Colombia’s FARC rebels have named Timoleon Jimenez as their new leader

Colombia‘s FARC rebels have named Timoleon Jimenez as their new leader after the group’s previous head was killed in a Colombian militaryoperation earlier this month.

In a statement  from the FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the group said it had designated 52-year-old Jimenez as its new chief on November 5, a day after his predecessorAlfonso Cano was killed while trying to break out of a military cordon in southwestern Colombia.

“We want to inform you that Comrade Timoleon Jimenez, with a unanimous vote by his companions in the secretariat, was designated on November 5 as the new commander of the FARC,” said the statement published on the Bolivarian Press Agency website, a site that often carries messages from the rebels.

The US government has offered a $5m reward for Jimenez, known as Timochenko, and Colombia’s government is offering another $2.6m for his capture.

Jimenez is the nom de guerre of Rodrigo Londono, who was born in the village of Calarca in western Colombia. He is one of the least visible rebel commanders.

One of his most recent appearances was in a May 2008 video confirming the death of FARC leader Manuel Marulanda.
Jimenez has been a member of the FARC’s seven-man ruling secretariat since the 1980s, making him the longest-serving member, according to Carlos Lozano, an analyst for the Communist Party weekly Voz.

Blows to leadership

The rebels’ leadership has suffered a series of blows beginning in March 2008, when the FARC’s foreign minister, Raul Reyes, was killed in a bombing raid on a rebel camp across the border in Ecuador.

That raid yielded authorities a treasure trove of information from computers and digital storage.

That same month, the FARC’s co-founder, Marulanda, died in a mountain hideout of a heart attack. Cano, the rebels’ chief ideologist, was named to succeed him.

And in July 2008, commandos posing as international aid workers rescued former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, three US military contractors and 11 others in an elaborate and bloodless ruse.

Still, the FARC has been regrouping in recent months, and is believed to have about 9,000 fighters within a disciplined military hierarchy.

 

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The Colombian Fast Deployment Force (FUDRA)

On December 7th 1999, within the frame of the celebration of the Colombian Infantry Day, the President of the Republic Doctor Andrés Pastrana Arango activated in an imposing military parade, the Army Helicopters battalion in the military base of Tolemaida, which would be called the Fast Deployment Force (FUDRA) of the Colombian Army.

The Fast Deployment Force, “Fudra”, is the symbol of the modernization of the Army and its Troops; it is an antisubversive fight unit composed by three Mobile Brigades and one Special Forces Brigade, equipped with Black Hawk and MI helicopters, from the Army aviation and with the permanent support of the Colombian Air Force with fixed-wings airplanes for transport and combat. 

Its mission is to conduct rapid offensive operations against the subversives throughout the Colombian territory where a guerrilla action occurs or any other illegal armed group acts against the Colombian people or of its forces. 

The Fast Deployment Force is a unit trained and prepared to operate in the jungles, the mountains, or in the desert. As it says its motto: any mission, in any place, at any hour, on the best way, ready to win.

With this new Mayor Operative Unit the Army military operative strategy is complemented and the reaction capacity is optimized, which has allowed from the moment of its creation a greater efficiency in the operational results, fortifying in this way the will and capacity of fight of our Troops

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Special forces arrive in southwest Colombia to combat FARC

The first contingent of special armed forces arrived in Cauca, southwest Colombia, to combat theFARC.

On last Friday 460 members of the special forces, along with the newly formed "High Mountain" battallion, arrived in Tacueyo, Cauca, led by commander of the Armed Forces Edgar Cely, reported newspaper El Especatador.

The contingent will concentrate its operations in Toribio, Corinto, Caldono, Jambalo, as well as the small villages of Siberia and Mondomo, all of which have been the target of attacks by the FARC.

They will also install checkpoints and roadblocks at critical points throughout the department in order to limit guerrillas mobility in the region.

In the history of Toribio, the FARC have carried out 13 attacks, which have left 41 people dead and approximately 600 injured. In the past decade, the FARC have suffered heavy defeats at the hands of the military forces, and have multiplied their small scale attacks in more remote areas of the country.

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