Globalization, Crime and the Revolution
Mood:  d'oh
Globalization, Crime and the Revolution

Summary

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia is spreading its criminal
enterprises and militant activities to other Latin American countries. This
could lead to an increase in crimes such as kidnappings for ransom and
militant activities aimed at provoking instability in many countries.

Analysis

Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte said March 7 in the Colombian capital of
Bogota that his government would "fight a frontal war" against efforts by
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to infiltrate Paraguay and
create regional instability. This was the first declaration of war against
the FARC by any Latin American government other than Colombia's. Duarte also
signed a bilateral security cooperation agreement with Colombia's government
specifically to battle the FARC.

Other Latin American governments that want to keep their distance from the
Colombian conflict are not likely to echo Duarte and announce offensives
against the FARC. However, Duarte's decision to forge close counterterrorism
and security cooperation links with Bogota likely was quietly supported by
the Bush administration, which perceives the FARC's spread to Paraguay and
other countries in the region as a dangerous destabilizing force.

Since the late 1990s the FARC -- Latin America's oldest, largest and most
lethal militant group -- has gone global in a big way. A combination of
economic, political and strategic forces are turning the largely rural,
peasant-based FARC into a multinational enterprise with ties to organized
crime groups and armed militant organizations in other Latin American
countries and in other parts of the world, including Europe, the former
Soviet Union and the Middle East.

The FARC's internationalization of its criminal and militant political
activities -- particularly to other Latin American countries -- has serious
implications for stability in the region, within nations such as Bolivia,
Paraguay and Peru and within larger countries such as Brazil and Argentina.
The FARC's widening alliances with organized crime groups portend more
violent crime and crime-related social problems in these countries.

The FARC's criminal alliances with political groups such as Paraguay's Free
Fatherland Party (PPL) also imply that politically motivated crimes such as
ransom kidnappings and murder could proliferate regionally. It also is
likely that local crime groups allied with the FARC could more frequently
target the FARC's declared foes -- such as U.S. government personnel and
U.S. citizens in general who reside in Latin American countries -- for
kidnapping and other violent crimes.

Venezuela could be particularly dangerous for U.S. citizens, since the
Chavez government maintains friendly relations with the FARC and is
unwilling to crack down on the group's criminal enterprises inside Venezuela
as long as they do not interfere with official Venezuelan interests. Given
President Hugo Chavez's policy of seeking a confrontation with the United
States, Venezuelan officials probably would not make more than a token
effort to rescue U.S. citizens abducted in Venezuela.

One of the biggest forces driving the FARC's internationalization is the
success of the Colombian government's U.S.-supported military offensive
against the militant group. Since 2000, Bogota's Plan Colombia and
subsequent Plan Patriot have destroyed hundreds of thousands of acres of
FARC-owned coca plantations, dismantled hundreds of jungle processing
laboratories, captured or killed many senior FARC commanders and seized
large caches of weapons and illegal drugs. These operations have eroded the
FARC's revenues from drug trafficking and other criminal activities, while
forcing FARC's leaders to disperse to neighboring countries to avoid
capture.

However, the FARC's internationalization of its criminal and militant
activities also appears to be a logical step in its evolution. The FARC's
deep involvement in drug trafficking has required it to develop commercial
alliances with organized crime groups from other countries, including
Brazil, Mexico, Russia and Italy. Its cocaine must be transported from
Colombia to various points around the world, and the profits have to be
repatriated to Colombia or deposited and invested outside Colombia. This is
one of the main tasks of the FARC's international division, Colombian police
sources say.

The FARC's tactical needs in Colombia also have encouraged the growth of
alliances with militant groups such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and
the Basque separatist group ETA. In particular, British and Irish
counterterrorism officials say the FARC and the IRA appear to have enjoyed a
close working relationship since at least 1998. These officials estimate the
IRA earned nearly $20 million from 1998 to 2001 teaching the FARC how to
manufacture highly accurate homemade mortars and sophisticated bombs. These
bombs have increased the number of FARC-inflicted casualties in Colombia
over the past five years. The FARC reportedly used one of these IRA-designed
mortars when it attacked the Iscuande naval base in southwestern Colombia on
Feb. 1, killing 16 soldiers and injuring 25 others.

Moreover, the FARC is not averse to exploring possible strategic relations
with Islamist militants. An MI6 warning issued to British embassies in Latin
America in December 2004 says the FARC is believed to have links with
militants associated with al Qaeda, Syria and Iran. Separately, the Belfast
News Letter recently reported that Colombian government intelligence
officials believe FARC representatives will meet somewhere in Venezuela
during March 2005 with Syrian security operatives. Colombian sources were
unable to confirm this report.

The FARC's expanding international network of alliances has made it a
wealthier and more lethal force in Colombia. A recent Colombian government
study estimates the FARC earned more than $780 million from drug trafficking
in 2003, with a large share of these profits divided among a handful of FARC
leaders. The FARC's international crime alliances are indistinguishable from
its strategic alliances with foreign militant groups, because many such
groups -- such as the FARC, the IRA and ETA -- engage in drug trafficking
and other criminal enterprises to fund their militant activities.

News reports from more than 24 countries, citing official government
security sources, say the FARC maintains strategic alliances with a broad
array of crime and militant groups worldwide. The FARC's global strategic
associates in mayhem include the IRA, ETA, the Palestine Liberation
Organization, the PPL, the Revolutionary Popular Army in southern Mexico and
elements of the Sandinista National Liberation Front in Nicaragua. Also, the
FARC has links to Brazilian and Mexican organized crime, Russian and
Ukrainian Mafia organizations, Italy's La Cosa Nostra and elements of the
Neapolitan Camorra.

Moreover, Brazilian, Argentine, Paraguayan and Colombian police and military
intelligence sources believe the FARC is developing strategic alliances in
Latin America with militant groups supported by Syria and Iran. They also
believe the FARC has close ties to Islamist groups active in the tri-border
region. These recent reports by security sources from these countries
contradict conclusions reached shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, which claimed
that the existence of such links was unconfirmed. Although smoking gun proof
has yet to be uncovered, many South American security officials are seeing
more frequent indications of FARC links with crime and militant groups
around the region.

For example, Bolivian military intelligence has linked at least two dozen
FARC members directly to political violence in October 2003 that toppled
then-President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada from power. In Peru, government
intelligence services have identified links between the FARC, Peruvian drug
trafficking organizations and remnants of the militant Shining Path
organization.

In Brazil the FARC has a close relationship with Rio de Janeiro's deadly
Comando Vermelho (Red Command) organized crime group, although this
relationship has been weakened by recent Brazilian law enforcement successes
in killing or arresting key Red Command leaders. In Paraguay the FARC has
trained PPL members in ransom kidnappings, with the FARC getting a large
share of any profits from such crimes, Paraguayan prosecutors say.

Drug trafficking and other criminal enterprises appear to be the common
thread in the FARC's relations with these various groups. Whether supporting
coca grower protests in Bolivia, working with Paraguayan militants to kidnap
and murder a former president's daughter, buying weapons from Brazil's Red
Command or learning how to make bombs the IRA way, crime for profit is the
link that shows up repeatedly in these relations.

Senior counterterrorism officials with the Colombian National Police believe
the FARC is transforming into a multinational organized crime enterprise
with quasi-political motivations. As one Colombian source put it, "They are
criminals with an agenda of promoting political instability regionally. It's
no longer just a Colombian conflict."

However, another Colombian source cautioned it would be incorrect to
perceive the FARC as a single supranational criminal enterprise. This source
described the FARC's spread to other Latin American countries as analogous
to a criminal Internet, where many autonomous hubs network to conduct
criminal activities that generate revenues to support violent militant
activity.

The new security cooperation agreement between Colombia and Paraguay could
set a precedent for other governments in the region to follow -- if and when
their governments finally accept that the FARC's internationalization
renders obsolete their official policies of neutrality in the Colombian
conflict. However, it will take human tragedies like the murder of former
Paraguayan President Raul Cubas' daughter Cecilia, or incontrovertible
evidence of direct FARC involvement in efforts to create political
instability, to encourage most Latin American governments to pull their
heads out of the sand and confront the growing threat posed by the FARC.