[Marxism] Assassination of Raul Reyes, Colombian military action causes crisis with Venezuela and Ecuador

[Anthony Boynton]

The Assassination of Raul Reyes

Things here are moving very quickly, so this little
note will probably be out of date by the time I send
it.

I just watched Hugo Chaves on TV. He was ordering 10
battallions to the Colombian border, and calling for a
minute of silence to commemorate  Raul Reyes.
Colombian TV did not show more of whatever is going on
in Venezuela. Ecuador has lodged a formal diplomatic
protest against Colombia for the military actions
taken by Colombia in Ecuador’s territory. 

As other posts on this list have already noted, the
press of Colombia and the world have reported the
death of Raul Reyes, a member of the secretariat of
the Colombian guerrilla movement known as the FARC
(Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia).
According to the Colombian press, Julian Conrado was
killed with Reyes as were 15 other guerrillas of the
FARC. 

As of this writing the FARC has not confirmed Reyes’s
death, but there can be little doubt that the reports
are true as they have been accompanied by pictures,
forensic evidence, etc. 

Raul Reyes was the public spokesperson of the FARC,
and one of the seven members of that organization’s
secretariat. He was the man that many observers
believe had been the central leader of the FARC for
the last several years. 

The assassination of the Reyes by the Colombian armed
forces took place near the border of Equator, possibly
within Ecuador . The Colombian government admits to
attacking what it claims was a FARC camp in Ecuador,
but claims that it killed Reyes within Colombia.

According to El Tiempo, the murder was a carefully
planned action based on monitoring of Reyes satellite
telephone communications, and human intelligence.
Electronic spying on FARC communications has been one
of the keys to virtually every military set back the
FARC has suffered, especially the capture and
assassinations of FARC leaders.

Whether or not the government had “human intelligence”
is an open question, but Colombia’s president Alvaro
Uribe has announced that the $5,000,000 reward for
information leading to the capture or death of Reyes,
and the $2,500,00 reward for information leading to
the capture or death of Julian Conrado, will be
awarded to the informants who provided the information
which allowed the attack to place.

The impact Reyes death will have on the FARC can not
be predicted, but his assassination is another
indication of the difficult military situation the
FARC is in, and the even more difficult political
situation it faces.

This assassination was the strongest possible rebuff
to all of the FARC’s recent efforts to negotiate with
the Uribe government. Despite two unilateral releases
of hostages brokered by Chavez and Colombian Senator
Piedad Cordoba, the government of Colombia has made it
clear that the only “peace” it is interested in would
be based on the complete destruction of the FARC.

While the FARC has never revealed its own military
strength, it has recently admitted that it can not win
its war against the Colombian state. 

Estimates of its strength in El Tiempo, whose sources
are the Colombian military and the United States,
place current FARC strength as 8,900 down from the
16,900 ascribed to the FARC by the paper in 2002. El
Tiempo also claims that 20 of the 67 fronts the FARC
had in 2002 have disappeared, that about 4,900 FARC
fighters have been killed in the last 2 years, and
that 8,221 FARC militants have been “demobilized”
since 2002. 

If these figures are close to being correct, it would
mean that the FARC has lost 13,000 fighters over the
last six years, and recruited around 5,000 to replace
them. How the FARC recruits is unverifiable, but it
has certainly lost most of the sympathy within the
legal left and within the student movement which it
once had. 

El Tiempo and other mainstream Colombian media are
speculating on the effects of the assassination within
the FARC, focusing on the possibility of a three way
internal crisis among factions they characterize as
“hard”, “moderate” and “military”. 

Families of people held hostage by the FARC have
expressed alarm over the military offensive against
the FARC because of the obvious dangers posed to their
relatives.

What might happen next is anybody’s guess.

Anthony






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