Venezuala, Ecuador Mass Troops on Colombia Border

Via CSMonitor -

Bogotá, Colombia - Ecuador and Venezuela say they are moving thousands of troops to Colombia's borders, a day after Colombian forces killed a leftist rebel leader in Ecuadorean territory. Colombia later charged that high-ranking Ecuadorean officials met recently with the slain rebel, Raúl Reyes, to accommodate the guerrillas' presence there.

The developments raised tensions in a region that has been on edge in the several months since Colombian President Álvaro Uribe and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez had a bitter falling-out. Mr. Reyes was the second-ranking commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

At a news conference late Sunday, Colombian National Police director Oscar Naranjo said that files in three laptop computers recovered in a jungle camp a mile inside Ecuador, where Reyes's body was found, show that the rebel met Jan. 18 and Jan. 28 with Ecuadorean Interior Minister Gustavo Larrea to discuss several issues, including stationing Army and police officers "who were not hostile to the FARC."

Mr. Naranjo also said documents show that Mr. Larrea and Reyes discussed a meeting between Reyes and President Rafael Correa in which Reyes's "secure transport" would be guaranteed. "The questions posed by these documents merit a response from the Ecuadorean government," Naranjo said.

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Who are the FARC?

According to CDI.org Terrorism Profile:

The FARC, together with the National Liberation Army (ELN), is responsible for the majority of kidnappings committed in Colombia today, and 15 percent of the 35,000 deaths that take place in Colombia each year. Since 1980, the FARC and the ELN have kidnapped more than 100 Americans, of which 13 have been murdered. In the first 10 months of 2001, human rights groups in Colombia attributed 197 killings as well as several mass kidnappings to the FARC. On April 11, 2002 the FARC kidnapped 13 Colombian lawmakers from a government building in Cali, Valle. In addition, several Colombian officials are currently being held hostage by the FARC, including presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt; former governor of Meta, Alan Jara Urzola; and five congressmen.

Although kidnappings and extortion have been signature tactics of the FARC since its early stages, these activities only partly finance their operations. The other portion of FARC's funding is derived from its deep involvement in the drug trade. In the mid 1980s, the FARC, then made up of about 2,250 men, discovered the profits of the drug trade by protecting drug cartels. Today, they are involved in all the processes of drug trafficking from taxing the cultivators of the coca and poppy plants, to controlling the manufacturing laboratories and even distributing the drugs themselves. While the FARC's deep involvement in the drug trade was widely presumed, it was always an issue of contention due to lack of hard evidence. However, on March 7, 2002, seven defendants, three of whom belong to the 16^th Front of the FARC, were charged with drug trafficking by the Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. This case is the first time that known terrorists have been indicted in the United States for drug trafficking. There is also evidence that the FARC has been exchanging cocaine for currency, weapons and other military equipment. Drug profits from cocaine and heroin range anywhere from $100 million to $1 billion annually to purchase arms, attract new recruits and fund FARC operations. These profits have made the FARC one of the richest, if not the richest, insurgent group in the world.