FARC Attack
By Aaron Mannes
On Saturday, the FARC lured a unit of elite Colombian soldiers into an ambush near the town of La Julia. In a day of fighting, 14 soldiers were killed. In Colombia’s long war with the FARC, incidents like this are not uncommon. On November 1 in the town of Tieradentro 17 police officers were killed in a mortar attack. On October 19, a car bomb detonated at a military university in Bogota, where the head of the army was giving a speech – 23 were injured. As painful as these losses are, 575 members of Colombia’s security forces have been killed in fighting with the FARC in 2006, they are inevitable consequences of the Colombian military’s success in its counter-insurgency against the FARC. As the security situation has improved, government forces operate in smaller units and drive deeper into FARC territory. Small units operating deep in enemy territory become vulnerable to ambush. These ambushes play into the FARC’s political strategy, undermining Colombian unity in confronting the FARC by sowing doubts about the government’s ability to defeat the FARC. Nonetheless, these attacks should be seen for what they are – tactical successes by the FARC in the context of a strategic retreat.
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