Terrorists use landmines in Colombia in a brutal and desperate campaign

On a recent visit to the Colombian military’s school of engineering in Bogotá, I arrived a few minutes ahead of the rest of my party. So I waited on the front steps of the building. And that’s when I saw the parade.

It was not the ritual march of soldiers under the watchful eye of a drill sergeant. Instead it was a steady stream of 20- and 30-something young men on crutches, coming and going around the military’s rehab facility. Most of the wounded had one good leg. The other leg was a stump, with a foot and part of the limb below the knee missing. Some were practicing on new prosthetics. It reminded me of the many young Americans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan in similar condition.

The antipersonnel mine may be the terrorist’s most cherished weapon. It costs almost nothing to make, with very low technology and easily accessible components. The fact that soldiers and civilians are equally at risk matters little. What’s important is that it kills and maims.

The Colombian military once used land mines to protect key infrastructure facilities from rebel groups like the FARC. But Colombia has reversed that practice. It is a 1997 signatory to the Ottawa Convention on antipersonnel mines, which means that it has taken a pledge against the use, stockpiling or production of mines, and that it is working to destroy them. The U.S. has not signed that agreement.

The school of engineering, which is responsible for dealing with Colombia’s land-mine problem, says that it has removed all mines that the military planted in past decades. That was not difficult, because it knew where they were. Yet the threat to life and limb remains grave.

A document written by “Alfonso” [Cano], the new head of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and discovered last year at a rebel camp raided by the military in the south of the country, provides evidence the rebels are devising a plan to increase the use of land mines.

The key reason is that the FARC as a fighting force has been severely weakened over the past three years. In his recently released book “Jaque al Terror” (Checking Terror), former Colombian Minister of Defense Juan Manuel Santos details the FARC’s “worst years,” which he says began with the military operation that allowed rebel hostage and former cabinet member Fernando Araújo to escape on Dec. 31, 2006.

Since then the FARC has had a string of devastating losses. One major setback was the military’s March 2008 strike on a camp in Ecuador that killed FARC commander Raúl Reyes and yielded a massive amount of intelligence. At the micro level, thousands of grunts—and even a few high-ranking rebels—have demobilized. In the first 11 months of 2007, Mr. Santos writes, the number of FARC putting down their rifles averaged seven per day. Today the FARC’s image is that of a drug-trafficking mafia that abuses rural populations.

The captured correspondence, which is addressed to the FARC secretariat, proposes a game plan for reviving the rebel operation. It reveals both Cano’s desperation and his ruthlessness.

One important angle to work, he writes, is the FARC’s relationship with Venezuela. He suggests the creation of “a people’s party” with the help of “Senator Piedad” [Cordoba]—a legendary left-wing Colombian politician with ties to Hugo Chávez and the FARC—that will “seek an alliance with the Bolivarian Movement.” This refers to the hard-left revolution Mr. Chávez launched and promotes around the continent.

Guerrilla tactics, though, remain central to the FARC’s work. It is important, Cano points out, to continue carrying out terrorist acts in order to avoid the impression that the rebels are facing defeat. To that end, snipers are said to be extremely useful. If the group acquires the necessary rifles and ammunition, snipers can produce “equal results to mines.”

Yet mines are this terrorist’s favorite tool. “We know that mines are the only thing that stops and intimidates enemy operations,” Cano explains. “With the use of mines and explosives” it is possible to combat “an enemy that is numerous, well-equipped and has enormous firepower.”

Cano proposes to increase the knowledge of explosives both inside the guerrilla group and “equally to begin a training program for the Bolivarian Movement and militias.” It is likely that “militias” here refers to the civilian forces that Mr. Chávez says he has armed to act as the enforcers of his Bolivarian revolution.

For the 19-year period ending in 2009, Colombia says it had the highest number of victims of improvised explosive devices and unexploded munitions in the world. Almost 35% of them were civilians, 10% were children and 97% of incidents occurred in rural areas. If the FARC and Mr. Chávez decide to booby trap the Andean jungle, those numbers will rise and there may be little the military can do about it.

Source: Wall Street Journal