Rebels desert as Colombia army advances

updated 4:46 p.m. ET July 1, 2008

VILLAVICENCIO, Colombia - Not long after two top commanders of Latin America's last major rebel army were killed — one in a raid, the other by a turncoat bodyguard — Diego Canizares decided to call it quits.

The 39-year-old veteran guerrilla made indirect contact with the Colombian army. Then he strapped on his 9mm Taurus pistol and portable radio, slipped 10 anti-personnel mines into a canvas sack and walked off as if going to work.

Instead, he met up with a waiting army patrol — becoming one of more than 1,450 fighters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to desert this year, according to the government's count.

Colombia's U.S.-trained and advised armed forces are squeezing the leftist rebel group as never before, bearing down on a half-dozen guerrilla concentrations after decimating several of the more than 50 rebel fronts last year.

Data shows rebels are weakened
Data obtained by The Associated Press from Colombia's armed forces and interviews with deserters show the rebels have been seriously weakened, so much so that many Colombians believe the endgame may be near. The 44-year-old insurgency has long filled its ranks with rural peasants resentful of government neglect, but is now widely despised for its embrace of kidnapping and drug trafficking.

John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee in the U.S. presidential race who arrives Tuesday for an overnight visit, has said one of his reasons for coming here is to highlight Colombia's military success.

"If it keeps up like this, in two years the guerrillas will disappear completely," said Canizares, a 16-year FARC veteran who gave up in March after the military doggedly pursued him and the 50 troops under his command. He was barely sleeping, sometimes going three to four days without a decent meal.

"More than one of us came to see that this was no life," said Canizares, who was second-in-command of plainclothes militias of the rebels' 39th Front, which operates in Colombia's broad eastern plains.

'Capacity to destabilize' remains
But longtime FARC watchers are reluctant to proclaim the rebellion over. The guerrillas have hunkered down in Colombia's forbidding jungles and mountains, planting more land mines in hopes of outlasting President Alvaro Uribe, who has made defeating the FARC the cornerstone of his administration. His second term ends in 2010 and he is constitutionally barred from running again.

"Those who are announcing that the FARC is defeated, that it's done for, are mistaken," said Carlos Lozano, editor of the Communist Party weekly Voz and a longtime mediator with the rebels. "The FARC remains a big guerrilla force spread across the nation with the capacity still to destabilize."

Nevertheless, the military now appears to have the upper hand. For the first time, more Colombian guerrillas deserted last year than died in combat, said Gen. Freddy Padilla, the armed forces chief. By official count, 2,480 rebels gave up, compared to 1,893 killed in action.

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