Colombian leader's raid gamble pays off

Posted on Tue, Mar. 11, 2008

Colombian leader's raid gamble pays off

By FRANK BAJAK

A cross-border raid into Ecuador to kill a senior Colombian guerrilla was a calculated risk that paid off for President Alvaro Uribe.
He survived a high-stakes diplomatic dustup and reaped a rebel's laptop with files indicating Colombia's leftist neighbors conspired with the insurgents against him. The biggest negative has been the anger of relatives of rebel hostages who fear the attack will impede more releases.

For the conservative Uribe, eliminating leftist rebel comandantes is personal. Fighters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, killed his rancher father in 1983. His two-term presidency has, to a considerable degree, been about payback.

The popular, U.S.-backed leader set off last week's saber-rattling by the leftist presidents of Venezuela and Ecuador by sending commandos 1.2 miles into Ecuador to kill Raul Reyes, a member of the FARC's seven-man ruling secretariat and its main link to the outside world.

The March 1 raid eliminated a member of the FARC's ruling junta for the first time in the history of the Western Hemisphere's oldest and most potent insurgency, which has been seeking to overthrow successive Colombian governments since 1964.

Uribe told news executives at a palace briefing he had carefully calculated the risk. Then, the wonkish workaholic flew to a summit in the Dominican Republic to defend himself before Latin America's leaders.

His fellow presidents were upset by Colombia's violation of a neighbor's territory. They unanimously condemned the attack despite Uribe's argument that he acted only after repeatedly providing evidence to Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Rafael Correa of Ecuador that Colombian rebels shelter on their soil.

But Uribe's widely broadcast finger-wagging showdown with Chavez and Correa in Santo Domingo on Friday ended with a mere apology and handshakes, likely due to Uribe's stroke of luck in the raid.

Rushing in after Colombia's air force dropped bombs that killed two dozen people at the rebel camp, commandos recovered three laptops. Electronic files from one prove Chavez and Correa conspired with the FARC to undermine Uribe, Colombian officials say.

Colombia quickly made public about 30 messages apparently sent between Reyes and other rebel leaders - documents that Chavez and Correa call fakes.

But this may be just the beginning: Authorities told The Associated Press they also recovered intact two external hard drives and three USB memory sticks. They said they are studying those and the other two laptops with the help of Interpol and U.S. computer experts.

"They are working very carefully in order not to lose information because some files are password-protected," a Colombian police official said, insisting on anonymity because he was not authorized to be quoted.

In the documents already discovered, the Colombians say, FARC chiefs admit to killing the sister of former President Cesar Gaviria and to planting a 2003 car bomb that killed 36 people at a club where Bogota's upper crust gathered for squash and drinks.

Cocaine sales are discussed in other files, and a plan is floated to borrow money from Libya for the possible purchase of surface-to-air missiles, officials say. Uribe interprets several documents as indicating Chavez was planning to give the FARC $300 million.

Such allegations have deflected attention from Uribe's own record.

He has been dogged by allegations he consorted with drug traffickers in the 1980s as a political up-and-comer. His camp is tainted by close ties with right-wing paramilitary death squads, a scandal that has landed 20 congressman, most of them Uribe allies, in jail. The Colombian army also has a questionable human rights record after dozens of civilian killings.

Chavez, who openly displays his sympathy for the FARC, has cited all this and more in calling Uribe a "mafia boss" and lackey of "the oligarchy" and Washington.

Given their ideological divide, many thought it odd when Uribe agreed last August to give Chavez a role in mediating a swap of more than 40 high-value FARC hostages for hundreds of jailed rebels. Uribe soon tried to push Chavez out, only to watch the FARC deliver six hostages into Chavez's hands on live television.

When the last four were freed Feb. 27, the rebels reminded Uribe in a communique of their key demand for talks on a broader prisoner swap: the removal of troops for 45 days from a New York City-sized area of southwestern Colombia. Uribe says the FARC negotiators must show up unarmed, a condition the rebels won't accept.

Four days later, Uribe oversaw the pre-dawn raid that killed Reyes.

His generals had known Reyes' whereabouts for weeks through human intelligence, several senior Colombian officials told AP.

But it wasn't that difficult to pinpoint Reyes' camp, where journalists, leftist sympathizers and foreign envoys regularly met with the rebels' public face. It was the main point of contact for the French government, which has been desperately seeking the release of Ingrid Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian national kidnapped while running against Uribe in 2002.

"This could delay, obstruct negotiations," Betancourt's husband, Juan Carlos Lecompte, told AP in discussing the attack. "It wasn't the moment to do it. Things were going well with the releases."

On Saturday, Uribe scored another victory when a second member of the FARC's secretariat, Ivan Rios, was killed by Rios' own chief of security, who is seeking reward money.

Colombia's military cheered the two killings as crippling for the FARC.

But former Sen. Luis Eladio Perez, who spent 6 1/2 years as a FARC hostage until his release last week, doubts the rebels are seriously weakened. He said their movement provides the only economic opportunities for people in Colombia's miserable, forgotten backwaters.

"The FARC doesn't have trouble recruiting," Perez told AP. "It provides (its troops) with food, assures them clothing, gives them a little something, like a watch."

Perez was held since July with three U.S. military contractors - Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes - who fell into FARC hands in 2003. Gonsalves' mother is at her wit's end with Colombia's leader.

"Uribe is constantly sabotaging any kind of release," Jo Rosano told AP by phone from Bristol, Conn. "You can't win by constant fighting. You have to sit down and talk. Believe me, I'm not any fan of the FARC. But enough is enough."

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By Simon on Mar 12, 14:23 in Politics & the war.

dwr says on Mar 12, 14:47:

Fair and Balanced

britabroad says on Mar 12, 14:51:

With my limited Spanish I think I heard on the 1pm news that the guerrillero who killed Rio IS being given the reward money mentioned above.

Leave the big stick at home...carry a cannon!

ColombianoGringo says on Mar 12, 15:20:

I feel compassion for Luis Eladio Perez because he spent so many years as a hostage. However, being a hostage doesn't make him an authority on counter-terrorism any more than being a patient in a hospital makes you an expert on medicine.

He is forgetting that these "troops" that are being provided with food, clothing, and a watch were most likely forced into the farc when they were children. They are also subject to extreme abuse, rape and summary executions at the whim of their "benevolent" commanders. The fact that the farc force campesinos into growing coca hardly qualifies as "economic development."

billyb says on Mar 12, 15:24:

Maybe a little Stockholm syndrome going on there.

ColombianoGringo says on Mar 12, 15:32:

You have to feel for those people and try to understand them for what they have gone through. It is understandable that they would want to do everything possible to free the remaining hostages. Unfortunately, some of the farc imposed requirements for a "humanitarian exchange" are completely unacceptable. I hate to sound callous, but what is best for the hostages isn't necessarily what is best for Colombia.

Simon says on Mar 12, 15:32:

Great anology, CG!

"Qué te calles, coño!" -- Capitán Vidal (Laberinto del Fauno/Pan's Labyrinth)

billyb says on Mar 12, 15:45:

"I hate to sound callous, but what is best for the hostages isn't necessarily what is best for Colombia."

You are 100% correct. As callous as it may sound, his responsability is to the 44 million Colombians. Do whatever is possible for the hostages (all of them, not just certain ones with french citizenship), but without harming the country as whole.

Mr. Hollywood says on Mar 12, 16:01:

ColGringo, I agree with you 110%.

It's a terrible thing that the hostages and their families have been put through. And their reactions are totally understandable. But the interests of the country as a whole must take precedence over the interests of a few individuals. Creating this dissonance is exactly the point of hostage taking.

To say that the Colombian people should not have killed Reyes when given the opportunity simply to allow an ongoing conversation about the hostages is preposterous, yet that's essentially what LeCompte is saying.