Military structure of the FARC–EP


The military structure of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo, formally began to be developed after the middle of 1964, when the Colombian Army occupied the town of Marquetalia.
The Colombian Army claimed they were cleaning the last remnants of "bandolerism", a mob justice system for displacement of adversaries, developed in the 10-year struggle for power between the Conservative and Liberal parties, during La Violencia. They were influenced by the counterinsurgency tactics developed by the United States through its famous School of the Americas. This, of course, was opposed to the vision that the farmers had of themselves, as a demobilized Communist self-defense and guerrilla force, refugees from the government of Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, working in a peaceful community. Following this attack, the scattered rebels reunited and eventually founded the FARC in 1966, establishing the beginnings of the internal structure and strategic outlook.

Political doctrine

According to internal regulations, every member of the FARC–EP's military forces has to take a vow in which they formally assume the commitment of fighting to establish "social justice" in Colombia. FARC members consider the necessary path to achieve this goal is through Marxism and Leninism, additionally influenced by the ideas of the Cuban Revolution and Che Guevara.
The symbol in the center of the FARC–EP flag is a book and two rifles in the middle of a map of Colombia, which transmits the message "learn and fight for Colombia", as a sign of the importance ideological education has for the FARC–EP. The three colors in the background are yellow, blue and red, common to the flags of Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia in northern South America. These colors also indicate the region's shared past and identity under Bolívar's Greater Colombia.

Development

Roughly from 1949 to 1964, during the "La Violencia" period of Colombian history, the FARC's precursor was a small Communist guerrilla band which usually engaged in "hit and run" warfare against their enemies and members of local Colombian security forces, when not implementing necessary activities for its self-defense from rival irregular groups. The group answered only to representatives of the Colombian Communist Party, which provided political cadres, recruits and small donations as support.
Because of the period's political turmoil, the Colombian government initially was unaware of the activities of this group of rebels. Towards the end of the period the group had settled in the Marquetalia area inside the Tolima department together with some of the fighters' family members, continuing to weapons and occasionally establishing a form of defensive perimeter. The construction of a form of primitive "commune" was attempted in practice, trying to organize an autonomous settlement under collective Communist ideals, combining military concerns with daily activities.
After the May 1964 Colombian Army attack, most of the rebels in Marquetalia scattered, soon gathering under a new "Southern Bloc" guerrilla unit, which reinitiated "hit and run" attacks and once again implemented a more offensive posture. In 1966, the FARC was formally created as a slightly enlarged guerrilla entity that continued to engage in this type of operations, additionally placing a greater political emphasis in openly revolutionary aims.
Still, during the 1970s the FARC kept a low profile by staying inside its traditional heartland areas, while newer guerrilla groups, such as the 19th of April Movement, appeared and achieved a greater degree of national influence as well as a more active urban presence.
The Seventh Guerrilla Conference in 1982 represented a significant change in outlook, as the FARC changed its structure to better suit the needs of an ambitious rebel army, for the purposes of increasing its recruitment and financing, as well for eventually achieving an international "status of belligerence" in its fight against the more numerous forces of the Colombian state's security apparatus.

Leadership

After these developments, eventually many U.S. and other military experts considered that the FARC's Manuel Marulanda Vélez, as a veteran guerrilla fighter and as an efficient commander for four decades, was able to lead perhaps the most capable and dangerous Marxist guerrilla organization in the world.
Marulanda is very often referred to as "Sureshot", because of a reputation for using firearms very accurately during his earlier years as an insurgent. For some of those analysts, an allegedly problematic aspect in Marulanda's profile concerns the fact that he has limited educational background, due to the poor economic conditions that his family and many others had to face when growing up in rural Colombia.
Jacobo Arenas, on the other hand, as the FARC's main ideologue, had political and ideological education as a communist intellectual, thus it is believed that he realized that FARC's initial status was not up to the necessary standards needed to properly fight a Colombian Army that could count on the aid of the United States from time to time.
This was possible since, after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the United States increased its military influence throughout the region through the activities of the U.S. Southern Command, an organization tasked with overseeing and handling military affairs in Latin America. U.S. Special Forces, such as the Green Berets, specifically trained to fight in Latin America jungles for counterinsurgency operations. Additionally, the widespread Spanish language was also taught to many members of U.S. forces in the region. From the perspective of Arenas, the challenge of having to potentially face the most technologically advanced military in the world made upgrading FARC's own military capabilities a necessity.

Belligerence of the FARC–EP

The role of Jacobo Arenas in FARC's military reorganization was significant. After the Seventh Guerrilla Conference in 1982, Arenas started to work toward the goal of turning the FARC from a guerrilla organization to a rebel army. According to his instructions, FARC added ranks and badges to many of its uniforms, as well as introducing a new inventory system for firearms and ammunition, in addition to providing new weapons and technology for FARC militants. In theory, a properly organized and trained guerrilla army would thus meet the international requirements for the recognition of a "state of belligerence", contained within the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949 and its additional protocols. FARC considers that it lives up to this, and therefore argues that it has been accepted as a legitimate army, in particular during negotiations with different Colombian governments.
Their opponents and the Colombian government claim that the practice of civilian kidnapping for ransom and the tax levied on coca crop buyers makes it an illegitimate army and point to a wide rejection of the guerrilla policies in national surveys. There are assassinations of opponents and forced displacements inflicted on the general population by all the forces involved in the Colombian Armed Conflict that makes the belligerence status claim harder to accept. This is further complicated by the coca eradication efforts of the Colombian government that involve US support and have led to the declaration of the FARC being a terrorist organization by the United States government and the European Union.
Some of the reforms implemented by Arenas were later published and transmitted to the media, as follows:
FARC regulations:
  • The Statute formulates the ideological foundations of the FARC–EP; it defines its organic structure, the regime of command, the obligations and rights of the combatants and the basic principles of the revolutionary organization.
  • The regulations of the disciplinary regime deals with essential matters of military order.
  • The internal rules of command deals with the usual daily practices of the different units of the FARC–EP.
FARC structure:
  • Squad: the basic unit consisting of 12 combatants.
  • Guerilla: consists of two squads.
  • Company : consists of two guerrillas.
  • Column: consists of two or more companies.
  • Front: consists of more than one column.
  • Central High Command : designates the highest command of each front.
  • Block of Fronts: consists of five or more fronts. It co-ordinates and unifies the activity of the fronts in a specific zone of the country.
  • Central High Command: designates the High Command of each Block. They co-ordinate the areas of the respective blocks.
  • Secretariat of the Central High Command : the superior organism of direction and command of the FARC–EP. Its agreements, orders and decisions rule over the entire movements and all its members.

    Main operational regions

The FARC–EP is organized into seven main operational regions and the "block" is the name given to each FARC military command inside one of the main operational regions. According to the FARC's military operational strategies, which take into account factors such as the size of the area and its population, each block is composed of between 5 and 15 of fronts. In addition to that, there are around 5 specially trained independent or elite fronts attached to some blocks, according to operational requirements.
There are also mobile fronts under the direct control of the FARC's high command. The names given to these additional or "special" units usually include historical figures or the FARC's revolutionary heroes, for the purpose of identification. As an example, there is a mobile front in the Cauca department, the "Jacobo Arenas Front", which played a significant role in several of the FARC's April 2005 attacks.
The FARC's force strength is usually estimated to be at around 15,000 to 18,000 men and women, organized in more than 80 fronts. The exact number is publicly unknown, though allegedly not even the FARC keeps a complete and comprehensive record of all its operatives due to geographical, operational and contextual difficulties. Since the 1980s, one of the long-term goals of the FARC has been to increase its military manpower up to at least 30,000.
The main operational regions are,
  • The Northern or Caribbean bloc, located in the northern part of Colombia bordering Venezuela, Atlantic coast, additionally operating about 5 fronts.
  • The Northwestern bloc, bordering Panama and operating about 10 fronts. It covers the departments of Antioquia, Chocó, Córdoba and also the Atlantic and Pacific coasts around the Middle Magdalena valley.
  • The Middle Magdalena bloc, bordering Venezuela and operating about 8 fronts. It covers parts of the departments of Antioquia, Bolívar, Cesar, Santander, and Boyacá.
  • The Central bloc covers the central highlands of Colombia, operating about 6 fronts. It includes the historical area of Marquetalia, considered as the birthplace of the FARC.
  • The Eastern bloc is the largest operational region and should be operating about 20 fronts. It covers the region of the eastern Andes mountains and the central departments of Cundinamarca and Boyacá.
  • The Western bloc, bordering Ecuador and the Pacific coast, operating about 15 fronts. It covers the western Andes mountains and reaches the Pacific Ocean.
  • The Southern bloc bordering Ecuador and Peru, and operating about 16 fronts. It covers the departments of Caquetá, Huila, Putumayo, and parts of Cauca.
The estimate of the total number of fronts operating in each main operational region, is dated up to July 2005, as done by several journalists monitoring reports from the Colombian war.