Colombia’s largest rebel group FARC control 93% of coca and marijuana crops in the southwestern Cauca department, the National Police told Congress Friday.
According to newspaper El Tiempo, Police director Jose Roberto Leon sent a report to Congress in which he explained that the FARC’s 6th Front, an elite unit of the rebel organization, is in charge of the FARC’s drug cultivation and trafficking in the department.
Recent violence in the north of Cauca is due to the FARC’s attempt maintain control of important drug trafficking routes through the region and the recover territory in the neighboring Tolima and Huila departments lost in 2010 and 2011 when the army launched a major offensive that eventually led to the killing of the FARC’s supreme leader, “Alfonso Cano,” said the report.
Additionally, one of the objectives of the FARC’s 6th Front is to “seek sources of financing through drug trafficking for the secretariat,” the FARC’s highest political command.
The Cauca department has traditionally been a stronghold for the rebel organization