[R-G] The Women of FARC-EP

[Macdonald Stainsby]

Guardian. 14 July 2002. Girls go to war as Colombia's frontline killers.

BOGOTA -- The fighting, said General Mora of the Colombian Army, had
been intense and bloody. But when his soldiers collected the bodies of
rebels killed last week near the town of La Plata, they were surprised
to find that most were young women.

The women had been fighting for the country's largest guerrilla group,
the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia, the Farc. It is training
girls as young as 13 to be killers, and has used women to hijack
airliners.

The battles near La Plata was yet another round in Colombia's 38-year
civil war that kills around 3,500 people every year. At least 52 people,
soldiers and rebels, were killed near the southern town last week, as
five equally vicious fights raged elsewhere.

The presence of so many female combatants at La Plata shows Farc is
increasingly forced to rely on its women warriors as the intensifying
war puts the rebels under greater pressure.

At least one third of Farc's 18,000 soldiers are now women.

Hundreds more are being recruited as it gears up for a greater challenge
from an expanding army expecting to receive more military aid and
training from the United States as part of Washington's wars against
drugs and terrorism. The US State department calls the Farc 'the most
dangerous terrorist group in our hemisphere.'.

One army chief, General Gilberto Rocha, said the rebel offensive is 'the
escalation that they have traditionally done when a government
administration is about to end'. A new president is to be inaugurated on
7 August.

The president-in-waiting, Alvaro Uribe, who has been accused of having
links with right-wing paramilitary groups, won the election by promising
a bigger army and to wipe out the Farc.

The guerrillas' response has been a massive recruitment drive of its own
in which hundreds of men and women are being signed up.

The Farc is as close to an 'equal opportunities' organisation as exists
in macho Colombia. On each front line, Farc women, or guerrilleras,
fight alongside men and are expected to kill or be killed.

Many are teenagers, but there are no concessions to age or gender.

The women wear regulation uniforms, carry AK-47 machine guns and
machetes, and must march long distances like the men, carrying their own
equipment.

The guerrillas' seven-strong leadership is all male, but women are
rising through the ranks, some winning 'commandante' titles. One, Olga
Lucia Marin, was a Farc ambassador to long peace talks which ended last
February.

Typically, females join up during their teens. Some sign up to escape
the boredom of villages without opportunity, or the drudgery of marriage
in which some women are little more than chattels. Others are seduced by
Farc's revolutionary ideals.

Life in the camps is highly disciplined.

Fighters must ask permission to go to the toilet, contraception is
mandatory, pregnancy forbidden. Women may have relationships, but only
with fellow Farc fighters and only with permission from their commanding
officer.

Men who sexually assault women are executed.

One former Farc fighter told The Observer the guerrilla commanders
believe that women are braver fighters than men and kill more cleanly.

On the Farc website, one female fighter Rubiela talks of being scared of
battle. 'You always feel fear, but you are not alone. You are with your
compneros, and they encourage you a lot.'

Another, Sonia, says: 'If we lower our guard, they'll kill us. If they
aren't careful, we kill them, though we know we are fighting against our
own people. That's why we prefer them to surrender.'




-- 
Macdonald Stainsby,
External Relations Co-ordinator,
Douglas College Students Union.
**
In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht.
***
"`Order rules in Berlin.' You stupid lackeys! Your 
`order' is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will rear 
ahead once more and announce to your horror amid the brass 
of trumpets: `I was, I am, I always will be!'" 

-Rosa Luxemburg, 1918.