Anonymous alleged “U.S. and congressional officials” told the Wall Street Journal this week President Joe Biden is planning to remove the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a nearly 60-year-old terrorist organization responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, from America’s list of designated foreign terrorist groups.
The FARC, a communist group, has been responsible for a wide variety of human rights atrocities in Colombia since its founding in 1964 that include mass killings, kidnappings, child rape, forced abortions, the use of child soldiers, and one of the world’s most lucrative drug trafficking operations.
The government of then-President Juan Manuel Santos rammed a “peace deal,” against the will of the Colombian people, with FARC terror leaders in 2016, granting terrorists uncontested seats in Congress and several other major concessions, including allowing them to establish a formal political party without imposing restrictions on the use of profits from international drug trafficking. The deal preceded record cocaine production, an ongoing wave of leftist mob violence, and a situation in which unelected federal lawmakers are threatening to kill the nation’s democratically elected president from unknown locations in the jungles of Venezuela.
Santos won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
Supporters of the FARC peace deal claim, despite contravening evidence, that most of the low-level fighters in the terrorist group – many of them forced into terrorism after being abducted and abused as children – have abandoned terrorism and handed their weapons over to the Colombian government. The fact that senior FARC members, with the glaring exception of failed presidential candidate “Timochenko,” have continued to engage in drug trafficking and guerrilla violence has not deterred this narrative, particularly in Washington.
The Wall Street Journal placed a heavy emphasis on the alleged demobilization of low-level FARC terrorists despite the ongoing activities of the group’s leaders in its report on Biden potentially removing them from America’s formal list of designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
“The FARC began to demobilize shortly after the signing, with 13,000 men and women laying down their arms,” the corporate newspaper asserted on Tuesday.
Graffiti of FARC leader Manuel Marulanda is seen at El Oso Territorial Training and Reincorporation Area (ETCR), in Gaitania, Tolima Department, Colombia, on October 27, 2021. (RAUL ARBOLEDA/AFP via Getty Images)
The newspaper offered little information on who had claimed that Biden would strip the FARC of its terrorist label and the White House has yet to weigh in on the measure. It claimed that the Biden administration would offer a formal announcement on the matter by November 30, the five-year anniversary of the unpopular “peace deal.”
“The Biden administration will remove a former Colombian rebel group from a list of foreign terrorist organizations, a measure intended to demonstrate American support for a fragile peace agreement with the guerrillas in Colombia, said U.S. and congressional officials with knowledge of the coming announcement,” according to the Journal.
The move “sends the signal to the FARC, ‘it is been five years, you’ve done your bit, behaved properly, and we’re delisting you,’” former Santos administration official Sergio Jaramillo told the Wall Street Journal. Jaramillo referred to the move as “low-cost.”
The Wall Street Journal noted that delisting the FARC as a terrorist organization allowed the government of the United States to fund the group.
To address the fact that FARC leaders like “Iván Márquez” remain active in terrorism, the Wall Street Journal claimed that Biden would simply rebrand the actual FARC leaders and label them, under the name “New Marquetalía group,” a designated terrorist organization, but remove the FARC from the list by name. Márquez and now-dead FARC leader “Jesús Santrich,” once offered a lawmaker position through the “peace deal,” resurfaced after disappearing in 2019 in propaganda videos calling for a “new Marquetalía,” or guerrilla struggle, against the government of current Colombian President Iván Duque. Duque, of the conservative Democratic Center party, won the presidency in part as a result of popular disgust with Santos’ FARC policies.
In addition to the “New Marquetalia” FARC leaders, however, Duque’s government has stated publicly that it has evidence that FARC members have participated in a wave of urban violence that hit nearly every city in the country early this year after leftist groups called for a “national strike” against the government. Masked attackers firebombed police stations, burned down churches, and ransacked residential neighborhoods and hospital shipments for weeks following the call for a “national strike.”
“We have determined that [involved in] the disorder and vandalism occurring in Cali in last days there are structures tied to drug trafficking, the ELN [National Liberation Army, another communist terror group], and FARC,” Colombian Attorney General Francisco Barbosa Delgado said in May. Cali endured some of the worst of the violence among Colombia’s major cities.
A Colombian soldier patrols in Marquetalia, the birthplace of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Tolima Department, Colombia, on October 27, 2021 (RAUL ARBOLEDA/AFP via Getty Images)
Legitimizing the FARC has been a priority for Biden Democrats since the Obama administration. Obama succeeded in de-listing the FARC in 2015 despite its extensive record of terrorism and ties to other terrorist groups such as Hezbollah after sending then-Secretary of State John Kerry to Cuba to meet with the group’s terror leaders. Kerry – an ally of other communist human rights criminals like the Chinese Communist Party – was one of the world’s most enthusiastic supporters of the Santos “peace deal” at the time.
“I am pleased that, after more than four years of intensive talks, the Colombian government and the FARC have achieved breakthroughs on some of the most challenging issues before them,” Kerry said in 2016. “President Santos deserves credit for his courage, leadership, and unwavering commitment to peace. … I also want to recognize the hard work of the negotiating teams and the constructive role played by the governments of Norway and Cuba.”
The Obama administration also removed Cuba from the U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list despite its open collaboration with the FARC and ties to other terrorist entities like the government of Iran, also on the state sponsors list.
President Donald Trump returned both the FARC and Cuba to their respective lists.