Botched Hostage Deal May Signify Weakened FARC
By Pablo Bachelet, The Miami Herald
Jan. 5–WASHINGTON — A Colombian guerrilla group’s botched offer to free three hostages shows the oldest and best-financed insurgency in Latin America is struggling to control units spread out in the jungle, analysts said Friday.
Pressured by the Colombian military and its improved communications interceptions capabilities, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, is relying more on old-fashioned courier networks to communicate, the observers said.
“They have gone back to the much more artisan, tried and true forms of communications that they’ve traditionally used,” said Bruce Bagley, a Colombia expert at the University of Miami. “And that means more command and communications problems.”
Last month, the FARC announced it would free three hostages, including Clara Rojas and Emmanuel, a young boy born to Rojas in captivity. But it turned out that FARC guerrillas had handed over the boy in 2005 to a Colombian man who took him to a rural infirmary. The boy wound up in Bogota, and a DNA test released Friday showed he was Rojas’ son.
Military offensives ordered by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe since he took power have driven the FARC deeper into the jungle and cut its ranks to an estimated 12,000, compared with about 17,000 in 2000.
Bagley believes the FARC still brings in about $200 million a year from drug trafficking and for-ransom kidnappings. That kind of money can still buy modern communications equipment, including satellite phones and scrambling devices, but the group has been stung by its use of such technologies and become more careful in using them.
In 2006, The Miami Herald reported that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had slipped to the FARC satellite phones that were supposed to be protected against eavesdropping but were not.
Col. John Cope, a senior research fellow at the National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies, said he suspects FARC commanders still have “some kind of classified mode” for communications.
But he doubts all 70 or so of the major FARC units, known as fronts, have access to this technology, which is hard to use in the jungle.
Most observers believe the FARC remains a formidable fighting force, despite the communications problems and the challenges in keeping 750 or so hostages, who are housed in makeshift camps and moved frequently.
The group failed to deliver timely proof-of-life evidence during a recent round of hostage negotiations. And in the past year or so several captives have managed to escape, including the current foreign minister, Fernando Araujo.
Even so, a Republican House staffer who requested anonymity said the Emmanuel case may be a case of the FARC not wanting to deal with caring for a sick boy in the jungle.
“Why do you want to schlep around a baby?” he said.
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