• Analysis by Constanza Vieira* (bogota)
• Wednesday, January 21, 2009
• Inter Press Service

'Operation Mistrust' could be the name of the efforts surrounding the planned unilateral release of six hostages by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which has run aground a month after it was announced.

As the days go by, the anxiety of the hostages’ families, as well as the mistrust and doubts, are growing.

Distrust on the part of the right-wing Colombian government of Álvaro Uribe towards a group of intellectuals who have maintained contacts with the FARC, and who secured the rebel group’s promise to free hostages. And also on the part of activists towards the authorities, who have been dragging their feet and delaying arrangements.

In addition, doubts have been raised as to the Red Cross’ capacity to ensure that the security forces will respect the operation – and even with regard to the level of neutrality of the aid group.

These are the most serious obstacles standing in the way of the release operation.

And since Uribe asked the Vatican last week to oversee the hostage release, fears have arisen that he is trying to gain time to plan some kind of military or intelligence intervention in the release.

At the same time that he asked the Red Cross to handle the logistics of the operation, the president set the condition that no foreign government or personality could take part.

But Uribe then 'authorised' the Vatican to help monitor the release - although without previously consulting the Church, which apparently annoyed leaders at the Vatican.

People close to the efforts to bring about the hostages’ release said the Colombian government has not even begun to take the official steps required to arrange the Vatican’s participation.

Furthermore, 'one thing the Holy See does not do is run,' an unidentified source remarked to the Bogota newspaper El Espectador in an article in its Sunday edition.

To all of this was added the fact that since 2008, the FARC has publicly stated that it would not accept Catholic Church participation in overseeing any hostage release operation – a refusal that it reiterated last week, IPS was told.

On Dec. 21, the FARC announced that it planned on handing six hostages over to a group of concerned intellectuals who have been holding a public dialogue with the guerrillas by means of open letters.

The group, now known as Colombians for Peace, emerged at the initiative of Liberal Party Senator Piedad Córdoba, a staunch opponent of Uribe and advocate of negotiations for an exchange of hostages held by the FARC for insurgents who are in jail. A humanitarian agreement for a hostage-prisoner swap is seen by the movement as a possible first step towards peace talks between the rebel group and the government.

The hostages’ families, meanwhile, say the government has stepped up bombing in the area where it believes the hostages might be released, although Colombians for Peace does not yet know where the handover would take place.

In previous negotiations, Córdoba and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez successfully brokered the release of six civilian hostages, in January and February 2008.

Both the opposition senator and Venezuela’s left-wing president were named by Uribe in 2007 as facilitators of negotiations for a hostage release. But the Colombian leader abruptly cut off their mediation role in November 2007, triggering a diplomatic crisis with Caracas.

The hostages, whose release is now in doubt, are Alan Jara and Sigifredo López, a former governor and regional lawmaker, respectively, who were seized by the FARC in 2001 and 2002, as well as three police officers and one soldier, whose names have not been provided by the insurgents.

FARC has taken hostages with the aim of swapping them for imprisoned guerrillas, along the lines of humanitarian exchanges carried out with previous administrations.

In early July, 15 hostages – including former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. defence contractors - were rescued in a bloodless military intelligence operation.

In the operation, one of the members of the military intelligence team used the Red Cross symbol, which is protected by international humanitarian law, and the misuse of which can constitute a war crime.

The team also disguised itself as a humanitarian mission - the helicopters carried a fictitious logo with the words 'International Humanitarian Mission' as well as the 'no weapons' symbol used by all such missions – while some of the members of the team posed as journalists.

In statements made after the operation, high-level army officers said they had closely studied the modus operandi and logistics used in the January and February 2008 hostage release operations, which were organised by Chávez, a former army lieutenant colonel.

After the stunning July rescue operation made world headlines, the question of the use of the Red Cross symbol drew loud criticism from some quarters.

But in Colombia the overall impression was that the Red Cross did not vigorously defend its logo from being misused, which perhaps contributed to the current doubts about the group’s neutrality.

The FARC says Red Cross facilitation of the hostage release, along with the presence of Senator Córdoba and delegates of Colombians for Peace, is 'insufficient,' and has called for the participation of some international figure.

The people taking part in the Colombians for Peace movement also consider that the only way to provide safety guarantees in the operation is the presence of international observers.

Uribe has made statements about Colombians for Peace, saying the public dialogue with the guerrillas vía open letters is 'a new ruse' by the FARC.

The problem is that in Colombians for Peace, made up of 150 intellectuals and journalists who signed the open letters to the FARC, known as the Diálogo Público Epistolar (Epistolary Public Dialogue), urging the rebels to abandon the practices of hostage-taking and kidnapping for ransom, there is no one with the training and background needed to assess the security of the logistical aspects organised by the Red Cross.

Although Colombians for Peace and the government agree that the Red Cross should hire the necessary helicopters and planes in Brazil, there is no confidence among the former as to guarantees that the aircraft would not be fitted out with devices that would endanger the safety of the hostages, the facilitators or the guerrillas.

This is a matter of concern because the aircraft would have to stay overnight in hangars in Colombia before setting out for the site designated by the rebels for the handover of the hostages, and it is not clear who would be responsible for ensuring a kind of 'chain of custody' of the planes and helicopters in such a way as to provide safety guarantees for the operation.

So far, all of the names of international personalities, including religious figures, suggested by Colombians for Peace as observers have been rejected or simply ignored by the Uribe administration.

In an attempt to get things moving, Senator Córdoba proposed on Sunday the participation of U.S. Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern, who is vice chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee, a member of the House Budget Committee, and co-chair of both the Tom Lantos Human Rights Caucus and the Congressional Hunger Caucus.

According to the U.S. chapter of Amnesty International, 'Congressman McGovern has been a leading voice on a range of political, civil, economic, social and cultural rights issues during his tenure, highlighting crisis situations in countries from Darfur and East Timor to Colombia and El Salvador.'

Córdoba believes McGovern’s participation in the release operation would not be opposed by the Uribe administration, which is keen on gaining U.S. congressional approval of a free trade deal between the two countries that has been blocked since last year by Democratic lawmakers on the grounds that the Colombian government has not done enough to clean up the country’s human rights record.

Last year, McGovern took part in meetings with the families of both hostages and imprisoned rebels - an unusual move that would make it unlikely for the insurgent group to oppose his eventual participation.

McGovern called Córdoba last week and told her he was interested in accompanying the release mission.

As of Tuesday night, the government has remained silent on the issue.

*Constanza Vieira is one of the signatories of the Diálogo Público Epistolar letter.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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