The FARC's Terrorist Diplomacy

By Jonathan Winer

If the information in the laptops seized by the government of Colombia following its March 1 cross-border raid into Ecuador proves to be as authentic as it appears, Colombia's FARC guerillas have developed an extensive political network to supplement their criminal and terrorist activity, with important nodes including the political leadership of Ecuador and Venezuela.

According to the material released to date in the Colombian press and currently being analyzed by a team sent to Colombia from INTERPOL, over the past decade, FARC had reached out to the governments of a number of countries in an effort to develop strategic alliances directed against Colombia and against the United States.

Texts of letters and other documents found in a computer that Colombia says belonged to FARC leader Raul Reyes have been published in the daily Bogota newspaper, El Tiempo. The correspondence includes letters from FARC's leaders to Venezeulan President Hugo Chavez and to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, as well as memos to FARC leadership describing diplomatic initiatives involving senior officials of Ecuador. They also outline a wide range of terrorist and criminal activities, such as FARC's efforts to obtain surface-to-air missiles from Libya and uranium from an unnamed broker; the status of its approach to using its hostages to secure the release of guerilla fighters and narcotics traffickers from prisons (including from the US); its direct involvement in drug trafficking as well as in taking payoffs from drug-producing areas and traffickers; and a window into its propaganda campaign and efforts to justify its actions.

Choice tid-bits from the correspondence include:

FARC telling Chavez that it doesn't smuggle drugs, but instead that "we charge a tax on the drug traffickers as they are produced in peasant regions organized by us."

FARC reporting that it has just been informed by Ecuador's security minister, after he conveyed "greetings" on behalf of Ecuador President Correa, that President Correa was "interested in establishing official relations with the leadership of the FARC," and willing to replace law enforcement officials in border areas who are hostile to "local communities and civilians" (that is, hostile to FARC), based on FARC's recommendations.

One of FARC's leaders advising another FARC leader that FARC was planning "about 300 bombings of the trans-Andean pipeline" as of February 2008, and had prepared some 600 grenades for the purpose. The same letter included discussion of FARC's possible involvement in purchasing uranium at $2.5 million per kilo. As the letter states "we take a look who we can sell [the uranium] to, and the deal should be to sell it to a government. They've easily got 50 kilos ready and could sell a lot more."

Counter-intelligence operations, in which FARC obtained information on officials in the Andean region who allegedly were working directly for the CIA and/or the DEA.

Outreach between Chavez and French President Sarkozy on possible prisoner exchanges, including efforts to release French-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt, held hostage by FARC for the past six years. A separate memo, ostensibly written by Reyes, dated February 28, 2008, complains about the pressure being brought to bear on behalf of Bentacourt, who Reyes describes as having "a volcanic temper" and who is "crude and provocative to the guerrillas in charge of looking after her." Worse, according to the FARC commander, Bentacourt understands PR, and was using "image" and "symbolism" to make her kidnappers at the FARC look bad.

Discussions about working out a deal with drug traffickers who "are asking for shelter and offering economic assistance," in which the traffickers would give FARC $230 million in apparent exchange for protection by FARC.

Venezuela has challenged the authenticity of the documents, describing them as fabrications.

To determine if that is the case, INTERPOL's own Executive Secretary, Ron Noble, has gone to Colombia to review the laptops, putting his own credibility on the line in an effort to assess the integrity of the documents.

If the INTERPOL analysis shows them to be real and true, the entire set should be copied and made available for review at the Organization of American States to provide a common foundation for some very serious discussions about how to deal with FARC's diplomatic initiatives, so nicely balanced in its data bases by its other initiatives, past and present, on nuclear smuggling, drug trafficking, bombings, kidnappings, and murder.

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