As Colombia's oldest and strongest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), turns 45 on Wednesday, its guerrillas have withdrawn into the jungle.
In hamlets dotted around the lush green expanse of southeast Colombia, the oldest residents still remember how FARC fighters used to be more visible as they patrolled the streets.
"They came very well-armed and dressed in clean uniforms and they began to behave like the authorities, because there were none here," said Cristino Vega, a peasant whose hands are weathered from years of tearing up coca leaves.
"They resolved fights between neighbors and sorted out the drunks."
Colombia, one of the closest US allies in Latin America, has been ravaged for decades by a civil war between left-wing guerrilla groups and right-wing paramilitary organizations.
For years, the FARC, which is on US and European lists of terrorist organizations, built a stronghold in the jungle zone of southeast Colombia where a third of the country's coca leaves are grown, hiding hostages and gathering their own taxes from the cocaine trade.
These days, the group notorious for kidnappings has increasingly resorted to ambushes and bomb attacks, before rapidly withdrawing to jungle hideouts.
When President Alvaro Uribe first took office in 2002, he launched an aggressive security campaign against the FARC and the National Liberation Army (ELN) -- another major rebel group -- helped by US funding from Plan Colombia, a multi-billion-dollar counter-narcotics aid package.
The FARC then suffered a series of blows in 2008, including the death of its founder Manuel Marulanda, nicknamed "Tirofijo" or "Sureshot," who died of a heart attack in March.
Raul Reyes, seen as the FARC's number two, was also killed in combat.
Several months later, the rescue by the military of 15 high-profile hostages, including the former presidential candidate Franco-Colombian Ingrid Betancourt, was another blow to the group's powers of negotiation for the release of their militants.
"The FARC have returned to guerrilla warfare, their initial combat strategy, because they no longer have the power they had some years ago," retired colonel German Pataquiva, who formerly fought the rebels, told AFP.
According to Pataquiva, the reverse was helped by the government's increased capacity for aerial reaction -- including heat-seeking radar to track people in sparsely populated jungles -- thanks to funds from Plan Colombia.
But the FARC -- who in 45 years have survived at least four campaigns against them by 11 governments and taken part in three attempts at talks -- are far from disappearing completely.
With an estimated 6,000-7,000 fighters, the FARC maintains a presence in areas producing coca, from which they make between 400 and 600 million dollars per year, according to the defense ministry.
"The FARC have an extraordinary capacity to adapt" and "they seem to be offering an iron resistance in some areas," the International Crisis Group said in a report published in March.
A wave of attacks in the first months of 2009 -- three with car bombs, killing a total of 10 and injuring 36 -- was blamed on the group.
Uribe's new police commissioner, Frank Pearl, calculated at the start of May that it would take "some 15 to 20 years, including a considerable path toward reconciliation" to end the war.
Efforts for more peace talks remain stuck, however. Allegations in March 2008 by the Colombian government that the FARC was receiving support from the Venezuelan government further complicated those prospects.
Meanwhile, the
rebels claimed last week that in March alone 297 soldiers had died and
340 had been hurt in "the war that the government denies, to avoid
recognizing the political nature of the insurgency." (AFP)
