Colombia: mixed messages

From almost the beginning, the UP's enemies dissected the new party's purpose. These enemies didn't wait to hear the UP's platform or understand its motives. They simply equated the UP with the FARC and started shooting.

Dudley adds that since the UP's formation in 1985 "thousands of UP militants were killed. Hundreds of others went into hiding or fled the country. Even when it was clear that the UP had no more political power, their enemies kept killing them."

Among the dead were two UP presidential candidates as well as any hopes that the FARC would again broaden its political views to include moderates and more importantly, trust the Colombian state. When talks were resumed in 1999 with the aid of United Nations mediators, some observers believe this had more to do with the political pressure on then president Andrés Pastrana than a real commitment for peace. By then the FARC had a standing army between 17-19,000 troops and controlled roughly 30 per cent of the country.

Seen as an unacceptable scenario by Colombia's hawkish generals and the Clinton administration, behind closed doors the counter-insurgency Plan Colombia was devised during the peace talks aimed at ridding the country once and for all of the FARC. In 2002, as expected, negotiations broke down and war was back on the agenda.

These days, despite more than US$4 billion in recent years having poured into Colombia from the United States, and Uribe's deep links to the paramilitaries and drug cartels, perhaps unlike any pervious head of state, the FARC hardly looks defeated.

According to a 2007 Amnesty International report more than "3000 killings and enforced disappearances of civilians were attributed to paramilitary groups since they declared a "ceasefire" in 2002". With the army, the paramilitaries are by far the biggest human rights abusers whose actions, along with Plan Colombia, do nothing but garner support for the rebels.

President Chávez - who the FARC see as an acceptable mediating figure - has recently declared he disapproves with the guerrillas' policy of kidnapping and will ask them to reconsider it. This is a positive step.

Unfortunately, until Colombia has a government which is serious about bringing to justice members of the military and paramilitaries for human rights abuses, taking an independent stance from Washington and, more importantly, allowing the FARC to create a political party who will not have its candidates gunned down at the polls like the UP's were, peace in the Andean country seems quite remote.