Views of Colombia's fight against the FARC
The Colombian newsmagazine Semana writes about an upcoming report from the Ideas for Peace Foundation, a security-focused think-tank founded by members of the country’s business community. [Update: that report (PDF) has been released.] The report will claim that the FARC guerrillas are badly weakened, and that the Colombian government’s military offensive has suffered no significant setbacks.
This clashes with the widely reported conclusions of another prominent security-focused think-tank, the center-left New Rainbow Corporation, which has documented an apparent increase in FARC activity and shift in guerrilla tactics.
The Ideas for Peace report includes this map, which gives the organization’s view of which Colombian municipalities (counties) have a balance of forces that favor the FARC (red) and the armed forces (green). It views the guerrillas as strongest near the Pacific coast and the Venezuelan and Ecuadorian borders. It gives the military the advantage in most of the FARC’s traditional strongholds in south-central Meta, Caquetá and Guaviare departments.