Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** Kurdish troubles.  According to a Turkish police report, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), with which the government is in peace talks, has kidnapped 331 children over the past six months, including 15 children from a local festival on 23 April.  According to one of the kidnapped children’s family, the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) has asked the PKK to return the children but it has refused.

There is a feeling in security circles that renewed activity by the PKK could be leading towards a breakdown in the ceasefire agreed last year.  The Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) and the PKK are said to have established 48 training centres across 10 provinces.  It is said that as many as 8,500 youths are being trained in these centres, which are euphemistically called Education Support Houses (EDEV).

Security sources say that the purpose of  the centres is to recruit more PKK members and to strengthen its support base.  Participants are being encouraged to join PKK militants based in the mountains.

*** Hopes for Colombian peace deal by year-end.  Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos, who is facing re-election on 25 May, says that he is convinced that he can achieve peace with the FARC rebel group by the end of this year if he is re-elected.  In an interview on Monday, he said: “I do not like imposing absolute deadlines, but the dynamics suggest that before the end of the year we could end the five-point agenda”.

Santos said that “almost three” of the agenda items had been agreed, and that the other two, transitional justice and what to do with the demobilization and surrendering of weapons, “could be completed in the remaining months of this year”.  He added: “We will close the point of drug trafficking in the coming weeks”.

Santos also said that he hopes any peace deal can embrace the ELN guerrillas as well.  He said: “It is a challenge that I hope we can address and hopefully we can converge the two processes and end all guerrilla forces in Colombia once and for all.”

In answer to his critics for talking to guerrillas, Santos said: “Of course we are talking with enemies.  Sometimes people forget that peace is negotiated with enemies.  They accuse me of legitimizing enemies, but of course if you don’t sit down with them you wouldn’t be able to reach any kind of agreement.”