Remarks by Nigel Inkster
Director for Transnational Threats
and Political Risk
The International Institute for Strategic Studies
London, 10 May 2011
It is rare thing for the records of an insurgent group to come into the public domain while the insurgency is still in an active state. But this is just what has happened in Colombia, providing the raw material for the latest IISS Strategic Dossier, The FARC Files: Venezuela, Ecuador and the Secret Archive of ‘Raúl Reyes’.
Specifically, this dossier is the product of over two years’ research into the data seized by the Colombian Armed Forces following a raid, on 1 March 2008, on a guerrilla camp just across the Ecuadorian border with Colombia. The camp was occupied by members of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo (The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army, known as FARC-EP or FARC), the largest of several insurgent groups that have challenged the authority of the Colombian state since the 1960s. The raid resulted in the death of Luis Edgar Devía Silva, better known by his nom de guerre, Raúl Reyes. Reyes was one of seven members of the FARC’s leadership structure, the Secretariat. Since the mid-1990s, he had also headed FARC’s overseas network of representatives and sympathisers known as the International Committee, or COMINTER. Reyes had maintained a decrypted archive of his e-mail communications, which had mostly been sent and received using PGP encryption via a radio link, since the year 2000, in defiance of standing FARC operational security procedures about which he himself had frequently reminded his colleagues and collaborators. His archive also contained 30 years’ worth of strategic documents, including records of periodic conferences and other meetings constituting key milestones in FARC’s evolution.
Having seized the archive, which comprised eight data-storage devices stored in a metal briefcase, the Colombian authorities handed the data to INTERPOL, which conducted a forensic investigation to validate its integrity. The data was also triaged for actionable intelligence. The Colombian government then handed the archive to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) to undertake a more detailed and systematic analysis. This proved extremely challenging, taking much longer than originally anticipated. Indeed, had we understood then the enormity of the task, we might have thought twice about undertaking it. Many thousands of messages amounting to millions of words had to be read, made sense of and organised in a sequential and searchable format. (The CD-ROM that accompanies this dossier presents only a portion of the archive that still runs to 1.6 million words.) The material then had to be checked against other relevant information already in the public domain before the writing of this dossier could begin. From the beginning, the Colombian government agreed that it would not seek to influence the direction of our research, nor our analytical conclusions. Consequently, the judgements in the dossier are those of the IISS alone.
Strategic insights
The Reyes archive offers an unprecedented insight into the origins, evolution and day-to-day functioning of one of the world’s largest and most influential insurgent groups, almost up to the present day. While the policies and behaviours of the Colombian government in respect of the long-running FARC insurgency have been reported and analysed in extensive detail, evidence regarding FARC itself, a covert organisation, has until now been much harder to come by. The archive therefore fills an important gap in our understanding of the recent history of the Andean region while greatly expanding our understanding of the political and cultural dynamics of insurgent movements more generally. It shows how FARC, which began with a limited tactical repertoire and a strategic theatre confined to remote rural areas of central Colombia, developed an ambitious road map to power that would seek to spread guerrilla warfare across the countryside; manipulate social and political tensions in the cities; exploit the desire of other actors in the conflict to seek peace while itself remaining committed to securing a military victory; and obtain material and political support from beyond Colombia’s borders. FARC’s military impact peaked in 1998, at a time when Colombia was beginning to be spoken of as a failing state. As Bogotá began to recapture the military initiative, FARC sought to compensate by focusing on the international, political dimension of its campaign, an area in which the Colombian government had struggled to impose its own narrative.
Throughout the period covered by the dossier, the main objectives of FARC’s international strategy remained constant. They were:
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To secure financial and military support. In this the group was broadly unsuccessful. Persistent efforts towards the end of the Cold War to interest regimes presumed to be ideologically compatible, such as China, the Soviet Union and North Korea, in providing sponsorship resulted in failure and were eventually abandoned. FARC has vigorously pursued a range of alternative options with the principal aim of acquiring man-portable air-defence systems (MANPADS) in order to challenge Colombian air supremacy, but there is no evidence in the archive or indeed subsequently to suggest that any of these efforts has met with greater success.
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To secure international political support and legitimisation. Here FARC was notably more successful. By the late 1990s the COMINTER was pursuing political activities in 27 Latin American and European countries, and had begun to receive a sympathetic hearing from some politicians and opinion leaders who proved receptive to the FARC narrative of a struggle by the dispossessed against a repressive and unaccountable oligarchy. Even when support for FARC was not forthcoming, the group was often able to make progress toward the equally important objective of generating opposition to the Colombian government. After FARC’s proscription as a terrorist organisation in the aftermath of 9/11, some of the group’s representations, which had taken on a quasi-diplomatic character, had to be closed down, but these were replaced with indigenous front organisations which proved remarkably effective in conducting advocacy on FARC’s behalf.
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To undermine efforts by the Colombian government to develop foreign security and cross-border cooperation. FARC worked hard to exploit tensions between Colombia and its immediate neighbours and to persuade the latter to, at a minimum, adopt a position of neutrality in the conflict, if not to actively promote FARC’s aim of securing recognition as a belligerent. These efforts were not always successful and occasionally proved counterproductive, but over time relations between Colombia and its Andean neighbours did undergo a progressive deterioration for which FARC can claim some credit.
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To establish and maintain safe havens in neighbouring states. These served the classic military functions of providing shelter, rest and recreation, training, resupply and redeployment, and they became all the more important once Colombia’s armed forces developed greater mobility through the use of air power, making it harder for FARC to maintain fixed positions inside Colombia. The archive also shows how FARC exploited these enclaves to meet a range of actors out of reach of the Colombian state. These included political sympathisers, narcotics traffickers, members of foreign armed groups (such as ETA) who received FARC training, and arms dealers, one of whom claimed to represent the Chinese state.
FARC and Venezuela
FARC had sought from the outset to develop relationships with successive Venezuelan governments and had had pragmatic dealings with Venezuelan security forces, which had little option but to accommodate themselves to the arrival of violent and potentially disruptive groups they lacked the capacity to expel by force. But it was only after the assumption of the presidency by Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez in 1999 that FARC’s activities in Venezuela stepped up a gear. The genuine appeal that FARC had for Chávez was from the first tempered by the lack of a solid ideological bond between them (FARC’s orthodox Marxist leadership was constantly frustrated by what they saw as Chávez’s lack of clear ideological definition); by Venezuela’s need to maintain good economic ties to Colombia; and by the political risks that contact with FARC entailed for a regime whose grasp on power was initially precarious. Nevertheless, from the beginning, Chávez, while publicly espousing neutrality and offering himself as an honest broker in peace negotiations with the Colombian government, allowed FARC to use Venezuelan territory for refuge, cross-border operations and political activity, and effectively assigned the group a role in Venezuelan civil society. The Venezuelan government funded FARC’s office in Caracas, and through the intelligence service DISIP provided documentation and other forms of assistance for FARC operatives. FARC was also able to set up its own front organisation, the Bolivarian Continental Committee (CCB). In a meeting with Reyes shortly after assuming office, Chávez further offered FARC material assistance of a kind calculated to change the military balance in Colombia, though this did not materialise, much to the frustration of FARC leaders.
Following the 2002 coup which briefly removed Chávez from power, FARC was able to exploit the ensuing climate of fear and paranoia to provide training in guerrilla and urban warfare for various armed groups that had been raised to defend the Bolivarian Revolution against a second coup or even a US invasion. FARC also responded to requests from DISIP to provide training in urban terrorism involving targeted killings and the use of explosives. Furthermore, the archive offers tantalising but ultimately unproven suggestions that FARC may have undertaken assassinations of Chávez’s political opponents on behalf of the Venezuelan state. Yet Chávez continued to keep the organisation at arm’s length and failed to deliver fully on promises of financial and material assistance. Described by those who taught him as a genuine strategic thinker, Chávez played his relationship with the guerrillas long, calculating that they needed him more than he them; and he was not averse to acting against FARC’s interests when he judged it expedient. Moreover, in 2004 two major incidents involving FARC which respectively angered and embarrassed Chávez led to a total breach with the organisation lasting 18 months.
By 2006–07, however, Chávez, buoyed by high oil prices and progress in achieving his domestic and international agendas, initiated a rapprochement with FARC that saw the nature of his engagement undergo a step change. In the words of Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, a former Venezuelan interior minister and long-standing intermediary with FARC, Chávez had come to see FARC as a ‘strategic ally in the event of aggression by the empire [the US] but at the same time … as strategic allies for the creation of a revolutionary bloc in the continent’. Several meetings took place with senior members of the FARC leadership. Chávez committed to helping the group achieve political legitimacy, formally reaffirmed FARC’s entitlement to use Venezuelan territory along the Colombian border and, critically, offered to provide FARC with US$300 million, with $50million to be made immediately available. Various options were also explored for providing FARC with the kind of weaponry, including MANPADS, that would alter the strategic balance in Colombia. One such arrangement, discussed a month before Reyes was killed, involved a three-way deal with President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, though at the time of Reyes’s death no such deals had been concluded and no money apparently paid.
The rapprochement with FARC coincided with a dramatic deterioration in Venezuela’s relations with Colombia, as Colombian President Álvaro Uribe took exception to high-profile efforts by Chávez to seek political and strategic advantage from engagement in the release of hostages kidnapped by FARC in what the group called ‘humanitarian exchange’. Chávez was not the only external actor to become engaged in these releases, and the archive shows that FARC cynically exploited them: the group’s main purpose was to attain political visibility and to place the Colombian government in a bad light by seeking to impose conditions it knew would not be acceptable. Likewise, the involvement of external actors in these exchanges was in the main undertaken for short-term political gain with little regard for the wider strategic consequences. Few (if any) can be said to have emerged with credit from the process, which effectively ended in 2008 when the Colombian government deceived FARC into releasing most of its high-value hostages.
FARC and Ecuador
As with Venezuela, in the 1990s FARC established a presence in Ecuador’s border regions, which were particularly important as they backed onto the Colombian departments of Putumayo and Caquetá. These were key FARC strongholds and produced much of the cocaine on which FARC relied for income. But FARC took much longer to gain political traction in Ecuador than in Venezuela, and the Ecuadorian border region was often an uncertain or downright hostile place for FARC. Ecuadorian security forces generally turned a blind eye to a strong Colombian and US intelligence presence in the region, and sometimes provided active collaboration. FARC never secured Ecuadorian state support akin to what they had enjoyed in Venezuela, and their contact with successive regimes was only ever intermittent. But as Ecuadorian domestic politics shifted gradually leftwards from the turn of the millennium, FARC was able to build ties with a range of actors wielding growing influence over government policy, including Lucio Gutiérrez prior to his election as president. The group had at least some contact with successive regimes and was successful in fomenting discord between Ecuador and Colombia. Reyes himself was based more or less continuously in the border region from 2003 until the time of his death and was able to meet a range of foreign visitors and manage COMINTER affairs in relative safety.
When Rafael Correa declared his presidential candidacy in 2006, FARC was initially unimpressed by his leftist credentials, but as his popularity increased and his radical potential became more evident, FARC contributed approximately US$400,000 to his campaign ($100,000 apparently came directly from FARC itself, and a further $300,000 from its allies) at a critical juncture. Correa almost certainly approved the use of these funds in his campaign, but this did not translate into a policy of state support for the insurgents during the brief period between Correa’s inauguration and Reyes’s death. The archive shows that what Correa wanted more than anything else from FARC was to play a role in the group’s humanitarian exchanges similar to that enjoyed by Chávez. However, although Reyes vigorously lobbied his Secretariat colleagues to afford Correa such a role, they remained unmoved. Moreover, although the death of Reyes provoked a serious breach in relations between Colombia and Ecuador – ironically a key FARC strategic objective – it also interrupted FARC’s burgeoning relationship with Quito. There is no evidence that the relationship has since prospered.
FARC today
Following the death of Reyes, FARC’s fortunes have fallen to a low ebb. Colombia’s Democratic Security policy has broadly achieved its objectives of clearing FARC from large swathes of the countryside, establishing governance and institutions where previously none had existed and pushing the insurgents to the margins of the state. Much-improved intelligence has enabled Colombia’s security forces to begin decapitating the FARC leadership, and levels of desertion from FARC ranks have steadily increased. But FARC has done the one thing all insurgent groups must do: it has lived to fight another day. Despite its reverses, it shows no more disposition to engage in serious peace negotiations that at any other time in its history. And although security in Colombia has improved markedly in recent years, the gains made by the government in this respect remain fragile and potentially reversible. The Colombian state faces formidable legacy challenges in dealing with millions of internally displaced persons, resolving difficult questions of land ownership, reintegrating into society large numbers of former paramilitaries and lifting eight million Colombians out of absolute poverty. The government is looking to refocus efforts and expenditure on economic development and social reform, but despite the post-conflict agenda, the war has not ended: Colombia’s security forces continue to clash with FARC, and to suffer casualties, on an almost daily basis. As long as FARC continues to benefit from a degree of cross-border sanctuary and support, Colombia’s development efforts will remain under threat.
