Report Shows Increase in FARC Activity This Year
News from Colombia |
on: Monday, 25 July 2011
The ‘Corporacion Nuevo Arco Iris’, a widely respected Colombian NGO, has released a report on the state of the Colombian conflict during the first 6 months of 2011. The report notes an increase in FARC activity and says that there is a high intensity conflict going on in 8 departments of the country. The report notes that there was an ‘exaggeration of the successes of democratic security’, the policy implemented initially by President Uribe, which has led to some military units showing signs of exhaustion and tiredness.
The report on the first six months of 2011 notes that “we are facing a renovated FARC with a different kind of armed conflict.” The guerrillas have abandoned large units in favour of attacks by small groups of specially trained guerrillas, and hit and run attacks against army units. According to the report, the killing of FARC leaders has not yielded the expected military results - although it did create a public perception that the war was being won, which benefitted the government. Interestingly, the report states that even if government forces managed to kill FARC commander Alfonso Cano, this would not be the end of the guerrilla group - although it would be a serious blow.
According to the report, while the FARC have changed tactics to hit and run attacks by small units as well as using car-bombs to target military garrisons in towns, the army continues to rely on heavy aerial bombardments. Human rights organisations have condemned the army’s use of aerial bombings, as well as their insistence on occupying buildings in the centre of towns and villages which endangers the civilian population. The report says that the guerrillas’ new tactics have caused “strong blows to morale” in the armed forces.
The report notes that while casualties have marginally decreased on all sides, the armed forces have still lost nearly a thousand men so far this year. By the end of 2010 the armed forces had suffered 2540 casualties – 300 more than in 2002 when Uribe took office. This clearly shows the failure of the militarisation of the conflict to resolve the situation. Moreover, the report details an increase in attacks by the FARC, but acknowledges that its statistics do not include FARC attacks on paramilitary forces. As an example it describes 31 FARC attacks on paramilitaries in Cauca and Narino, and 17 in the north of Santander. Therefore the true increase in activity may be even higher if these actions are taken into account.
Furthermore the report states that the army is crippled by corruption and says that many areas have not seen any noticeable “benefit” since the so-called ‘demobilisation’ of paramilitary groups in 2005. It notes that in the east of the country, when the armed forces pushed the FARC out of an area, paramilitary groups then took over, and that in the region of Cordoba, troops are almost “one and the same” as paramilitary groups. In other areas, such as Meta, military units continue to carry out intelligence work against the civilian population, but “do not consolidate the rule of law” and “still see the civilian population as the enemy.” It is also precisely in these so-called ‘consolidated zones’, where the state has taken control that human rights organisations have noted an increase in human rights abuses. Finally, the report calls for the military to be purged of the criminal networks that have penetrated it.
It is clear from the content of the report that the government’s military strategy has failed to destroy the guerrillas, and that the further militarisation of the social conflict in Colombia is counter-productive and does not resolve the issues that are at the root of the violence.
