By Mario A. Flores
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America
BOGOTÁ, Colombia – The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) launched offensives in different locations throughout Colombia on Friday leaving eight members of the security forces and five insurgents dead. The guerrillas kidnapped at least one government official.
Five soldiers and five insurgents died when FARC rebels attacked army troops in Colombia’s central region. Several soldiers were reported injured in the fight. The army says it has not been able to catch the guerrillas that attacked the troops.
Another three men died when FARC guerrillas attacked a city's council members in the southwest. According to official sources, the guerrillas were planning to kidnap several local representatives, but were foiled by law enforcement.
The FARC are celebrating their 45th anniversary, making them one of the oldest insurgent forces in the world. Established in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party, the FARC is Colombia’s oldest, largest, best-equipped Marxist insurgency. And despite recent setbacks, it remains strong.
Although the Tamil Tigers, one of the most brutal and innovative insurgencies are being decimated, and the Nepalese Maoists opt for the political route, the FARC remain committed to their unlikely aim of overthrowing the state and imposing a socialist regime.
The FARC are a throwback to the 1960s, when Cuban-inspired insurgent groups sprang up in South and then Central America. Its members are motivated neither by religion or ethnicity. And they are pretty much all that remain of those insurgencies that swept through Latin America.
The FARC has suffered almost seven years of sustained military pressure under President Alvaro Uribe -- a period that has seen its top leaders killed, mid-level cadres captured and the rescue of its top hostages.
Last year their founder and legendary leader, Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, died of a heart attack at age seventy eight.
They have seen large scale desertions, with a record 3,000 deserters in 2008 alone.
Of the seven members of their ruling body, the Secretariat, two have been killed. One in neighboring Ecuador, another murdered by his own bodyguard, who cut off a hand to show the authorities and claim a reward.
"The FARC are at their worst point in forty five years of fighting," says Alfredo Rangel, head of the Bogota think-tank Security and Democracy.
"Up until recently they had always been growing, in numbers and territory. Now they are being driven back, and their numbers are falling. They are in terminal decline."
Yet the FARC are far from defeated. They are working on reinventing themselves. They have new leaders, including an anthropologist known by the alias Alfonso Cano, long the movement's ideologue, a committed Marxist Leninist and hardliner.
He has now established his control over the movement, since the death of Marulanda, and delivered his new strategy for the rebels, called “Plan Rebirth.”
As part of ''Plan Rebirth,'' the rebels are working to reduce large-scale desertions, and have also sought to cut down on combat by increasing the use of mines and snipers.
They have also stepped up their attacks, with more incursions so far this year than any year since 2003.
And the rebels are trying to move away from their peasant roots and project themselves into Colombia's cities, aided by training from international groups like the Provisional IRA and the Basque separatist group ETA.
''It's like a poker game. They [the FARC] have lost a few hands and lost a lot of chips but they still have enough to keep playing,'' said Luis Eduardo Celis, a conflict analyst with the Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris in Bogotá.
For more information, please see:
Colombia Reports - 13 die in fights with FARC - 30 May 2009
BBC News - Oldest insurgent force marches on - 27 May 2009
The Miami Herald - Colombia's FARC rebels work on rebirth plan – 27 May 2009
Fundación Seguridad & Democracia - La gestión de Santos – 24 May 2009
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