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Was the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders?
By James J. Brittan
12/03/08 "Counterpunch" -- -- 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-People’s 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
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.
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 America’s
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, 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,.
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.
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.
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-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.
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 (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 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.
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.
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-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?
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.
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 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.
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-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.
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 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.
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.
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
james.brittain@acadiau.ca
.
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