James Brittain
Since its formal inception in 1964, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) has maintained a unique presence within Colombia and Latin America in general. Unlike many revolutionary movements created throughout Central and South America during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the FARC-EP has had several unique approaches toward creating social transformation.
One important characteristic of the FARC-EP-led insurgency is the method by which it has sought support and organised its internal structure. The insurgent groups did not form within classrooms or churches; they were not a movement led or largely made up of lawyers, students, doctors or priests. On the contrary, the FARC-EP's leadership, support-base and membership have come from the very soil from which it obtains its sustenance, for the insurgents have been largely made up of peasants from rural Colombia.
The relation of the peasantry to the FARC-EP has remained consistent over the past four decades. To enter most 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of rural Colombia is to enter guerrilla-controlled territory. The FARC-EP has been exceedingly fluid throughout much of the countryside and, within these areas, the insurgents have frequently held inspections on primary and secondary roadways, implemented grassroots judicial centres, and of course, engaged in militant confrontations with government and paramilitary armed forces.
Recently, however, this is changing, due to a new military model constructed by the US administration led by President George Bush, in cooperation with the Colombian government led by President Alvaro Uribe.
When Plan Colombia was presented to the United States and passed in 2000, (ostensibly designed to combat coca production, this plan allowed the US to step up funding to the war against the insurgency) there was considerable opposition to it.
As a result of this pressure, the US government of the time, led by Democrat Bill Clinton, voted to limit to 800 the number of US troops and privately contracted forces allowed to enter into Colombian territory.
In contrast, the Bush administration has manufactured a "war on terror" methodology to cover up the blatant failure of Plan Colombia. This is also intended to eliminate the well-equipped and powerful Marxist-Leninist FARC-EP, which poses a tremendous threat to US economic and political interests. Consequently, in late 2003 and early 2004 the US Department of Defense initiated an increase of US-based counterinsurgents to execute a campaign of armed aggression against specific regions of Colombia through Plan Patriota.
Plan Patriota has allowed the United States government to legally justify an enormous state-sponsored escalation of US troops and contracted forces within Colombia. From the time of its implementation, offensives have been carried out against suspected rebel-extended regions, thus causing numerous noncombatant casualties, displacements and deaths.
The assaults are carried out by United States state/private combatants who are leading over 20,000 Colombian soldiers in a scorched earth policy that is meant to eliminate the FARC-EP by combatting its support networks, including political parties, students, campesinos, food-crops, academics and unionists. The "plan" is now largely concentrated in the departments of Putumayo, Caquet , Nari¤o, and Meta.
Since late spring, it has appeared that Plan Patriota is "succeeding" in rooting out the FARC-EP from regions where it once showed tangible presence. I noticed this during a recent visit to south-eastern Colombia (Cundinamarca, Huila, Tolima and Cauca). The FARC-EP was not as visibly present in many rural towns and villages as it had been in months and years past. However, the lack of an overt presence does not mean that the FARC-EP has fully retreated from the countryside. I would speculate that the guerrillas have been more reticent for two specific reasons.
The first is that the FARC-EP is trying to limit the opportunity of the US-Colombian state forces from entering campesino-inhabited regions that are, or at one time were, supporters of the insurgency. The Colombian military has a horrendous record of committing human rights abuses against non-combatants; therefore the FARC-EP has chosen to limit its immediate visible presence in the hope of diminishing the chance of injury against the rural populations of FARC-EP extended regions.
The second explanation for their imperceptibility is that the insurgency may be planning to implement a large-scale regional assault against the US-Colombian state forces in southern Colombia. Since 1982, the FARC-EP has labelled itself as the People's Army; however, since that time the FARC-EP has maintained its socio-political activities through methods of guerrilla-based warfare — strategic small-scale attacks or armed missions against specific targets, and not as a formally organised army. Therefore, I would argue that the FARC-EP has pulled back a large percentage of its combatant forces from the region, with the purpose of waging a major armed conflict against the Colombian army, paramilitary, and now, US forces.
The interesting aspect of all this, is that while the FARC-EP may well be preparing for a major military confrontation in southern Colombia, the rural supporters of the insurgents are still quietly stationed throughout the country; in the cities, towns, villages, mountainside and fields. Therefore, the eve of a full-scale revolutionary war between the insurgent forces of the FARC-EP and their rural support-base against the Colombian/United States forces could be reality in the not-too-distant future.
[James J. Brittain is a Ph.D. candidate and Lecturer of Sociology at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. He can be reached at <james.brittain@unb.ca>.]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, December 1, 2004.
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