Our man in Havana

JIMMY Carter tends to be remembered in Pakistan without a great deal of affection. And with good reason. It was primarily towards him that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto directed his caustic “No, gentlemen, the party is not over” remark shortly before he was overthrown. It is widely accepted that General Ziaul Haq had at the very least obtained clearance for his coup from the Americans, and that two years later a sufficiently stern warning from Washington could have saved Bhutto’s life.

It was also under the aegis of the Carter administration that the United States became involved in the Afghan imbroglio (although two decades would pass before it reaped the whirlwind, so to speak), and eventual confessions by Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski leave no room for doubt that American intrigues and actions at the time bore no relation to concerns about Afghanistan: the intention was embarrass and weaken the Soviet Union. (That US troops in Afghanistan have lately been trying — thus far without success — to target Gulbadin Hekmatyar is a fact dripping with irony; back then, the Hizbe Islami leader was Zia and Washington’s favourite mujahid.)

The bitter and twisted Brzezinski wasn’t exactly able to fill Henry Kissinger’s shoes — but not for want of trying. His efforts ensured that the groundwork for Ronald Reagan’s greatest triumph had been done by the time that particular zombie lurched into the Oval Office. Carter’s final months in office were dominated by the hostages at the US embassy in Tehran (including a badly botched rescue attempt), and by election day in November 1980 he was being derided as the weakest US president in living memory. Four years earlier, however, a not terribly charismatic peanut farmer from Georgia had seemed like a pleasant change from the well-documented excesses of the Nixon era.

Although Carter’s claim that stress on human rights would be the distinguishing feature of his government’s foreign policy turned out to be largely rhetorical, there were areas — including relations with China and Cuba — in which the administration proved to be somewhat less hypocritical than the preceding and succeeding Republican regimes. And while many Americans recall Carter’s years as head of state with chagrin, he is widely acknowledged to be the most decent ex-president the US has ever had. His toothsome visage can invariably be found wherever there is an election to be observed, and the Carter Centre he set up after being ejected from the White House has developed a do-gooder reputation that is not entirely undeserved.

Last week Carter’s sense of mission drove him to an island where no US president has been before — at least not since the days of Herbert Hoover. He stood, hand on heart, next to Fidel Castro as a Cuban band struck up The Star-Spangled Banner. A couple of days later, his keynote address to the Cuban people was broadcast live and uncensored by state radio and television. The unexpurgated text appeared in Communist Party newspapers the following day. (It is impossible to imagine comparable courtesy being extended to Castro by the US, unless by some miracle Jesse Jackson or Ralph Nader were to be elevated to the presidency.) What’s more, Castro kept his word by not seeking to prevent Carter from meeting anyone he wanted to, including leading lights of the unofficial opposition, or from publicizing their agenda.

In his speech Carter predictably made the case for elections and capitalism, but he also acknowledged that the embargo slapped on Cuba by the US more than 40 years ago is wrong. Stressing the need for freedom of travel and better relations between the two countries, he admitted that Washington ought to take the first step in this regard.

That may yet happen, but not under the present administration. Not long before Carter flew to Havana, a ranking US official informally extended George W. Bush’s notorious “axis of evil” to cover Libya, Syria and, above all, Cuba. Undersecretary of state John Bolton, a particularly virulent specimen of the extreme right-wing species that currently holds sway in Washington, claimed in a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation that Cuba could well be developing biological weapons and sharing its expertise with countries such as Iran. He cited no evidence, and shortly afterwards his boss, Colin Powell, felt obliged to retract the charge.

Apart from ideologically motivated bloody-mindedness, the accusation appears to stem from envy over Cuban advances in biotechnology, which rival those of US pharmaceuticals. A tiny Canadian firm has recently made a deal with the University of Havana to develop a cancer vaccine that could earn Cuba millions of dollars in foreign exchange. Even Bolton acknowledged that Cuba’s biotech industry is “one of the most advanced in Latin America and leads in the production of pharmaceuticals and vaccines that are sold worldwide”. He may view this as a threat, but the fact is that Cuban medicines are popular (and not just in the Third World) because of their quality, and because they are not accompanied by the prohibitive price tags that US-based multinationals invariable attach to patented treatments.

Before travelling to Cuba (needless to say, to do so he required special permission from the headquarters of the Land of the Free), Carter queried US officials about possible proof that the Castro regime was in any way involved in the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. He was told there was none.

To his credit, Carter was willing to emphasize this point — and was unstinting in his praise for Cuba’s stress on universal free education and health care. His initiative enjoys the support of scores of members of the Congress, many of whom are, no doubt, influenced by the prospect of the US firms striking profitable deals in Cuba rather than by political considerations. But even the business angle is not going to influence Dubya and his cohorts.

In Miami this week, the US president is expected to outline further efforts towards toppling Castro — not least because his brother Jeb, seeking re-election as governor of Florida, needs the votes of Fidel-hating Cuban exiles. The million-dollar question is whether Bush will even momentarily ponder the monumental hypocrisy involved in pandering to an autocracy such as the one in Saudi Arabia while excoriating the Cuban regime.

Probably not. Carter, however, ought to have known better than to cite the failure of the recent military-industrial coup against Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez in support of his thesis that democracy has irreversibly gained a foothold in Latin America. After all, he must know that the plot to displace the elected populist president was at the very least enthusiastically endorsed, if not actually underwritten, by US officials.

A reasonable case can, of course, be made for democracy in Cuba — albeit not democracy of the sort that elevated Bush to power. The island nation has been ruled by Castro since 1959. For much of this period he appears to have carried the people with him, but that is not a good enough excuse for denying them the opportunity to vote him out, nor does it justify one-party rule or restrictions on free speech. At the same time, it is worth noting that at no point in its post-revolutionary existence has Cuba been spared a barrage of vicious propaganda from across the Florida Straits. Nor at any point has there been a guarantee — or even a likelihood — that the US would restrain itself from exploiting the openings that a political free-for-all would offer.

Under Fulgencio Batista, Cuba was a veritable mafia-run whorehouse for American capitalists. The mafia helped to get John F. Kennedy elected in 1960, and expected him to repay the debt by making Cuba safe for capitalism once again. The Bay of Pigs failure may have cost Kennedy his life. It also effectively signalled the end of the Castro administration’s efforts to establish ties with the US on the basis of mutual respect. Cuba did not fall into the Soviet sphere of influence entirely of its own accord. It was pushed.

Yet, notwithstanding its economic dependence on the Comecon nations, it never quite became a Soviet puppet. This goes some way towards explaining its ability to survive, despite considerable hardships, the demise of the USSR. Another reason is the fact that Castro came to power via a popular revolution: unlike Eastern European leaders, he wasn’t placed at the helm by the Red Army. And he has been able, by and large, to run Cuba with a fraction of the repression deemed necessary by other communist states — or, for that matter, commonplace in dictatorships brazenly courted by the US.

In Florida this week, President Bush will be seeking not only to smooth down feathers ruffled by his administration’s decision to allow the Carter mission to proceed (it could hardly have done otherwise without risking an international scandal, but that excuse may not satisfy the Miami mafia) but also to deflect attention from growing evidence that the government and its intelligence agencies ignored indications of Al Qaeda hijack plans shortly before September 11.

White House denials have focused exclusively on the absence of any suggestion that the World Trade Centre or the Pentagon would be targeted. It goes without saying that if the hijackings could have been prevented, the attacks would not have taken place. But the vehemence of the denials provokes more questions than it answers. The flunkeys doth protest too much, methinks.

In the department of small mercies, on the other hand, one ought to be grateful there has thus far been no suggestion that Osama bin Laden was actually Fidel in disguise.

War clouds on the horizon

THE Indians claim that the United States had given them an assurance to address the question of terrorism in the occupied Kashmir once their mission in Afghanistan was over. It is hard to believe that the United States would have fallen victim to India’s vociferous propaganda which portrays the freedom fighters in Kashmir as terrorists only to hoodwink the public opinion.

By no stretch of the imagination, can the concept of terrorism be invoked by India against Kashmiris’ struggle for self-determination, the legitimacy of which has been recognized by the United Nations. The state of Jammu and Kashmir is a disputed territory, as declared by the United Nations, which means that the inhabitants of that state, at present under the illegal occupation of India, are not Indian subjects by any definition. The Kashmiris are struggling for their legitimate cause and cannot be accused of undermining India’s territorial integrity, as Kashmir is not a part of that territory. Thus, the concept of territorial integrity cannot be invoked by India in this case.

Taking advantage of the international community’s resolve to fight against international terrorism and to detract world’s attention from its own state terrorism in the occupied Kashmir, India has, of late, raised the pitch of its propaganda against the freedom fighters in Jammu and Kashmir while unleashing a reign of terror against them. Since long, India has been accusing Pakistan of supporting cross-border infiltration into the occupied Kashmir. Time and again Pakistan has denied this allegation. The indigenous struggle of the Kashmiri people had neither been sponsored by Pakistan, nor had ever been supported by it materially.

For more than a decade India has deployed more than 700,000 troops in the occupied Kashmir to suppress the on-going freedom struggle there. Following the December 13 attack on the Indian parliament by some unknown persons India also massed more than 500,000 troops on its side of the Line of Control and along its international border with Pakistan. According to India’s own declaration, the area immediately behind the Indian side of the LoC has been heavily mined to a width of five kilometers. Under these circumstances, any large-scale infiltration into the occupied Kashmir is practically impossible.

Indian prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, has recently admitted in the parliament that the cross-border terrorism has declined during the recent months. A senior intelligence officer in the occupied Kashmir has made a similar admission, although attributing this reduction to heavy snowfall in Kashmir. Paradoxically, however, the Indian ministry of external affairs’ spokesperson Nirupama Rao said, last week, that the figures for infiltration of militants into the occupied Kashmir closely match those of previous years. Obviously, this assertion is only a figment of her imagination unless, of course, India has devised some method to keep an account of infiltrators into the occupied Kashmir.

India seems poised to indulge in adventure against Pakistan, ostensibly, for its failure to stop the alleged cross-border “terrorism.” CIA Director George Tenet has warned that the chances of Indo-Pak war are very high. Douglas Feith, the US defence department’s policy chief, has given a similar warning.

India’s hostility towards Pakistan is not a new phenomenon. It has imposed three wars on Pakistan during the last fifty years or so. The reason for India’s present belligerent attitude towards Pakistan is, however, explained by Sunil Khilani, a respected Indian historian, in these words: “Mr Vajpayee’s Bharatya Janta Party has lost every state election in the past year. What better issue than Pakistan to restore its popularity?”

According to P.R. Chari, an Indian defence analyst, “India’s strategy of putting pressure on Pakistan to end cross-border terrorism in Kashmir has clearly failed. India has made itself a hostage to fortune. It cannot de-escalate its military build-up without completely losing face.” On the other hand, Ashok Mehta, a retired Indian general, has recently revealed that “Indian generals are telling the politicians that they cannot remain fully mobilized indefinitely.”

It seems that India, which is on the horns of a dilemma, is now looking for a face-saving device to end its existing predicament. No wonder, if it is contemplating a symbolic strike on Azad Kashmir so that it may be able to de-escalate its military deployment with some semblance of grace. However, India needed a solid pretext to embark upon its military adventure against Pakistan. Apparently, it wants to avail itself of its oft-repeated allegation of cross-border terrorism against Pakistan to salvage its position. If so, India owing to its shortsightedness will be treading on the path of destruction.

Given India’s superiority over Pakistan in conventional forces, the political and defence analysts are apprehending a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, with loss of life and property on a scale the world has never witnessed before. The United States, alarmed at the possibility of a devastating nuclear war, is doing its best to reduce tension between the two countries. Ms Christina Rocca, assistant secretary of state, recently visited India and Pakistan for this purpose. However, her mission did not succeed owing to India’s usual obduracy. According to media reports, the deputy secretary of State, Richard Armitage, is also expected to visit the region very soon for the same purpose.

It is, however, intriguing that the United States, being closely involved in efforts to reduce the danger of war between India and Pakistan, should have chosen this very crucial moment, to have joint military exercises with India in Agra. The US should have exercised extreme caution to establish its credentials as an impartial peace-broker. The US has also publicly endorsed the upcoming elections in the occupied Kashmir which, as in the past, are being opposed by the Kashmiris. Regrettably, such ill-conceived moves, on the part of the United States, may not only dilute its own leverage in Pakistan but may also create difficulties for President Pervez Musharraf in is fight against terrorism.

It is time that Indian leaders gave serious thought to resolving the long-standing Kashmir dispute by peaceful means rather than embarking upon an adventure against Pakistan. Posterity will never forgive them for their irresponsible and ruthless behaviour.

The writer is a former ambassador of Pakistan.

Did Bush know of 9/11 attack?

THERE are aspects of the US-led war against international terrorism which are gradually coming to light and which can only be regarded as disturbing. It is still not easy to see how the “war” which left no option for Pakistan but to join on the side of the US will proceed in the coming months.

There is only one thing that can be said with any certainty: the world will not be the same again after the events of Sept 11, 2001, and President Bush’s unilateral declaration of war against terror. Following certain information which has come to light only recently, a controversy has started in the United States over whether or not President George W. Bush was alert to the full implications of an advance intelligence warning of possible hijacking of American passenger planes by members of Al Qaeda. The controversy is gaining the proportions of a national debate involving, among others, high-ranking officials, US intelligence services, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

President Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleeza Rice, has acknowledged that the intelligence warning was received in the White House on August 6 — more than a month before the fateful events of September 11. Many are asking why the full implications of the warning were not grasped by the higher echelons of the administration and, if they were, why was not the president properly alerted? It is said that the warning was actually brought to the notice of the president through a “briefing book” which was handed over to him at his ranch in Texas on August 6.

Even more mystifying: some US officials maintain that this was not the first such warning that had come to the president’s notice. The CIA had warned President Bush even earlier, in last May, that Al Qaeda activists might hijack planes “as part of their campaign against the US.” This has prompted a Democratic member of the senate, Ben Nelson, to sarcastically remark: “Most people thought we didn’t have a clue; now it appears we had a clue (but) we obviously didn’t do enough with it.”

Defending his position, President Bush has somewhat naively said that had he known that the “enemy” was going to use aeroplanes as missiles to kill, he would have done everything in his power to prevent it and protect American lives. At any rate, the US chief executive should be expected to know that intelligence warnings can seldom be that detailed and specific. What has added to the American people’s anxiety is information that has been made public only after the events of September 11 that in the first instance, the US administration reportedly gave Congress only “a watered-down version of the CIA’s assessment that did not mention hijacking.”

The overall concern over the matter has been further heightened by the disclosure that in 1999 the CIA had instituted a study at the behest of the Congress library which painted a scenario close to what actually happened on September 11. The study had predicted that in retaliation for the US guided missile attacks on Osama bin Laden’s strongholds in Afghanistan in 1998 (when Clinton was president), Al Qaeda “suicide battalions” could attempt to ram a plane loaded with explosives into a sensitive government building in the US, like the Pentagon or the CIA headquarters or even the White House.

This is almost how it happened on September 11, except that the hijacked planes which the Al Qaeda desperadoes crashed into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon building did not carry explosives.

What makes the whole episode even more puzzling is the fact that some months before the events of September 11, the FBI office in Phoenix had urged the headquarters to “review” the activities of some Middle East men with possible links with Osama undergoing flying training at US flying schools. According to a report in a major American daily, the FBI director, Robert Mueller, has acknowledged that the information “was not pursued aggressively enough.”

Yet another piece in the jig-saw puzzle of September 11 events is the report that on September 4 the White House security team had finalized a directive for Mr Bush’s signature to launch what his press secretary has called an all-out assault on Al Qaeda outfit with the aid of some Afghans opposed to Osama bin Laden. The question is if such a plan was finalized by September 4, why did it not receive the president’s approval if it was put up before him?

To add to the general sense of confusion and anxiety, which prevails in the United States today. The US defence secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, has now spoken of the ‘likelihood’ of more terrorist attacks in the US. He has been quoted as saying: “The likelihood is because it is not possible to defend every place at every moment — that there will be another terrorist attack; we should just face this reality.” This is bound to add to the prevailing paranoia in the US and make things extremely unpleasant for Muslims living in that country.

A poll conducted by Newsweek recently posed the question whether Mr Bush did all he should have with the intelligence warning of possible hijacking of American passenger planes to be used as ‘missiles’ to hit US targets. forty-eight per cent of the respondents said the president did what he should have while 39 per cent said he did not. On the whole, however, according to the Newsweek poll, Mr Bush’s popularity has not been “dented.” But in the current popular mood of anxiety and fear over the question of security across America, there is no knowing how the people will react to further disclosures about serious security lapses and failure and how these will affect President Bush’s popularity ratings.

Disapproval of the administration’s handling of the terrorism issue is already becoming audible. The leader of the minority (Democratic) party in the US House of Representatives, Richard Gephardt, commenting on the intelligence lapse has accused Mr Bush’s administration of having “failed the American people in a very important respect.” Even while reaffirming his party’s support to President Bush in his war on terrorism, he has stressed that the administration has “got to do better in preventing terrorist attacks.” President Bush has reiterated his determination “to chase the killers one by one and bring them to justice” and maintained that this is exactly what is going to happen.

Following the disclosure about the CIA report of possible hijacking of passenger planes and Washington’s inadequate attention to this threat, there is speculation about President Bush’s political future. A staff writer of The Guardian of London, in a commentary, has speculated that more “sinister secrets” might emerge about the hijackers who crashed into the World Trade and the Pentagon and a fourth plane which was brought down in Pennsylvania.

There are also fresh misgivings in America itself about the success being claimed for the US-led coalition’s war against terrorism in Afghanistan. After repeated claims of total success for the Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, there now are reports of Osama bin Laden being alive, “somewhere inside Afghanistan.” The Al Qaeda leader has been quoted in a London-based Arabic paper as saying: “We don’t consider that the battle has ended in Afghanistan... [it] has begun and its fires are picking up.”

This may prove to be an empty boast but the fact that a new operation — Operation Condor — involving a thousand coalition troops, mainly British, has been launched recently in the mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan makes it all too clear that the war against terrorism is nowhere a decisive victory.

Brig Roger Lane, British commander in Afghanistan, has said that the coalition against terror is coming up against “a substantial enemy force” in eastern Afghanistan.

A day before Condor began an Australian patrol came under attack from what are believed to be remnants of Taliban and Al Qaeda. It is clear that despite months of intense fighting, a sizable number of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters are still holding out.

That they are putting up tough resistance to the British-led coalition force in Khost-Paktia area is clear from the latest reports from the region.

A cultural tug-of-war: OF MICE AND MEN

THE uproar created in Karachi and Sindh on the transfer of antiquities from the National Museum to the Lahore Fort has drawn attention to another matter of somewhat similar import. The most striking feature of the national heritage are historical monuments, the structures left by the Mughal kings occupying pride of place.

Some of them are included in the World Heritage List maintained by UNESCO. They are all looked after by the federal Department of Archaeology & Museums. Why do the provincial governments want to take over their control? This is the matter in dispute.

When neutral observers are asked this question, their comments are not the same. Some of them think it is a natural human tendency, as expressed by bureaucrats through the governments they serve, to grab as much authority as they can. Others believe that the federal government is not able to spend the requisite funds on repairs and renovation of these buildings and the provinces would maintain them better. Still others are of the view that these magnificent structures evoke a sense of pride in the provinces where they are located, while the federal government has no such sentiment about them.

I think the real reason is a mix of the three. In either case, for the last ten years or so the provinces have been hard at it, striving to take over control of historical monuments and other buildings of cultural value from the centre, but the status quo prevails. Then the tide suddenly turned in their favour when, in a meeting some months ago, President Pervez Musharraf directed that the subject be transferred to the provinces, of whom Punjab was the most vocal.

But the decision is still to be implemented. Some quarters believe that the federal authorities will be able to convince the President to change his mind on ground of some weighty reasons that they propose to put up to him. That has not put a brake on the meetings and conferences that continue to be held between the federal government and the Punjab government on the subject. Recent developments make interesting reading.

In November last year it was announced that the National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB) and the Department of Archaeology & Museums would hold a meeting in Islamabad, to be attended also by the four provincial chief secretaries, to finalise the plan for decentralisation of the concerned sites and monuments. Why the NRB? Because apparently the decision was being taken in the light of the devolution plan.

In pursuance of the President’s directive, the NRB had asked the department to undertake the exercise and the latter had sent a proforma to the heads of its northern and southern circles seeking details regarding staff, budget and the province-wise number and location of protected monuments and archaeological sites. The department had also gathered information as to who, the provinces or the centre, actually holds control of the relevant sites and monuments, because some of them, like Lahore’s grand Badshahi Mosque for example, are looked after by the province.

The two circles had filled up the proformas and sent them back to the department, and also supplied other details required by it. An exercise had also been carried out on how, if at all, the antiquities were to be further transferred to the newly elected district authorities. The Punjab government was reported to have already issued a notification in this behalf, though its details are not available.

What happened then? Some sort of meeting was held but it was not a meeting that could arrive at decisions. The newspaper report said it was inconclusive. It was chaired by the chief secretary, Punjab, but, apparently it was cold-shouldered by the federal culture ministry which has to do the needful. The province has expressed its readiness to take on the responsibility of the historical and other buildings but that’s about all.

Despite the ability of the press to ferret out information of all kinds, it is sometimes difficult for it to find out the simplest thing. Nothing could be known of what had happened to delay matters. Now a newspaper has discovered that the summary that was to be put up to the president to accord his final OK to his own verbal directive had not yet left the ministry on its way to the Aiwan-i-Sadar.

Another report said that the summary contemplated by the culture ministry was not on the lines mentioned in the above paragraph. Instead of seeking his formal authorisation to the transfer of monuments, it was intended to point out to the president the problems that would arise — or the problems that the ministry thought would arise — if the transfer was given effect to. So this is another picture altogether.

The reaction of a concerned officer of Punjab (not named) was one of indignation. “This is disgusting”, he said, “and a clear violation of the president’s desire.” He added that from what was transpiring there seems little hope of the provinces getting the new responsibility in the field of archaeology, but there is also the likelihood that they will agitate.” But the provinces can’t agitate. What he probably meant was that they would put up a strong and bold front to the attitude of the ministry and then leave the final decision to the President.

Viewed dispassionately you have to concede that the culture ministry’s objections to the transfer should be given careful thought. That is the proper way in administration. It is believed that the ministry proposed to point out certain legal and technical complications that were a hurdle in the way of the transfer and needed being smoothed over before the curtain was allowed to drop on the matter finally.

One of the most serious of these was that the UNESCO was not inclined to deal directly with the provinces because it was the centre which was signatory to a number of UN conventions on the subject. Another reason for UNESCO’s hesitation was that half a dozen of the monuments were on its World Heritage List and it would like a national authority to deal with them.

So there the matter rests, and we have to see which way the camel sits, as the adage goes in Urdu. And what about the camel which is agitating in Karachi?

Colombia’s political violence

BEFORE the latest carnage reported from Colombia is shunted down into the archives and certainly before the Bush administration decides it is going to redirect its military aid to Colombia, now concentrated on defeating drug trafficking, in the direction of fighting leftist guerillas, we should all take time out to reconsider the last 100 years or more of Colombian history.

As Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia’s Nobel Prize winning novelist, has reminded us, Cicero wrote two thousand years ago, “To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child”.

In Colombia’s case the continuing political violence has cut across all levels of society on and off all through the last century and much of the century before. (The common Colombian term La Violencia is usually used for the particular intense period of civil war between 1946 and 1966, to distinguish it from the War of a Thousand Days fought between 1899-1902.) Nearly all Latin American societies have had their civil wars but nowhere have they been so continuous and seemingly unending as in Colombia. The historian R.W. Ramsey described the phenomenon as the “western hemisphere’s largest internal war in the twentieth century”. Politics have never been tranquil or harmonious in Colombia.

At the same time Colombia has long prided itself on its Athenian tradition of democracy, on its sophisticated literary traditions, on its relatively free press and not least its commitment to regular elections. Its military, although an important element, do not rule behind dark glasses. For nearly all its history the civilian politicians have called the shots, as they do today.

Colombia’s violence is rooted in the almost equal contest of electoral politics, between Liberals and Conservatives, whose original highly charged dividing line between an oppressed peasantry and working class and the Church-supported, landed aristocracy has become dulled over time. For decades now what matters most is what political tribe you are born into.

As for the Church, according to one study made in Aritama in remote northern Colombia, the political polarization of contemporary society is so complete that the two factions even have their own saints: the Virgin, San Rafael and San Antonio are said to be Conservatives associated with the colour blue while the Sacred Heart of Jesus and San Martin are liberals, and therefore “reds”.

In the course of La Violencia brutal methods of torture and assassination became commonplace in rural Colombia. In the small towns and villages violence was often perpetuated by people who had grown up alongside their victims. The brutality has been literally handed down from grandfather to father to son. For the last 38 years the leftist rebels have concentrated on fighting the government but in recent months much of the rebels’ action has been in moving against the rightists’ paramilitaries.

Last week’s largest civilian massacre for decades was a result of a clash between the country’s two biggest irregular armies- one leftist, living off income from the coca trade and the other a paramilitary force supported by landowners and elements of the army. The free-lance armies have begun to eclipse the regular army even though it is now heavily backed and supplied by the U.S.

The endless cycle of violence has been a constant preoccupation of Garcia Marquez- the violence of civil war and economic exploitation in his One Hundred Years of Solitude; the violence of partisan political hatreds in No One Writes to the Colonel; the structural violence of dictatorship in The Autumn of the Patriarch; and the sexual violence of a repressive society in Chronicle of a Death Foretold. In all of them he tries to plumb the reasons for the violence and at the same time to steer outsiders from their caricaturing of the South American as “a man with a moustache, a guitar and a revolver”.

But the bitter irony remains, the novels of La Violencia, as Garcia Marquez himself once said, are “the only literary explosion of a genuinely national character that we have had in our history”.

Violence is deeply ingrained in the Colombian personality and to root it out will be the work of generations.

Yet despite the writings of this literary master and despite the brave coverage of events in Colombia by reporters like Scott Wilson of the Washington Post who brought us the news of last week’s massacre in remote Bellavista, we watch the juggernaught of the American military machine rolling into Colombia with an insouciance that is almost awesome, if it weren’t so foolish.—Copyright Jonathan Power