Group Profile: The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejercito del pueblo – FARC)

17 Aug 2010

History and Motivation: The FARC is a left-wing revolutionary militant group operating in Colombia.  It is designated as a terrorist entity by the governments of Colombia, the United States, Canada, New Zealand and the European Union.  Founded by the Colombian Communist Party in 1964, under the leadership of Manuel Marulanda, in the wake of the country’s civil conflict between the Conservative and Liberal militias– a period known as La Violencia – the group consists of a ‘peasant’ army which claims to defend and promote the interests of Colombia’s rural poor, support the redistribution of wealth and oppose the influence of international corporations in the country.   The group is organised along military lines, led by Alfonso Cano – real name Guillermo Leon Saenz Vargas.

Tactics: Kidnapping for ransom, extortion and narcotic cultivation and trafficking (principally cocaine and heroin) – all of which are carried out to fund its operations: Kidnapping for political negotiation; bomb attacks, murder, hijacking and warfare against Colombian political, military, and economic targets.

Strength: Colombian government estimate: 8,000 – 10,000 combatants, including women and children.

Links with other groups:  Around the same time as FARC was founded, another left-wing ideological group was formed; the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN). ELN is much smaller than FARC; in some parts of the country the groups cooperate, but in other parts they have directly clashed. Colombia’s rightwing paramilitaries – principally the United Self-Defence Forces (AUC) umbrella group – are direct enemies of the group.  The AUC was formed in 1997 to counter leftwing insurgents. There were allegations of a connection between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) terrorist group and FARC, after the arrest and conviction in 2001 of three Irishmen in Colombia, who were using false passports and found with traces of explosives on their clothes.  Security sources in the UK identified the three as being IRA explosives experts.  The IRA itself denied it was training FARC members in explosives…MORE ONLINE

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