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“…hitting terrorists who attack systematically the people of a country, no matter they are not inside its territory, is an act of legitimate defence”

Juan Manuel Santos
Minister of Defence of Colombia

Juan Manuel Santos at the event Colombia: Hostage Rescue & What Lies Ahead, held 23 July 2008 in Washington (Photo: Center for American Progress vía Flickr, CC-BY-SA licence)

Even though the premise is simple and it is based on an ancient institution —if I’m attacked, I have the right to defend myself—, its development is complex. It is not enough, as minister Santos, together with President Uribe^[1], that there is an armed enemy which puts the survival of the State at risk and which is taking shelter abroad, to pursue it and wipe it out.

It is not a matter of discussion the right the State has to chase inside its borders anyone who commits a crime and, if that were the case, to subdue it through force, sticking to the law. But that right becomes exceptional when criminals seek shelter abroad. 

One of the mainstays in the international legal order is State sovereignty. Accordingly, every State must have its territory, its institutions and, of course, its inhabitants respected. But it also admits exceptions because that is not a leeway for committing crimes at the expense of others.

There are extreme situations which can lead to such exceptions, as when a State becomes a threat against the others. In this case, those affected can intervene in it but through a multilateral organization, such as the UN, for example, where the case should be studied and the proper decision should be made.

Several tools exist in order to made the troublesome State to have recourse to the international rules. From censorship motions, condemnations in international courts, economical embargoes, expelling from supranational organisms or even armed intervention through multinational troops.

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US Secretary of Defence Robert M. Gates meets with Colombian Minister of Defence Juan Manuel Santos in the Pentagon on 11 March 2008 (Photo credit: Cherie A. Thurlby, United States Department of Defence, public domain)

After calling the “legitimate defence” to “hit terrorists” inside or outside Colombian territory theory on, Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos makes the headlines again. Colombia and her neighbourhood are worried, and they are right to do so. Though this is not the first time that Santos or his boss, President Álvaro Uribe, spread the Bush theory (or "doctrine"), it is surprising their insistence with such an inconvenient timing for Colombia.

It seems the Colombian government is not willing to realize that the international panorama is changing with Barack Obama as the President of the United States, putting the Bush doctrine aside, the same doctrine urging not only the “legitimate defence” argument which was the reason to embark on the costly Iraq war, but also the same which justifies the “preventive war” used by Israel, its unconditional ally, so often.

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Released Colombian army soldier William Giovanni Domínguez (L), police officer Wálter Lozano (R), and Senadora Piedad Córdoba arrive to the Vanguardia airport in Villavicencio on 1 February 2009 (Photo credit: Gabriel Aponte / © El Espectador).

Like it happened on the past hostage releases by FARC, in this week’s operations, when former governor Alan Jara, former local lawmaker Sigifredo López, the three police officers and the army soldier were freed, opportunism also was present. Everyone sought to be the centre of the attention and, of course, their own personal profits.

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Álvaro Uribe at the event Colombia & the United States at a Crossroads: A Conversation with President Alvaro Uribe, 2 May 2007 in Washington (Photo: Center for American Progress / Flickr, CC-BY-SA licence)

Muddy waters

The political year in Colombia has started quite wildly. With Senator Gina Parody’s resignation both to her Congressional seat and the ruling Party of the U, and at the same time opposing Álvaro Uribe Vélez’s second re-election, the breachs in the ruling coalition have become official. Though her absence from the Congress will not affect the number of votes favouring Uribe, the fact that Ms Parody had been one of his closest allies in the local parliament sheds light on the extent the re-electionist project has started to break down from its own entrails.

But Ms Parody’s resignation is not an exception to the rule. The presidential pre-candidate poses of Andrés Felipe Árias, Minister of Agriculture, or “presidentico” as columnist Antonio Caballero calls him, are striking. If a man as close to president Uribe as Mr Árias is daring to promote himself as an alternative to succeed him is because Uribe is aware that his immediate re-election is not that clear, no matter his efforts to prop it up, such as the nightly decrees issued to save the referendum.

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Photos: Julián Ortega Martínez / equinoXio, with Creative Commons – Attribution licence

The march had been scheduled to begin at 11:00 on Tuesday morning. Gradually, more people came to the Palestinian embassy in Bogotá. At noon, around 150 demonstrators, most of them young people, departed eastwards, in direction to the building where the Israeli embassy to Colombia is located. Of course, some members of the Palestinian community in Colombia joined the demonstration. Mainstream media like teleSUR or Caracol TV, or alternative media as El Turbión covered this event.

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What interests hide behind the recent indigenous demonstrations

Indigenous people march in Bogotá downtown on 21 November 2008 (Photo credit: Irene Tobón [aka Airin (i-ren ishii)] via Flickr, CC-BY-NC-SA licence)

With the recent popular strikes and demonstrations against the government, undoubtedly president Álvaro Uribe must have been in a black mood. Or at least in a copper-coloured mood, due to the irrepressible stream of indigenous’ demonstrations that cannot be addressed in the short term, unlike the protests of victims of huge scams (known as "pyramids"), or the strikes of cane harvesters and justice system’s workers. Perhaps were these native communities doing all this noise in behalf of guerrilla groups like FARC? Maybe were those people expecting only positive answers to their demands from a government weakened by scandals like the ‘false positives’ ones?

First, the indigenous communities are not simply a social movement assembled spontaneously in Facebook, but a people. The minga (civil resistance demonstration) that came out from Cauca department last 26 October is an expression of these communities that are certain about what they need in order to preserve their lifestyle: autonomy, protection for their culture, and land. What makes them angry the most is that every four years the president throws the responsibility of solving the problem to the next president, instead of providing a definitive solution. In contrast, the indigenous are well organized since 40 years ago and have a long term political vision.

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Photo: BarackObama.com via Flickr, licence CC-BY-NC-SA

Obama’s projects and proposals have shifted to the background after he became the candidate of hope and change. I mean, electoral promises became hidden within the vital need for the US to actually recover its role and spaces of democracy in the world.

Of course, Americans are interested on the recovery of an economy gone bankrupt, increased unemployment rate, and health of 50 million people who do not enjoy that right. Of course, they want details and schedules on the withdrawal of their troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. They want a quietful relationship with Iran and a safe Israel. But, above all, they need their country to resume its leadership in the world, in the context of the multilateral accords, respect for its neighbours and its attention –finally– to global warming issues.

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Army parade in Medellín (Photo: Michael von Bergen [www.vonbergen.net] / Flickr, CC-BY-NC licence)

I almost don’t believe it. Since I had to deliver this project, I forgot about any kind of medium for a couple of days, so I missed one of the most significant announcements ever made by the Uribe administration: the purge of 27 Army officers of all ranks for the grisly ‘false positive’ cases in different regions of the country. This announcement is a clear contrast with this very same character’s thug, rowdy attitude when Human Rights Watch dennounced his alleged hampering of justice efforts, without even having read the report. I find quite interesting this administration has been strong enough to recognize these soldiers, in the best scenario, are responsible of negligence, and that it has decided to do it by taking drastic measures, facing the music. That’s the best thing they can do to keep our trust in the Armed Forces whose sacrifice and devotion we are so indebted to: kudos for Álvaro Uribe and Juan Manuel Santos’ campaign.

Nevertheless, I wonder if this wouldn’t be a case similar to Wilson Bueno’s (aka Isaza), the guerrilla fighter who helped former Congressman Óscar Tulio Lizcano to escape FARC. There’s huge speculation that his motivation was not an altruist feeling or compassion toward his prisoner, not even ambition for the substantial reward or the hero’s treatment Uribe is giving him (with such an insistence for appearing in front of the cameras and a rush for controversy which remember his best smoke screens). I’m also inclined to think this guerrilla man saw his bad luck going when he felt the Army breathing down his neck, so he thought he had more possibilities to go out alive with a valuable hostage, sorry, with a freed man, than waiting for the military to kill him in a rescue attempt or his own commanders after a second blow like Operation Jaque. In other words, that man didn’t free Mr Lizcano for conviction, but because he had to.

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Indigenous clash with police in Cauca (Photo: Simone Bruno vía Indymedia Colombia)

While the Colombian government deals with scandal after scandal, in the last few weeks we have witnessed, again, protests from different sectors: the judiciary branch, the sugar cane cutters, and indigenous peoples. But why if Colombia’s the second happiest country on Earth? Why if everything’s so perfect with the "democratic security" policy? Why if, according to terrorist Pablo Escobar’s cousin (José Obdulio Gaviria, turned into presidential adviser or a de facto minister of propaganda), paramilitary death squads no longer exist, FARC are nothing but six separated bands on the verge of collapse, and there is no internal displacement but "migration"? Let’s take a look.

The judiciary branch started a national strike late August. They demanded a 1992 law to be finally honoured. That law enacts the salary and benefit system for Colombia’s government employees, but it has not been completely fulfilled in the case of the judiciary branch. In other words, judiciary employees were demanding fair salaries. Negotiations were hard, but the worst thing is that, after months of smear and intimidation to the Supreme Court of Justice from the government because it is probing alleged links between President Uribe allies and paramilitary death squads, most of the public believed that judiciary employees were striking because "they didn’t want to work", "they earn too much and they want more", "they just want to f**k president Uribe." A series of presidential decrees, intended to partially satisfy judiciary employees demands, was not enough. It could satisfy judges and justices, who have been enjoying previous benefits, but not low-rank employees. On 9 October, president Álvaro Uribe, after a "suggestion" by Colombia’s richest man, declared a state of emergency. Intimidation finally worked, and the judiciary branch union voted to "suspend" the strike 15 October, after 44 days.

Early September sugar cane cutters in Valle del Cauca (southwest) decided to strike, protesting for low salaries and unfair social security conditions. It turns out that the sugar cane cutters, working for around 13 sugar cane mills and ethanol plants grouped at ASOCAÑA, are actually "employed" indirectly through "associated labour cooperatives", "bodies that were designed by the Colombian government in the late 1990s as part of a labour reform so that companies no longer have to pay contributions to social security and other benefits." As a minister cinically said they cannot strike against themselves. Most of the sugar cane mills are owned by tycoon Carlos Ardila Lülle, who also owns pro-Uribe, Fox News-like RCN TV and Radio. The protests, initially peaceful, turned violent when riot police cracked down on sugar cane cutters striking and blocking highways. Some cutters marched in Cali, and a few protestors traveled to Bogotá to explain their demands. The reaction of Uribe was to claim that FARC had infiltrated the strike, which is still going on, despite media blackout.

Finally, indigenous peoples all over the country celebrated the Minga Nacional de Resistencia Indígena, as a commemoration of that it’s known in English-speaking countries as Columbus Day and in Spanish-speaking nations as Día de la raza or, more recently, Día de la Hispanidad. In La María-Piendamó, Cauca (southwestern Colombia), indigenous activists blocked the Pan-American Highway to force the government to sit and talk about their demands (including but not limited to land promised by the government as a compensation for a 1991 massacre).

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Im in ur kreditz failing ur economiez (Photo: TeppoTK / Flickr, CC-BY licence)

Everything started with an irresponsible act: evading the prudent way of carrying out the relevant studies to analyze the risk in order to lend money to those having enough solvency to pay a mortgage loan. Yes, in order to encourage housing consumption, to impact homes’ net wealth (which is perceived as the acquired level of wealth at the moment of becoming a house’s owner), and energize construction, the credit specialized organizations devoted to lend money as if there were no tomorrow.

That, obviously, strongly impacted consumption increase and construction dynamics in the USA at the start of this century. The problem is that they never realized many average Americans were going to fall behind the payment of their obligations, which leaded the credit entities to make the warranties and the mortgages effective. Since those mortgages were piling up at the banks’ files, it was needed to create the most complex, collateral share certificates ever to be traded in stock markets, and then transfer them to the investors. So, as they say on The History Channel, the rest is history!

Now we are facing the deepest and most significant financial crisis in history. In 1929, during the 24-29 October week, around 14 billion dollars vanished from markets… today, we’re talking about a mere trillion American dollars lost in less than a month, 8 times the Colombian GDP. Corporations as Lehman Brothers, with a 158-year-old tradition and having survived the two world wars and the Great Depression, is now bankrupt and out of the market. In August, one share was worth US$28; three weeks ago, it was just 17 cents. Or General Motors, whose shares were worth last week the same they were 60 years ago, as if they had done nothing in all that time. Citigroup and Wachovia, completely with no cash or liquidity. Giants Fannie Mae y Freddie Mac, along with AIG, nationalized at the best way of the Chavista pantomime.

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