Danny Morrison on a
FARC-ICAL EPISODE
( http://www.dannymorrison.com/ )
AS I SEE IT - Danny Morrison
Jim Monaghan is a sound man, a former republican prisoner, who I met in the
1980s after his release from prison and who sat on the Ard Comhairle of Sinn Féin
for a time.
He and two others were arrested in Colombia last week with false passports,
which in itself is a fairly minor offence. However, the Colombian military
authorities claimed that the three men had been training FARC (the
16,000-strong, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) in “terrorist acts, the
handling and manipulation of explosives and the fabrication of non-conventional
weapons.” A spokesperson claimed that traces of cocaine and numerous types of
sophisticated explosives had been found on their clothing.
The British media jumped on the claims and unionist representatives heralded the
arrests as evidence of republican deceit with regards to the peace process. By
the next morning the BBC was reporting that the authorities had satellite photos
of the three men training FARC in the making of barrack busters.
Sinn Féin was called to account for the men’s presence in South America. The
media reported that the investigation could take up to eighteen months and that
the men were facing possibly twenty years in prison.
By the next morning there were, eh, no pictures and a lot less talk of traces of
explosives or cocaine on the men’s clothes. Now, I haven’t a clue what Jim
and his company were doing in Colombia. I do know, however, to be sceptical and
suspicious of news agencies, especially given our own experience of the chasm
between the presentation of Irish republicans in the British media and the
actual truth.
Jim Monaghan is well read and is very much into revolutionary politics. But
he’s not the sort of guy to be interfering in the internal affairs of another
country in the way of Tony Blair, for example. Blair supports ‘Plan
Colombia’, a $1.3 billion programme organised by the USA, aimed at defeating
FARC; a programme that has caused immense suffering to the peasantry.
Blair and former US President Bill Clinton, not that long ago, also authorised a
bombing campaign in Kosovo and Serbia, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds
of civilians. Of course, they killed some of ‘the enemy’ as well and brought
Serbia to heel, so that must make it okay. Ulster Unionist MPs supported this
bombing campaign whilst simultaneously questioning the commitment of republicans
to the use of exclusively peaceful means for achieving their objectives.
So what about FARC. Founded in 1964 it has its roots in decades of peasant
revolts against repressive, oligarchic governments in a country where 1.5% of
the people own and control 80% of the land that is fit for agricultural
development.
Hundreds of thousands have died over fifty years in an intermittent civil war
that continues to this day. Displaced peasants who were driven from their farms
by large landholders sought out inhospitable areas such as the foothills region
of the various Amazonic departments where they established agricultural
production. It is in these areas that FARC enjoys most support and from where it
launched its guerrilla war.
In the 1980s FARC supported the Patriotic Union (UP), a coalition of left-wing
forces that attempted to establish a popular political party. In its first
electoral intervention, UP elected 14 Congress members to the Senate and House,
eighteen deputies to departmental assemblies and 335 counsellors. In reaction to
this the Bogotá government unleashed a ‘dirty war’. By 1988, 30% of UP’s
candidates were assassinated. Trade union leaders were also murdered, popular
protest criminalized and the media continues to be controlled by big business.
The extermination of the UP threw FARC back into armed struggle.
The peasants, particularly in the wake of agricultural recession, found coca to
be the only product that was both profitable and easy to market. Today, 300,000
people are directly dependant on the coca economy. FARC derives its income from
imposing a revolutionary tax on rich businessmen. But it, undoubtedly, also
derives significant taxes from medium- and large-scale coca producers, which is
where I must part company.
FARC is thus in conflict with the US government, millions of whose citizens’
lives are being devastated by illegal drugs, mostly trafficked from Colombia.
However, FARC claims the main reason it is opposed by the USA is because it is a
revolutionary, socialist organisation resisting US imperialism. Washington
claims that the guerrillas are major drug traffickers (a claim repudiated by
even the US Drug Enforcement Agency in a 1997 report) and that counterinsurgency
and counternarcotics operations are one and the same. (Incidentally, this is a
separate war from that against the likes of the late drug baron Pablo
Escobar’s Medellin cartel with its corrupt links to government, judiciary and
armed forces.)
FARC argues that the way to eradicate the drugs trade is for peasant farmers to
be given aid to develop and plant alternative crops, but the government has
shown no interest in this offer and instead murders farmers, attacks villages
and, advised by US experts, destroys the peasant crops through aerial fumigation
of coca and poppy fields which has damaged the health of children and poisoned
water supplies, as well as driving an army of unemployed youth into FARC.
Several years ago, as a result of a peace process Colombia’s President Andres
Pastrana conceded almost 40% of Colombia to FARC. The area is known as the
‘demilitarised zone’. Last month FARC released 300 captured soldiers in an
exchange of prisoners but just this week Pastrana signed a controversial new law
giving the military sweeping powers of detention and the right to set up martial
law in specific places, despite international opposition, the army's abysmal
human rights’ record and its proven links to right-wing death squads.
In the demilitarised zone FARC has built 250km of new highways, twenty bridges,
paved streets in the towns so that people can walk free of mud and mire, built
water mains and carried out a massive vaccination programme.
In the June edition of their magazine, ‘Resistencia’, FARC mentions the
volume of international visitors to its demilitarised zone, ranging from
“government envoys,
ambassadors, parliamentarians, journalists and personalities, etc.” In its
‘capital’, San Vincente, it has held festivals of theatre, dance and music
in the central square to which it invites those in solidarity and foreign
tourists.
People just like Jim Monaghan and his two friends.
Copyright © DannyMorrison.com. All rights
reserved.
Site developed & hosted by Blacknight Solutions
http://www.dannymorrison.com/articles/unionismstate.html