Colombia-Ecuador dust-up: Pride, hot tempers, annoying rebels - but not yet war

Instant-replay and what’s-it-all-mean scenes from the current crisis that is unfolding in South America:

The Economist notes that, this week, it really did seem as though a chunk of South America was on the verge of all-out war. “It began [last weekend] when Colombian forces bombed a camp just inside Ecuador, killing 21 FARC guerrillas[,] including Raúl Reyes, a top commander. Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, chose to treat this as a casus belli. He broke off diplomatic relations and ordered troops to the border, warning Álvaro Uribe, Colombia’s president, not to try anything similar against Venezuela. Ecuador’s [president,] Rafael Correa…felt obliged to mimic his fellow leftist, breaking ties and moving troops up to his border.”

AP

Colombia’s military attacked a FARC rebel camp across the border in Ecuador last weekend

The situation has been tense. The good news: So far, Correa, Uribe and Chávez “have fired nothing deadlier than epithets” at each other’s countries, with such words as “genocidal,” “liar” and “lackey” being “the small arms of this verbal battle.” Still, the British newsmagazine notes in an editorial, the current contretemps amounts to “the most serious diplomatic conflict in South America for more than a decade.” The magazine does not refrain from predicting that “[p]olitical brinkmanship could easily tip over into shooting.”

The underlying cause of the current crisis is the FARC, a guerrilla army in Colombia that was set up in the 1960s and whose “anachronistic[,] Marxist language conceals its degeneration into a predatory mafia of kidnappers and drug traffickers. In the 1990s[,] it came close to making Colombia ungovernable. Then three years of talks - during which the FARC kidnapped many of the hostages who now constitute its main weapon - showed that it had no interest in peace or democracy. Colombia’s elected leaders turned to the United States for military aid to match the cash that American drug consumers were giving the FARC and other mafia armies.” (Indeed, the Bush White House is standing behind its man, Uribe, on this one. Chávez has been known to refer to his Colombian counterpart as “Washington’s poodle.”)

The BBC notes that, as a result of Colombia’s incursion into Ecuadoran territory, “[t]roops have been mobilized[,] and ambassadors withdrawn, while frantic negotiations [have been] going on in Washington and several Latin American capitals to try to deflate the tension….Colombian officials said [that] captured computers [that were confiscated in last weekend’s anti-FARC operation] contained evidence that both Ecuador and Venezuela [had] collaborated with the rebels - something both [countries’] governments denied.” In fact, Ecuador’s government has said that, last year, “it destroyed 47 FARC bases on its territory.”

Miraflores Press Office/AP

Yesterday, Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa (left) met with Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, at the Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas

Thus, the BBC observes, perhaps the current crisis amounts to “a dispute about hurt national pride and long-standing regional rivalries.” After all, “Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela are major trading partners and simply cannot afford to go to war.” Also, “[t]ens of thousands of Colombians live in Ecuador, and Venezuelans in Colombia.” Thus, the British news service predicts, “[o]nce acceptable apologies have been issued, the tension is likely to subside….While this dispute is likely to subside over the next few days and weeks, Colombia’s war against its FARC guerrillas is far from over, and the jockeying for influence between the United States and Venezuela over the region will continue.”

Cambio, the Colombian newsmagazine, notes that Ecuador cut off diplomatic relations with Colombia, and that Venezuela closed its embassy in Bogota in reaction to last weekend’s Colombian-military action, and that both Ecuador and Colombia moved troops into their shared-border regions, setting up conditions that, at worst, could lead to a military incident. That outcome could be, the magazine suggests, “more feasible that it might seem.” Noting that calls have come in from other governments around the world urging Ecuador, Colombia and Chávez’s concerned - some might say meddling - Venezuela to keep cool and not fight, Cambio does clearly state, in hindsight, that Colombia’s decision to send its troops into Ecuadoran territory was a decidedly “questionable” move.

Albeiro Lopera/Reuters

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Colombia’s president, Alvaro Uribe, in Medellín in late January; the Bush White House is standing by Uribe in the current diplomatic crisis

In Ecuador, the newspaper El Universo reminds readers in an editorial that diplomats are at work on the border-incursion crisis, and that, for now, perhaps the more urgent concern for Ecuadorans is the fate of their countrymen in certain parts of their small nation who have lost their homes and otherwise suffered as the result of recent, bad weather, which has left many without the most basic services. President Correa should not respond to the “provocation” of those “who want Ecuador to get involved in a war… ,” the paper argues.

The Economist examines what or who may really be dangerous in the current crisis. The magazine notes: “The biggest threat in the region is not Colombia but Venezuela….Chávez has recently veered towards outright support for the FARC. Colombia alleges that the captured laptops show that he gave the guerrillas $300 [million] (and also that the FARC is seeking uranium for a ‘dirty’ bomb)….Chávez’s mismanagement of Venezuela’s oil boom has made him increasingly unpopular at home. His regime runs a risk of imploding. A cornered…Chávez might think of a border skirmish as the perfect distraction - and as justification for more repression at home.”

Posted By: Edward M. Gomez (Email) |
March 06 2008 at 03:31 PM