Peace Takes on an International Flavor, but Where’s the U.S.?

Last Thursday’s talks between the Colombian government and its largest rebel group returned some measure of hope to the war-weary nation. By engaging international observers for the first time in the effort to resolve the four-decade-long conflict, President Andres Pastrana and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, might have put the country’s bedeviled peace process on sounder footing. But to make the process work will be far from easy.

For most Colombians, who have learned to keep their expectations in check, there is still no choice but to pursue peace. Few believe that a military solution is an option. Without a peace process in place, the country will have to endure more of the same: unabated violence and rampant lawlessness, reflected in record kidnappings and the world’s third-largest internally displaced population. The situation can get worse, leading to an implosion. That is why a political settlement is essential.

This may be Pastrana’s last chance to get peace negotiations moving. He has staked his entire presidency on the issue. But despite bold gestures, including granting a demilitarized zone to the FARC in southern Colombia, and the best of intentions, Pastrana has failed to secure concessions from the FARC that would signal their inclination to negotiate in good faith. With fewer than 18 months left in office, what the Colombian leader can accomplish is, most agree, quite limited.

Pastrana’s meeting with FARC leader Manuel “Sureshot” Marulanda last month--and their decision to restart talks that had been frozen since November--gave the president badly needed political oxygen. But to restore public confidence, he has to deliver concrete results. An agreement to allow international verification of the human rights abuses committed in the conflict would, for example, represent an important step forward. News announcing a cease-fire would surely give Colombians something to cheer about.

Attending Thursday’s meeting was an impressive array of officials from Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Cuba, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Finland, Norway, Holland, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, the Vatican and the United Nations. Its purpose was a modest, chiefly informational one: to review the status of the two-year peace effort. But the meeting marked a step beyond previous gatherings with international officials to talk about alternative crops or last year’s “Eurotour,” when FARC representatives visited European capitals.

For the wily and headstrong 70-year-old Marulanda, bringing international actors into Colombia’s peace process gained the FARC the international recognition and legitimacy it has long sought. With some 18,000 combatants, the FARC enjoys scant popular support in Colombia. Its image has suffered on the international front as well, in part because of accumulating evidence of the FARC’s involvement in Colombia’s drug trade and its systematic violation of human rights. Last year, the FARC was responsible for the bulk of Colombia’s reported kidnappings. Still, despite its reliance on criminal operations to sustain the insurgency, the FARC’s interest in engaging international actors reveals that it has a pragmatic side and understands the need to gain political ground.

Although Thursday’s meeting hardly assures eventual success, progress in the peace effort would be even harder to achieve without the participation of non-Colombians. In other conflicts, an outside force to help catalyze a peace process proved essential. In the Middle East, Northern Ireland and Central America during the previous decade, neutral countries played crucial roles in convening the parties in conflict and trying to bring them toward an accord. In the on-again, off-again talks between the FARC and Colombian government, such a function had been missing.

It is encouraging that Mexico and Brazil, Latin America’s two largest countries, sent representatives to Thursday’s meeting. Their presence reflects a welcome shift in policy and the growing interest of Mexican President Vicente Fox and Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso to assist the hemisphere’s most besieged democracy. Also important, in light of recent friction between the Colombian and Venezuelan governments, was the participation of a Venezuelan official.

Yet, the absence of a U.S. government representative was disappointing. The FARC’s failure to account for the March 1999 murders of three human rights workers from the United States, combined with Washington’s general reluctance to get involved, explains the decision. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has said that the United States supports a political solution to Colombia’s conflict, but there have been few signs that the Bush administration has decided to put its full diplomatic and political weight behind the peace effort. U.S. refusal to be at the meeting--merely to observe and learn about the process--may turn out to have been a lost opportunity.

Some argue that it is too early for the Bush administration to get involved, that it should only do so when progress is more evident. But the United States has a chance to make a real difference now by assisting Colombia on the regional and international stage. It could, for example, seek to elevate the role of the United Nations as the most credible external catalyst for peace. Moreover, defining a peace settlement as the lodestar of U.S. policy would help allay some of the criticism generated, particularly among Colombia’s vulnerable and increasingly nervous neighbors, by last July’s approval of a $1.3 billion mostly military, antidrug aid package to Colombia. President George W. Bush, who met with Fox last month and is scheduled to meet with Cardoso later this month in Washington, should strive to forge a hemispheric effort to end the conflict.

With the clock running out on his presidency, Pastrana needs to move resolutely on three fronts. First, he should demand concessions from the FARC like an immediate end to kidnapping and forced recruitment of minors. Second, he should press the United States to go beyond its narrow emphasis on fighting drugs and enlist it to play a more energetic role in the peace process. He should not just request an aid package, but rather a broader policy that stresses political and diplomatic initiatives. Finally, Pastrana should reach out to different sectors within Colombia to form a national consensus behind a strategy to bring together his badly torn country. Above all, he should seek to ensure that the process begun last week continues under the next Colombian president.

To be sure, even if the Colombian government and the FARC reach an agreement, the country will face many formidable obstacles on the road to peace. Discussions that appeared more promising between the government and the National Liberation Army (ELN), the country’s second-largest insurgency, have run into serious problems. Colombia’s expanding paramilitary forces, together with some of the local population, have objected to the Pastrana administration’s plan to grant the ELN a demilitarized zone like the FARC’s. Moreover, it is hard to imagine a full reconciliation in Colombia until the paramilitaries are dealt with.

Still, last Thursday’s meeting should be seen as a first, small step in what will doubtless be a long and arduous path to relieve Colombia’s humanitarian horror and build an enduring peace.