Word: farce
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Since then, Castano, who wears camouflage fatigues and moves with the predatory restlessness of a jungle cat, has been stalking the two chief rebel groups: the 16,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the smaller but no less virulent National Liberation Army (ELN), which has 5,000 fighters. His AUC members, who look as though they were outfitted from the back pages of Soldier of Fortune magazine, number 8,000. They operate in 25% of Colombian territory, mainly in the north, along the Venezuelan border and in the central Magdalena River valley. But in the past month...
...guerrillas is to hide themselves among the civilians. That may give them immunity against the army and police but not against us," Castano says chillingly. After all, say some Colombians, nothing else seems to have worked, not even the government's two years of peace talks with the FARC...
...Castano near the Panama border? Because, he explained, his men had been tracking FARC guerrillas moving out of secret bases deep inside the Panamanian jungle. Last Saturday night a contingent of 300 FARC rebels attacked a Colombian army outpost in the Darien rain forest. Mortars screeched through the mist, and the dark jungle engulfing the army camp was suddenly lit by hundreds of blazing rebel guns. The Colombian army sergeant in charge and his 60 men faced annihilation. In the confusion and crashing grenade explosions, it took the FARC attackers a while to realize that they were suddenly being shot...
Castano's crusade against the rebels began as a white-hot act of revenge: in 1979 a FARC gang kidnapped his father, a dairy farmer in Cordoba province. The members demanded $50,000, and when the Castano family could raise only $20,000, they executed him. "We knew these guerrillas. We'd let them sleep in our house. We sympathized with their social ideals," Castano recalls. Later, his kid sister was killed in a botched kidnapping by the FARC. Eight more of his siblings were later killed, either by drug hit men or rebels, he says...
...FARC is to hide themselves among civilians, among non-combatants. That gives them immunity against the state forces, but not against us. But you can't let the war be won our way, either. It would delegitimize the state. The only way out is through negotiation, under international auspices. The sad thing is there are people who think we're the solution. We're a solution for what's happening now, not a fix for the long term...