The Death of Alfonso Cano is not the death of the FARC.

November 4^th the Colombian army killed the head of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Even if this has been a severe blow for the guerrilleros, they do not seem to be opening up for a peaceful agreement.

Source: PressTV

The death of Alfonso Cano during a military action early in the morning on November 4^th, in the department of Cauca, is the toughest hit endured till now by the FARC; also because it happens right after the disappearance of two other leaders: Raul Reyes in March 2008 and Mono Jojoy in September 2010. Cano is the fourth component of the summit of the FARC to be killed in a military operation and the fifth if one counts that the legendary chief of the guerrilla Manuel Marilanda Velez, also known as Tirofijo, died of an apparently natural death in 2008. Today, of the seven men that in the 90’s obtained quite a few successes there are only two left: Timoleon Jimenez, nicknamed Timochenko, and Ivan Marquez.

The leadership of the FARC, as all Stalinist-inspired organizations, acts as a military council with a visible leader but with a collective, real, not purely representative, management. Its ability to substitute dead leaders, though, is failing, and not only for the disappearance of the men that have marked the history of the group in the last decades, but also because the gerrilleros with a national importance are always less.

Source: Blitz Quotidiano

Pessimism

The blow suffered by the FARC is severe also from a military point of view. Alfonso Cano was the promoter of a new strategy of resistance to the Colombian army that was having quite some success. The continuous wave of attacks typical of the guerrilla, with the use of snipers and the launch of bombs in some departments of the country, the placement of landmines car bombs in the cities and, more recently, the organization of some fortunate ambushes against the army, had raised concern about the possible resumption of the FARC. The strategy of Cano had given a certain breathing space to the guerrilla.

It is therefore probable that, at least for some time, his death will strengthen the uncertainty and disorient the chain of command. Without counting the severe blow that the disappearance of FARC’s leader represents for the spirit of the group, every month it has to deal with hundreds of demobilized.

The death of Cano underlines also the strategic defeat of the organization, but it does not mean the end of the guerrilla nor the approach to a peaceful resolution. Most probably, for some time at least, the Revolutionary Army will take care of healing its wounds: the changes in the summit, the concern for the safety of the survived leaders and the preoccupation for the air supremacy demonstrated by the government, will bring to a greater isolation. At least in the short run it is unlikely that the new leadership will give any signs of rapprochement to the government, an act that inside the group would be interpreted as a defeat.

Despite the very little triumphalistic tone with which the president Juan Manuel Santos has announced the death of Cano, his message to the guerrillas has been clear. Santos has made it clear to them that the only way to avoid death or a life in prison is the demobilization and the opening up to negotiations. A message that very probably this old peasant guerrilla, transformed into a “war machine”, (as written by Eduardo Pizarro, one of the major experts of the FARC) will interpret as a provocation.

One can make many hypotheses about the possible scenarios that will open up after the disappearance of this great leader Alfonso: the guerrillas could sit on the table of the negotiations, join the drug traffic and the other many discussible actions of the new paramilitary groups, or disintegrate in small groups that, in some cases, already have some alliances with the successors of the paramilitary in charge of operating and administrating the traffic of cocaine. Finally, they could create new fronts more faithful to the tradition of the guerrilla.

For now it is impossible to say with certainty which way the Revolutionary Army will take: their history, their logic and the changes that they have suffered in the last years do not leave hope for anything good. Certainly the organization will not give up easily.

Maybe the constant succession of setbacks and losses, the last worst than the previous ones, will change the situation. 

Columbia’s Spy-Agency Dissolved Amid Rampant Corruption

Last Monday saw the dissolution of Columbia’s spy agency, the DAS, as the culmination of a series of scandals that had racked the agency for years. Columbia’s President, Juan Manuel Santos, issued an executive order late on Monday announcing that the current employees will be transferred to other offices and that a new entity will replace the disgraced agency. The DAS had long been mired in scandals which included spying on presidential foes such as judges, human rights activists and reporters during Alvaro Uribe’s administration, who preceded Santos. The agency had also been accused of colluding with right-wing paramilitary groups that have wrought havoc on Columbian society by killing and displacing thousands of people and targeting labour activists. Uribe had prioritised the demobilisation of these paramilitaries, which were set upon in the 1980s to fight left-wing guerrillas, as one of the pillars of his security policy; however the allegations that surfaced subsequently have cast a shadow on its effectiveness.

Only last month a Columbian court sentenced a former intelligence chief, Jorge Noguera, to 25 years in prison for collaborating with right-wing paramilitaries that were involved in the assassination of a prominent academic activist. Noguera led the DAS from 2002 to 2005 which coincided with part of Uribe’s administration and was a close friend of the President. To highlight the extent of corruption with the DAS one need only look at the case of another former DAS chief, Maria del Pilar Hurtado, who has obtained political asylum in Panama with Uribe’s help to avoid charges of illegally ordering wiretaps of government opponents. The former President’s chief of staff, Bernardo Moreno has similarly been charged and jailed pending trial for allegedly ordering illegal espionage of Uribe’s foes. The scandal broke back in February 2009 and subsequently led to the imprisonment of at least 20 DAS officials.

The current DAS director Felipe Munoz said 92% of the agency’s employees would maintain their government jobs by being transferred to the chief prosecutor’s office, the Foreign Ministry and the national police. Santos further emphasised that “a lot of people in the DAS have been stigmatized, unjustly I would say. So many law-abiding people shouldn’t pay for a few sinners”.

However, the new agency, details of which Santos said would be announced soon, is still shrouded in uncertainty. Given the scale and extent of the scandals in which the DAS was mired, it is worrying that neither Santos nor Munoz explained how they would prevent previous DAS employees involved in illegal activities from simply being transferred to the new agency. As it does not seem to be merely a case of a few rogue employees engaging in illicit activities this issue is anything but marginal. Another concern regards the U.S. funding for the new agency. Previously the DAS collaborated closely with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, receiving training and equipment, as its responsibilities also included fighting Columbia’s drug traffickers. Despite the U.S. claiming that aid was closely monitored to avoid it being mishandled or funnelled into illegal channels, it remains unclear how much assistance the new agency would receive given the pervasiveness of the scandals. How these issues are tackled will largely determine whether scrapping the DAS will successfully eradicate the corruption that pervaded it or whether it is merely a superficial measure.