STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

The Government of Colombia and the Terrorist FARC Organization are finally Reaching a Peace Agreement after Decades of Fighting.
Congratulations! Recent newspaper articles describe the imminent signing of a peace treaty that is being crafted to end the war between the terrorist group FARC and the Columbian government.

Decades ago, I had the unique opportunity to negotiate with the FARC  regarding the release of an American Peace Corps hostage who was taken while he and others were trekking through the jungles of that country. I immediately assessed the situation from afar and determined that in fact a peace corps volunteer had been taken for reasons that remained both unclear to me and more importantly to FARC. FARC assumed that this young man was a CIA operative. However after some time, they conceded with my insistence that he was not ever CIA nor could ever be CIA because his education and lifestyle were completely inconsistent with that of an American operative. Once we agreed that this individual was a target of happenstance, like many other Peace Corps members, they decided after some long distance communication to release him for a price.

At first the price was quite high. I don’t remember the amount but it did not correspond to the raison d’etre for his capture. Eventually, it came to a point in our conversations where the FARC leader had to admit that they had made a mistake in taking him. What became more interesting was, as the weeks went by, I was sensing an urgency from the FARC leader to get rid of the American hostage. I recalled the O’Henry short story—“The Ransom of Red Chief”—where the captive became so obnoxious that the captors eventually released the captive.

As I gathered more HUMINT, I learned that the Peace Corps volunteer had made himself so incredibly disliked and burdensome to the FARC over a very few short days that I was able to knock down the asking price to a paltry amount. Thanks to the fact that Peace Corps hostage was a real pain in the ass. I went down to Colombia to make the necessary exchange without involving myself or the FARC in any direct communications.

The Peace Corps volunteer was released. The FARC was true to their word. And the rest of the story was inspiring, right?

Not quite!

In the middle of another hostage siege that took place in the USA involving a black American Muslim who had taken over five hundred hostages in Washington DC, [Hanafi Muslim Siege], I received a disturbing phone call from the Peace Corp member’s family. She informed me that one year after his release, he had committed suicide. I mentioned a few words of consolation and then proceeded to extract out the five hundred hostages from the hands of the Black Muslims. After the ordeal was over, I asked myself what had happened to this young Peace Corps volunteer who really was extremely helpful in facilitating his own release.

I began to realize that his suicide might have been a PTSD reaction to what had happened to him while he was in captivity. I researched the issue of hostage taking and PTSD; and I found that there was very little literature related to this phenomena in the civilian press. Yet in military literature there was an inchoate movement that was starting to study prisoner captivity in North Korea and Vietnam. As a result of this FARC hostage siege and its tragic aftermath, I recommended that the State Department personnel [those who were about to leave abroad on assignment] should take a mandatory hostage-survival preparation course. Under Secretary for Management, Lawrence Eagleburger, enforced this mandate.

In retrospect, as much damage and pain that FARC had caused Colombia, I do remember one small, incidental episode where they had inspired me to make hostage-survival a part of the Foreign Service Curriculum. Whether that program still exists, I have no idea.

I congratulate both the FARC and the Colombian government for their final approach to signing a peace treaty.

May that peace last for many years!

The Colombian people deserve a respite from violence and terror.