Deterring peace-building: the case of Piedad Córdoba
If you write an e-mail to a leader of Colombia’s FARC guerrilla group telling him, “It’s in your political interest to release all of your hostages,” did you just commit a crime? Did you offer advice – construed as “material support” – to a terrorist group?
The answer to that question could be “yes,” both in Colombia and the United States.
The issue came up on Monday in Colombia, when the country’s inspector-general (Procurador), Alejandro Ordóñez, abruptly fired Liberal Party Senator Piedad Córdoba and prohibited her from holding public office for eighteen years. The charge is that Sen. Córdoba “promoted and collaborated” with the FARC.
Sen. Córdoba is one of Colombia’s most prominent leftist politicians. Among the 17 Liberal Party senators elected in March, Córdoba received the third-highest vote total. She is controversial because of her pugnacious manner, her outspoken support of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and – though she rejects their violent methods – her contacts with the FARC.
These contacts led Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, for a three-month period in 2007, to name Senator Córdoba and President Chávez – his political rivals – as official facilitators for talks with the FARC. Córdoba sought the release of dozens of civilians and security-force officers whom the guerrillas were holding hostage. Over the next two years, even after being “de-authorized,” Senator Córdoba did manage to convince the FARC to release several hostages.
According to news reports, the bulk of the evidence against Sen. Córdoba comes from e-mails and documents found on computers recovered in March 2008, at the FARC encampment in Ecuador where Colombian forces killed guerrilla leader “Raúl Reyes.” It is not clear whether the incriminating e-mails came from her, or whether they are guerrilla contacts’ possibly inaccurate accounts of her words.
These files’ contents may embarrass Sen. Córdoba, and Colombians may be angered by instances of poorly chosen language or an over-familiar tone. But the evidence against her has not been made public, so we cannot judge either its veracity or its seriousness.
Most importantly, we cannot assess whether, in fact, Sen. Córdoba crossed the line between “promotion of negotiations” and “material support to the FARC.” This is a very gray area, and it lends itself to being enforced arbitrarily, or according to political criteria. This in turn hurts prospects for future peace promotion.
Coaxing violent groups to negotiate, or even to make a show of good faith, often requires advising them that doing so is in their interest: that as a strategy, it makes more sense than continuing the armed conflict. Conveying messages like these means providing advice, which may be illegal.
By the same token, future peace efforts requiring contact with violent groups – even efforts that enjoy official government sanction – will be impossible if mediators are led to think that poorly chosen words, or even a tone regarded as too “friendly,” could be used against them, or could even see them end up in jail.
This is not just a Colombian issue. In the United States, it is illegal under the PATRIOT Act to provide “material support” to a group on the U.S. terrorist list (on which Colombia’s FARC, ELN and AUC appear). A June 2010 Supreme Court decision (Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project [PDF]) defined “material support” very broadly – as, among other things, “tangible or intangible resources, service … training, expert advice or assistance.”
On September 10 the U.S. Institute of Peace held a panel discussion on the Supreme Court decision’s implications. According to USIP, “The majority of the panel expressed concerns that the Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project opinion could cast a cloud over the entire field of peacemaking. … [G]rantmakers, lawyers and international aid workers will have to be even more careful about what they say and do in the sphere of peacebuilding, capacity building, facilitation or mediation when dealing with organizations on the government’s lists.”
Though her case is before the legal system of Colombia, not that of the United States, Piedad Córdoba has just learned this lesson the hard way.