June 21, 1999
A Colombian Rebel Group Gains Notice, Loses Sympathy
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Related Article
'Fishing' for Ransom, Colombian Rebels Cast Net Wide (June 3)
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By LARRY ROHTER
OGOTA, Colombia -- Their military capability has been weakened by a series of reverses on the battlefield, and the government is ignoring their demands for peace talks. But the National Liberation Army, Colombia's second largest guerrilla group, has managed to thrust itself back into the center of national attention here through a wave of bold and dramatic kidnappings.
The abductions have undermined support for the Colombian government's effort to negotiate a solution to a decades-long insurgency that has resulted in the deaths of 35,000 Colombians in just the past ten years. But through its own miscalculations and ineptness, the National Liberation Army, a Marxist rebel group, thus far has little to show for its campaign but additional opprobrium.
The guerrillas' resurgence began in April, when a group of its commandos hijacked an Avianca domestic flight with 41 people on board. That was followed by the abduction of more than 140 people from a Roman Catholic mass in Cali on May 30 and the kidnapping of nine members of a sports club as they were fishing on a river near Barranquilla a few days later.
The rebels have virtually monopolized Colombian news coverage in recent weeks by periodically releasing small groups of their hostages and delivering long harangues against President Andres Pastrana and his government. On Friday, eight of Avianca captives were released in just such a ceremony, leaving more than 50 airline passengers, churchgoers and fishermen still in rebel hands, including two Americans.
Yet political and military analysts here regard the spate of kidnappings not as a show of the group's strength but an indication of its growing debility. Right-wing paramilitary forces are reported to have made significant advances in recent months against the rebel units in the north-central region that had been the rebels' stronghold, nearly wiping them out in some areas.
The peace process launched by Pastrana after he took office last August, on the other hand, has been almost entirely focused on the country's largest insurgent group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC. The government has granted the FARC control over four counties as a good faith gesture, but has rejected demands by the National Liberation Army that it be apportioned a similar disarmament zone and largely ignored the group since the collapse of a preliminary dialogue in Caracas early this year.
Given the disparity in the government's approach and the resentment it has generated, many analysts see the recent kidnappings by the National Liberation Army as little more than an expression of petulance. "They are desperately shouting to the government and Colombian society, 'We are here, we exist, don't forget about us,"' said Armando Borrero, a former national security adviser.
But as Borrero also noted, the kidnappings have had "a very high political cost" for the smaller rebel group that may ultimately outweigh their usefulness as a propaganda tool. The Cali church kidnapping in particular has alienated and outraged important segments of the Roman Catholic Church that had in the past shown some sympathy to the National Liberation Army and its Cuban-inspired program.
Founded in the mid-1960s, the National Liberation Army has traditionally drawn many of its estimated 5,000 fighters from adherents of Liberation Theology, a socially conscious form of Roman Catholicism that combines Christian and Marxist teachings. Until his death last year, the group was led by Manuel Perez, a Spanish-born former priest; analysts say Perez' death set off a power struggle within the high command.
In recent remarks apparently aimed at soothing the Colombian public, the rebel commanders said that they sent out orders to units for "spectacular actions" but did not specifically approve the church kidnapping. Military analysts say that explanation is probably true and view it as a sign of the inability of the rebel's nominal leadership to enforce discipline within the National Liberation Army.
Historically, the army has been "very fragmented, with acute ideological disputes and a loose command structure that permits each unit to obtain its own resources and carry out its own actions," said Alfredo Rangel Suarez, author of the book "Colombia: War at the end of the Century." One faction, he added, "considers any dialogue with the state to be unrevolutionary," and may want to sabotage any prospect of renewing talks with the government.
In another effort to repair the damage to its image, the group's senior commander, Nicolas Rodriguez traveled to the Vatican earlier this month and, according to local press reports, met with a senior aide to Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Dario Castrillon, a Colombian. But little seems to have come of that contact: The Vatican continues to call the kidnapping a "sacrilege" and to maintain its excommunication of those who carried it out.
At the same time, rebel leaders have stepped up efforts to obtain international mediation of their dispute with Pastrana. Key to their campaign is Germany, and in particular a former minister of security, Bernd Scmidbauer, and a shadowy former West German intelligence operative, Werner Mauss, both of whom have been involved in negotiations to free hostages held by the rebels.
With its efforts to force the government back to the negotiating table having apparently failed, the rebels have now taken a new tack that promises to complicate the situation even further. At the latest release of passengers from the Avianca flight on Friday, the group's chief military strategist, Antonio Garcia, acknowledged that many of the remaining hostages are no longer being held for political purposes, but simply for ransom.
"When it comes to financing a war declared by the government, we think that is legitimate," he said. Pastrana responded hours later with a televised speech condemning "the extortionist and delirious position assumed by this armed group" and stripping the National Liberation Army of its status as a legitimate "political force," awarded last year in hopes of encouraging peace talks.
The rebel kidnapping campaign comes as Pastrana's government is still reeling, and the peace process with the larger rebel group, the FARC, stalled, due to the resignation late last month of Defense Minister Rodrigo Lloreda. A former presidential candidate much respected by the military, Lloreda stepped down to protest government concessions in the negotiations.
His replacement, Luis Fernando Ramirez Acuna, is close to Pastrana but has little standing among or experience with the military. An accountant who was Pastrana's running mate in his unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1994, Ramirez was formally sworn in on Friday, promising to both restructure the Armed Forces and step up efforts to halt mass kidnappings.
"Pastrana is in a tight squeeze, or as they say here, between the sword and the wall," a European diplomat said last week. "When he doesn't act against the guerrillas, he is condemned, and when he does, he is also criticized."
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