Latin
America:
US
Puts
$75
Million
Bounty
on
Colombia's
FARC
Leaders
3/31/06
In a March 22 press conference in Washington, DC, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and DEA administrator Karen Tandy announced cocaine trafficking charges against 50 leaders of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), the leftist guerrilla army that has waged war against the Colombian state for the past four decades. At the same time, the State Department put up a $75 million reward for their capture. The FARC was responsible for smuggling 60% of all cocaine snorted in the US in the past decade, or some 2,750 tons, according to the 54-page indictment. "This is the largest narcotics-trafficking indictment ever filed in US history and fuels our hope to reduce narco-violence in Colombia and stem the tide of illegal drugs entering our country," Gonzales said. "We're hoping the amounts being offered, up to $5 million each for some of the suspects, result in some arrests and in us being able to request further extraditions," Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said. The US has spent more than $4 billion on Plan Colombia, its effort to wipe out coca and the cocaine trade in Colombia, without achieving noticeable reductions in the price or availability of cocaine. Congress is considering this year's tranche of $743 million. The US has long accused the FARC of financing its operations through cocaine trafficking, and this indictment formalizes that suspicion. It alleges that FARC leaders collected millions of dollars in cocaine trafficking proceeds after switching from merely taxing the coca crop to being actively involved in the manufacture and distribution of cocaine. Those funds were used to buy weapons to wage its guerrilla war against Bogota, says the indictment. It also accuses the FARC of killing farmers who refused to cooperate and of ordering its troops to shoot down US planes spraying herbicides on suspected coca fields. The indictment's impact on either the FARC or the cocaine traffic is likely to be insignificant. Only three of the 50 mid- and high-level FARC leaders indicted are in custody, and given their demonstrated ability at eluding Colombian security forces for the past 40 years, chances that the remaining 47 will be captured are iffy at best. While the indictment's impact on the FARC leadership is doubtful, it could have an adverse impact on efforts to reach a negotiated settlement to the conflict, some observers said. "You negotiate peace with a military organization that has a recognized political status," Colombian military analyst Alfredo Rangel told the Los Angeles Times. "If you reduce the FARC to just a drug cartel, you make the possibility of negotiating a political settlement more difficult."
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