From Colombia Reports
Devastating Blow for FARC Rebels
By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Sep 23, 2010 (IPS) - The death of guerrilla commander Luis Suárez, aka Jorge Briceño or "Mono Jojoy", is a "devastating blow" for Colombia's FARC insurgents, military affairs analyst Ariel Ávila told IPS.
Briceño, who was killed in a bombing raid on his camp Wednesday by government forces, was a member of the Secretariat (Ruling Body) of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), which were founded in 1964. His death was announced Thursday.
He commanded the Eastern Bloc in southeastern Colombia, which covered nearly 40 percent of the territory of this South American country of 1.1 million square kilometers.
The raid by government forces, which involved 700 to 800 troops and heavy bombing, began Sunday and continued through Thursday.
RejoicingBriceño was the guerrilla leader most hated by Colombia's elite and by the public in general, and as a result the rejoicing over his death Thursday was only infrequently toned down by expressions of Christian charity.In the attack on Briceño's camp, U.S.-made smart bombs were dropped from Super Tucano war planes purchased from Brazil.
"The strategic core of the FARC has been dealt a heavy blow," said former defence minister Rafael Pardo, head of the Liberal Party, which backs President Juan Manuel Santos.
"It wasn't a blow dealt just by chance," he said in an interview with the Caracol Radio station. "It was an operation that formed part of a larger plan."
"We'll see each other in the cities," Briceño said in February 2002, when three years of peace talks between the FARC and the government in the southern region of San Vicente del Caguán broke down.
His remark illustrated the idea, widely held among the young campesino insurgents, that the war would end with an enormous fiesta and celebration of peace in Bolivar Plaza in central Bogota, with the guerrillas exulting and shooting guns into the air.
When the government of Santos's predecessor, Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), showed no interest in negotiating a humanitarian swap of imprisoned FARC rebels for the military and police hostages held by the insurgent group, Briceño announced the decision to start seizing civilian hostages -- mainly politicians -- to trade for imprisoned guerrillas.
But no exchange was negotiated, and most of the civilian hostages were released by the FARC unilaterally, although others died and former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors were rescued.
Briceño's former captives remember him with fear, as a cold, heartless man.
The missiles were apparently guided by a chip that had been smuggled into the rebel leader's camp in an intricate intelligence operation that may have involved informers or infiltration of the guerrilla forces.
The bombing raid took place in a valley between the towns of La Macarena, La Uribe and Vista Hermosa, in the Sierra de La Macarena National Park in central Colombia, one of the birthplaces of the FARC.
Sources on the ground described the bombing as "brutal" and "devastating," and said "they burnt everything." Some 50 bombs were reportedly dropped.
"Even if you combine the deaths of (Manuel) Marulanda, Raúl Reyes and Iván Ríos -- all three together weren't as heavy a blow as this," said Ávila, the head of the Armed Conflict Observatory of the Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris, a Bogota think tank, referring to a series of losses of FARC leaders in March 2008.
That month, FARC founder and top leader Marulanda died of a heart attack at age 78; the group's international negotiator Reyes was killed in a bombing raid similar to this week's, across the border in Ecuador; and Ríos was betrayed and killed by his own men.
Briceño's death is "a devastating blow," Ávila repeated, "in first place because he was well-loved within the FARC: he was the legendary leader who replaced Manuel Marulanda" in the esteem of the campesinos who make up the troops of the left-wing rebel group.
Marulanda was succeeded by Alfonso Cano, an anthropologist at the National University in Bogota who, according to Ávila, "is seen as a city man" by the rank-and-file.
The leadershipThe FARC leadership is now made up of commanders Alfonso Cano, Joaquín Gómez, Pablo Catatumbo, Mauricio Jaramillo (known as "the doctor"), former parliamentarian Iván Márquez and Timochenko. Briceño will have to be replaced. The "alternates" for the Secretariat are Pastor Alape and Bertulfo.
Briceño was born in 1953 in Boavita, a town in the northeastern province of Boyacá, the scene of heavy violence unleashed by the conservative government in the war that began in 1946. And he grew up in the FARC; his mother was a guerrilla and was purportedly the cook for Marulanda's second-in-command, Jacobo Arenas, who died in 1990.
He reportedly never formally attended school, but learned to read and write in the guerrilla movement, where he studied the history of Colombia and Marxist texts.
Known as an intelligent, keen conversationalist, with practical medical skills that he applied to himself, he stayed up-to-date on what was going on in the world while keeping a close grasp on the details surrounding the insurgent forces under his command.
"He became a military and cultural myth in the FARC," Ávila said, referring to the man who at one point commanded some 9,000 fighters, when the Eastern Bloc was at its strongest in 1998-1999.
After being hit by Plan Colombia and Plan Patriot -- lengthy U.S.-financed military operations -- as well as Plan Consolidation, a civic-military campaign that also has the support of several European countries, the Eastern Bloc may now be made up of some 4,000 guerrillas distributed in 32 different theatres of war, Ávila said.
While the government and some analysts say Briceño's death makes peace talks more likely because it weakens the rebel group, Ávila said the FARC does not work like that.
"We have to wait, maybe three or four months," the analyst said. "This will bring about, in the near future, some demobilisations, and there might be some splits, maybe some falling apart." But, he warned: "The FARC will recover." (END)
This was the #2 guy in the command chain and this is definitely a major blow to the FARC as he was clearly a "born and bred" revolutionary.
Some say that we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the FARC, while others aren't so sure.
It will be interesting to follow because if the FARC does ever disappear from the landscape it will surely have an impact on the economy and collaterally real estate /condos prices as well.
The Colombian government's killing of a senior guerrilla leader could mark a critical turning point in the country's civil war, according to analysts.
BY SIBYLLA BRODZINSKY
Special to The Miami Herald
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Armando Borrero, a former security advisor, said because of the ``charisma'' he had within the FARC, Briceño will be ``irreplaceable.''
The military found his camp through information from FARC deserters.
``The FARC are falling apart from within,'' Defense Minister Rodrigo Rivera said at a news conference, in which he called on rebels to turn themselves in.
The FARC had stepped up attacks on the military since Santos was sworn in last month, as part of what analysts had called their expected ``welcome'' to the new president.
On Thursday Santos said: ``This is our welcome to the FARC.''
Dozens of Colombian families living in South Florida were victims of planned abductions, ordered and executed by Briceño.
In the late '90s, when the FARC controlled half of the country's territory and decreed war taxes, many of these Colombians who paid ransom, escaped or were threatened and were forced to leave the country and seek political asylum in South Florida.
As devastating as Briceño's death is for the FARC, ``It does not mean they are dead,' Borrero said, adding that he hoped this blow would prompt some ``sense'' into the FARC to sit down to peace talks.
``This is a hard, hard blow,'' he said, ``but there's a long way to go before they capitulate.''
El Nuevo Herald staff writer Gerardo Reyes contributed to this report.
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