The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) Research Paper

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) - Research Paper Example FARC has waged war against the Colombian government for roughly four decades. At the start of the insurgency, the group had merely more or less 350 soldiers. Majority of these soldiers were the disgruntled and peasants, and they did not have the necessary advanced weaponry (Corrales & Romero 98-99). From this humble beginning, the group’s military capability has risen to roughly 18,000 combatants (Martin 214). Besides its assaults on Colombian economic, political, and military institutions, FARC has been deeply engaged in murder, extortion, kidnapping for ransom, drug trafficking, and other crimes (Hough 386). In fact, the organization becomes more popular for its deep involvement in illegal narcotics businesses than for its rebellious operations. However, its leaders remain devoted to its social revolutionary objectives and use terrorist methods to terrorize or pressure its political enemies. Even though FARC has been successful in taking over massive portions of Colombian territory, the group has been unsuccessful until now to overpower the Colombian armed forces in open combat (Lee 29). This paper discusses current efforts to combat FARC and speculates as to why they are still successfully active. The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, headed by Carlo Castano, is a conservative paramilitary organization created in 1984 to fight guerilla soldiers or insurgent groups in Colombia, like FARC. Its exercise of terrorism to abolish the support base of these guerilla militias has made it a dominant and feared army in Colombia (Martin 214). The country’s government since the 1960s has been combatting a number of radical terrorist organizations; the two biggest are the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the FARC (Hough 381). The operations and activities of FARC, alongside the narcotics industry, have given Colombia a quite infamous and perilous reputation. The Colombian army  The Colombian army raided a campsite owned by the FARC on the 26th of March 2012, taking the lives of 36 members of the organization and arresting three more.