EXTREMIST GROUPS
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
FARC were formed in 1964; the acronym for standing Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP). It was the world’s longest insurgency, with fighting lasting for over half a century. According to various sources, 9 million Colombians have been subjected to political violence and 6 million displaced from their homes. In the early 2000, the FARC had 28,000 combatants in arms and were present in 60% of Colombian municipalities. However, after struggles with the Colombian military FARC disarmed in 2017, and handed over its weapons to the United Nations. It reformed as a political party, with five seats in each house of the Colombian parliament guaranteed until 2026.
FARC originated as the armed wing of the Colombian Communist Party. The organisations is inspired by a Marxist-Leninist ideology, supporting poor farmers, calling for the redistribution of wealth and challenging the power of multinationals and foreign governments – particularly the United States – had over Colombia. The organisation was founded by smallholders and farmers in a response to the long-standing inequalities of wealth in Colombian society. In the 1920s, the Colombian Government had sold off huge swathes of land, leaving peasant populations vulnerable to exploitation and expulsion from the lands they had farmed for generations by their new landlords. The two-party system of government was unstable, locked in a ten-year civil war known as La Violencia from 1948-1958, which only exacerbated issues in rural Colombia, providing no democratic means of addressing injustice.
From the 1930s, the Colombian Communist Party effectively organised discontented peasants, seeding left-wing ideas in the country. FARC became active as an armed wing of the party from 1964, with displaced peasant farmers forming both the backbone and the leadership of the movement – which was unique amongst groups at the time, which tended towards drawing their leadership from the urban elite. Inspired by the Cuban revolution of the 1950s, FARC established an agricultural commune called the Marquetalia Republic, and demanded control over the land. In support of the landowners, the state called in the army to destroy the commune. It was eventually overrun and destroyed in 1964. Survivors of the attack held a meeting regrouped as an insurgent force which would become FARC.
FARC was an overwhelmingly rural guerilla organisation. Their fighters were organised into tactical groups, that are organised in regional blocs, and controlled by the Secretariat, a small group that set the strategies for the organisation as a whole. They focussed their attacks upon Colombian security forces and sabotaging infrastructure so that they could control their territory; this included the use of landmines which also devastated local populations. FARC was believed to be one of the wealthiest terrorist organisations in its time, due to its ability to charge levies on Colombia’s booming cocaine trade. Other means to finance their activities were via mining and capturing people and holding them for ransom. In 1999, of around 3,000 kidnappings in Colombia, 728 were attributed to FARC. One police officer was held for 14 years before being rescued; but many abductees were executed in captivity.
The cocaine boom of the late 1970s led impoverished migrants to congregate in FARC-controlled territories looking for work growing and processing coca leaves. But while it increased the population, it also increased competition for a lucrative market. Pablo Escobar’s Medellín crime syndicate became hugely influential and popular with lower-class Colombians, while his henchmen were purchasing large estates and cattle farms in FARC territory. This threatened FARC’s control on two fronts. FARC responded by kidnapping drug lords, and demanding hefty ‘taxes’ for their release. The drug lords in turn created paramilitary forces to defend themselves and their families from FARC. With time, drug lords became major landowners, marginalising rural populations. By the 1980s, America’s ‘war on drugs’ drew Escobar’s men into urban areas, and out of FARC’s heartlands. Finally, in 1993, the Colombian state, with the cooperation of a rival drug gang, located and assassinated Escobar. Ultimately, cocaine production diversified outside of the control of large organised gangs, but the flow of cocaine to the United States continued via small-scale producers and traffickers.
By the early 1980s, FARC was well-established in southern and eastern Colombia, as well as the south-central highlands – and expanding. It operated as a de facto state in regions which the official government of the country had failed to reach. In 1982, it changed its name, striking a more militant pose, seeking out larger-scale confrontations with state forces. Across the 1990s, it consolidated control over rural regions, as neoliberal economic changes led to plummeting wages and desperation led more and more people to migrate to FARC controlled regions to work in processing coca for the cocaine trade. FARC levied taxes on the populace, but also provided infrastructure, including bridges and hundreds of miles of roads. It also instituted agrarian reforms, attempting to provide alternatives to coca production in its regions – but the high income and ready markets for cocaine remained compelling for many farmers. The United States tended to view FARC as merely another crime cartel, ignoring its complex relationship with the cocaine trade in Colombia. Unlike the drug cartels, there was never any indication of FARC’s leaders profiteering from the Colombian drug trade. The International Monetary Fund insisted upon measures against both the cocaine trade and FARC; they also opened up Colombia’s oil reserves to multinational petrochemical firms. Much of Colombia’s oil lay in rural areas controlled by guerillas. FARC attacked oil pipelines running through its territories and caused millions of lost dollars to the oil industry, and significant damage to the environment. Security firms and paramilitaries stepped in to provide protection for the oil companies – being paid via US aid financing.
In 1985, FARC and allied groups attempted to achieve political legitimacy through forming a leftist coalition party as part of a ceasefire arrangement with the Colombian government. However, thousands of members were killed in targetted assassinations by right-wing forces over a few years, and by 2002, the coalition had entirely ceased to exist. In 1998, President Andrés Pastrana effectively ceded territory by demilitarising an area of over 40,000 square miles. This offer did not lead to productive negotiations, and the next president Álvaro Uribe re-militarised after FARC hijacked a plane and kidnapped a Colombian senator. Uribe deployed intensive policing and military action, hugely reducing their capacity in urban areas. Despite being weakened, FARC refused any diplomatic course of action. After cycling through leaders between 2008 and 2010, in 2012 FARC announced the cessation of its practice of kidnapping for ransom and freed military and police captives. It entered into peace talks which appeared promising until FARC kidnapped military targets in 2014. However, they agreed to a bilateral ceasefire, and President Juan Manuel Santos ordered his troops to stop bombing FARC sites. However, FARC killed a group of 11 soldiers, and Santos restarted aggressions, leading to the deaths of 26 FARC members. FARC recommitted to negotiations, and eventually in 2016, a peace treaty was signed between Santos and the leader of FARC in the presence of Ban Ki-Moon and regional leaders. The peace treaty was rejected by Colombians in a referendum by a tiny margin, yet nonetheless, both parties moved towards a cessation of hostilities.
Following the peace treaty, thousands of former combatants attended reintegration zones in former FARC territory. However, dealing with former militants has proven challenging, with the reintegration process attracting criticism for neglecting those in its camps, former FARC members facing hostility and FARC’s internal cohesion disintegrating. This makes the management of former militants a lingering challenge for Colombian society.
Meanwhile, former FARC members are targetted for revenge killings, or by other members of the organisation who reject the peace deal, with 342 assassinations – 11 in the month of July 2022. Some renegades from the disbanded organisation continue to take part in crimes, including extortion and kidnapping, and clashes with criminal gangs. In 2019, former FARC members disappointed with the peace settlement rearmed and formed a successor organisation, Segunda Maquetalia, which operates close to the Venezuelan border.