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STRATFOR.com
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THE INTERNET SOURCE FOR GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE
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Colombia's Civil War Entrenches United States
February 23, 2002
Summary
The Colombian Army has begun to move into the former demilitarized zone that until Feb. 21 provided safe haven for the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The army has met little resistance from the guerrillas, who reportedly began pulling out of the DMZ weeks ago. With U.S. support and encouragement, the Colombian government has abandoned the peace process and is now seeking a military end to the country's decades-old insurgency. However, despite apparently rapid army advances, the situation will get much worse in Colombia and is likely to involve the United States in a costly and open-ended war.
Image Credit: l’Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Analysis
PRELUDE TO WAR
On Feb. 12, 2001, Colombian Army helicopters descended on the town of Barrancomina in the Guainia department of eastern Colombia. The assault, known as Operation Black Cat, targeted the 16th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which operated freely in and around the town. The 16th Front, led by Tomas Medina Caracas, a.k.a. Negro Acacio, was essentially a quartermaster unit for the FARC, handling major arms and narcotics transactions in close cooperation with Brazilian narcotics traffickers. The Colombian soldiers caught the FARC unit completely by surprise, routed them and later captured a major Brazilian drug kingpin who had been hiding in the town.
Image Credit: Stratfor.com.
The importance of Operation Black Cat in the strategic thinking of both the Colombian Army and the FARC cannot be overstated. Barrancomina is deep in the trackless jungles, far from anything of importance and, the FARC believed, beyond the military's reach. Feeling secure, the 16th Front had ceased behaving like a guerrilla unit and had settled down and set up shop. It was a fixed target, fat and happy.
For the Colombian military, Operation Black Cat was a tactical triumph made possible in part by the application of two key resources supplied by the United States: air mobility and intelligence. These allowed the army to identify a key node in the FARC's organization and project force deep into territory the rebels considered secure, achieving the element of surprise and winning both a military and psychological victory.
(The Rest of the Story)
(c) 2001 Stratfor, Inc.
Dan
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