
A Visit to FARC's Jungle Lair - everbody
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/farc-preparing-for-renewed-fighting-deep-in-colombian-jungle-a-1286296.html
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est31
Slightly related: the co-author of this piece, Juan Moreno, has discovered
that his colleauge, an award-winning Spiegel author, instead of doing honest
journalistic work, completely invented his stories (including the ones he got
the awards for). He discovered the fraud, collected evidence, and called it
out despite resistance from inside the newspaper organization (who wants to
admit that they have been printing fradulent stories for years and not
noticing it). Amazing guy! More reading:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claas_Relotius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claas_Relotius)

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mothsonasloth
Surprised they are using American weapons (looks like M4 variants in the
photos).

I would have thought the FARC would have historically held onto Russian /
Chinese AK platforms due to their reliability in Jungle environments.

Unless they source most of their weapons from cartels?

~~~
saiya-jin
2nd page of the article:

> He is very eager to have a Kalashnikov like Lorena's, a comrade having told
> him that there's no better rifle for the jungle. Unfortunately, those rifles
> are currently hard to find, so Carlos has to make do with an American M16.

US is very happy to sell arms left and right, so its either through cartels or
just good old arms dealers.

~~~
devtul
For sure, putting gun runners out of a job

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samirillian
Didn't Colombians vote against Amnesty for farc in 2016? How is this not
mentioned in the article

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jonifico
We didn't votate against amnesty, but against the full bunch of laws derivated
from the process. Anyhow, after some discussions, the peace process was
implemented and now over 95% of the guerilla members left the guns behind.
There are a few remaining in narcotics business.

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remarkEon
Fascinating.

Jungle ops always intrigues me. So do insurgencies. But a _jungle insurgency_
...? I mean, good luck countering that if you're averse to burning down the
entire forest. It takes some fanatically dedicated fighters to put up with
that kind of life and still maintain even a rudimentary level of combat
effectiveness.

~~~
whoisjuan
Hmm except that’s what the Colombian military has been doing for almost two
decades.

At least 10 head commanders of FARC were killed through out the years, when
the Colombian Military found their location and bombed their camps deep in the
jungle.

~~~
remarkEon
I don't think that's an exception. That's exactly what I'm saying. These guys
are the real deal.

~~~
whoisjuan
Gotcha. I read it differently. I thought you were saying that because they
were hiding on the jungle it was hard to fight them.

The Colombian Military is probably the best military when it comes to fighting
in this terrain.

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a0zU
And how does Alvizú expect the government to fix any problems if they're
fighting a war against guerillas?

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uniacid
The problem is many in the government are right wingers hell bent on
continuing the same war, same with many Colombians, just ask any of them, they
don't support doing anything with the FARC.

Kind of a sad story if you ask me, seems like Colombians don't learn from
their own mistakes even though the FARC have been operating on the same
premise for more than 2 decades.... their Government doesn't take care of
their own people and it's not hard for plenty of farmers to see.

~~~
agallego
Here is a web developer pretending to understand a multi generational gap of
power. The complexities of this armed conflict cannot be possibly explained in
a line as rude as `colombians don't learn from their own mistakes`. For those
of us the grew up in the midst of it, everyone you'll ever talk to wants
better and more often than not, working on it. It's not just 2 decades. It's
closer to 60 years.

~~~
mieseratte
> Here is a web developer pretending to understand a multi generational gap of
> power.

Don't you know that computer science is the only degree program to make you an
expert in math, physics, history, economics, and politics?

~~~
juandazapata
Do not forget arts, nutrition, and exercise.

