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Now in its fifth decade, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) — one of the most enduring South American Marxist insurgent groups — is in dire straits. Though Stratfor does not unequivocally join those quick to declare the FARC dead or dying, several interrelated trends — from the effectiveness of Colombian military operations to defections by FARC’s own commanders — suggest that the FARC is in very real trouble.
Founded in 1964 as the militant wing of the Colombian Communist Party, the FARC began like many militant organizations in South America, rising out of a popular dissatisfaction with corruption and incompetence in the central government. Colombia was also in the middle of a civil war called “La Violencia” during which many different Marxist and right-wing militias rose up. The FARC was one of the most hierarchically well-organized groups and grew to become heavily involved in the drug industry, first through protecting the cartels’ crops and then through its own drug operations. The FARC eventually became, by many measures, the most successful and certainly the most enduring major Marxist insurgent organization in the region. At its height, it had ambitions to grow from a large guerrilla organization into a full-scale people’s army.
But the 21st century has not been kind to FARC — though it did not start out that way. The ineffectual negotiation efforts of former President Andres Pastrana (whom the FARC actually endorsed) allowed the group to run rampant in 2001. The FARC mortared President Alvaro Uribe Velez’s inauguration in 2002 — almost 20 years after they gunned down his father on the family’s ranch — and killed 16 other people in a nearly successful assassination attempt in April that same year.
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