23 July 2008
Colombia's FARC Terrorist Group Faces Devastating Reversals
Freed hostages, leadership deaths, membership defections weaken terrorists
Washington -- The Colombian terrorist group known as the FARC is suffering mounting losses at the hands of aggressive Colombian military and law enforcement authorities while simultaneously watching its influence and relevance weaken.
Terrorism experts believe that for any terrorist organization to survive it must maintain some degree of popular influence and be relevant in the minds of the public. Take that veneer away and the group begins to disintegrate.
Every effort by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to win relevance and influence in the past year has failed, while President Alvaro Uribe's hardline strategy to rein in the group has won widespread popular support and successes. Uribe has indicated that if there are to be negotiations with the FARC leadership, they should expect little or no concessions.
THE LOSSES HAVE MOUNTED
In March, three of seven key FARC Secretariat commanders died or were killed: its second-in-command, Raul Reyes; the leader of the FARC's Central Bloc, Ivan Rios; and FARC co-founder Manuel Marulanda Velez. Until this year, Colombia's armed forces had not killed a single member of the group's secretariat.
In May, FARC computers were seized by Colombian authorities in raids that revealed some of the group's strategic information and connections to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and other political leaders inside and outside of Colombia.
A further blow to the organization began last year and has spread into this year with the defection of more than 3,000 FARC insurgents. A decade ago, the FARC claimed a membership of 18,000, but that number has dwindled to approximately 9,000 insurgents due to excessive losses and defections.
In March, FARC Commander Nelly Avila Moreno deserted the organization, telling authorities she had not spoken directly to the group's high command in more than two years, which terrorism experts believe is a strong indication of a breakdown in the group's ability to command and communicate with outlying units and leaders.
And in a stunning July 2 raid, Colombian army commandos literally took 15 hostages, who included French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and three Americans, from the hands of FARC terrorists without firing a shot. In the process, several terrorist-captors suddenly found themselves the captives.
On July 20, Colombians celebrated their independence day by marching in the millions in Colombian cities and in dozens of other major cities including New York, Washington and Paris to protest FARC kidnappings and the harsh treatment shown captives. The Free Country Foundation in Colombian capital Bogota, a public policy analysis group, estimates that almost 700 hostages still are held by the FARC in the far reaches of the South American country, according to the Washington Post.
At the White House July 22, President Bush said the success of the July 2 rescue mission underscores the progress the Colombian government has made in battling terrorism and the illegal drug trade. "This progress is also evident in the hearts and minds of the Colombian people. On Sunday [July 20], more than a million Colombians marched in their nation's streets and called on the FARC to release its remaining hostages and to stop practicing terror."
Bush also said that since Uribe took office six years ago, the Colombian government reports, homicides have dropped by 40 percent, kidnappings have dropped by more than 80 percent and terrorist attacks have dropped by more than 70 percent. Reforms to Colombia's criminal justice system have dramatically increased conviction rates.
"It symbolizes the huge gains made under Uribe in partnership with the U.S.-funded Plan Colombia program and is a major black eye for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and their rogue insurgency," said Ray Walser, a senior policy analyst for Latin America at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation. "The liberation of these 15 hostages could not have been timelier. Not a shot was fired; not a single life was lost."
Walser said in a recent Heritage Foundation report that the FARC had hoped to use Betancourt and the three American hostages, who were U.S. defense contractors, as pawns in a game of international blackmail against the United States and to raise its image internationally. "The organization sought to apply pressure on the U.S. government and Congress to release two FARC leaders -- Ricardo Palmera and Anayibe Rojas Valderama -- both of whom are serving sentences in U.S. prisons for drug trafficking," Walser said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, writing in the New York Times July 23, said that eight years ago illegal armed groups in Colombia's cocaine and heroin drug trade controlled more of the countryside than the government. "Today the most dangerous and vicious of the groups -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- has seen a sharp drop in its strength and status. Once 18,000 strong, the group has lost half its forces along with whatever credibility and following it had elsewhere in Latin America. The other major militias, the National Liberation Army and the United Self-Defense Forces, no longer pose a serious threat," Gates and Santos said.
These losses are having a cumulative effect on the terrorists and their ability to conduct effective operations and garner popular support. And recent public opinion polls, compared with polls in 1998 and 2000, indicate that the Colombian people believe the group's ability to inflict harm has been weakened substantially.
"It's reaching the point where most of the leaders of the FARC are going to say, 'We're not going to win, we don't have a chance,'" according to Peter DeShazo, director of the Americas Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, in news reports. "And when they reach that point, then political negotiation becomes more possible."
FARC IS OLDEST LATIN AMERICAN GROUP
Founded in 1964, the FARC is Latin America's oldest, largest, most capable and best-equipped terrorist organization, according to the U.S. State Department's annual Country Reports on Terrorism. The FARC has been designated by the secretary of state as one of three foreign terrorist organizations operating in Colombia.
The other two are the National Liberation Army and the rightist paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, which is in the process of demobilizing. The Country Reports indicates these three terrorist groups have been weakened by aggressive military and police actions, but that they also continue to murder, kidnap and terrorize Colombians.
Walser says the FARC still has a force of some 9,000 insurgents, so its ability to conduct terrorist operations and threaten Colombian security is still viable, though weakened.
"The rescue is a powerful indicator that U.S. assistance and support for Colombia's military through Plan Colombia continues to yield results in the campaign against the narco-terrorists of the FARC, stripping away their leaders and military cohesion, and now their ability to manipulate the headlines through exploitation of the plight of captives," Walser said.
Liduine Zumpolle, who now heads a group of former FARC terrorists critical of the group, told the Washington Post that the FARC is "completely irrelevant. I think today the FARC has totally lost moral support."
While the United States has played a critical role in helping Colombia deal with terrorism, DeShazo told the New York Times that "in the end it's the Colombian political will ... that has made this happen."
