FARC Uranium May Be Depleted, But It's Still Nuclear Material
By Jonathan Winer
Let's assume that the 33 kilos of nuclear material discovered last week by Colombian officials allegedly cached by FARC was almost worthless, and represented no real security threat, as suggested by Aaron Mannes in his article "DU Dud."
Does that mean we should conclude, as he does, that it represented desperation, ignorance, failure of judgment, or incompetence by the FARC, making FARC either (a) the victim of the scam, no longer feared by the person scamming FARC, or (b) the scammer who would hurt its reputation with critical partners if it sold the bad stuff for too much money?
Another view might conclude that FARC was interested in smuggling nuclear material, wasn't able to get highly radioactive material, and was undertaking a "trial run" at the nuclear business in preparation for better-grade future opportunities. It's certainly common for criminal organizations to start criminal activity small scale or low-level and to move up the chain as capacity and opportunity permit; terrorist activity tends to follow the same pattern.
Any assessment of the implications is for now be based on a rather thin set of data about the material. For now, we can only speculate about FARC's intentions for the depleted uranium, even if terrorist use of depleted uranium would be, as the LA Times cited an unnamed U.S. official as saying, more "irritating" than creating actual dangers to public health.
As previously noted, there is reportedly be a lot more information in the FARC computers that we have yet see. When it becomes available, hopefully we will achieve a better understanding of just how far along FARC was in its cross-border criminal and political networking, and better determine whether its nuclear interests were mere dabbling, or something more profound.
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