Ecuador puts pressure on FARC hiding out in border settlements

By: JournalNow Staff | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 31, 2008

Puerto Nuevo, population 1,700, has no church, no police, no immigration post and no elected officials. Flanked by dense rainforest on the southern bank of the muddy San Miguel River, it's a town of transients -- and of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

For 20 years, the rebel group has used settlements just across the border in Ecuador for logistics, staging and recreation -- with tacit approval from Ecuadorean governments. Now, Ecuador's new leftist government says it is determined to send them packing.

The policy shift became evident after March 1, when Colombian warplanes wiped out a FARC camp just this side of the border. The bombing raid killed FARC's foreign minister, Raul Reyes, and 24 others, and prompted Ecuador to break diplomatic relations with Colombia.

It was an embarrassing indication of just how little control Ecuador had over its territory.

Documents found in Reyes' laptop detailed close ties between the rebels and several prominent Ecuadorean leftists. They also indicate that President Rafael Correa's 2006 campaign got $100,000 from the FARC.

Correa calls the documents bogus. But shortly after they were made public, he replaced most of the armed-forces high command and stepped up military operations along the 400-mile border with Colombia.

"We will not tolerate an armed presence -- regular or irregular -- on our border," the new defense minister, Javier Ponce, told The Associated Press in an interview.

The government is now promising to establish police posts in previously neglected border areas by year's end, and to buy pilotless drones to patrol where officers can't. So far this year, Ecuador's security forces have seized at least 34 FARC bases and five drug labs and made 26 arrests. They have found 66 firearms, 150 pounds of dynamite, and a crude mortar factory.

Ecuador has the hemisphere's largest pocket of war refugees -- 150,000 by U.N. count -- and it's often impossible to distinguish insurgent from refugee -- or even Ecuadorean from Colombian.