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"The
Bolivarian Movement is not an electoral force. Its aim is to create
an insurrectionary movement because the FARC cannot seize power
alone by military means. Our efforts will not succeed if this just
ends up being two armies, the FARC and the government security forces,
fighting each other," said Carlos Antonio Lozada, former commander
of the FARC’s urban militias in Bogotá and now member
of the rebel negotiating team.
The FARC insists that, unlike the M-19 insurgent group, they will
never disarm. But the FARC are not the only ones looking more to
the battlefield than the peace table. In addition to signing up
greater numbers of professional, volunteer soldiers instead of raw
conscripts, and purchasing helicopters and other matériel,
the military is currently completing at least five major garrisons
on the strategic approaches to Bogotá.
The outposts, manned by battalion-strength units, will ultimately
be used as "mooring points" to launch search-and-destroy
missions into rebel strongholds. The most significant of these bases
is in Sumapaz, a region that runs down the spine of the eastern
cordillera of the Andes, through five provinces and into the poor
southern neighborhoods of the capital. The area has long been used
as a logistics route by the rebels and a major thoroughfare for
spiriting kidnap victims out of Bogotá.
FARC supreme commander Manuel Marulanda has long predicted the most
decisive battles of Colombia’s war will be fought in Sumapaz’s
rugged mountains and high plains that rise above 12,000 feet.
"If Bogotá falls then the country falls. By building
this base in Sumapaz we may set back the FARC plan by eight or 10
years," said Col. Enrique Cotes, commander of the army’s
Sumapaz task force in a February interview.
Few ordinary Colombians believe there is any real prospect of peace
in the short term. Most think the war will escalate before the combatants
decide they must seek a genuine political solution to the conflict.
But even if, against the odds, rebel and paramilitary rifles do
fall silent any time soon, one of the impoverished inhabitants of
Nelson Mandela City, the Cartagena shantytown, warned the conflict
would not be over.
"The peace talks mean nothing," said Lázaro Pérez,
"Only when the government begins to help the poor will the
war finish."
Related
Articles:
Into the Abyss: The Paramilitary Political
Objective in Colombia
Vanishing Act? The Mysterious Disappearance
of Carlos Castaño
A Forum on U.S. Involvement in Colombia
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