# A Dutch Guerillera: The Foreign Face of FARC's Civil War



## Disir (May 4, 2014)

> Tanja Nijmeijer of Holland spent more than 10 years fighting with the rebel group FARC in the jungles of Colombia. More recently, she has been part of the guerillas' peace negotiating team in Cuba. What drives her?
> 
> Until recently, there had long been only two possible fates awaiting Tanja Nijmeijer: a grave in the Colombian jungle or a cell in an American maximum-security prison. Nijmeijer has never had any doubts as to which option she would prefer. "I will die in the jungle," she says.
> 
> Nijmeijer is wanted by Interpol for three cases of kidnapping, the use of a firearm during a violent crime and supporting a terrorist organization.



Read the rest here: 
A Meeting with Dutch FARC Member Tanja Nijmeijer - SPIEGEL ONLINE

This is a very interesting two part-er.  Fifty years is entirely too long and I doubt that peace is coming. The automatic responses to questions on FARC at the end are exceptionally rattling.


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## waltky (May 16, 2016)

FARC to relinquish child soldiers...

*Colombian FARC rebels agree to let minors under 15 leave ranks*
_Monday 16th May, 2016 - Colombia's government and leftist FARC rebels on Sunday agreed to a roadmap for children under 15 to leave guerrilla encampments and re-integrate into civil society, as part of negotiations aimed at ending Latin America's longest war._


> The accord is a first step towards all minors leaving rebel ranks, the two sides said in a joint statement read out at a news conference in Havana, where they have been negotiating a peace deal for more than three years.  The FARC has long been accused by the government and human rights groups of using child solders as cannon fodder.  The rebel group announced last year it would stop recruiting minors, but no deal was reached on handling teenagers and children already in its ranks.  "The deal foresees the FARC handing over information necessary to identify and locate the minors still in these camps and collaborating with (their) exit," the government's top negotiator, Humberto de la Calle, said.
> 
> The drug-fuelled civil war in Colombia has killed some 220,000 people and displaced millions of others since 1964.  The FARC's forces are estimated at 8,000 guerrillas but it is not known how many might be minors. The group said on Sunday there were 21 children under 15 among its ranks.  "We have agreed with the national government that these minors cannot be prosecuted and that, as victims of an immense social and political drama, they will be treated as such and never as criminals," FARC lead negotiator Ivan Marquez said.
> 
> ...



See also:

*Colombia's war-weary farmers head home amid hopes and fears*
_Monday 16th May, 2016 - When gunfire and cylinder bombs erupted around their farmhouse, nestled in the jungle in Colombia's southern Putumayo province, Jesus Alebio Portillo and his family took refuge under a bed and, trembling with fear, waited until the fighting stopped._


> A decade ago, battles between paramilitary groups and their most bitter enemies, the Marxist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), took place almost every week as the two sides fought for territorial control.  The unrelenting violence prompted an exodus of thousands of villagers from the farmlands around the town of La Hormiga and across Putumayo during the peak of violence in early 2000s.  "We were caught in the middle of the crossfire," Portillo, a farmer and father of two children, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.  "Once the FARC told us we had to leave as there would be a confrontation with the paramilitaries. They gave us two hours to leave. The whole village left, 80 to 100 people," he said, recalling the first of four times his family had to flee.
> 
> More than five decades of conflict have forced 6.7 million Colombians to flee their homes, many of them poor farmers like Portillo, making the country home to the second biggest internally displaced population after Syria.  Some of the land left behind was abandoned, left idle for years as farmers sought refuge in nearby towns. Other land was seized by paramilitary forces with farmers often pressured by the armed groups to sell out at cut-rate prices.  The government itself estimates that 6.5 to 10 million hectares of land - up to 15 percent of Colombian territory - have been abandoned or illegally acquired through violence, extortion and fraud.
> 
> ...


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## waltky (Jun 23, 2016)

Who the Farc are they?...





*Who are the Farc?*
_23 June 2016 - Following the announcement that Colombia's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces (Farc), and the Colombian government have reached an agreement on a bilateral ceasefire, BBC News takes a closer look at the guerrilla group which has been fighting the longest-running armed insurgency in the Western Hemisphere._


> Who are the Farc?
> 
> The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc, after the initials in Spanish) are Colombia's largest rebel group.  They were founded in 1964 as the armed wing of the Communist Party and follow a Marxist-Leninist ideology.  Their main founders were small farmers and land workers who had banded together to fight against the staggering levels of inequality in Colombia at the time.  While the Farc have some urban groups, they have always been an overwhelmingly rural guerrilla organisation.
> 
> ...


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