Colombia's Oldest Guerrillas Turn 45
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Colombia's Oldest Guerrillas Turn 45
By Henry Orrego
San Jose del Guavire, Colombia (AFP) — As
Colombia's oldest and strongest rebel group,
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC),
turns 45 on Wednesday, its guerrillas have
withdrawn into the jungle.
In hamlets dotted around the lush green
expanse of southeast Colombia, the oldest
residents still remember how FARC fighters
used to be more visible as they patrolled
the streets.
"They came very well-armed and dressed in
clean uniforms and they began to behave like
the authorities, because there were none
here," said Cristino Vega, a peasant whose
hands are weathered from years of tearing up
coca leaves.
"They resolved fights between neighbors and
sorted out the drunks."
Colombia, one of the closest US allies in
Latin America, has been ravaged for decades
by a civil war between left-wing guerrilla
groups and right-wing paramilitary
organizations.
For years, the FARC, which is on US and
European lists of terrorist organizations,
built a stronghold in the jungle zone of
southeast Colombia where a third of the
country's coca leaves are grown, hiding
hostages and gathering their own taxes from
the cocaine trade.
These days, the group notorious for
kidnappings has increasingly resorted to
ambushes and bomb attacks, before rapidly
withdrawing to jungle hideouts.
When President Alvaro Uribe first took
office in 2002, he launched an aggressive
security campaign against the FARC and the
National Liberation Army (ELN) -- another
major rebel group -- helped by US funding
from Plan Colombia, a multi-billion-dollar
counter-narcotics aid package.
The FARC then suffered a series of blows in
2008, including the death of its founder
Manuel Marulanda, nicknamed "Tirofijo" or "Sureshot,"
who died of a heart attack in March.
Raul Reyes, seen as the FARC's number two,
was also killed in combat.
Several months later, the rescue by the
military of 15 high-profile hostages,
including the former presidential candidate
Franco-Colombian Ingrid Betancourt, was
another blow to the group's powers of
negotiation for the release of their
militants.
"The FARC have returned to guerrilla
warfare, their initial combat strategy,
because they no longer have the power they
had some years ago," retired colonel German
Pataquiva, who formerly fought the rebels,
told AFP.
According to Pataquiva, the reverse was
helped by the government's increased
capacity for aerial reaction -- including
heat-seeking radar to track people in
sparsely populated jungles -- thanks to
funds from Plan Colombia.
But the FARC -- who in 45 years have
survived at least four campaigns against
them by 11 governments and taken part in
three attempts at talks -- are far from
disappearing completely.
With an estimated 6,000-7,000 fighters, the
FARC maintains a presence in areas producing
coca, from which they make between 400 and
600 million dollars per year, according to
the defense ministry.
"The FARC have an extraordinary capacity to
adapt" and "they seem to be offering an iron
resistance in some areas," the International
Crisis Group said in a report published in
March.
A wave of attacks in the first months of
2009 -- three with car bombs, killing a
total of 10 and injuring 36 -- was blamed on
the group.
Uribe's new police commissioner, Frank
Pearl, calculated at the start of May that
it would take "some 15 to 20 years,
including a considerable path toward
reconciliation" to end the war.
Efforts for more peace talks remain stuck,
however. Allegations in March 2008 by the
Colombian government that the FARC was
receiving support from the Venezuelan
government further complicated those
prospects.
Meanwhile, the rebels claimed last week that
in March alone 297 soldiers had died and 340
had been hurt in "the war that the
government denies, to avoid recognizing the
political nature of the insurgency."
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