ERRI SPECIAL REPORT-ERRI Risk Assessment Services-Wednesday, January 9, 2002
PROFILES OF COLOMBIAN REBEL GROUPS
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)
The FARC are not your traditional terrorists nor revolutionaries. They are not cut from the same cloth of the traditional Latin American revolutionary guerrilla force, that was dreamt up and exported by Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara after the successful Cuban revolution in the late 1950s. The FARC roots can be found in the Liberal guerrilla bands of La Violencia, a civil war between the Liberal and Conservative parties that raged from 1948 until 1958, which became disillusioned with the leadership of the Liberal Party and turned to communism.
One such guerrilla band was led by Pedro Antonio Marin (AKA Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda), who in 1966 baptized his group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Manuel Marulanda, now more than 70-years-old, still heads the FARC.
Until the 1980s, the growth of the FARC was slow, restricted mainly to the outer reaches of the country where peasants had carved land from the jungle and where the state has neglected to follow them. But then the FARC discovered drugs, not consuming them, which is prohibited in the rebel ranks, but taxing them. Now they tax every stage of the drug business, from the chemicals needed to process the coca bush into cocaine and the opium poppy into heroin, right up to charging for the processed drugs to be flown from illegal airstrips they control. And they make at least US$300 million from the drug trade every year, added to which is their income from kidnapping and extortion, making them probably the richest insurgent group in the world.
The FARC did briefly flirt with a political route to power, establishing a political party, the Patriotic Union (UP), in the late 1980s. But the UP was decimated by right-wing death squads, sponsored by drug traffickers and with links to government security forces. Some 3,000 UP members were murdered, including the UP's 1990 presidential candidate, Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa. The political route was therefore effectively closed to the FARC and they focused on the military route to power, which they are still following today, despite having been in a peace process with the government for three years.
Granted a safe haven the size of Switzerland in 1998 by President Andres Pastrana -- their condition for sitting down at the peace table -- the FARC have talked peace with the government but made war, bringing violence and kidnapping to record levels. They have used their safe haven to import arms, export drugs, recruit minors and build up their military machine.
From 1996 to 1999, the FARC inflicted a series of humiliating defeats on the Colombian army, capturing more than 500 security force members. But the tide has turned and while the Colombian military is in no position to defeat the FARC, thanks in no small part to US military aid, it now is able to swiftly react to guerrilla attacks and with the use of airpower and troops has been inflicting heavy losses on the rebels.
Yet the FARC still believe they can take power by force, and until they are shown that this is an impossibility they are unlikely to negotiate peace in earnest feeling, they can achieve more on the battlefield that at the peace table.
The following is the U.S. State Department profile of FARC:
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)
Description: Established in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party, the FARC is Colombia's oldest, largest, most capable, and best-equipped Marxist insurgency. The FARC is governed by a secretariat, led by septuagenarian Manuel Marulanda, a.k.a. "Tirofijo," and six others, including senior military commander Jorge Briceno, a.k.a. "Mono Jojoy." Organized along military lines and includes several urban fronts. In 2000, the group continued a slow-moving peace negotiation process with the Pastrana Administration, which has gained the group several concessions, including a demilitarized zone used as a venue for negotiations.
Activities: Bombings, murder, kidnapping, extortion, hijacking, as well as guerrilla and conventional military action against Colombian political, military, and economic targets. In March 1999 the FARC executed three US Indian rights activists on Venezuelan territory after it kidnapped them in Colombia. Foreign citizens often are targets of FARC kidnapping for ransom. Has well-documented ties to narcotics traffickers, principally through the provision of armed protection.
Strength: Approximately 9,000 to 12,000 armed combatants and an unknown number of supporters, mostly in rural areas.
Location/Area of Operation: Colombia with some activities -- extortion, kidnapping, logistics, and R&R--in Venezuela, Panama, and Ecuador.
External Aid: Cuba provides some medical care and political consultation.
National Liberation Army (ELN)
Said to had been inspired by the Cuban revolution, a group of Colombians went to Havana to receive training in insurgent war- fare, returning to Colombia in 1964. Under the leadership of one Fabio Vasquez Castano, they founded the National Liberation Army (ELN).
The movement attracted many Catholic priests who adhered to Liberation Theology, starting in 1966 with a young crusading priest from a prominent family, Father Camilo Torres. He was killed in his first action with the guerrilla group, but several other priests followed in his footsteps. Among them was Spaniard Manuel Perez, who led the movement from the 1970s until his death in 1998. He was succeeded by the present leader, Nicolas Rodriguez, alias "Gabino," a tenacious guerrilla fighter and lady's man who joined the movement as a teenager.
Hard hit by the army in 1973, the ELN recovered when it discovered two lucrative sources of income: kidnapping and extorting money from the oil industry. It reached the height of its power in the late 1990s with some 5,000 fighters. Now hammered by right-wing paramilitary and the Colombian armed forces, its morale is suffering and its numbers have dropped to around 3,500.
Unlike the FARC, who adopted a strict hierarchy and concentrated on building up their military power, the ELN members split their efforts between military and social work. The ELN did not move into the drug trade in the same way as the more powerful FARC, in part due to the moral objections of the former priest Perez. This is another explanation for their failure to enjoy the same explosive military growth as the FARC.
The ELN rebels are the biggest kidnappers in Colombia and took over 800 hostages for ransom during 2001. They also hit the headlines with a series of mass kidnapping operations starting in April 1999, during which they hijacked a domestic airliner, forced it to land on a deserted jungle airstrip and kidnapped the passengers and crew. This was swiftly followed by the abduction of an entire church congregation during a service in the city of Cali. Guerrillas burst into the church and herded 150 worshippers and the priest into waiting trucks.
Unable to match the military might of the FARC and take on the security forces directly, the ELN has focused on hitting infrastructure targets such as the oil industry and the country's electricity grid.
The ELN has shown a will to make peace since June 1998, when rebel leaders met with Colombian civilian representatives in Germany. There they laid out proposals for a peace process based on the creation of a National Convention designed to forge a new state incorporating all elements of Colombian society. But the government of President Andres Pastrana preferred to concentrate on the larger FARC and is only now trying to engage in serious peace talks with the group.
The following is the U.S. State Department profile of the ELN:
National Liberation Army (ELN)
Description: Marxist insurgent group formed in 1965 by urban intellectuals inspired by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Began a dialogue with Colombian officials in 1999 following a campaign of mass kidnappings -- each involving at least one US citizen -- to demonstrate its strength and continuing viability and to force the Pastrana administration to negotiate. Bogota and the ELN spent most of 2000 discussing where to establish an ELN safehaven in which to hold peace talks. A proposed location in north central Colombia faces stiff local and paramilitary opposition.
Activities: Kidnapping, hijacking, bombing, extortion,
and guerrilla war. Modest conventional military capability. Annually conducts hundreds of kidnappings for ransom, often targeting foreign employees of large corporations, especially in the petroleum industry. Frequently assaults energy infrastructure and has inflicted major damage on pipelines and the electric distribution network.
Strength: Approximately 3,000 to 6,000 armed combatants and an unknown number of active supporters.
Location/Area of Operation: Mostly in rural and mountainous areas of north, northeast, and southwest Colombia and Venezuela border regions.
External Aid: Cuba provides some medical care and political consultation.
United Self Defense Forces Of Colombia (AUC)
Formed in 1997, the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) like to trace their roots back to legal local self-defense groups formed under legislation passed in 1968, which allowed citizens to be used by the government to restore normality. But more accurately, the AUC has its roots in the paramilitary armies built up by drug lords, most notably Jose Rodriguez Gacha of the Medellin cartel, and the AUC present leader's brother, Fidel Castano.
As the drug lords became landowners, buying up vast tracts of Colombia, they took over local self-defense groups and set up their own, to protect not the local population but their own interests. And as big landowners, they found themselves facing kidnapping and extortion by the country's leftist guerrillas.
So when the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) kidnapped the father of Fidel and Carlos Castano and then murdered him, the family swore revenge. They have been taking it ever since, killing thousands of guerrillas and suspected rebels sympathizers.
Carlos Castano is the present leader of the AUC -- although officially, since May 2001, just its political head. He inherited his position from his elder brother Fidel, killed in a guerrilla ambush 1994. Carlos has built up the para- military force of 300 he inherited from his brother to an army of some 9,000 today. In 1997, he formed the AUC as an umbrella group under which all were welcome: local warlords, drugs traffickers and disaffected members of the security forces -- in short anyone prepared to kill guerrillas.
One of the main developments in the administration of President Andres Pastrana has been the explosive growth of the paramilitaries. The AUC has grown in strength and influence -- due to links with the army and financing by business interests and landowners tired of guerrilla extortion. The failure of President Pastrana's peace process and the abuse of government concessions by the guerrillas have all fed the paramilitary coffers as Colombians see the state unable to defend them. With this rise has come an increase in massacres, and the murders of left-wing intellectuals, union workers, human rights activists and journalists, as the right- wing death squads seek to silence all those that speak out against them, or in favor of the guerrillas.
Working on the principle that draining the water will kill the fish, the paramilitaries have provoked massive displacement through their policy of massacres and terror. The locations may change, but the operating procedure remains the same. The death squads arrive in communities in areas of guerrilla influence with a list in hand. The list contains names of suspected guerrilla sympathizers. All those on the list are killed, usually in front of their families and in a most gruesome manner. The message is brutally simple: support the guerrillas and you will die. And it has had great effect in many parts of the country, "cleansing" them of guerrilla presence. But those that flee run into the arms of the rebels and Colombia's polarization increases.
Like the guerrillas, the paramilitaries earn much of the money from drug trafficking but, unlike the guerrillas, their history has been linked to drug barons across the country, which is still true today. There is an undeniable body of evidence that shows cooperation between army units and paramilitaries. The Colombian government has worked hard to sever links between the military and the paramilitary death squads but these still exist and indeed groups like Human Rights Watch insist the ties are stronger than ever.
The following is the U.S. State Department profile of the AUC:
United Self-Defense Forces/Group of Colombia
(AUC-Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia)
Description: The AUC -- commonly referred to as autodefensas or paramilitaries -- is an umbrella organization formed in April 1997 to consolidate most local and regional paramilitary groups each with the mission to protect economic interests and combat insurgents locally. The AUC--supported by economic elites, drug traffickers, and local communities lacking effective government security -- claims its primary objective is to protect its sponsors from insurgents. The AUC now asserts itself as a regional and national counterinsurgent force. It is adequately equipped and armed and reportedly pays its members a monthly salary. AUC leader Carlos Castaņo in 2000 claimed 70 percent of the AUC's operational costs were financed with drug- related earnings, the rest from "donations" from its sponsors.
Activities: AUC operations vary from assassinating suspected insurgent supporters to engaging guerrilla combat units. Colombian National Police reported the AUC conducted 804 assassinations, 203 kidnappings, and 75 massacres with 507 victims during the first 10 months of 2000. The AUC claims the victims were guerrillas or sympathizers. Combat tactics consist of conventional and guerilla operations against main force insurgent units. AUC clashes with military and police units are increasing, although the group has traditionally avoided government security forces. The paramilitaries have not taken action against US personnel.
Strength: In early 2001, the government estimated there were 8,000 paramilitary fighters, including former military and insurgent personnel.
Location/Areas of Operation: AUC forces are strongest in the north and northwest: Antioquia, Cordoba, Sucre, Bolivar, Atlantico, and Magdalena Departments. Since 1999, the group demonstrated a growing presence in other northeastern and southwestern departments and a limited presence in the Amazon plains. Clashes between the AUC and the FARC insurgents in Putumayo in 2000 demonstrated the range of the AUC to contest insurgents throughout Colombia.
External Aid: None.
The following is an overview of terrorist acts committed in Colombia during the year 2000. The source of the information is the U.S. State Department's annual "Patterns of Global Terrorism - 2000":
Despite ongoing peace talks, Colombia's two largest guerrilla groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), continued to conduct international terrorist acts, including kidnapping private US and foreign citizens and extorting money from businesses and individuals in the Colombian countryside.
A significant development during the year involved a series of FARC attacks on interests of US coal firm Drummond, Inc., in Colombia, which publicly refused to pay the group millions of dollars annually in extortion under the terms of FARC Law 002, a tax on entities valued at more than $1 million. As a result of FARC actions, Drummond did not bid on a state-owned coal company, potentially costing Bogota tens of millions of dollars in lost privatization revenue. Colombia's second-largest crude oil pipeline, the Cano Limon, was attacked 152 times in 2000--a record--which the army blames mostly on the ELN. The attacks forced Occidental Petroleum to halt exports through most of August and September.
In October, the Colombian police rescued a five-year-old US citizen who had been held six months by individuals connected with the FARC.
The FARC and the ELN continued to reach out to government and non- government groups throughout the world and especially in Europe and Latin America through international representatives and attendance at regional conferences and meetings, such as the Sao Paulo Forum. The FARC also continued to target security forces and other symbols of government authority to demonstrate its power and to strengthen its negotiating position. President Pastrana in December extended the FARC's demilitarized zone to 31 January 2001 and pledged to place government controls over the zone. The FARC--which said it would not return to the table until Bogota reined in the right- wing paramilitaries--unilaterally froze peace talks in November.
Meanwhile, rightwing paramilitary groups continued to grow and expanded their reach in 2000, most notably in southern Colombia's prime coca growing areas. The groups, in addition to massacring civilians in their attempts to erode FARC and ELN areas of influence, also abducted seven national congressional representatives in December, demanding negotiations with the government
July 17, 1998--COLOMBIA'S NEW BREED OF DRUG TRAFFICKER
03/29/98--U.S. Hostages Still
Being Held in Colombia by Rebels (requires RealAudio player)
04/30/97-10:00CDT-- ENN Special Report - Kidnapping; A Latin American Growth Industry
11/06/96 -- IS COLOMBIA AT WAR WITH ITSELF?
08/24/96 -- SECURITY PROBLEMS IN LATIN AMERICA
ERRI World Hotspot Terrorism Reports
Various Dates: ERRI Colombia Advisory Sheet
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