[News] The Continuity of FARC-EP Resistance in Colombia

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/brittain08012008.html
August 1, 2008


Not the End of Guerrilla Warfare


The Continuity of FARC-EP Resistance in Colombia

By JAMES J. BRITTAIN

At the beginning of the 1970s, early in the 
insurgency’s formation, the FARC-EP received a 
devastating blow at the hands of the Colombian 
state when the Misael Pastrana Borrero 
administration [1970-1974] implemented massive 
military counterinsurgency offences against 
specific guerrilla-extended regions (Premo, 1988: 
230; Hobsbawm, 1970: 56). In 1973, the Colombian 
state, with the assistance of the United States, 
launched “Operation Anori”, which resulted in the 
destruction of much of the FARC-EP’s military 
supplies and sections of its leadership (Avilés, 
2006: 154n.25). After this and other 
counterinsurgency campaigns took place during the 
early-mid 1970s, it was documented that the 
FARC-EP had lost seventy percent of its 
ammunitions with as little as one-hundred-fifty 
armed and trained combatants remaining (FARC-EP, 
1999: 24; Premo, 1988: 243n.45; Ruhl, 1980: 196, 
205n.63). While extensive press was given to the 
FARC-EP’s demise in a few short years such 
assessments were shown to be premature. The 
insurgency quickly bounced back from the 
counterinsurgency campaign and was able to 
“regroup and conduct sporadic actions on an 
increasing number of fronts” by the mid 1970s 
(Premo, 1988: 231; see also Petras and Morley, 
2003: 101; Castro, 1999: xx-xxi). Following the 
US and Colombian-state aggressions, the FARC-EP 
succeeded in maintaining their activity, in spite 
of the initial errors, in spite of the severe 
handicap of having to arrange for the evacuation, 
dispersion and resettlement of a civilian 
population, in spite of the strength of long 
anti-irregular experience of the Colombian army, 
and in spite of the deep political divisions in 
the countryside 
 [They] succeeded not merely by 
tactical and technical adjustments, but above all 
by a profound understanding of the political base 
of guerrilla warfare (Hobsbawm, 1970: 56-57).

In the spring of 2008 two significant blows came 
to the FARC-EP when not one but two of the 
insurgency’s most recognizable leaders were 
killed coupled by the death of the guerrilla’s 
Commander-in-Chief, Manuel Marulanda Vélez. In 
the early days of March, it appeared as though 
the FARC-EP may have been dealt a mortal blow 
when Comandante Raúl Reyes and Iván Ríos, two of 
the FARC-EP’s highest ranking Secretariat leaders 
and diplomatic representatives, were murdered. 
Quickly accounts came flooding in of this 
devastating upset for the guerrilla. Utilizing 
state reports, Juan Forero (2008) published that 
“Colombians are for the first time raising the 
possibility that a guerrilla group once thought 
invincible could be forced into peace 
negotiations or even defeated militarily. 
Weakened by infiltrators and facing constant 
combat and aerial bombardment, the insurgency is 
losing members in record numbers”. Using 
government and military sources, one of 
Colombia’s most popular newsmagazines published 
that desertion and lack of internal support has 
caused a devastating decline for the FARC-EP – 
potentially resulting in its internal eradication 
(Cambio, 2008). Even Venezuelan President Hugo 
Chávez voiced the opinion that the period of 
organized class struggle through the medium of 
guerrilla warfare had past. However, while the 
death of three of the insurgency’s primary 
leaders was of great significance, reports 
declaring the FARC-EP’s decline are not new.

The Colombian government and those promoting 
domestic and foreign economic interests remain 
threatened by the FARC-EP’s revolutionary push 
for it continues to erode the state from below. 
Well known anthropologist Michael Taussig (2004: 
13) has argued that the guerrilla is far more 
powerful than many state outlets will have the 
international community believe. He noted that 
“there is an unstated fear that cities all over 
Colombia could be isolated anytime by the 
guerrilla” who have the military capacity to 
block external military support by “blowing up 
roads and bridges”. In recognition of this power 
the dominant class periodically employs hegemonic 
tactics, through both state and media outlets, to 
portray the FARC-EP as being structurally 
weakened in the hopes of discouraging both 
internal and external support for the insurgency. 
It must be understood that reports claiming the 
insurgency’s defeat have been repeatedly proven false as time elapses.

Following several significant counter-insurgency 
campaigns (Plan Colombia [1998-2006] and Plan 
Patriota [2003-2006]) premature victories over 
the FARC-EP were claimed. As time past it was 
realized that the insurgency had not witnessed a 
decline but rather saw a significant influx in 
combatant growth and attacks against corporate 
and state infrastructure (Brittain, 2005). 
Similarly, the 2008 impulsive allegations of 
deterioration saw the FARC-EP materially 
responded by destabilizing Colombia’s most 
important oil infrastructure facility while 
eliminating entire military battalions. Between 
the 29th of April and the 6th of May the FARC-EP 
carried out a coordinated series of attacks which 
isolated sectors of Colombia’s largest oil 
pipeline and subsequently halted the production 
of an estimated eight-hundred thousand to 
three-million barrels of oil. In addition, the 
guerrilla strategically destroyed important 
transportation routes needed to control the flow 
of oil and military supplies throughout various 
departments in the north of the country. 
Destroying an essential bridge near Catatumbo in 
the department of César, the FARC-EP was able to 
severe the movement of state and private security 
forces thereby keeping existing military units 
preoccupied (Weinberg, 2008). Following the 
offence, another Front in Norte de Santander 
pursued an aggressive attack against security 
forces guarding the 770 kilometre Colombian-based 
Ecopetrol and US-based Occidental Petroleum owned 
Caño-Limón pipeline near Tibu – the true target 
of the attack. Ironically, all this took place 
just a few short hours after William Brownfield, 
the United States’ Ambassador to Colombia, 
visited the area and applauded the growth in 
security and economic progress as a result of the 
FARC-EP’s so-called decline (Reuters, 2008a). In 
response to the FARC-EP’s strike, Colombian 
General Paulino Coronado coordinated a mounted 
offensive on 3rd of May to eliminate the FARC-EP 
attack and resume the flow of oil production. The 
guerrilla quickly eliminated the deployed 
battalion and continued their assault on the 
pipeline facilities for an additional forty-eight 
hours (Associated Press, 2008). Showing that 
their campaign targeting the Caño-Limón pipeline 
was not simply a one-time tactical success, the 
FARC-EP carried out an additional attack on 
Colombia’s largest coal mine – the Cerrejón – on 
the forty-fourth anniversary of insurgency’s 
inception. On 27th of May 2008, roughly one month 
after the transgressions aimed at oil production 
took place, the guerrilla again targeted attacks 
against exploitive multinational corporations and 
state-infrastructure involved in the region by 
derailing “around 40 wagons out of the 120-wagon 
train, carrying 110 tonnes of coal” (Reuters, 
2008b). While officials tried to downplay the 
extensive damage it was quickly revealed that the 
FARC-EP had considerably hampered trading by 
destabilizing entire export routes (Reuters, 
2008c). These are but two actions where the 
FARC-EP demonstrated their continued military 
capacity to respond to both state and private 
security forces in relation to corporate 
interests. Most interesting, however, was that 
the coordinated FARC-EP campaigns silenced many 
officials from both the Colombian and US state. 
Many have perceived sectors of Colombia’s north 
to be economically sheltered as sectors of the 
country’s south have appeared to be the centre of 
FARC-EP activities; however, the above events 
demonstrated that FARC-EP support and capacity go 
far beyond that mentioned in the popular press. 
As Colombia’s own Interior Minister Carlos 
Holguin announced, Colombia should not dream or 
come close to proclaiming a victory over the 
FARC-EP just yet (see Otis, 2008).

The administration of Álvaro Uribe Vélez 
[2002-2010] has created a façade of general 
security in a region that has witnessed a 
half-century of civil war. It has become general 
knowledge in Colombia that the state has actively 
under-represented figures and information related 
to the civil conflict to present a picture of 
internal stability. In the summer of 2006, Jorge 
Daniel Castro, then General Director of 
Colombia’s national police, stated that 30,944 
paramilitaries had taken amnesty since 2003 
through Law 975 (Badawy, 2006). This number was 
double that of any figure ever described by 
scholars, military analysts, or governments 
officials when concerning the size of Colombia’s 
largest paramilitary organization, The United 
Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas 
Unidas de Colombia, AUC) (see International 
Crisis Group, 2004: 2, 2n.7; Murillo and Avirama, 
2004: 89, 108; Livingstone, 2003: 269n.15; 
Crandall, 2002: 88; Ministerio de Defensa 
Nacional, 2000: 10). Then in 2007, President 
Uribe and Vice-President Francisco Santos 
Calderón were accused of forcing state officials 
to alter statistics related to issues of internal 
security and state policy. Cesar Caballero’s, 
former director of Colombia’s National 
Administrative Department of Statistics 
(Departamento Administrativo Nacional de 
Estadística, DANE), admitted that the state had 
and continues to manipulate “statistics to make 
Colombia appear safer than it is, casting doubt 
on achievements that have made him popular both 
at home and with the U.S. government 
 the 
president’s policy is 
 to maintain the 
perception that security has improved, no matter 
what the case” (Crowe, 2007). An example of such 
state-enforced disinformation can be realized 
through a simple evaluation of internally 
displaced persons (IDPs) in Colombia. When 
examining the issue of displacement, Constanza 
Vieira (2008) noted that the number of Colombian 
IDPs jumped thirty-eight percent in 2007. 
Colombia is now second only to the Sudan for the 
largest number of IDPs in the world, which only 
began after the rise of state-supported 
paramilitarism in the 1980s. To put this into 
perspective, Colombia has well over one million 
more IDPs than the entire Middle-East combined 
(including Iraq). The state stipulates that 
Colombia has roughly 1.9 million IDPs yet this is 
half the figure documented by various domestic 
and international human rights organizations and 
research centres. For example, the Consultancy 
for Human Rights and Displacement (Consultoría 
para los Derechos Humanos y el Desplazamiento, 
CODHES), the Internal Displacement Monitoring 
Centre (IDMC), and the Japan International 
Cooperation Agency (JICA) all agree that the 
actual figure of Colombian IDPs fluctuates 
between 3.9 and 4.2 million (see Consultoría para 
los Derechos Humanos y el Desplazamiento, 2007; 
Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2007; 
Japan International Cooperation Agency, 2007). By 
recognizing the above example of state-based 
disinformation one can understand how reports 
concerning the FARC-EP’s disintegration may be suspect as well.

While it cannot be dismissed that in the past few 
months the FARC-EP has experienced unprecedented 
difficulties it must be realized that as long as 
inequitable sociocultural and political-economic 
conditions pervade Colombian society so too will 
a base from which the FARC-EP can recruit. The 
FARC-EP remain the longest running and most 
powerful political-military movement in 
contemporary Latin America with numbers still 
ranging in the thousands, arguably tens of 
thousands. Therefore, to buy into any suggestion 
that Colombia finds itself in a period of 
increased stability or that the FARC-EP have past 
into the annals of history is to adopt a false 
consciousness of the realities that exist within 
this Andean country. Jennifer S. Holmes, Sheila 
Amin Gutiérrez de Piñeres, and Kevin M. Curtin 
(2006: 178) have clarified that a “lack of 
economic opportunity contributes to leftist 
guerrilla violence”. As the nation witnesses 
accelerated levels of inequality, displacement, 
and exploitation so too will increased levels of 
opposition continue. Such are the causes of 
instability and the true forum through which 
people become aware of their class positioning; 
hence, their subsequent engagement in acts of 
resistance through more extreme measures. Peter 
Calvert (1999: 128) has argued that 
political-economic disparity enables “insurgent 
movements a ready-made mass of disaffected 
supporters”. Presenting that the FARC-EP is 
experiencing a period of tactical reformation and 
withdrawal is correct but to assess that the 
insurgency movement is over is an ignorant 
assessment and lacks an understanding of both 
guerrilla warfare and the material conditions 
which pervade Colombian society and its class 
struggle. To suggest that the FARC-EP have 
experienced defeat fails to understand the right 
of self-determination through an internal 
interpretation of revolutionary emancipation. The 
internal struggle within Colombia is far from 
over. It will continue to be waged through 
radical and antagonistic forms. As the United 
States and the Uribe administration continue to 
engage a war against the poor so too will they 
exacerbate and intensify “Colombia’s internal 
conflict by robbing families of their livelihoods 
and leaving them with little option but to join 
the left-wing guerrillas, particularly the FARC” 
(O’Shaughnessy and Branford, 2005: 7).

James J. Brittain is an Assistant Professor of 
Sociology at Acadia University, Nova Scotia, 
Canada and the co-founder of the Atlantic 
Canada-Colombia Research Group. He can be reached 
at <mailto:james.brittain at acadiau.ca>james.brittain at acadiau.ca.

Works Cited

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killed in clash with leftist rebels” May 4, May 5, 2008.

Avilés, William (2006). Global Capitalism, 
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Badawy, Manuela (2006). “Colombia monitors 
ex-rebels, measures success,” July 7, 2006.

Brittain, James J. (2005). “The FARC-EP in 
Colombia: A revolutionary exception in an age 
of       imperialist expansion,” Monthly Review, 57(4): 20-33.

Calvert, Peter (1999). “Guerrilla Movements,” in 
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Nicola Ohillips (Eds.)             Manchester, 
UK: Manchester University Press. pp.112-130.

Cambio (2008). “El Computador de ‘Iván Ríos’” March 12, 2008.

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manipulates crime data” February 17, 2007

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Forero, Juan (2008). “Colombia’s Rebels Face 
Possibility of Implosion Chief Threat Not 
Deaths,   but Desertion” March 22, 2008.

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America,” in The Socialist Register. 
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Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, IDMC 
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Reuters (2008a). “Colombia says rebels bomb oil pipeline” May 2, 2008.

Reuters (2008b). “Colombia coal train bombed, exports unaffected” May 27, 2008.

Reuters (2008c). “Colombia coal train bombed, exports affected” May 27, 2008.

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