The War That Never Was: Colombia and Venezuela at the Crossroads

After much anger, resentment and accusations by Colombian officials and Hugo Chavez, a Cold Peace has been declared between officials from Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador. After an attack on FARC rebels by Colombia that took place inside Ecuador's border, a negative reaction by Ecuador's President and the movement of troops and saber rattling by Chavez of Venezuela could have lead to an open war between the South American neighbors. Even the country of Nicaragua set to oppose Uribe and Colombia, but in the end disgruntled hand shakes and an official apology by Colombia towards Ecuador allowed everyone to maintain stability on the borders. The only real losses were to the FARC organization. In the recent bout of political maneuvering, the FARC for the first time lost one of its top leaders, Raul Reyes based on proper intelligence work and efforts by Colombia and Uribe. Two days later, another one of FARC's top officials was assassinated by his own bodyguard. Motivations for this were partially due to a $2.6 million reward as well as fatigue and a loss of cohesion in much of the FARC organization. In the end, the FARC soldier defected with his commander's hand and brought Colombia the knowledge that FARC might be losing its luster of having untouchable leadership and a stable command structure.

In an ISN article last week called Colombia: Unintended Consequences, journalist Sam Logan discusses the outcome of the latest Andean skirmish after the attack on the FARC camp by the Colombian Armed Forces. The view, as discussed by Logan is that there were no obvious winners or losers in the latest political drama, but that the end of the situation showed that the FARC may have lost its image of invincibility due to the death of one of its top seven leaders and tacticians. This rolling success was only complemented by the death of a second FARC mid-level leader, showing to everyone that FARC's discipline and command and control of its 16,000 plus soldiers did not stop one of its other leaders from losing his hand and his life to his own bodyguard. Logan explains that not only luck aided Colombia in creating FARC's problems, but new intelligence helped produce FARC's recent troubles. Colombia has recently adjusted its intelligence gathering system to disseminate information in a more productive manner. This may have contributed a great deal in finding Reyes, as well as allowed Colombian forces to press the attack on the FARC.

The damage to FARC's reputation will do nothing more than help Uribe gain more support in Colombia's own "War on Terror". Political support and nationalism will likely remain high for Uribe, who himself was attacked by the FARC before taking office. Chavez has also saved face among his people, but may not be willing to proclaim another conflict so easily as the FARC's unintended losses and his own political career depend on the will of the Venezuelan people to support an attack on its neighbor. With half of the country supporting Chavez and the other half opposed, support for FARC kidnappings, attacks on Colombia and spilling blood for those causes may not put Venezuela's self proclaimed Caesar in a position to hold power in the future.

The clear losers of the whole situation are those kidnapped victims held by the FARC to date. While Chavez did aid in getting some hostages released, the use of kidnapping against Colombians and others is an effective torture on society in Colombia. Many seek to blame aggressive policies in maintaining captives like Ingrid Betancourt in FARC hands and put pressure on Uribe to negotiate with the FARC to gain her release. It is unlikely this debate will end with a possible aggressive push against a weakened FARC in the near future.