Shared Responsibility

Colombia's FARC deeply involved in drug trade, paper says

Written by EFE Monday, 08 March 2010 00:00

Colombia's leftist FARC rebels smuggle U.S.-bound cocaine via Venezuela, Panama and the Pacific, the Bogota daily El Tiempo said Monday, citing unnamed U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sources.

The information was obtained from documents found on the computer belonging to Edgar Tovar, commander of the 48th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, who was killed by the army.

Police found some 60 e-mails that Tovar exchanged with the FARC high command and several guerrilla commanders in which they discussed drug shipments and alliances with gangs to move the drugs out of southwestern Colombia.

The e-mails, moreover, revealed FARC attempts to swap drugs for weapons in transactions with Colombia's three most-wanted kingpins.

An unnamed police expert told El Tiempo that the 48th Front stockpiles cocaine in Putumayo, bordering Ecuador and Peru, the 30th Front protects the shipments all the way to Cañon de Garrapatas, in the northwestern province of Choco, and the 57th Front moves the drugs into neighboring Panama.

One of the biggest challenges facing the security forces right now is attacking the laundering of guerrilla assets in Central America and neighboring countries, El Tiempo said.

The FARC high command ended up adopting a decision-making structure typical of the "mafioso subculture," National Police director Gen. Oscar Naranjo said.

The FARC, Colombia's oldest and largest leftist guerrilla group, was founded in 1964, has an estimated 8,000 to 17,000 fighters and operates across a large swath of this Andean nation.

President Alvaro Uribe's administration has made fighting the FARC a top priority and has obtained billions in U.S. aid for counterinsurgency operations.

The FARC is on both the U.S. and EU lists of terrorist groups. Drug trafficking, extortion and kidnapping-for-ransom are the FARC's main means of financing its operations.