Patterns of Global Terrorism 1996 - Colombia

Colombia continued to grapple with widespread violence in 1996, suffering numerous terrorist bombings, murders, kidnappings, and narcotics-related violence. Drug traffickers, leftist insurgents, paramilitary squads, and common criminals committed with impunity scores of violent crimes. Although most of the politically motivated violence was directed at domestic targets, Colombia recorded 66 international terrorist incidents during 1996, a drop from 76 such incidents in 1995. The most frequent targets of international terrorist attacks were the nation's oil pipelines, which are operated in partnership with foreign oil companies.

The nation's two main leftist insurgent groups – the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) – showed little interest in pursuing serious peace talks with the government, preferring to press their violent agenda.

Throughout the year ECOPETROL, the national oil company, was forced to shut down production repeatedly due to ELN attacks. Foreign oil company employees were kidnapped and held for ransom as part of the guerrillas' continuing war of terror against the Colombian oil industry. ELN carried out 45 attacks against the oil pipeline, justifying its actions by claiming the government is giving away its precious oil reserves to foreigners.

The ELN and FARC staged numerous attacks against police and military installations throughout the year. In a 15 April attack on an army patrol in Narino Department, guerrillas killed 31 soldiers. In a countrywide offensive conducted in late August and early September, the ELN and FARC launched a major offensive in reprisal for the government's efforts to eradicate coca. At least 150 persons were killed in the attacks, including an unknown number of civilians. On 30 August the FARC overran a Colombian Army base in Putumayo Department, killing 27 soldiers and taking prisoner more than 60 others. By year's end the soldiers had not been released. A guerrilla attack in Guaviare Department on 6 September left 22 soldiers dead.

Narcoterrorists are suspected of placing a 173-kg car bomb on 5 November outside a Cali business owned by the family of a senator who advocated reinstating extradition of Colombians to the United States. Although the bomb did not explode, flyers found at the scene threatened US citizens and businesses as well as Colombian supporters of extraditing Colombian nationals.

Colombian guerrillas earn millions of dollars from ransom payments each year. Nearly three dozen foreigners were kidnapped by guerrillas during the year. In one major kidnapping, members of a group with possible terrorist links abducted Juan Carlos Gaviria, brother of former Colombian president and current Organization of American States General Secretary Cesar Gaviria. At the request of Cesar Gaviria and the Colombian Government, Cuba in June agreed to admit nine of the terrorists in exchange for the safe release of Juan Carlos Gaviria.

The United States issued arrest warrants against 12 members of the FARC for the murders of two New Tribes Missionaries, Steven Welsh and Timothy Van Dyke, who were killed while being held hostage by the FARC in June 1995. Four other US citizens remained hostage in Colombia at year's end: three missionaries from the New Tribes Mission who were abducted in 1993, and a US geologist who was kidnapped in early December. (The geologist was killed in February 1997.) Two other US hostages were released in May and June.

Some individual fronts of the FARC, and to a lesser extent the ELN, have symbiotic links with narcotraffickers, especially to the east of the Cordillera Oriental. In some instances, guerrillas have been known to provide security for coca fields, processing facilities, and clandestine shipping facilities. Drug-related activities – along with kidnapping for ransom, extortion, and robbing banks – help generate needed revenues to finance the groups' terrorist activities.