FARC-EP

Salome Pawlowski April 15th, 2010

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army, shortening FARC or FARC-EP, is a guerilla organization formed 1964 as an opposition to imperialist rule in Colombia (including US influence), that pursue Marxist-Leninist ideology and the rule of the marginalized. As it formed in 1964 in the aftermath of struggles known as La Violencia it was a military wing of the Colombian Communist Party. The organization is highly involved in the ongoing Colombian armed conflict being one of the largest, counting from an estimated 11 000 members to 18 000 members depending on the source, and one of the oldest insurgency groups in the Americas. The struggle between FARC-EP and the Colombian government has now been going on for 46-years and although the leaders of both the government and the guerilla organization has changed over the years, the conflict between them stays put, as do their ideological differences. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FARC)

The FARC-EP was founded by late Jacobo Arenas and his fellow companion Manuel Marulanda (aka Tirofijo) and is governed by a secretariat that was supposedly led by Manuel Marulanda himself to his death in march 2008, today overtaken by ‘Alfonso Cano’ and six others including senior military commander Jorge Briceno (aka Mono Jojoy). (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/farc.htm) The FARC-EP is organized according to military standards having several urban fronts around the country and is known to have sent fighters for military training to Vietnam and the Soviet Union in the 1980’s and had IRA members come to train their fighters between 1998 and 2001. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FARC)

After the murder of populist president Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948 the struggle between supporters of the Colombian Liberal Party and the Colombian Conservative Party escalated into civil war known as La Violencia, lasting a decade. The power in Colombia was seized by a military government 1953 led by General Gustavo Rojas. In an attempt to demobilize former fighters the new government offered former insurgency groups amnesty in exchange, a strategy that didn’t appeal to some radical liberal and communist guerilla groups, resulting in refusal. These groups retreated instead to more isolated areas of the country where they organized their own communities and continued to operate. Suffering attacks the Colombian Communist Party choose to send Jacobo Arenas as a political activist to help organize existing self-defense amongst the guerillas and assist the organization of guerilla units into a rural enclave. Civilian rule in Colombia was restored in 1958 as the former government and moderate Conservatives and Liberals joined in a coalition called the National Front. By 1970 a new president, Misael Pastrana, was elected. At this time armed self-defense groups and communist had organized their own local governments in remote parts of the country. With growing influence they were considered a threat to the rule of the government and the Colombian National Army was ordered to take full control of the concerned areas. The communist answered by reorganizing as “the Southern Bloc”, rename itself “Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia” (FARC) in 1964 and selecting Jacobo Arenas and Manuel Marulanda as their top leaders. By 1982 and the increased income from the “coca boom”, the guerilla expanded into a irregular army and went from moving close to rural areas to middle-sized cities and added the initials “EP”, for “Ejército del Pueblo” or “People’s Army”, to the organization’s name. In May 1984 the organization presented its aims to take over the rule in Colombia by the 1990’s. Same year a cease-fire was signed with the government of Belisario Betancourt (“Cease-Fire, Truce, and Peace Agreements”, also known as the “La Uribe Agreements”). Peace negotiations however failed due to battles between right- and left-wing extremist. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Armed_Forces_of_Colombia)

In 1984 the FARC-EP decided to organize in a political wing, called the Patriotic Union. Disagreements though between civilian’s movement members in the Patriotic Union and the FARC-EP members resulted in an inability to act and the disappearance of 2000 to 4000 of its members. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Armed_Forces_of_Colombia)

Peace negotiations held between 1990 and 1998 led to the demobilization of some of the guerilla groups in Colombia, although not the FARC-EP. The organization suffered an army led attack in the end of the 1990’s despite ongoing peace negotiations with the government, claimed to be motivated by the organizations lack of engagement in the peace process. War continued and the peace talks were to be abandoned in 1993 due to lack of agreement. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Armed_Forces_of_Colombia)

A new attempt on peace settlement was brought 1999 by the election of Andrés Pastrana, son of 1970’s former president Misael Pastrana. The president granted a safe haven to the guerilla as this was one of the FARC-EPs demands for continued peace talks. But yet again the peace talks were to end, this time due to suspicion of criminal activities committed under the security of the safe haven. FARC-EP was said to be responsible for terrorist actions including hijacking a plane, making bombs and kidnapping political figures. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Armed_Forces_of_Colombia)

Since 2004 when Álvaro Uribe took office and launched a vicious counterstrike against the guerilla, FARC-EP suffered massive loss of members not only due to the fighting but also through capture and desertion of members. Uribe has a personal attachment to the conflict caused by his father being killed by the guerilla in 1983 during an attempted kidnapping. The FARC-EP has also launched a large scale mortar attack on the Presidential Palace 2002 while Uribe was being initiated. All peace talks have now been abandoned. (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/farc.htm)

The FARC-EP funds itself mostly through kidnapping of political as civilian persons and taxation of illegal drug trade. It’s estimated to hold 40 percent of the Colombian territory. The organization is a violent non-state actor classified by many countries as a terrorist group, among them the Colombian government, the United States Department of State, the Canadian government as the European Union. Countries less hostile towards the FARC-EP include the Venezuelan government, as the Bolivian and the Ecuadorian governments. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FARC) The Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has for example acted as an intermediary in a “humanitarian exchange” of FARC-held hostages for FARC prisoners in Colombian jails in 2007. (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/farc.htm)

FARC-EP has as for now no homepage after their last one, active to august 2009, become disabled by the German – Swiss host. (http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/5524-farc-website-taken-off-air.html) Being identified as a terror group by the European Union and other western and pro- western countries makes an official websites hard to realize. It’s therefore more than obvious that contact information is a laughter-provoking impossibility.

Due to the ideological nature of the conflict one have to bear in mind that all the references presented above are highly questionable as to who did what to whom and if so, why. All acts are interpreted differently depending on the interpreter; this of course excludes the existence of facts.

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