| Page 2 of 2 < |
FARC Dissidents Assist Colombia
Raúl Agudelo is a leader of the prison group Hands for Peace.
(By Juan Forero -- The Washington Post)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
Proponents of the government policy say that the rebels, though jailed, have never renounced their FARC ties and, in some cases, continue to collaborate with the guerrilla group. They say that rewarding those rebels for renouncing their FARC membership -- and then providing information about the group and its operations to the military -- is a smart move and one that will help further isolate a waning guerrilla movement.
Liduine Zumpolle, a Dutch human rights worker who helped create Hands for Peace and is the group's most visible representative in Bogota, said the dissident guerrillas are the most effective spokesmen against the FARC because they have intimate knowledge of how it works. Hundreds of jailed rebels have signed a statement renouncing their FARC ties.
"It's very threatening to the FARC, because it's a movement that's absolutely peaceful, without spending a bullet, without spending one human life," Zumpolle said. "And it's eating the rebel movement from within."
Agudelo, the jailed guerrilla, said that he and other rebels are ready to "reveal very confidential information" about the internal structure of the FARC, its ties to businessmen and politicians and even officials in other Latin American governments.
He and other dissident rebels held at La Picota do not sugarcoat their lives in the FARC.
Omar Mosquera was an explosives expert and military strategist. Wilson Barragan worked in logistics and intelligence. Sergio Luis Oviedo trained for the FARC's most elite units.
Mosquera, 35, recalled how necessity prompted him to join the FARC at age 12, and how he later took classes in Marxism and advanced explosives, with a Vietnamese trainer. "They taught us all the tactics that they used in Vietnam," he said.
The guerrillas, interviewed on a recent day, said that even before they were captured they had concluded that the FARC had failed to offer an alternative vision for how Colombia should be governed. They said they were disillusioned by the group's descent into crime and drug trafficking.
Agudelo said that once jailed rebels are given lenient terms in exchange for information, other, more hard-line FARC members in prison will join Hands for Peace. That could further hurt the FARC, which is losing hundreds of guerrillas each month in combat and to desertions.
"This war has to end," Agudelo said. "If there are no men in arms, the war has to end."
