Impact of top Colombian rebel's death unclear

updated 6:25 p.m. ET May 25, 2008

BOGOTA, Colombia - Most Colombians can't remember a time when the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia were not a major force to be reckoned with.

But the death of the FARC's founding leader Manual "Sureshot" Marulanda, coupled with recent military setbacks, has many wondering whether the 44-year-old insurgency might now change course and possibly be more willing to accept government conditions for a prisoner swap.

"The end of the FARC is in sight," Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos told reporters Sunday after a senior rebel confirmed that Marulanda died March 26 of a heart attack.

Santos quickly added: "We are winning but we haven't yet won." He and other Colombian leaders appealed to the rebels put down their weapons and talk peace.

FARC says it will continue
But the FARC, which Colombia's military says has some 9,000 fighters, was characteristically defiant.

"We will continue our work," rebel commander Timoleon Jimenez, alias Timochenko, said in a video message, "profoundly optimistic that we will move forward in spite of this adversity."

He said the FARC's is a "struggle for political power, the struggle for a socially just society and the struggle for socialism."

In March, guerrilla commander Raul Reyes and another member of the rebels' seven-man ruling Secretariat were killed, and last weekend a female leader who held near mythic status in the group defected.

But even as the rebels, who are listed by both the U.S. and the European Union as "terrorists," have suffered setbacks, they remain potent. Across the country, clashes with police and the army are an almost daily occurrence.

Whether the FARC heads in a new direction could depend on Alfonso Cano, a bearded and bespectacled, longtime ideologue who was designated the group's new leader.

Adam Isacson, Colombia analyst for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for International Policy, says the group is at a "fork-in-the-road moment".

"For about the past six years, you've seen nothing different, no changes in political strategy," he said. "It's hard to say in what direction the FARC will go but it seems certain there will be a different direction."

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