Archives for August 2016

The Marxist narco-terrorrist guerrilla get seats in Congress (emphasis added):

The accord calls for the state to work with the FARC to mitigate drug trafficking in areas where the guerrillas had influence; permits the rebel group to transform into a political party; establishes a system to investigate war crimes by both rebels and military personnel; and lays out how to compensate victims.

Under the deal, three former rebels would serve in the lower house of congress and three in the senate in a nonvoting capacity, permitting the ex-combatants to have a say in the implementation of the accords, said Sen. Manuel Enriquez Rosero, a Liberty Party politician who supports the process. In the 2018 congressional elections, the FARC would be guaranteed at least five seats in the house and five in the senate, said Sen. Antonio Navarro Wolff, himself a former rebel. The mechanism to permit former rebels to have that many seats will necessitate a constitutional reform that was agreed upon in Havana.

Under the deal, the rebels would congregate their 7,000 fighters in 23 hamlets and eight 10-acre encampments scattered across rural Colombia. There, they would turn in their weapons to a United Nations verification commission over a six-month period.

In plain words, the FARC got everything it wanted.

Former president, now senator Alvaro Uribe is against the deal:

Mr. Uribe is widely credited with the military gains that forced the rebels to the negotiating table. But he is now leading a growing campaign against the deal, saying it amounts to an unjust amnesty for the rebels.

“They will spend zero days in prison, they will be awarded with political representation,” Paloma Valencia, a senator in Mr. Uribe’s party, said of the rebels. “This deal breaks the rule of law.”

Uribe also points out that Santos will finalize in Congress unsigned agreements where the FARC asks for more concessions,

Anuncian otra trampa d Santos:radicará en el Congreso acuerdos finales no firmados por FARC que pone otras condiciones. ¡Acuerdos sin firma!

— Álvaro Uribe Vélez (@AlvaroUribeVel) August 24, 2016

The NYT asks,

Will the rebels give up not only their weapons, but their control of the lucrative drug trade as well?

The State Department calls the FARC a terrorist organization that “controls the majority of cocaine manufacturing and distribution within Colombia, and is responsible for much of the world’s cocaine supply.”

The answer to the NYT’s question may lie in Emili Blasco’s August 15th article, where he reported that the Venezuelan government is colluding with the FARC to continue the drug traffic, unimpeded,

√ Maduro’s decision to open the crossings with Colombia shows that the peace accord announcement is ready

√ The guerrilla could have used the “border truce” to leave men and weapons in Venezuela

√ The verification of the existence of cocaine labs in Venezuela shows that the guerrilla wants to keep its business

Douglas Farah posts, The FARC’s Political Roadmap: From Insurgency to Criminalized Political Party? (emphasis added)

This is because the FARC, a Marxist insurgency that endured more than 50 years by developing thriving clandestine structures that became highly criminalized and enormously profitable, is not required to dismantle those structures in the peace process.

Key leaders of other Latin American revolutionary movements that successfully kept their clandestine structures intact – particularly the Communist Party faction of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador and the Ortega wing of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in Nicaragua – are the FARC’s most important advisers in the negotiations, and their clandestine structures have today grown into some of the most powerful criminal organizations in Central America.

These advisers, who still define themselves in their internal writings as Leninists, believe that the Marxist revolution must continue by whatever means available, much as the FARC believes. Having lost the war militarily, the FARC is now shifting to economic and political warfare, not with the idea of playing a constructive democratic role but with the goal of taking power then holding it in perpetuity following the path trod by Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Daniel Ortega, and Evo Morales.

Exit question,
“Why does never anyone answer me: Where will the kingpins be detained?
I’m asking those who claim there’ll be no impunity.”

Por qué nunca, nadie me contesta: ¿cuál será el lugar de reclusión de los cabecillas?
Pregunta para los que dicen que no habrá impunidad.

— Claudia Bustamante (@cmbustamante) August 24, 2016

There’s a non-binding referendum scheduled for October 2. Skeptics view it as “non-binding” only if the people vote NO.

UPDATE
Here is a 297 page unsigned document titled ACUERDO FINAL PARA LA TERMINACIÓN DEL CONFLICTO Y LA CONSTRUCCIÓN DE UNA PAZ ESTABLE Y DURADERA [FINAL ACCORD FOR ENDING THE CONFLICT AND BUILDING A STABLE AND LASTING PEACE] (h/t Ed Morrissey) from the Mesa de Conversaciones website.

Mesa de Conversaciones is the official peace negotiation team hosted in Havana.

The document is on plain paper with no letterhead or apparent watermark(s), unsigned, and dated August 24, 2016, except for pages 287-291, dated August 19, detailing the UN’s jurisdiction over the Peace Tribunal, and pages 292-297 dated August 20 detailing weapons and territory.

I have not had a chance to examine it further.

Later,
I was in The Ed Morrissey Show talking about the deal (link corrected).

Linked to by Hot Air. Thank you!