[News] Was the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders?
Anti-Imperialist News
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Wed Mar 12 11:29:03 EDT 2008
http://www.counterpunch.org/brittain03122008.html
March 12, 2008
Was the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders?
By JAMES J. BRITTAIN
While virtually every country in Central and
South America, including the Caribbean, has waged
in on the debate of the Colombian state
conducting an illegal military campaign within
Ecuadorian sovereign territory, resulting in the
deaths of various high ranking officials in the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Peoples
Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de
Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo, FARC-EP), the
United States have remained virtually silent.
Such silence from the US is quite perplexing
consdiering the administrations of Ronald Regan,
George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W.
Bush have wielded a twenty-two year old assault on this insurgency movement.
The United States have deemed the FARC-EP to be,
what it considers, a foreign terrorist
organization (FTO). Therefore, would one not
expect, during the so-called war on terror,
some attention from Washington - other than a few
sentences by state officials - following the
deaths of both Comandante Raúl Reyes and
Comandante Iván Ríos within less than six days of
each other; two of the seven highest-ranking
members of the organization (lest we forget the
hourly visual barrage of images related to the
capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003 or his
execution in 2006). The following makes a case
that the United States silence has far more to
do with a plausible connection to the deaths of
Comandante Reyes and Comandante Ríos rather than simple disinterest.
The Case of Comandante Raúl Reyes (Murdered March 1, 2008)
It has become general knowledge that shortly
after midnight on March 1, 2008, the President of
Colombia Álvaro Uribe Vélez, Vice-President
Francisco Santos Calderón, and Defense Minister
Juan Manuel Santos sanctioned an illegal air and
ground assault against the 48th Front of the
FARC-EP, which resulted in the death of
Comandante Raúl Reyes, one of the members of the
insurgencys Secretariat of the Central High
Command, Julian Conrado, a member of the Central
High Command (and the insurgencys most
recognized cultural icon through his work as a
revolutionary folk-musician), and twenty other members of the FARC-EP.
Hours after the assault had taken place Defense
Minister Santos reiterated that Colombian forces
began the operation with an air assault followed
by a group of Colombian soldiers engaging in a
ground combat against members of the FARC-EP
Front. Santos expressed that recently obtained
intelligence information related to a satellite
phone used by Comandante Reyes enabled the
Colombian military to pin-point the location of
the encampment, subsequently enabling the campaign to take place.
During meetings of the OAS, state officials and
representatives from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil,
Chile, Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and
Peru condemned the assault. Unsurprisingly, one
of the only backers of the illegal military
incursion was the US. Nevertheless, President
George W. Bush and J. Robert Manzanares, the
United States representative during the OAS
meetings, had very little to say about the
greatest achievement ever realized by the United
States principal ally in Latin Americas
forty-four year old civil war with the FARC-EP.
When asked if the Uribe and Santos administration
had informed Washington preceding the
transgression on Ecuadorian soil, Tom Casey, a
spokesman for the US State Department, hesitantly
stated No, Im not aware that we found out about
this other than after the fact. Less than
assuring complete impartiality, Colombias Chief
of Police, General Oscar Naranjo declared that I
can say for sure that the operation was
autonomous. As General Naranjo continued his
press conference he did however reveal that the
United States had, in fact, been involved in
operations connected to the Colombian military
assault in Ecuador, albeit indirectly,.
General Naranjo asserted that no external forces
were involved in the FARC-EP-targeted attack but
he did offer that it is no secret that
a very
strong alliance with federal agencies of the US
exists between the Colombian military. Shortly
following this statement, a high ranking official
within the Colombian Defense Ministry leaked that
the United States had been involved in the March
1, 2008 operation. In actuality, the US, through
satellite intelligence gathering over southern
Colombia and Northern Ecuador, had been able to
retrieve signals from the FARC-EPs 48th Front
and handed over the identification of the
satellite telephone being used by the insurgency
to intelligence sectors of the Colombian police.
The informant went on to add that it was only
then that Colombian officials were able to
process the data, thereby enabling the Colombian
state to decipherer the exact location of
Comandante Reyes. The informants account of the
satellite phone effectively mirrors that made
during Defense Minister Santos first press
conference. The leaked information demonstrated
that the US was, at the very least, indirectly
involved in the actions of March 1, 2008. That was until March 7, 2008.
On Friday, Ecuadors Defense Minister Wellington
Sandoval announced that after further
investigation of the area targeted during the
March 1 attack it was revealed that the site had
been bombarded with at least five bombs (Smart
Bombs). All five detonations were within a
50-meter diameter during a nocturnal attack, a
virtually impossible achievement when concerning
the military capabilities and resources of the
Colombian Air and Armed Forces. Sandoval claimed
that the arms used during the incursion can only
be deployed through the use of aircraft which
have the capacity to fly at a considerable height
and velocity, weaponry that is again not found
within the Colombian Air Force. The only Air
Force in the region with such an arsenal is the United States.
While the US and the Colombian governments claim
that the United States were not involved in the
attack that resulted in the death of Comandante
Raúl Reyes, it is quite likely that the United
States played more than an informal role in the aggression.
The Case of Comandante Iván Ríos (Murdered March 4, 2008 or March 7th, 2008)
On the afternoon of March 7, 2008, the country of
Colombia was once again the witness of an
interruption by Defense Minister Santos taking
precedence on both television and radio. Similar
to his announcement made six days earlier, Santos
announced that a member of the FARC-EPs
Secretariat had been killed. To the great
surprise of many, the Defense Minister claimed
that Comandante Iván Ríos had been killed by
another member of the FARC-EP named Rojas (in
association with two other combatants associated
with the insurgency) on March 4, 2008.
The Defense Minister proceeded to tell the press
that after those deemed responsible had killed
Comandante Ríos they severed his right hand in
order to prove to Colombian officials that the
youngest member of the Secretariat was dead. It
was then stated that the three insurgents took
the severed limb, along with Comandante Ríos
laptop and identification and handed them over to
members of the Colombian Army and the Colombian
Attorney General Offices Technical Investigation
Body (Cuerpo Técnico de Investigación, CTI).
During a brief press conference related to this
incident, Defense Minister Santos said that the
Colombian army had launched an operation designed
to capture Comandante Ríos on February 17, 2008
after (again) receiving intelligence that he was
located in a mountainous region in the Department
of Caldas. Unlike the March 1, 2008 press
conference, however, Santos did not entertain any
questions or reveal any additional information
other than that listed above and that Comandante
Iván Ríos had been officially pronounced dead.
Confusion immediately began to envelop the events
presented by Defense Minister Santos. The reason
for the uncertainty was that previous to the
official pronouncement ofe Comandantes Ríos
death another state official within the
Prosecutors Office of Colombia had given a
different account concerning the death of the FARC-EP leader.
An anonymous official had prematurely contacted
the press and reported that Comandante Ríos had
been killed on March 7, 2008 during an attack
carried out by a unit of the Colombian Army in
conjunction with members of the CTI in Aguadas,
just outside the Samaná Municipality within the
department of Caldas. This again mirrors events
as revealed in the case of Comandante Reyes
death; intelligence provided to state officials,
upper level official presenting sanitized
sanctioned accounts explaining the deaths of the
FARC-EPs high command, and lower-level officials
disseminating alternative accounts of the actual
on goings during said transgressions.
Another strange complexity related to Comandante
Ríos death is simply, where is Rojas? One would
think that the state would put forth details
concerning who Comandante Ríos murderer was,
what his social background or personal
identification is, how the killing occurred, what
has happened to Rojas, etc. Interestingly,
however, nothing related to the above queries concerning Rojas were released.
If Comandante Ríos was, in fact, murdered by
Rojas, such events surrounding the death are
quite perplexing due to the actual structure and
formation of the FARC-EP. It is difficult to
understand how one FARC-EP combatant let alone
three were capable of breaking rank and violently
reacting against not only a highly-ranked officer
but a leader within the FARC-EPs Secretariat.
Each Comandante associated with the Secretariat
has a cadre of more than a dozen immediate
personnel which are not only responsible for the
Comandantes protection but oversee the on goings
of the guerrilla camp in which the leader is
situated. From first-hand experience, all
meetings and interactions with the Comandante are
coordinated each day and formally scheduled.
Prior to each meeting, the party invited must
wait and ask for approval to enter the
Comandantes barracks. Once approval has been
arranged it is only then that a member is
escorted into the Comandantes quarters by at
least one other armed guard. How is it then that
not only one but three armed FARC-EP combatants
were able to violently enter into Comandantes
Ríos barracks directly in front of an entire
FARC-EP Front, which includes two FARC-EP
Companies and two FARC-EP Guerrilla Squads which
contain, on average, at least twelve combatants per squad?
For any researcher, academic, environmentalist,
or journalist who has spent any significant deal
of time within FARC-EP-controlled territory since
2002, the Defense Ministers official account
of Rojas and two other so-called FARC-EP
combatants being solely responsible for the
murder of Comandante Ríos is highly problematic.
The discussion of Comandante Ríos limb being
removed by a FARC-EP member is greatly out of
character to any informed analyst of the
Colombian civil war. There has not been one
confirmed case of any FARC-EP combatant in its
forty-four years of existence of employing such
tactics; however, such a tactic has been
systemically employed by paramilitaries,
privately funded security forces, and
right-wing civilian vigilantly groups dating back
to the 1940s and increasingly carried out over the past decade.
Plausible Paramilitary Role in the Deaths of both
Comandante Reyes and Comandante Ríos
Over the past two years the Uribe and Santos
administration have increasing promoted the story
that Colombian paramilitarism has come to and end
with the demobilization of the United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas
Unidas de Colombia, AUC) throughout 2003-2006.
Such proclamations are in direct contradiction to
existing evidence, eye-witness reports, and
escalating violence targeted at civilians
critical of the Colombian state and
political-economic structure. More accurately the
AUC has decentralized its actions and activities
through various small-scale organizations rather
than that experienced between 1997 and 2006 where
a single umbrella organization consolidated
leading paramilitary organizations into one dominant structure.
The actions related to Comandante Ríos murder
are symbolic of those carried out by Colombias
many far-right paramilitary groups. However, if
it was to get out to the general international
public that paramilitarism has, in reality,
continued within Colombia there could be awkward
political and economic consequences.
The Colombian state cannot afford to have a
paramilitary group claim responsibility for the
murder of Comandante Ríos. This would, once
again, demonstrate to the state has either failed
in its political capacity to demobilize the
paramilitary, or more accurately, that the state
has been complicit in covering up the actions of
Colombian paramilitarism which are rampant
throughout the Colombian countryside.
Rather than supporting the claim that FARC-EP
combatants committed the assault and subsequent
amputation of Comandante Ríos hand it is more
likely that what transpired was a tactic which
has been widely utilized by the paramilitaries
over the past several years. Countless
researchers and journalists have exposed how
reactionary forces dress up in fatigues, making
themselves appear to be FARC-EP combatants.
Paramilitaries have regularly presented
themselves as members of the FARC-EP so as to
commit atrocities against civilians in the hopes
of creating false condemnations aimed at the insurgency.
Plausible US Role in the Deaths of both Comandante Reyes and Comandante Ríos
The Bush administration has had great difficulty
in getting a new Free-Trade Agreement (FTA) with
Colombia passed. Internal congressional protests
by sectors of the Democratic Party have opposed
the legislation, due to allegations and proven
atrocities committed by the paramilitaries,
crimes that the Colombian state has allowed to go
unpunished. Many of these politicians argue that
the Colombian state and the US government and
military have failed to quell the illicit
drug-trade or decrease the FARC-EPs strength
throughout the Colombian countryside even though
billions of US dollars have been spent.
Therefore, if the Bush administration was able to
claim even the slightest victory over the FARC-EP
than they could argue that their
counter-insurgency funding has been successful
and that a new FTA should be supported in Congress.
There is a distinct possibility that the United
States may have been involved in the actions
leading up to Comandante Ríos death. US Special
Forces and Marines have been illegally engaged in
counter-insurgency campaigns within the country
of Colombia for years. Even though the legal
number of US troops cannot exceed 800 state
forces (and 600 private forces), thousands have
been operating in campaigns against the FARC-EP.
For example, Peter Gorman published that as far
back as 2002 roughly 1,100 US counter-insurgent
troops were on orders to eliminate all high
officers of the FARC. This does not even
highlight what possible actions private US-based
contradicted counter-insurgent forces may be carrying out.
There is a two-fold psychological
effect inculcated by propaganda related to the
deaths of Comandante Reyes and Comandante Ríos,
which is being disseminated through the
centralized media, primarily El Tiempo.
1) Systemically exposing sectors of Colombias
general public to photographs of the bullet
ridden and mutilated corpse of Reyes on an hourly
basis or the cooler containing Ríos severed
limbs is a tool utilized to intimidate and to
deter sympathizers with the insurgency, political
activists, and state opponents within Colombia
from criticizing the states political dominance
and promotion of far-right economic policies.
2) Telling the world that Comandante Ríos was
murdered by his own comrades is a tactic employed
to decrease external solidarity from sectors of
the international community, who may now falsely
believe the argument that the largest and most
powerful Marxist-Leninist revolutionary social
movement in Latin America is loosing ground,
power, and influence in the Colombian
countryside. At the same time, such accusations
are internally disseminated in the hopes of
destabilizing the FARC-EP itself. Claiming the
rank-and-file have abandoned the leadership and
that the movement is collapsing is a strategy to
destabilize the insurgencys many Squads, Companies, Columns, and Fronts.
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.
Freedom Archives
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San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
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