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The origins of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) can be traced back to a period in Colombia known as La Violencia (1948-1958) or "The Violence" which was sparked by the assassination of George Eliecer Gaitan, a presidential candidate and progressive liberal leader who fought for the rights of the landless masses. La Violencia was a long and brutal battle between the pro-reform Liberals and the Conservatives who were sponsored by the elite landowners and miners that wanted to maintain a strong alliance between the church and the state. During this period, more than 200,000 deaths were recorded.
In an effort to protect their rights, landless locals banded together in self-defense groups forming rural communities known at the time as "Independent Republics" located mainly in south Colombia. FARC was a conglomeration of such groups, and survived La Violencia by fighting against conservative peasants now known as autodefensas or paramilitaries, who roamed the countryside committing atrocities against civilians and were backed by wealthy landowners and industrialists. In 1958, La Violencia ended after the Liberals and Conservatives reconciled and governed for the next two decades through a power-sharing agreement. In 1964, about 16,000 soldiers of the new government's army attacked the "Independent Republics" by land and by air, but most of the camps had already been abandoned and the guerilla members had taken refuge in the mountains of southern Colombia. Later that year, the FARC was formally established, based on Marxist ideology, as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party under the leadership of Pedro Antonio Marin, a.k.a. Manuel Marulanda.
Manuel "Tirofijo" (Sure-shot) Marulanda, now 71, continues to rule the Western hemisphere's largest insurgent group, made up of approximately 15,000 to 18,000 armed combatants and an unknown number of supporters.
The FARC, together with the National Liberation Army (ELN), is responsible for the majority of kidnappings committed in Colombia today, and 15 percent of the 35,000 deaths that take place in Colombia each year. Since 1980, the FARC and the ELN have kidnapped more than 100 Americans, of which 13 have been murdered. In the first 10 months of 2001, human rights groups in Colombia attributed 197 killings as well as several mass kidnappings to the FARC. On April 11, 2002 the FARC kidnapped 13 Colombian lawmakers from a government building in Cali, Valle. In addition, several Colombian officials are currently being held hostage by the FARC, including presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt; former governor of Meta, Alan Jara Urzola; and five congressmen.
Although kidnappings and extortion have been signature tactics of the FARC since its early stages, these activities only partly finance their operations. The other portion of FARC's funding is derived from its deep involvement in the drug trade. In the mid 1980s, the FARC, then made up of about 2,250 men, discovered the profits of the drug trade by protecting drug cartels. Today, they are involved in all the processes of drug trafficking from taxing the cultivators of the coca and poppy plants, to controlling the manufacturing laboratories and even distributing the drugs themselves. While the FARC's deep involvement in the drug trade was widely presumed, it was always an issue of contention due to lack of hard evidence. However, on March 7, 2002, seven defendants, three of whom belong to the 16th Front of the FARC, were charged with drug trafficking by the Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. This case is the first time that known terrorists have been indicted in the United States for drug trafficking. There is also evidence that the FARC has been exchanging cocaine for currency, weapons and other military equipment.
Drug profits from cocaine and heroin range anywhere from $100 million to $1 billion annually to purchase arms, attract new recruits and fund FARC operations. These profits have made the FARC one of the richest, if not the richest, insurgent group in the world.
The FARC has been involved in several unsuccessful attempts to negotiate peace with the government. The first peace process in 1984 brought a cease-fire under which the FARC established its own political party, the Patriotic Union (UP). Since its inception, however, death squads run by drug cartels with links to security forces murdered thousands of the UP members, causing the party to slowly disintegrate. Two other peace processes were attempted in 1991 and 1992 and were equally unsuccessful.
The most recent attempt to establish peace between the FARC and the Colombian government was from 1997 to 2002 under the rule of President Andres Pastrana. In 1998, as part of his ongoing efforts to negotiate a cease fire, Pastrana granted the FARC a 42,000 square mile "safe haven" known as the despeje or "clearance zone." Rather than promoting peace, this Switzerland-size zone in southern Colombia was used to stage kidnappings, run drug operations, and recruit young men and boys into the FARC ranks. Pastrana and Marulanda met several times, and on numerous occasions Pastrana renewed his decision, with reservation, to continue allowing the FARC to use the despeje in the hopes that peace would be established. On Feb. 20, 2002, the FARC hijacked a domestic aircraft and kidnapped Sen. Jorge Gechem Turbay, the fifth congressman to be kidnapped since June 2001. Hours later, Pastrana ordered the Colombian armed forces to start retaking the FARC controlled zone.
While the situation with the FARC in Colombia appears to be a domestic issue, many international actors are involved. Drug profits have attracted many foreigners to train the FARC in combat techniques, the production of arms and the managing of explosives. Evidence shows that Iranians, Argentineans, Germans, Venezuelans and possibly Iraqis and Cubans have been in the despeje, demonstrating FARC's potential global reach. The most recent evidence of foreign presence in Colombia was the arrest of three suspected IRA members in August 2001. Colombian sources claim that the nature of the war in Colombia has greatly changed since mid 2001, as the FARC has used techniques unique to the IRA, including highly sophisticated car bombs and the use of long-range mortars.
While to date there has not been any concrete evidence proving the involvement of foreign terrorists in Colombia's civil war, there is evidence that the war is becoming more intense due to the increasingly convoluted terror tactics of the FARC. Meanwhile, the United States has been providing the Colombian government with military aid since the late 1980s under the pretext of fighting drugs, as more than 90 percent of the cocaine consumed by Americans comes from Colombia. U.S. lawmakers are currently debating whether or not to change the basic premise of military aid to Colombia from counter-narcotics to counter-terrorism, in order to help the military defeat the guerillas, in particular the FARC.
Sources:
U.S. Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism 2000, April 2001
Hearing of the House Committee on International Relations, International Global Terrorism: Its Links with Illicit Drugs as Illustrated by the IRA and Other Groups in Colombia, April 24, 2002
Center for International Policy, Colombia Project, Information About the Combatants, FARC
Molano, Alfredo, The Evolution of the FARC: A Guerrilla Group's Long History, NACLA Report on the Americas, Sept./Oct. 2000
Colombia rebels kidnap politician Sunday, BBC News, Feb. 24, 2002
McDermott, Jeremy, Colombia's most powerful rebels, BBC News, Jan. 7, 2002
Human Rights Watch, World Report 2002, Colombia
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