FARC breaks truce with ELN
By Manuel Rueda, Editorial Director
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Nine guerrillas and three civilians have been killed in the department of Arauca, after combat between the ELN and FARC guerrillas resumed on May 26th.
According to radio communications recently intercepted by Colombian security forces, the fighting stems from a message by local FARC commander “Grannobles” to his men, where he ordered the FARC´s 10th and 45th fronts to wage “total war against the ELN,” urging them to attack ELN bases, structures and collaborators.
Both guerrilla groups operate near each other in several parts of the country, but in the Arauca region they have been intermittently fighting since January 2006, when the FARC – with about three times more members than the ELN - blamed the ELN for the murder of a local guerrilla leader.
The latest wave of violence between the guerrillas has forced 45 families in the Arauca countryside to flee their homes, says Colombia´s Human Rights Ombudsman.
Arauca, an oil-rich region in the eastern plains, had long been a bastion of the Maoist ELN guerrillas, but the FARC entered the area earlier this decade, seeking to profit from oil companies operating in the area, who at times have paid guerrillas extortion payments known as “vacunas”, so that the guerrillas don't attack their infrastructure.
Although the Colombian army has reduced attacks on oil rigs and oil pipelines in the region, both rebel groups are still present in Arauca, where they also tax cattle ranchers working in the region´s sparsely-populated plains.
The ELN and the FARC also use Arauca as a corridor through which to traffic drugs to nearby Venezuela.
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