BOGOTA, Colombia: Colombia’s leftist FARC rebels seek political rebirth on Sunday as they move to transform into a party to seek elected office after disarming to end a half-century war.
About 1,000 delegates from the freshly demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia will launch a founding congress to choose their political representatives.
They will choose a name for the party and candidates to run in next year’s general elections.
“We are going to define the character of the political party that we aspire to build,” former guerrilla commander Carlos Antonio Lozada told AFP.
He said they will also shape “its structure and name the leaders, at least at national level.”
Another former commander of the force, Ivan Marquez, said he expected the movement to call itself the Alternative Revolutionary Force of Colombia.
However, the overall FARC leader Rodrigo Londono canvassed opinion on Twitter and many respondents said they favored the name “New Colombia.”
Conflict analyst Frederic Masse of Bogota’s Externado University said the debate reflected a “dilemma” in the movement.
“Some want to keep the word ‘revolutionary’ while others want to change that to show that this is a new start,” Masse said.
Regardless of how many votes they may win, the peace deal signed with the government last year guarantees the new party five seats in each of the two legislative chambers for two terms.
“We hope to get enough votes not only to justify those five senate and five lower house representatives, but also we aspire hopefully to achieve an even greater representation,” Lozada said.
Londono has ruled out the new party fielding a presidential candidate.
But he said it will support a candidate who guarantees the peace deal the FARC signed with center-right President Juan Manuel Santos.
The communist FARC formed in 1964 from a peasant uprising for rural land rights.
Its members have avoided publicly framing their current discussions on their political future with terms such as “socialist” and “communist” however.
Another former FARC commander, Pastor Alape, said they were looking for a broader “liberal democracy” movement.
Some ex-FARC leaders have said it will be “anti-imperialist” and “anti-patriarchal” in spirit.
Lozada said it would focus on promoting free health and education and environmental protection.
After 53 years of attacks and kidnappings, the FARC in its new form faces a struggle for acceptance.
Recent polls indicate that more than 80 percent of Colombians are opposed to it.
“There is a long history of grievances weighing against the FARC,” said analyst Angelika Rettberg.
Voters narrowly rejected the peace deal in a referendum last year. Santos and the FARC tweaked it and the government pushed it through congress.
“The FARC will face a number of challenges The first is not to betray their support base. The second is to enlarge their electorate,” said Masse.
“The third is to show that they are capable of doing politics differently and not letting themselves get sucked into traditional patronage politics.”
The FARC has invited other likely presidential candidates to its congress, though none has publicly confirmed attendance. It has also invited some 150 international participants.
The congress in Bogota runs until September 1, when the party will hold an official launch ceremony in Bolivar Square, the heart of the capital’s political district.
The Colombian conflict drew in various rebel forces, paramilitary groups and state forces over the decades.
It left some 260,000 people confirmed dead, 60,000 unaccounted for and seven million displaced.
The government has opened peace talks with the last active group, the 1,500-strong National Liberation Army, in the hope of sealing what Santos calls an “overall peace.”
Disarmed, Colombia’s FARC seek political rebirth
Disarmed, Colombia’s FARC seek political rebirth
Mystery of CIA’s lost nuclear device haunts Himalayan villagers 60 years on
- Plutonium-fueled spy system was meant to monitor China’s nuclear activity after 1964 atomic tests
- Porter who took part in Nanda Devi mission warned family of ‘danger buried in snow’
NEW DELHI: Porters who helped American intelligence officers carry a nuclear spy system up the precarious slopes of Nanda Devi, India’s second-highest peak, returned home with stories that sent shockwaves through nearby villages, leaving many in fear that still holds six decades later.
A CIA team, working with India’s Intelligence Bureau, planned to install the device in the remote part of the Himalayas to monitor China, but a blizzard forced them to abandon the system before reaching the summit.
When they returned, the device was gone.
The spy system contained a large quantity of highly radioactive plutonium-238 — roughly a third of the amount used in the atomic bomb dropped by the US on the Japanese city of Nagasaki in the closing stages of the Second World War.
“The workers and porters who went with the CIA team in 1965 would tell the story of the nuclear device, and the villagers have been living in fear ever since,” said Narendra Rana from the Lata village near Nanda Devi’s peak.
His father, Dhan Singh Rana, was one of the porters who carried the device during the CIA’s mission in 1965.
“He told me there was a danger buried in the snow,” Rana said. “The villagers fear that as long as the device is buried in the snow, they are safe, but if it bursts, it will contaminate the air and water, and no one will be safe after that.”
During the Sino-Indian tensions in the 1960s, India cooperated with the US in surveillance after China conducted its first nuclear tests in 1964. The Nanda Devi mission was part of this cooperation and was classified for years. It only came under public scrutiny in 1978, when the story was broken by Outsider magazine.
The article caused an uproar in India, with lawmakers demanding the location of the nuclear device be revealed and calling for political accountability. The same year, then Prime Minister Morarji Desai set up a committee to assess whether nuclear material in the area near Nanda Devi could pollute the Ganges River, which originates there.
The Ganges is one of the world’s most crucial freshwater sources, with about 655 million people in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh depending on it for their essential needs.
The committee, chaired by prominent scientists, submitted its report a few months later, dismissing any cause for concerns, and establishing that even in the worst-case scenario of the device’s rupture, the river’s water would not be contaminated.
But for the villagers, the fear that the shell containing radioactive plutonium could break apart never goes away, and peace may only come once it is found.
Many believe the device, trapped within the glacier’s shifting ice, may have moved downhill over time.
Rana’s father told him that the device felt hot when it was carried, and he believed it might have melted its way into the glacier, remaining buried deep inside.
An imposing mass of rock and ice, Nanda Devi at 7,816 m is the second-highest mountain in India after Kangchenjunga.
When a glacier near the mountain burst in 2021, claiming over 200 lives, scientists explained that the disaster was due to global warming, but in nearby villages the incident was initially blamed on a nuclear explosion.
“They feared the device had burst. Those rescuing people were afraid they might die from radiation,” Rana said. “If any noise is heard, if any smoke appears in the sky, we start fearing a leak from the nuclear device.”
The latent fear surfaces whenever natural disasters strike or media coverage puts the missing device back in the spotlight. Most recently, a New York Times article on the CIA mission’s 60th anniversary reignited the unease.
“The apprehensions are genuine. After 1965, Americans came twice to search for the device. The villagers accompanied them, but it could not be found, which remains a concern for the local community,” said Atul Soti, an environmentalist in Joshimath, Uttarakhand, about 50 km from Nanda Devi.
“People are worried. They have repeatedly sought answers from the government, but no clear response has been provided so far. Periodically, the villagers voice their concerns, and they need a definitive government statement on this issue.”
Despite repeated queries whenever media attention arises, Indian officials have not released detailed updates since the Desai-appointed committee submitted its findings.
“The government should issue a white paper to address people’s concerns. The white paper will make it clear about the status of the device, and whether leakage from the device could pollute the Ganges River,” Soti told Arab News.
“The government should be clear. If the government is not reacting, then it further reinforces the fear.”
