Another FARCer in pieces

Photo from Reuter’s

Manuel Marulanda (R), a top commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), welcomes Venezuelan Foreign Minister Luis Alfonzo Davila (L) as the FARC’s Ivan Rios (C) observes in Los Pozos, Caqueta province in this March 8, 2001 file photo.

Kate at A Colombo-Americana’s Perspective reports another FARC tango rests in pieces, thanks to the Colombian Army;

In the department of Caldas, Iván Ríos, a member of the FARC’s Secretariat was killed today. For those of you who don’t remember, he famously paraded around with Chávez and Colombian senator Piedad Córdoba last fall at Miraflores.

The Spanish language Noticias24 article. From Reuter’s AlertNet;

Rios, a member of the seven-member secretariat of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, died in combat with soldiers in the northwest coffee-producing part of the country.

From the Associated Press;

Colombian security forces carrying out an arrest warrant Friday for a top rebel leader killed a man in a shootout, and were trying to confirm his identity, an official in the chief prosecutor’s office said Friday.

The raid targeted Ivan Rios, a member of the FARC guerrillas’ ruling junta. If the body is identified as his, it would be the second member of the ruling secretariat of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to be killed in a week.

That would be a huge blow to Latin America’s oldest and strongest insurgency, shaken by the death Saturday of spokesman Raul Reyes in a cross-border raid in Ecuador that has set off an international diplomatic crisis.

It may be that Colombia’s cross-border gambit paid off. And this is happening while Uribe tears up the Correa government in Santo Domingo (Bloomberg link);

Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe tore into his Ecuadorean counterpart Rafael Correa during a regional summit, accusing the socialist leader of receiving campaign money from Colombian guerrillas.

Uribe, speaking to 15 Latin American presidents during the Rio Group summit in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, said Ecuador isn’t an ally in the fight against terrorism and acknowledged he didn’t inform Correa in advance of a military operation in Ecuadorean territory last week that killed top rebel leader Raul Reyes.

“I didn’t inform him of the operation because we have not received cooperation from his government in the fight against terrorism,” Uribe told the leaders.

An unconventional war calls for unconventional methods. Since when do the criminals get to violate all of the rules while we just bleed. But Uribe was just warming up;

Uribe, who has been mostly silent since the Organization of American States criticized his military’s violation of Ecuador’s sovereignty this week, saved no criticism of his neighbors’ alleged collaboration with the FARC rebel group.

He said four laptop computers seized during the cross- border raid contained documents pointing to FARC financing of Correa’s 2006 presidential campaign. This week, Uribe alleged the same files show Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been funding the FARC. Correa and Chavez have denied allegations they help the group.

“One letter from Marulanda to Raul Reyes transferring $50,000 to help Correa win the second round in his election,” said Uribe, referring to septuagenarian FARC commander Manuel Marulanda.

That’s going to leave a mark.

Category: Foreign Policy, Hugo Chavez, Terror War