The most astonishing thing about the state of emergency declared in Colombia by President Alvaro Uribe just days after taking office is why none of his predecessors took such a step. The country has been wracked by a three-cornered civil war between government, Marxist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries for more than 30 years. Tens of thousands have been slaughtered, invariably the innocent. Both the communist insurgents of FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and the paramilitaries have had no scruples about massacring entire villages if they deemed them to have collaborated with the other side, even though those same villages were forced on pain of death to do so. And just as terror is their common tactic, so both fund their violence the same way: from the drugs trade. They have become so powerful that it is impossible to talk of Colombia as a functioning state.
States of emergency come in varying degrees. Mostly, they are about using the army at a time of some natural catastrophe, like the present disastrous flooding in the Czech capital, Prague. What President Uribe has invoked, however, is about as draconian as they come. Ruling by presidential decree, he has already imposed a special tax on the rich to pay for 10,000 extra policemen and two regiments of special forces to fight the terrorists, but the provision in the constitution he has invoked also allows him to impose curfews, restrict internal travel, ban cell phones, close newspapers, and authorize the police to arrest people without warrants. It is a sign of Colombians’ utter despair with the situation that they have welcomed the possible curtailment of their basic civil liberties with open arms. But then they voted overwhelmingly for Uribe specifically because he promised to get tough with the guerillas. This is the action they want.
The irony is that it is thanks to FARC that he has been able to act so decisively and so soon. Their murderous attacks on the capital during his inauguration and in other cities since — intended no doubt to intimidate — have played into his hands. With at least 100 dead as a result, the entire political spectrum, including the trade unions and the opposition, support Uribe in the view that it is time to declare war against the terrorists.
What has disappointed Colombians is Washington’s attitude. It has given its blessing to the state of emergency, and rightly so: the need to wipe out a scourge that has so wrecked Colombia fully justifies the state of emergency. But that is as far as it goes. For all the Bush administration’s talk about the war against international terrorism, it has no intention of getting involved in Colombia, and has said so.
The cocaine industry, run by FARC and the paramilitaries, wrecks carnage in every American city every year. Thousands upon thousands of American lives are ruined, families destroyed, neighborhoods blighted; more Americans die as a result of their addiction than were killed on Sept. 11. For all that, the war against terrorism is not to be taken to Colombia.
For Colombians, it does not add up. At the very least, they fell, Washington could have offered to underwrite the costs of all those extra policemen and troops needed. It could afford it. Such a gesture would have been welcomed by the Colombians.
