Some welcome bad news for three bad groups and some good news for liberty and the Rule of Law.
The FARC in Columbia is doing poorly.
Lately, everything seems to be coming up as dead daisies for them.
The FARC has made huge amounts from Cocaine smuggling but the money hasn’t filtered down to the troops and quotidian life in the steaming jungles has been miserable.
Karina has now turned on her former comrades publicly telling them to quit and come in before it is too late. There are a lot of FARC defectors, hundreds, and Uribe puts them on Columbian radio, beaming broadcasts into the jungle, to further lower FARC morale.
First, the longtime founder and leader of the Communist Guerilla group has died. General Manuel Maulanda, whose real name was just Pedro Marin, succumbed to old age and a heart condition. He was around 78 years old.
His second in command, Raul Reyes, then and his number three henchman, Jose Valandia, were both killed recently –within a week of each other, the latter by his bodyguard who cut off his hand and brought it in for the $2.5 million reward something I told you about in my column at the time.
The Columbian Army has been energized under the activist President Uribe and they have been pounding the FARC in raids and bombing attacks daily.
The FARC is badly splintered and the desertions have been heavy. Consider that this is a group that almost took over the country at one time.
Another recent blow was the defection of a notorious female FARC member named “Karina” who surrendered after 21 years in the FARC army.
Her real name is Nelly Moreno and she is 45 years old. Nelly had lost an eye to a bullet and said she was tired of sleeping in a different place every night, lucky to have only one meal a day.
The FARC is much decentralized, unfortunately, and so it is it is not going to die as one body but the parts are being mortally wounded, one piece at a time.
They still hold around 700 hostages, including three American men, US government contractors who have been captive for many years.
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