| . |
Sunday, 10 March, 2002
FARC
Shifts Strategy After Peace Talks Collapse
Bill
Rodgers
Bogota
2
Mar 2002 09:40 UTC
 
 Listen
to Bill Rodgers' report from Bogota (RealAudio)
Rodgers
report - Download 480k (RealAudio)
With the
collapse of Colombia's peace talks and the loss of the rebel-controlled
zone, the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, are
shifting their strategy, and will be stepping up terrorist attacks in
urban areas. Analysts are debating what the future may hold for the FARC
and the prospects for renewing peace talks.
Until February 20,
the FARC had been in control since late 1998 of a huge demilitarized
zone in southern Colombia, extending 42,000 square kilometers, or the
size of Switzerland. President Andres Pastrana, who began his
four-year term in 1998, had ceded the territory to the FARC to
facilitate the opening of peace talks.
But the talks
failed to achieve what the Pastrana government wanted - an end to the
38-year war. Instead the FARC abused the zone, using the vast savannah
and junglelands to hold kidnap victims, stage attacks elsewhere in
Colombia, and allow drug cultivation and trafficking to flourish.
The guerrillas,
Colombia's oldest and largest rebel group, have a Marxist orientation.
Yet while the peace talks were under way, some negotiators moderated
their discourse. A former banker turned guerrilla commander, Simon
Trinidad, once told VOA how the FARC would someday like to see a mixed
economy in Colombia. At the same time, he also warned that land should
be expropriated, if necessary, to carry out agrarian reform.
Mr. Trinidad
said, "The state can buy the land to carry out a true agrarian
reform or exproriate it. If this does not happen, he warned, the
people will do it through violent means - because land tenancy
problems have to be resolved."
Based in the
countryside, land reform is one of the main political issues advanced
by the FARC. But this kind of rhetoric is outdated in Latin America
today. Analyst Sergio Uribe says the FARC statements reflect a
mentality that remains from the time the leftist rebel group first
emerged.
"From my
experience in some regions I see that the ideological orientation
which if you look at the type of declarations that were taken out
during the last months in the DMZ, I mean it is a 1960's speech, right
- they haven't even changed that," said Uribe. "I mean, they
haven't modernized... they don't realize it's not the 1900s - it's
2000, it's another century so they're very orthodox in that."
If the FARC's
rhetoric alienates Colombians, the rebels' brutality does so even
more. Kidnappings, killings, and other acts of violence continued
while the peace negotiations were under way - and served to undermine
support for the Pastrana government's efforts.
These acts of
terrorism are already on the rise. FARC rebels brutally murdered seven
civilians in the town of La Macarena - one of five in the
demilitarized zone as they retreated from government troops.
The rebels also
will be concentrating on terrorist actions in the cities - according
to analyst Vicente Torrijos of the University del Rosario, a
specialist on the FARC. Traditionally the FARC has been a rural
guerrilla group.
Mr. Torrijos
said the FARC will develop an urban strategy, changing its tactics
from rural actions because they will need new areas to hide. He said
they are going to need more resources which they can find in urban
areas. All this means, he said, that the rebels are going to react
very creatively to the loss of their enclave and that terrorist
actions are going to increase.
This new urban
strategy is already clear. A transcript of a radio conversation
between a guerrilla leader by the name of Romana and another rebel
quotes him as saying: "You've got to deliver an urban blow - so
the oligarchy feels the war."
Email
this article to a friend.
Printer
Friendly Version
|
|