Fighting Mad in Colombia
I have a friend who is doing interesting and dangerous work in Colombia, working with women who have become involved -- and are trying to get away from -- the terrorist organization FARC.
She's written a gripping piece for Foreign Affairs, under a pseudonym:
In the summer of 2009, during a lunch with a retired colonel of the Colombian army, I asked about his experiences fighting female members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), an insurgency that has plagued the country since the mid-1960s. Although the colonel did not say it was official policy to shoot women first during a firefight, he hinted that any sensible soldier would do so. Women, with their "Kamikaze-like" mentality, he said, were the most deadly combatants.
Talk about a powerful lede! She goes on:
Twenty-eight years old today, Athena is barely over five feet tall, compact, and attractive. Her body is never fully relaxed. Even when she sits down, her light eyes scan her surroundings. She always appears at the ready. She grew up with her mother, an older brother, and two younger sisters in an impoverished rural town. She does not describe her home life before she became a militant as abusive, although her brother regularly beat her whenever she "misbehaved." (Misbehavior included her refusal to obey commands to perform random demeaning tasks.) After one such beating, Athena ran away, and within a few weeks of her arrival in a neighboring village, a "kind, old man" named Paco approached her, offering "protection and fun" if she would come with him to la finca (the farm). Had he been making his pitch to a boy, he probably would not have played up physical security. Generally speaking, FARC recruits boys with the promise of a motorcycle, a cell phone, and cool clothes, all of which will help them get girls.
It's a powerful and deep look at what happens inside a terrorist organization -- how young people are recruited and how they're kept, often against their will.
She's a brave person, doing very dangerous stuff, and the article is really worth your time.
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Comments:
May '10
Re: Fighting Mad in Colombia
Rob, Columbia isn't a particular problem, your dad lives right there.
Oh, you mean the country?
Re: Fighting Mad in Colombia
Whoops. Corrected now. But for the record: I misspelled Colombia. But had it automagically fixed.
Jul '10
Re: Fighting Mad in Colombia
Yet during encounters with the enemy, Athena found herself losing focus, imagining each adversary as someone's son. The bouts of empathy enraged her. She would remember her murdered son and resent her duty to kill another woman's child. At the same time, she wanted to believe that there had been some purpose to her forced abortion. Moments of doubt threatened her sanity.
Reminded Me of Chambers and when He began to hear "the screams."
Sep '10
Re: Fighting Mad in Colombia
Reading that article was quite an emotional roller coaster. I felt a sense of relief for Athena by the end.
In spite of her experiences, she still clings to elements of Marxist ideology:
That's understandable, I guess, but also a bit sad. Indoctrination that starts so early is hard to overcome. Perhaps, over time, she'll come to see that the 'imperialist empire' and its friends aren't so bad after all.
Feb '11
Re: Fighting Mad in Colombia
Thank you for sharing this.
Aug '10
Re: Fighting Mad in Colombia
The Female of the Species is more deadly than the male.
A taste for those too timid to go to the link.
Or even,
Kipling knew the dangers of women.
Jan '11
Re: Fighting Mad in Colombia
In 1988, I visited El Salvador as part of a Jesuit tour. One of the many lessons from the Salvadoran war, especially since it lasted over decades, is that all the men are wiped out.
In the U.S., we decry the decline of fatherhood, but at least there are men around. The generation of men, on whom society depends to be teachers, role models, coaches, workers, breadwinners, and so on -- were all gone in El Salvador then. A teenager in El Salvador had only two options: fight for the rebels or fight for the government. There was no third option.
Because the "daddy" generation simply wasn't there, the country had a decidedly adolescent mentality: immediate gratification, no sense of the long term, no chance for a future. Gang mentality.
Imagine that same "fatherless" syndrome working on a whole country. Now consider Afghanistan and al-Qaeda territories, or the Sudan ... across several countries ... the daddies are all dead.
But at least in El Salvador in the late 1980s, they still had mothers. Rob's story is especially chilling, because now they're making the mothers into killers too. They'll be wiped out before long.
May '11
Re: Fighting Mad in Colombia
Interesting story. The young woman went from being a sex slave to a propaganda director for FARC because of her obvious intelligence. Sounds like FARC is like most beauracracies. The story rings true to me because a friend of mine spent a few years photographing the children of war for the UN and spent a lot of time in the barrios of Peru when the Shining Path was the rage of the revolutionaries. As I understand it, their power over the local people ended when the women of the barrios stood up and said "No mas".
May '10
Re: Fighting Mad in Colombia
Sound like FARC is just like all of the other cults and gangs out there. They lure members in with the illusion of goodies and then keep them trapped and enslaved to do the cult's or gang's dirty work.