More on the FARC Documents
Little by little more of the thousands of documents captured from the FARC rebels in Colombia are coming to light and the picture is not pretty.
While INTERPOL is reportedly set to declare the contents of the computers captured after the March strike that killed FARC commander Raul Reyes, the Colombian government is quietly making use of the documents to inflict unprecedented damage on the guerrilla-criminal organization that is on the terror list of the United States, Canada and the European Union.
Police commander Oscar Naranjo, who has been in the war against drug trafficking organizations for years, says this is the first time in his career that the FARC is shrinking, rather than growing.
Another sign of the guerrilla’s weakening are the numbers of desertions by combatants that had been with the FARC anywhere from five to 12 years, said Naranjo.
‘’It is their qualified combatants that are demobilizing,’’ he said. ‘’What I’m seeing for the first time in the last 30 years is that the FARC are no longer growing—to the contrary, ‘’ they are shrinking.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the documents show Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in personally involved in helping the FARC, authorizing rest areas for their troops inside Venezuela, offering a $250 million loan to be repaid when the FARC takes power, and allowing senior Venezuelan officials provide weapons to the rebels.
A Venezuelan general, Hugo Carvajal, suggested piggy-backing weapons for the FARC on weapons shipments arriving from Russia, using containers that could then be passed on to the FARC in Colombia.
One of the weapons the FARC clearly wants, the documents show, are surface-to-air missiles, in order to better tackle the Colombian and U.S. use of aircraft, both for surveillance/communications monitoring and fumigation of coca fields.
El Pais, Spain’s premier newspaper, contains another worrisome nugget: The FARC was aided in its contacts with international arms dealers by a leader of El Salvador’s Communist Party, part of the FMLN alliance, the former guerrilla group now a leading political party.
The FMLN contact is identified in the computer files as “Ramiro,” know to be Luis Merino, a member of the Central American parliament. While most of the FMLN has embraced the political process, the Communist party has maintained a clandestine paramilitary apparatus and has never cut its contacts with other armed movements.
El Pais also says the documents show that Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista rebel leader, former and current president of Nicaragua, also offered to send some old but useable weapons to the FARC.
This is precisely the pipeline I have written about before, and why it is dangerous. It is not just Chavez and the FARC in a bit regional hijinx. It is a continuum of bad actors that stretch from Iran to the FARC to Ecuador, Nicaragua and to our border.
The papers are receiving relatively little attention, to our great detriment. One could plausibly argue that this particular pipeline, because if flows across our border seamlessly and with little effort, is a vital national security threat.
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A Murder in Mexico The Handover of the Paramilitary Terrorists in Colombia Could Be a Milestone
What happened to the claim that these files documented Chavez supplying FARC with $300 million to purchase uranium for the construction of dirty bombs? What reason is there to think that these new claims are any less bogus spin by the Uribe government (or the Bush administration, for that matter?)
There’s a long history of claims of conflagration that turn out not only to be no fire at all, but precious little smoke even.
— Jan Rooth May 12, 14:18 #
OK, so the US State Department and the CIA seeded these stories in the international newspaper media stream.
Bogus.
Our own puppets, the OAS, have publicly and recently stated that there ARE NO FARC personnel in Venezuela.
But Colombia IS driving their indigenous population over the border.
http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/88496/1/
...are THEY rebels too?
— Da' Buffalo Amongst Wolves May 12, 15:23 #
Clearly you have no experience with the FARC. If it were the paramilitaries (and it often has been) who committed these atrocities and wrote out their plans that were captured (as has happened), it would be accepted at face value for what it is-a cache of documents from inside a criminal organization that has an atrocious human rights record. Where is the intellectual honesty in this approach?
The State Department and CIA no longer have the capacity or the interest in seeding stories like this, and the documents were largely produced within hours the attack. Their content has already been shown to be true in numerous instances (the $480,000 in Costa Rica, the depleted uranium stash, the ties to Mexican organizations-or is that just smoke too?) Do you really think the CIA and/or State Department are capable of that?
There was no claim in the documents about the Chavez and the $300 million, that was an extrapolation from on document that I believe is erroneous. But that does not mean the documents are not real.
Perhaps you will take Interpol at its word when it authenticates the documents. Or perhaps you will find a new reason not to believe the evidence that you don’t like, just because you don’t like it.
— Douglas Farah May 13, 09:00 #
To the best of my recollection, I have never in my life jumped to any conclusion about the paramilitaries, so I don’t know what basis you have for accusing me of intellectual dishonesty. I see nothing dishonest about taking a skeptical approach given this administration’s long history of fabrication and given the Uribe government’s manifest self-interest.
Taking your claim that the CIA has somehow forgotten all its tradecraft at face value, how about Colombia? Are they also naive innocents, incapable of fabrication? Does it take a genius to have some stuff prepared in advance for such a contingency? Even if some of this material is genuine that does not demonstrate that all of it is.
And I’d be damn careful about making a big deal about the “stash of depleted uranium.” If it is your position that DU is suitable for making dirty bombs, then the US Army is the world’s worst dirty bomber by about 50 orders of magnitude. (For your information, that’s not my position. Just pointing out that it follows necessarily from any claim that possession of DU is possession of dirty bomb material)
— Jan Rooth May 13, 10:01 #
Apologies, Jan. I was more aiming the comment at the other commentator.
I have written extensively about how bogus the claim of the uranium is for making WMD or any such thing, but it does appear the FARC was scamming someone or was scammed itself into believing it could be used.
My frustration, which was a bit heavy handed in how I expressed it, is that there is almost universal agreement that the Paras are bad, and they are. But there is a tendency to try to defend the FARC in the face of what to me is completely indefensible conduct.
I spent years covering the AUC and its massacres, fishing bodies out of rivers and dealing with the people who were butchered by them. So I know the AUC.
I am just weary of some many people who will take anything at face value on the AUC (and I am not implying you are one of them) and believe it, but hold the FARC to a completely different standard.
So, apologies for over-supposing on my part. I try to keep a civil and intelligent blog, and hope to return to that.
— Douglas Farah May 13, 10:42 #
I apologize as well for snapping back at you.
I assure you I have no illusions about FARC nor any wish to defend them. They are a deadly criminal gang with few if any redeeming qualities. But my frustration is that our own policies and those of our allies have for decades done more harm than good in this region. It seems to me there are many interests that find it profitable to sustain instability and disparity in the distribution of wealth and power.
I’m thinking particularly of the “War on Drugs” – surely one of the most quixotic and counterproductive of endeavors ever. I could go on at great length about the idiocy of that (and of the “war” paradigm for anything and everything) but out of respect for your blog I’ll stop there.
Suffice it to say that all this leads me to cast a skeptical eye on any claims of exciting new evidence against our enemies. In that vein, I have a question about the Interpol examination of these documents. Do you know if they are merely examining copies, or do they have access to do forensic analysis on the actual hard drive from the computer? If it’s the latter, I would have complete confidence in their results since they would be able to examine for a normal pattern of over-writes and chronological consistency of those over-writes. If it’s the former, then I submit they don’t have the information to detect a competent forgery.
— Jan Rooth May 14, 10:32 #
My understanding is that Interpol took originals, and the CNP are using mirrored drives. I don’t think Ron Noble would do it any other way.
Another reason for my confidence in this particular process is that I have known Gen. Naranjo for 15 years, and I have a great respect for the work he has done through that time. I would not feel comfortable vouching for many in the whole War on Drugs world (and it is a sad and damaging paradigm), but he is one of the good guys, in my book.
— Douglas Farah May 14, 15:06 #
That’s good to know. As I said, in that case I have complete confidence in whatever results they find.
— Jan Rooth May 15, 09:36 #