By Anna Husarska
The Boston Globe on June 28, 2007 published the following article by Anna Husarska, the IRC’s senior policy adviser.
BOLIVAR, Colombia PRESIDENT ÁLVARO URIBE of Colombia has ordered the conditional release from prison of Rodrigo Granda, one of the principal leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the main leftist guerrilla movement, and some 150 other imprisoned members of the group.
There is speculation that with this move he hopes to prompt the release of some hostages held by FARC, among them former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three US citizens.
In the four decades of civil war in Colombia, all sides often take hostages or make forced recruitment into their ranks. But unless the victims are foreigners or prominent Colombians -- like Foreign Minister Fernando Araujo, who was nominated to the post soon after he escaped from six years of captivity -- their suffering seldom becomes public.
Most people I spoke to here in the south of Colombia did not dare report that their relatives were kidnapped or killed, no matter the political color of the captors, whether leftist guerrillas or paramilitaries.
I met a woman whom I will call Marina, kidnapped at age 8. She was kept by one of those groups for five years as a sex slave. After she escaped, her brother was killed in punishment. Another person, John, was recruited by force, obliged to participate in looting and recruitments of others; when he managed to escape, he found out that his girlfriend was abducted and her father was killed. Madlene was raped by members of an armed faction who wanted her husband to keep silent about mass graves near his farm. Winston was lured by the same faction to a park because his brother-in-law refused to work for them. Meanwhile, others shot his son.
This list of horrors is a reality for the whole nation; it has impregnated residents' lives, displaced 3 million persons and for the third generation is making normal life impossible.
I asked five teenagers in a school in a highlands hamlet, four hours from the last bit of tarmac, "What would you like to become?" Their dream careers had an unmistakable pattern: criminologist, lawyer, forensic doctor, soldier, and chemist. (The latter with views to set up a prosperous cocaine laboratory, I was told.)
No wonder they have such plans: these pupils have not known anything but a civil war. The same can be said about their parents.
Like the dream jobs of these young Colombians, everything here is distorted by four decades of fighting. At the beginning of the conflict there was some ideology behind the actions of the irregular armed groups; now it is waged mostly over the coca leaves and poppy seed cultures and the drugs they yield, cocaine and heroin, respectively. But as is often the case in armed conflicts, the ones who suffer most are the civilians, especially the children and youth.
After almost half a century of fratricide and with the illicit drug trade introducing high economic stakes, there is no miracle solution. The only way to eliminate the scars of this horror is through patient work and long-term engagement to attend to the psychosocial problems, and offer protection and concrete humanitarian assistance to Colombia's future generation.
I saw the future student of criminology play soccer with real gusto; the girl who dreams about joining the army told me she enjoys singing; and the lawyer-in-waiting showed great interest in learning English.
The good news is that here in the south of Colombia, there is a vibrant civil society. Many local nongovernmental organizations are dealing with the most acute problems. What they need are funds that are in short supply and more exchange with foreign partners that would help them in implementing projects.
Improvements in the security situation -- cease-fires, demobilizations, and prisoner or hostage releases -- would help the organizations' efforts. Such moves may, just may, help to break the circle of violence that deforms the adolescents' dreams.
The other good news is that the fate of the Colombian civilians suffering from the civil war is not ignored, even though reports from Colombia are not always in the headlines in the United States.
US Representative James McGovern of Worcester has a resolution pending in the House Foreign Affairs Committee that "the government of the United States should increase the resources it makes available to provide emergency humanitarian assistance and protection through international and civilian government agencies, and assist Colombia's internally displaced people in rebuilding their lives in a dignified, safe and sustainable manner."
When I shared this text with Colombians they just had one comment: "Ojalá!" -- Spanish for "if only!"
Anna Husarska is senior policy adviser at the International Rescue Committee.
