Ex-rebel: The FARC are ‘narco-terrorists’

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Hugo Chavez shouldn’t look to Joaquin Villalobos for support in his drive to legitimize Colombia’s largest rebel group, which is known by its Spanish initials FARC. Villalobos, the former El Salvador guerrilla leader-turned-Oxford intellectual, issued a scathing attack on the Venezuelan president for trying to persuade countries to regard the FARC not as terrorists but as ‘belligerents,’ which could lead to diplomatic recognition.

Writing in the Spanish newspaper El Pais, Villalobos charged that the FARC’s main objective is to maintain its status as the world’s No. 1 cocaine trafficker, contrasting it with other Latin American rebel movements, including Colombia’s urban guerrilla group M-19, which accepted political settlements with their governments to achieve political goals.

Former M-19 leaders have gone mainstream as members of Polo Democratico, Colombia’s rising leftist party, he noted. Villalobos, 56, who helped found the FMNL rebel alliance during the Salvadoran civil war, noted that 2,400 FARC members, or 15% of the ranks, left the group last year, and that the FARC failed to take a single town or village controlled by the state.

‘The FARC have no future as guerrillas, only as narco-traffickers.... They are the best kidnappers in the world.... To demand political legitimacy in exchange for mistreated hostages who are threatened with death is equivalent to demanding respect for being evil.’

-- Chris Kraul and Alex Renderos in Bogota