Chavez's embrace of the FARC pariah

Douglas Farah:

The most electrifying political moment I have witnessed came about a dozen years ago, when a young woman in a T-shirt adorned with the image of an elephant strode to the front of the Colombian Senate chamber and denounced the pervasive drug corruption rotting her nation from within.

For three hours, broadcast on national television, Sen. Ingrid Betancourt laid out the case against President Ernesto Samper for taking drug money. She demanded his impeachment. The image on her white shirt represented drug corruption, the elephant in the room that no one dared discuss.

Ingrid, who was a source when I covered Colombia for The Post and is also my friend, is still paying for her courageous action in June 1996, when most of Colombia was cowed by cocaine barons and their political surrogates. Her popularity propelled her to a presidential bid in 2002. But while campaigning, she and a companion, Clara Rojas, were kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

These days the FARC, the hemisphere's oldest rebel group, is more of a criminal enterprise than a political movement. It released Rojas and former congresswoman Consuelo Gonzalez this month in a rare moment of good news in Colombia's relentless conflict. But hopes of real progress were dashed when Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who helped broker the women's release, endorsed the FARC as a revolutionary army entitled to international acceptance.

Few are less deserving of international esteem than the FARC. For its well-documented abuses against civilians and deep involvement in the drug trade, it deserves its designation by the United States and the European Union as a terrorist entity. Despite Chávez's embrace, the FARC remains a pariah even on the Latin American left.

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To many, it makes sense that the "war on terrorism" is focused almost exclusively on radical Islamist groups. But the FARC's criminal and terrorist activities, coupled with Chávez's institutional support, pose serious, often underestimated, threats to our national security.

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Originally a part of the Liberal Party militias, the FARC acquired a Marxist ideology in the 1960s and moved into drug trafficking after the Cold War ended. Raw capitalism, in the form of the cocaine trade and kidnapping for ransom, replaced Marxism as the group's raison d'etre.

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Chavez's association with these people demonstrates what a despicable human being he is. He can chew on his cocaine derivatives and get high on his lack of inhibitions but he has embraced some really bad people who will be looking out for their own selfish interest. They may share an interest in being control freaks but that interest will eventually be in conflict.

Counterterrorism Blog reports that the leader of FARC has called for a general offensive in 2008.