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 Editorials | Issues | April 2008 
FARC Found to Have Cast a Wide Net
 Tyler Bridges - Miami Herald
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| | Marcelo Franco, left, father of Fernando Franco one of four Mexican college students who died during a Colombian Army cross-border raid on a rebel camp in Ecuadorean soil, shouts slogans in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Mexico City on March 28. (Marco Ugarte/AP) | | |
Lima - On the run at home, Latin America's oldest guerrilla group has sought to expand its web outside of Colombia. But recent police seizures and arrests in neighboring nations have left the FARC insurgents isolated, unable to overcome their reputation as a terrorist group that finances its activities through extortion, kidnapping and cocaine trafficking.
Anti-FARC operations - especially a deadly military raid in a rebel camp in Ecuador after which Colombian authorities obtained computer documents belonging to slain guerrilla leader Raúl Reyes - indicate that the FARC had established links in Venezuela, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Mexico.
But authorities have severed some of those ties, and the governments of Panama and Peru recently pledged to assist Colombia in attempting to dismantle the guerrilla network abroad.
"We now know that the FARC were not just sitting in the jungle," said Adam Isacson, who closely follows the guerrilla group at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for International Policy. "It's clear from the records found on Reyes' computer that they had an international outreach effort. But it is also clear that it was stunted."
"They have not even gotten near mainstream leftist groups in the countries they've reached out to," Isacson said.
"They have mostly remained a pariah group."
Even before Reyes' death on March 1, the FARC - the Spanish acronym for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - acquired a major public adherent, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. But he has failed to convince European or other Latin American countries to treat the FARC as a "belligerent" group, which would give the FARC enhanced diplomatic standing.
Instead, important South American countries - such as Brazil, Argentina and Chile - European countries, Canada and the United States continue to label the FARC guerrillas as "terrorists." The news last week that authorities in Bogotá seized 66 pounds of uranium linked to the FARC didn't help the group's reputation abroad.
Reyes' death represented the loss of a key contact with outsiders, and the FARC's network outside of Colombia seems weaker. During the bombardment at the camp about a mile inside Ecuador, four Mexican students and one Ecuadorean were killed along with some 20 FARC guerrillas, and an additional Mexican student was injured.
"The FARC's meetings are with 20-somethings or officials of tiny South American Communist parties," said Isacson.
Killing Reyes has served another purpose, according to Rafael Nieto, who served as vice minister of internal security in Uribe's government. He said Reyes' laptops contained a treasure trove of information that Colombian authorities are sharing with officials in other countries, although not Ecuador and Venezuela.
With the information, Nieto said, "other countries are collaborating with Colombia against the FARC."
Earlier this month, Costa Rican police found $480,000 of FARC money stashed at the home of a retired university professor outside of San José, thanks to documents found on Reyes' laptops, according to Costa Rica's security minister, Fernando Berrocal, who promised more disclosures.
"On this computer, there's more I'm not going to tell you now, but the country will soon find out," Berrocal told reporters.
Other recent arrests also have weakened FARC's international network.
The FARC lost access to a potential weapons vendor when authorities in Thailand in March arrested Viktor Bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer. Authorities tracked Bout for several months before arresting him while he was allegedly attempting to sell weapons to what he believed were FARC representatives. Bout had reportedly sold weapons to the FARC several years earlier.
Two weeks ago, Peruvian police arrested two Colombians on charges of recruiting for the FARC.
It was the first capture of FARC guerrillas in Peru in at least six years, Peruvian Defense Minister Antero Flores-Araóz told The Miami Herald.
In yet another apparent blow, Peruvian authorities also arrested seven Peruvians on Feb. 29 who were returning from an assembly in Quito organized by the Coordinadora Continental Bolivariana, a group believed by Peruvian intelligence officials to be tied to the FARC.
All of these developments come at a perilous time for FARC.
Plan Colombia, the anti-drug trafficking and anti-guerrilla initiative that since 2000 has received $6.1 billion in funding from the United States, has pounded FARC, reducing their ranks from 16,000 in 2002 to about 10,000 today, Colombian officials told The Miami Herald in Bogotá two weeks ago.
Under orders from President Alvaro Uribe, Colombian troops are launching increasingly lethal attacks, and guerrillas are deserting in droves.
The situation has gotten so bad for FARC that a veteran guerrilla earlier this month killed his boss, Iván Ríos, and brought his laptop and severed right hand as proof of his vicious deed. The guerrilla said he acted to save his unit from Colombian military attacks.
FARC has been trying to expand its role outside of Colombia "because they are being squeezed at home," said Patrick Esteruelas, who follows the Andean countries for the Eurasia Group, a security risk and consulting firm. "They have realized over the past few years that their support at home has eroded and is now at rock bottom. They have very little room to maneuver at home. They have tried to use international pressure to force Uribe to make concessions that he wouldn't otherwise make."
Uribe has barely budged, even after FARC unilaterally released six high-profile kidnap victims earlier this year. He did offer last week to liberate jailed guerrillas if FARC first released former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and some other high-value hostages. But the offer - like previous offers - contained an unattractive catch for FARC: freed guerrillas could not return to FARC's ranks.
While weaker inside and outside of Colombia, FARC has gained a crucial ally in Chávez.
Colombian authorities believe that he had been secretly backing the group for some time by allowing FARC guerrillas to seek refuge from Colombian troops at camps on Venezuelan territory.
One of their pieces of evidence: an e-mail from Reyes' computer in which the guerrillas discussed receiving $300 million from Chávez - a charge that Chávez has hotly denied.
This and other e-mails prompted Bush administration officials to say they might put Venezuela on the list of nations that sponsor terrorism.
Immediately after the attack on Reyes' camp, Chávez offered his most vocal support to date for the FARC.
"We pay tribute to a true revolutionary, who was Raúl Reyes," Chávez said, the day after Reyes' death was announced.
tbridges(at)MiamiHerald.com |
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