Playing Favourites; or a Vicious Sight of Reality

For: Hollman Lozano

There are people who only see the world through their established sight, although the cruel reality persistent speaks by itself. Like the National Post columnist Lorne Gunter, who adamantly defended on his column of Monday August 21 called “Playing Favourites” Israel’s violation of the U.N. Resolution.
But for Mr Gunter, the problem is not that Israel had broken the ceasefire. The problem for him is that Kofi Annan had declared himself “deeply concern about the violation of the ceasefire.” This, because according to him, [the Israeli] “commandos were inserted because since the cessation of hostilities Iran and Syria have reopened their supply routes through the Bekaa Valley to Hezbollah” Nonetheless, Israel does not have any right to attack after the cessation of hostilities, not only because under these excuses the conflict could continue endlessly, but also because if there is anybody who should stop the possible actions of Hezbollah, it should not be Israel.
When Israel accepted the 1701 United Nations resolution, it accepted that with all its implications. The possibility that the U.N. could not have enough armed forces in place, or intention to stop Hezbollah because its “muddled, bureaucratic, politically correct international body” do not give authorization to Israel to violate the U.N. resolution.
If Hezbollah, as Mr Gunter calls it “vicious enemy replenish the venom in its tangs and recoils for another strike” against Israel, the last thing that Israel should do is deploy commandos, for it gives reason to all those who had condemned the overused of Israel’s power.
In fact, what Israel should do in case Hezbollah breaks the agreement is to denounce it emphatically to the international community, so that they would take the required actions. But to take these actions before anything happens publicly compromises the will of Israel to follow accepted agreements.
The problem is not that Kofi Annan declared himself “deeply concerned” about the Israeli violation. He is only being the voice of the international community that worried sees how Israel indiscriminately attacks civilians on Lebanon without even respecting its own word. Although for him the issue is that “Mr Annan is really criticizing Israel for taking the actions his organization should be taking, but for which it lacks the troops or the nerve, or both.” Nonetheless, fortunately neither Mr Annan, nor the international community have that vicious sight about reality that does not allow an appropriate understanding of the world.
Thought this conflict the people have not been criticizing Israel because of anti-Semitism as is being labelled any comment against the military actions of Israel. The people with Mr Anan in front of us are criticizing Israel for this persistent abuse of power.

Vancouver, August 21, 2006

hollman.lozano@yahoo.ca

Israel y la batalla perdida

Si “…la guerra moderna es la continuación de la política por otros medios…”, como dijera Carl von Clausewitz hace algunos años, en su libro De la guerra, entonces Hezbollah le ha ganado la batalla al estruendosamente poderoso estado israelí. Pero esa batalla ganada por Hezbollah no fue ganada por una actividad militar consistente que repeliera cada uno de los ataques israelíes, pues el número de bajas del lado árabe dobla de lejos los israelíes caídos. La batalla fue ganada a través de una consistente práctica de guerra de guerrillas que hizo lucir ridículo e inasertivo al ejército israelí, el cual, a pesar de contar con el apoyo irrestricto de Estados Unidos, la carta de condenación de los países miembros del G-8 entre los que se encuentra Egipto Jordania y Arabia Saudita a Hezbollah por el secuestro de los dos soldados israelíes, y las constantes promesas de los altos mandos israelíes según los cuales acabar con Hezbollah era cosa de una semana, no lograron ni en los mas mínimo desarticular la organización, ni dar de baja a ninguno de los altos mandos de la organización armada, ni siquiera rescatar a los dos soldados capturados por Hezbollah, los cuales fueron la excusa por la cual todo esto comenzó.
Por el contrario, lo que Israel logró fue fortalecer unas relaciones que por sí solo Hezbollah no hubiera podido restablecer. Me refiero al restablecimiento de las relaciones entre la señalada organización y el estado Libanés, el cual ha asegurado que los miembros de su ejercito no van a tomar parte en el desarme de Hezbollah. No solo por el alto contenido chiíta en el ejército libanés, ni por el absoluto respaldo con el que cuenta la organización armada en la parte árabe del Líbano, sino porque incluso los católicos libaneses que durante mucho tiempo se opusieron rotundamente a las practicas y perspectivas de Hezbollah llegaron a sentirse representados por estos, contra el brutal e indiscriminado atropello perpetrado por el ejercito israelí en la parte árabe del Líbano.
De hecho la gran conclusión de la perdida de la batalla por parte del Estado israelí es que no tenía in idea de la inmensidad de la batalla a la que estaba yendo. No tenia ni idea pues no parece haber considerado la aceptación con la que cuenta Hezbollah entre la población árabe del Líbano. Pero contrario a las creencias de los analistas, esta aceptación no ha sido ganada mediante la cooptación y el miedo, si no todo lo contrario, a través de un proceso persistente y dedicado de acompañamiento a los menos favorecidos y a las victimas del conflicto con planes de atención social y respuestas inmediatas como lo señala Sonia Verma en el caso de Marwan Shamone, el cual recibió diez mil dólares de Hezbollah como compensación por los daños recibidos para que viva mientras la compañía de construcción del movimiento armado Santa Guerra por la Construcción construye su casa de nuevo. Incluso cuando la persistencia de los bombardeos israelíes dificultaba las más elementales actividades de los miembros de Hezbollah estos se encargaban de proveer con agua y reservas de comida a las poblaciones victimas del conflicto.
No se trata de resaltar las bondades de Hezbollah. Se trata de reconocer que a pesar de sus tórridas relaciones con Siria e Irán Hassan Nasrallah y las demás cabezas de Hezbollah han comprendido lo que Israel y Estados Unidos no han podido. Que las guerras son políticas y no se gana solo con tecnología y bajas del lado contrario, si no con aceptación y respaldo de las poblaciones, con su participación activa y decidida, pues para bien o para mal los muchachos árabes del Líbano crecen queriendo formar parte de Hezbollah, mientras miembros de la reserva israelí se resistían a la idea de tener que ir al frente. Ello sin olvidar las voces al interior de Israel que culpan al primer ministro Ehud Olmert y al recientemente nacido pero ya feneciente partido político Kadima por las consecuencias de ir a una guerra sin las herramientas de inteligencia necesarias ni un plan efectivo que hubiera hecho lucir menos ridícula su actividad en el Líbano, pero no todo esta dicho y aunque Hezbollah ha ganado la batalla, es solo una en una larga guerra que desafortunadamente va a continuar.




hollman.lozano@yahoo.ca

Colombian and the Paramilitaries or How to Rebuild a Nation

For: Hollman Lozano

It‘s necessary to recognize that the paramilitary movement in Colombia had gone so far that was absolutely necessary to negotiate with them their deposition of the arms. The idea of openly fight with them was not recognising their power and capacity to intimidate the population of their places of influence and to spread terror. Their violent actions had gone to extremes of barbarism with extremely strong ties with the organisms of security of the government that to pretend its end by means of the legitimate state were no more than democratic dreams. Therefore, the negotiation with the paramilitaries was not only a necessity to stop their armed actions; it was also an obligation, although a formal acknowledgement from the government about its impossibility to stop the paramilitary movement by other means.
However, the negotiation that the administration of Alvaro Uribe had done with the Colombian paramilitaries is not what was required within the specific and complex humanitarian situation that lives Colombia.
The paramilitaries grew extremely fast with the help, training and information of the security forces of the state, as well as their participation on the traffic of narcotics. In fact the paramilitaries started to do the dirty job as the killing of union members as well as people ideologically close to the left, which the Colombian army was unable to do for the permanent vigilance of the NGO’s. In the same sense they permeate the regional politics enforcing through the power of their guns and their economical power derived form the traffic of narcotics. Therefore, the same importance that the government has placed in the deposition of their arms is to be placed in breaking their ties with the agencies of security of the government. Not to do so, will only mean an eventual deposition of their guns, leaving intact their structure of terror, loosing a historic opportunity to reinstitutionalize the country. In fact not to do so, is to leave the door open for new groups that eventually will be much more savage than the already demobilised.
In fact, one of the great dangers that the paramilitary movement has inflicted to Colombian’s, is not only the savage killing of so many innocent people, but at the same time, the public sensation that the state cannot be trust, for its representatives are close friends of the paramilitaries. The role that the state should have played as a central factor able to play in favour of the less favoured was taken for these representatives of the state, as well as the paramilitaries that joined forces to violently delegitimate the Colombian state.
As a result, the process of clearing the close tights that the paramilitaries have had with the government is even more important that the clearing of the relation that the movement has had with the traffic of narcotics. For their relations with the government have undermined the confidence that the population should have on the democratic institutions allowing them to solve their differences by any means, especially violent ones. If we, as a society are able to reduce the bridge that now exists, between the society and the institutions, we will be able to modify that culture that has seen the guns and the violence as means to solve any difference. However, this responsibility should not be left to special committees. It should be a function of every citizen who since its primordial individuality assumes its role on the reformulation of the structures of the nation and takes the required measures to its proper end. This responsibility is for every one of the Colombians, who should search, look and denounce, for it is a necessary step if we are to change the structure of violence that has taken place in the country.

hollman.lozano@yahoo.ca

Farc and the Uribe Administration: Or different strategies to not talking

If there has been anything clear in the history of processes of peace, is that the parts in conflict cannot be static about the decisions that they take. At given moments they have to be able to modify their positions, in order to improve its circumstances over the table. Per se a negotiation of peace is a formal conversation in which the parts bargain about its better conditions, considering it’s the strength and weakness as well as those of its opponent. But if we are to judge for the modifications that have taken place during the attempts of negotiation between the Colombian government, over the past four years and the leftist guerrilla movement of FARC, there seems to be that the Colombian government has not understood that in a negotiation of peace, your position cannot be static, for it is the end of the negotiation, or in other words, the formal victory of the guns over the possibility of reconciliation.
From the beginning of the Uribe administration, the Colombian government has been looking for secret contacts that may build confidence with the guerrilla of FARC to the point of setting up a meting where the representative of the parts could discuss face to face their differences, trying to build agreements. However, the parts do not trust each other and seems that won’t ever trust each other. None of them is able to renounce temporarily to its strategic advantages to make possible a conversation of peace, for they both consider that any effort that improve the possibilities of a conversation of peace is a strategic advantage that the opponent is going to capitalize.
For one side, the FARC movement is trying to make public any contact of peace with the government, because their experience is that this is the only way through which the government may feel itself bind to any possible agreement as wells as to respect the guerrilla representatives; whereas the government does not trust any attempt of negotiation that implies public conversations for in their perception it undermines its possibilities of action as the responses of the society to the armed group. Especially considering that the president Uribe won the presidential elections for attacking the former conversations of peace that took place with the former president.
But at the very end of the issue, the FARC and the Colombian government need each other, and could spend the next four years avoiding the strategies of negotiation, but this is only going to degrade the conflict, with its consequent political costs. Both of them need to make efforts that improve the possibilities of an agreement of pace, otherwise, the political myopia will be too expensive to be paid.



Hollman Lozano
hollman.lozano@yahoo.ca