base of the FARC's
pyramid is less stable and more disconnected physically and
philosophically from the leadership. Pizarro highlighted the
generational theme, too, pointing out that leaders of the
FARC's founding days at Marquetalia are dying. Moreover, the
composition of the Secretariat is shifting: its seven members
are now dominated by those of urban origin (five) rather than
rural campesinos (two). The resistance of the past forty
years, says Pizarro, is a campesino concept. By contrast the
FARC's city-born, highly educated ideological leader Alfonso
Cano is now 55 years old; in Pizarro's view, Cano does not
want to die in the jungle.

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Legal Carrots and Sticks
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8. (C) Interlocutors said the Justice and Peace law would
not, by itself, bring the FARC to the table. Many said FARC
leaders are unwilling to serve any jail sentences at all,
given their conviction that their motivations were pure as
the 'army of the people.' Moreover, past experience (septel)
shows that the FARC expects a peace process and associated
legal framework crafted uniquely to their needs. Rangel
qualified Justice and Peace as "marginal...more of an
obstacle than a facilitator." Views were mixed on the impact
of U.S. extradition filings. Pizarro said "the threat of
extradition is an extremely high cost," and therefore a
valuable bargaining chip in negotiations. Most commentators

saw a GOC commitment not to extradite those sought by the
U.S. as a potential concession by the GOC to wring
compromises from the FARC.

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Betting on Uribe
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9. (C) Drawing analogies to El Salvador and Guatemala,
Pizarro stressed that success in peace processes in Latin
America has been typically achieved by right-wing
governments. No one negotiates with the weak, he said, only
with the strong. Villaraga cited a Colombian precedent: the
very authoritarian military government of Rojas Pinilla in
1953 demobilized some 15,000 liberal guerillas who were
precursors to the FARC. Gonzalez commented that when one
talks to the FARC one sees that they despise the Colombian
left, academics, Liberal candidate Horacio Serpa, and
politicians, while they respect power and symbols of power.
Even Liberal party leader and ex-President Cesar Gaviria
conceded that the FARC despises the left more than Uribe for
being traitors. Rangel concurred, saying that guerrillas
hate the political left as apostates.


10. (C) Rangel stressed that any process of negotiation with
the FARC would need immense political support. In his first
term Uribe used his substantial personal capital to soften
the GOC stance and make a series of landmark offers to the
FARC. The most important of these was the acceptance of a
key FARC demand (see septel) for a constitutional assembly
(constituyente) to follow peace talks. With the ELN, Uribe's
administration yielded on its demand for a total truce before
talks, becoming more pragmatic in order to make progress. On
the subject of humanitarian exchange of hostages with the
FARC, Uribe has similarly reversed his prior positions with
respect to temporary 'safe haven' in the pursuit of results.
In his offers to the FARC, Uribe has shown "immense
generosity," according to Rangel. By all accounts this is
because Uribe definitely wants negotiations with the FARC.
As Pizarro said, this is the way Uribe wants to pass into
history.

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Why Not Wait to 2010?
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11. (C) Some argue that the FARC has survived for forty
years and can survive another four under Uribe, awaiting a
softer left-leaning administration in 2010. The FARC is
expert at holding out and hiding out, helped by dense jungles
and frightened rural populations. Ana Teresa Bernal took
this perspective: "The FARC defines itself in terms of
resistance. Their characteristic is prolonged popular war.
Four more years of Uribe does not mean an end to the FARC."


12. (C) Others interviewed, however, said the FARC could
neither 'lay quiet' nor sustain another four years of active
conflict without attempting negotiations. "Four more years
of (Uribe's) Democratic Security will be too costly for the
FARC," forecast Pizarro; "we are entering the last stages of
the war." Ex-insider 'Nicholas' added that the FARC has been
in a phase of accumulation for the past four years; it needs
to pass to a more active phase of confrontation or it will
atrophy. Fading into civilian life for four years would
disperse the ranks of hard-won recruits. Al Qaeda expert
Bruce Hoffman asserted that terrorist organizations must make
continued attacks to be relevant. A guerrilla movement
without actions, without visual and visceral attacks, does
not get attention.

WOOD