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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/brittain03122008.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/brittain03122008.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>March 12, 2008
<br><br>
</font><h1><b>Was the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders?
</b></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5><b>By JAMES J.
BRITTAIN <br><br>
</b></font><font face="Verdana" size=5 color="#990000">W</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>hile 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-People’s Army
(<i>Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo</i>,
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. <br><br>
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.<br>
<b>The Case of Comandante</b> <b>Raúl Reyes (Murdered March 1, 2008)<br>
</b>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 insurgency’s Secretariat of the Central High Command,
Julian Conrado, a member of the Central High Command (and the
insurgency’s most recognized cultural icon through his work as a
revolutionary folk-musician), and twenty other members of the
FARC-EP.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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
America’s forty-four year old civil war with the FARC-EP. <br><br>
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, I’m not aware that we
found out about this other than after the fact”. Less than assuring
complete impartiality, Colombia’s 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,.<br><br>
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-EP’s 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
informant’s 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.<br><br>
On Friday, Ecuador’s 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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
<b>The Case of Comandante Iván Ríos (Murdered March 4, 2008 or March 7th,
2008)<br>
</b>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-EP’s
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. <br><br>
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 Office’s Technical Investigation Body (<i>Cuerpo Técnico
de Investigación</i>, 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 <i>and</i>
that Comandante Iván Ríos had been officially pronounced dead. <br><br>
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 Comandante’s Ríos death another state
official within the Prosecutors Office of Colombia had given a different
account concerning the death of the FARC-EP leader.<br><br>
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-EP’s high command, and lower-level
officials disseminating alternative accounts of the actual on goings
during said transgressions.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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-EP’s Secretariat. Each Comandante associated with the
Secretariat has a cadre of more than a dozen immediate personnel which
are not only responsible for the Comandante’s 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
Comandante’s barracks. Once approval has been arranged it is only then
that a member is escorted into the Comandante’s 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 Comandante’s 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?<br><br>
For any researcher, academic, environmentalist, or journalist who has
spent any significant deal of time within FARC-EP-controlled territory
since 2002, the Defense Minister’s ‘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.<br><br>
<b>Plausible Paramilitary Role in the Deaths of both Comandante Reyes and
Comandante Ríos<br><br>
</b>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 (<i>Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia</i>, 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. <br><br>
The actions related to Comandante Ríos’ murder are symbolic of those
carried out by Colombia’s 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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
<b>Plausible US Role in the Deaths of both Comandante Reyes and
Comandante Ríos<br><br>
</b>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-EP’s 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.
<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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
<i>El Tiempo.</i> <br><br>
1) Systemically exposing sectors of Colombia’s 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 state’s political dominance and promotion of far-right economic
policies. <br><br>
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 insurgency’s many Squads, Companies, Columns, and
Fronts.<br><br>
<b>James J. Brittain</b> 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
<a href="mailto:james.brittain@acadiau.ca">james.brittain@acadiau.ca</a>
.<br><br>
<br><br>
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