Mexico cartels strengthen ties to FARC

Sara Carter:

Mexican drug cartels are strengthening alliances with a Colombian terrorist group that has engaged in a decades-long war to topple the U.S.-supported government in Bogota, intelligence officials said.

The cartels are aggressively negotiating with the Marxist guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as FARC for the purchase of "multiton quantities of cocaine directly from South America," said Michael Braun, former administrator and chief of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The strengthened ties between Mexican cartels and the FARC, which for years offered security for Colombian drug organizations in return for cash for weapons, is a bad sign for already tenuous U.S. border security, Braun said.

"An unholy alliances between the FARC and the Mexican cartels will undoubtedly strengthen these groups, and could land FARC operatives in Mexico," he said. "That could extend the FARC's operational influence to areas just across our shared border with Mexico."

The FARC leader, Raul Reyes, outlined to his military commanders a deal he made with Mexican drug dealers at his jungle hide-out in a letter originally obtained by Bloomberg news service and published earlier this year.

Reyes said the deal would bypass traditional middlemen and give the FARC a chance to double its profits.

Deals with drug cartels have enabled the FARC to earn at least a billion dollars in the past year, officials said. The group has been able to finance a war with the Colombian government that has dragged on for decades. The key to FARC's survival has been access to cocaine refined from coca leaves in territory it controls. About 90 percent of all the cocaine entering the United States originates in Colombia, according to U.S. officials.

A military official with knowledge of Colombian operations said FARC is "setting up shop in Peru where cocaine is plentiful, allowing for stronger negotiating ties with Mexican cartels that are relying more frequently on Colombian and South American cocaine."

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The criminal insurgents in Mexico and the communist rebels trying to overthrow Colombia's government share a ruthlessness that knows no inhibitions. FARC is also operating in Bolivia and has transit operations in Venezuela. The Mexican cartels need to secure their product inventories. It is unlikely that many of the South American countries outside of Colombia will mount an effective challenge to FARC. If the Mexican government can cripple the cartels, it would be a blow to FARC, forcing an even greater reliance on its European operations that are fed through its African connections.