with a conventional armed forces structure

Table 2.2 Hierarchical leadership structure of the FARC-EP (in comparison with a conventional armed forces structure)

Equivalent in a conventional armed FARC-EP’s organic structure forces structure Combatant Soldier Candidate for commander Sub-official Squad deputy Corporal 2nd class Squad commander Corporal 1st class Guerrilla deputy Sergeant 2nd class Guerrilla commander Sergeant 1st class Company deputy Sergeant Major Company commander Sub-lieutenant Column deputy Lieutenant Column commander Captain Front deputy Major Front commander Lieutenant-colonel Block deputy Colonel Block commander Brigadier-general Central High Commander deputy Major-general Commander of the Central High Command Three-star general Commander-in-chief of Central High Command No equivalent

Source: Adapted from information obtained through observational research alongside documents provided by the FARC-EP in 2004; see also FARC-EP, 2001c.

percent of its formal members coming from the countryside – 12 to 13 percent derived from various indigenous groups13 – and the remaining 35 percent from urban sectors. The current membership is dominated by subsistence peasants and small producers, but has grown to incorporate indigenous populations, Afro-Colombians, the displaced, landless rural laborers, intellectuals, unionists, teachers, professionals, doctors, lawyers, priests, and sectors of the urban workforce (Petras et al, 2005: 118; Petras, 2003: 24–5, 99; Petras and Veltmeyer, 2003a: 178–9; Richani, 2002a: 63; Wickham-Crowley, 1992: 214). Attention has also been paid to gender equity with respect to both the rank and file and leadership. Currently, 50 percent of FARC-EP members are female, with 30 to 55 percent of comandantes being women, depending on the region (Gutiérrez Sanín, 2008: 10; O’Shaughnessy and Branford, 2005: 27; Galdos, 2004; Richani, 2002a: 62).14 Such sociocultural compositions demonstrate how the FARC-EP “became an army of the whole people” (Petras, 2008). From being heavily centered in the countryside, the expansion of the FARC-EP into the cities is of tremendous importance.15 For decades it was argued that Colombia’s cities remained largely immune from the civil war (see Williamson, 1965: 41).16 Some analysts even claimed the FARC-EP lacked any formal strength because it had yet to develop urban support (Rochlin, 2003: 143). However there is substantial evidence that over the past two decades the FARC-EP has acquired clandestine allies and constructed counter-hegemonic networks in various cities. The FARC-EP has formed a number of urban

militias (Petras, 2003: 161; Petras and Veltmeyer, 2005b: 378). During the 1990s, the FARC-EP mustered support in various cities through “a network of helpers” that provided “logistical support for armed action” (Livingstone, 2003: 208). Prior to the peace talks with the Andrés Pastrana Arango administration (1998–2002), the FARC-EP engaged in combat with state forces and launched major military campaigns just outside Bogotá, while establishing roadblocks along main highways (Simons, 2004: 91; Petras, 2003: 25; 1999: 32). Beginning in 2001, the FARC-EP started to show growth in Cali and Medellín, and increased its technological and organizational capacities in the capital, as was made apparent in its attack on the Casa de Nariño during the first presidential inauguration of Uribe in August 2002 (Crandall, 2005b: 176–7; see also Sweig and McCarthy, 2005: 25; Petras and Brescia, 2000: 134–5). In fact, the insurgency has engaged in, and won, significant confrontations with state forces in various cities since the 1990s (Richani, 2005b: 84; see also Steinberg, 2000: 264). Some suggest that the FARC-EP has acquired an estimated 12,000 members in urban centers over the last ten years alone (Felbab-Brown, 2005: 105; see also Chernick, 2007: 67; Petras and Veltmeyer, 2005b: 378; Petras et al, 2005: 118).17 With the urban expansion of the guerrillas, aggression has expanded to areas that had been largely unaffected by the conflict. In the last few years “the escalating dynamics of war in Colombian cities are introducing Colombians to a conflict traditionally restricted to Colombia’s rural areas” (Sweig and McCarthy, 2005: 25). While numerically smaller than the countryside, the power of such forces cannot be understated. For example, one urban militia in Medellín required roughly 3,000 state police and military forces to detain 29 combatants (Sweig and McCarthy, 2005: 25; see also Petras and Brescia, 2000: 134–5). The mid-2000s saw the insurgency wage assaults throughout Bogotá by constructing networks that facilitated “attacks on water and electrical infrastructures” and “the country’s political elite and middle class, whose political and financial support Uribe depends upon” (Sweig and McCarthy, 2005: 26). Within six weeks of Uribe’s re-election (in 2006), the US embassy in Bogotá attested that the FARC-EP had not been weakened since his arrival to office. Intelligence revealed that the guerrillas retained the capacity to launch urban military campaigns, and officials were ordered to stay clear of certain areas of the city (Reuters, 2006b).18 Two years later, General Oscar Naranjo and Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos admitted that little had changed and the FARCEP still held the ability to target the capital (Agence France-Presse, 2008c). Examples of the insurgency’s counter-hegemony in urban locales are also found in community-based health clinics in various barrios. In 2006, it was made known the FARC-EP had been providing medical services in some of the most impoverished slums of Colombia (People’s Daily, 2006b). The guerrillas had created infirmaries capable of supplying surgical operations, medicine, and healthcare supplies to local civilians. It is for these and other reasons that some have suggested the FARC-EP has taken advantage of “vacuums of legitimate power at local levels” across several cities (Williams, 2005: 161). Hence, what began as a peasant-led rural-based land struggle in the 1960s has since been