This story is known only superficially. The communist narco-guerrillas known as the FARC, in concert with Hugo Chavez, manufactured a huge media circus in order to liberate three innocent captives held hostage in the Colombian jungles over the last several years. They intended to dominate the world’s headlines, but were preempted by other, more opportune, though equally sinister, terrorists who wrecked their party with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. The publicity, naturally, will be significantly less. In any case, what where the objectives being pursued by the protagonists of this obscene spectacle based on exploiting the suffering of the victims and their families in Colombia?
Lets begin with Hugo Chavez
The Venezuelan president seeks to project his image and consolidate his status as the leader in a zone of influence. It fits part and parcel with his narcissistic psychosis, but it also responds to a particular strategy. He set up the operation as a collective political triumph. It was an opportunity to present himself at the head of a group of countries, which he proposes should adhere to his delirious plans of constructing an international political block dedicated to the hostile treatment of the Western World. Thus, he quickly asked of his allies that they designate representatives of a certain status that would demonstrate his power of assembly. Chavez, like all mafia godfathers, charges interest on whatever resources are loaned. His debtors, in some cases, are the thankful recipients of those electoral briefcases full of petrodollars that fly like comets throughout the region.
Argentina sent ex president Nestor Kirchner and foreign secretary Jorge Taina; Cuba, German Sanchez, ambassador in Caracas, and known by Venezuelans as the Viceroy, an able and hardened representative of the Cuban intelligence services; Ecuador picked Gustavo Larrea, ex Interior minister; Brazil, Marco Aurelio Garcia, a man who is close to both Lula and Castro; and Bolivia sent the vice minister Sacha Llorent. Together with these, somewhat disoriented, will travel the French ambassador Hadelin de la Tour-du-Pin, who will probably enjoy this picturesque excursion through the tropics and maybe even be convinced that he is the beatific agent of a charitable act, or perhaps a minor character in a Garcia Marquez novel.
For the FARC, the release of the two women and the child, born captive, assists them in six objectives:
*It allows them to demonstrate flexibility and improve their uncomfortable image as murderers and drugs traffickers.
*It obligates the hated government of Uribe to confer on them a certain legitimacy.
*The acceptance, if only provisionally, of “neutral zones.”
*The insertion, within the conflict, of international factors favorable to them.
*Lend support and please Hugo Chavez, their most valuable ally.
*And finally, perhaps take a step toward the tactic suggested by Chavez: give support to a candidate akin to their cause in the 2010 elections, a strategy recently approved by Raul Reyes, head of the FARC’s political arm. Prepare themselves, in sum, to realize at the polls what they have not achieved with four decades of violence. After that hypothetical victory would follow the now familiar script: a new Constitution and the progressive and total dis-articulation of the democratic / republican institutions of Colombia.
What no one can understand is what a person like Nicolas Sarkozky is doing in this inhosbitable region with such distasteful company. One would hope to see a more serious attitude from the president of France. He must know that the Council of the European Union has, for very good reasons, declared the FARC a terrorists organization. They are a sizable group, made up of thousands of members, dedicated to acts of extortion, drugs trafficking, kidnappings, and assassinations. Their explicit objective, to make matters worse, is to set up a collectivist madhouse, modeled after the soviets, once they occupy the Palace of Nariño. Where is the coherence of a diplomatic policy which only a few weeks ago warned of the dangerousness of Iran and today commits itself to the Colombian jungle at the hand of Ahmadinejad’s greatest ally in the world? How is it possible that the same France, which in Europe contributes loyally and efficiently to the prosecution of ETA, in Latin America naively falls prey to a dance performed to the tune played by Colombian narco-terrorists?
