INTELLIGENCE WRITING SAMPLE GOVT 381: What methods would you proactively use to analyze a potential FARC threat to the U.S.?
After reading chapter 9 from the text, discuss the following questions:
1. What methods would you proactively use to analyze a potential FARC threat to the U.S.?
2. Define the differences between FARC’s apparent world view and that of the Biblical world view.
Remember the final self analysis. this is what are reading assignment was for the week: 12 Colombia’s FARC Attacks the US Homeland CASE NARRATIVE The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—known by the Spanish acronym FARC—is Latin America’s largest, oldest, and currently most capable insurgent organization. Its history of kidnappings, assassinations, and indiscriminate acts of violence makes the FARC one of the most despised groups in Colombia and has landed it on the US State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.1 In recent years, the FARC has cultivated relationships with foreign states, such as Venezuela and Ecuador, and terrorist groups, such as the Spanish Basque separatist group ETA and the Irish Republican Army, reportedly to gain access to military materiel and terrorist expertise. Since 2003, the Colombian government—with help from the US military—has cracked down on the FARC and its main source of income: the drug trade. Although this has led to operational successes, including the deaths of many FARC leaders, it has also raised the specter of increased violence against not only the Colombian government but also against the United States, as the FARC seeks to regroup and assert its revolutionary credentials. Revolutionary Roots The FARC was formally established in 1965 after Colombia’s two major political parties ended more than a decade of political violence, a period known as La Violencia, which resulted in more than two hundred thousand deaths. Under this agreement, known as the National Front, the two leading political parties agreed to share power, end the violence, and return the country to civilian rule. The period from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s was the height of armed rebellion throughout Latin America. Funded in part by Cuba, leftist revolutionary groups operated throughout the continent. Since then, nearly all of the groups have been eliminated, legitimized, or disbanded—but not the FARC. Several factors account for the FARC’s ability to survive when nearly all other armed communist insurgencies in Latin America have disappeared. Much of Colombia’s territory is beyond the central government’s control. Large parts of the Amazon region have provided safe haven to the FARC and other outlaw groups for decades. The FARC also has developed significant military capability and experience during forty years of armed struggle. But the most important factor contributing to the FARC’s longevity has been a sustainable business model based on kidnapping for ransom, extortion, and, increasingly, the drug trade. According to the Colombian government, the FARC had about sixteen thousand insurgents in 2001. The head of the United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM) testified in March 2008 that the FARC had been reduced to about nine thousand fighters. FARC forces are well equipped, and the group is known to use highly sophisticated technology. Its forces are mostly self-trained and self-supplied, although the FARC has recently received some external assistance. The FARC is made up of about seventy-seven distinct military units, called Fronts, organized by geographic location. These in turn are grouped into seven “blocs.” The FARC is led by a seven-member Secretariat and a twenty-seven-member Central General Staff, or Estado Major. The FARC is most active in the southern and eastern portions of the country, which are mostly jungle.2 It also has an International Commission with representatives in Latin America, Europe, Canada, and the United States.3 The FARC maintains a series of websites to post its messages and attract followers within Colombia and overseas.
