FARC red on red action

Judith Apter Klinghoffer:

With the help of captured documents emails, Von Alex Baur details the unsavory reality of Swiss mediation between the Colombian government and FARC. The shocker is not the fact that a Swiss professor acting as mediator turns out to be a bag man for ransom payments, we all suspected as much. Much more important is the evidence that the Swiss "even handed" policy helps FARC look good by helping the terrorist organization cover it's own blunders. Indeed, the reason terrorists look so efficient while democratic governments appear to be faltering is because the mistakes of terrorists are covered up with the help of "useful idiots" such as the Swiss in the case of the FARC. Consider the following story:

On 18 June 2007, Alfonso Cano sent an e-mail to his boss Manuel Marulanda - alias "Tirofijo" - concerning a terrible mishap. At the time, Cano was still a deputy of the since deceased FARC leader. "Good Evening, Comrade," Cano writes, "Due to a serious mix-up our unit was attacked by our own people who thought we were from the ELN [the National Liberation Army, a rival guerilla force]; the guards holding the representatives then killed eleven of the twelve hostages, because they thought they were being attacked by the army. This grave error is going to cause us enormous problems."

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There is much more to this fiasco. The FARC opeartional security has already been challenged by other email and this is just another example of how poorly led these people are and how their command and control has fallen apart under the relentless pressure of the US intercepts of their communications that are being turned over to the Colombian government.