FARC; sounds like something following beans

John Otis has the story of yet-another civil war at Time.com:

On 1 September, Colombia's Marxist guerrillas detonated 1,400 pounds of TNT near the southern town of El Doncello. The blast killed fourteen policemen, who were among forty government troops who lost their lives in rebel ambushes this month. The carnage seemed to signal that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was gaining a second wind after a string of crushing defeats. To rally the troops, new President Juan Manuel Santos flew last week to the conflict zone. "The FARC is a mouse that uses terrorism to try to roar like a lion," Santos told police and army soldiers at the sprawling military base in Florencia. "And we are going to keep after that mouse until it no longer breathes."
The Colombian military took a huge step towards strangling the rodent when it killed Jorge Briceño, FARC's Number Two leader, who goes by the alias Mono Jojoy. In a predawn raid in La Macarena, a region two hundred miles south of Bogota, Colombian air force planes bombed Briceño's elaborate jungle camp, which had been outfitted with concrete bunkers and escape tunnels, killing Briceño before Colombian special forces moved in and gunned down another twenty guerrillas. "This is a day of joy and glory for all of Colombia," Defense Minister Rodrigo Rivera said. Santos called it the biggest blow to the FARC since the rebels took up arms in the 1960s.
For most Colombians, the burly, mustachioed Briceño, who always wore a Che Guevara-style black beret, symbolized a dark and desperate period. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Briceño planned a string of attacks on poorly defended southern towns and military bases in which the rebels killed and captured hundreds of government troops. He was also a driving force behind the FARC's decision to kidnap Colombian politicians in an effort to swap them for imprisoned guerrillas. Looking like a corrupt prison warden, Briceño was filmed in 2001 lording over scores of hostages penned up in jungle concentration camps. Keith Stansell, one of three U.S. military contractors held for five years (2003-08) by the FARC, sarcastically referred to him as "the great and magnificent Mono Jojoy."
Amid a long-running, U.S.-backed military campaign, Stansell and most of the other FARC hostages have been freed, while the rebels have seen their numbers cut in half to about 8,000 fighters. Now, with the death of the 57-year-old Briceño, the FARC has lost four of the seven members of its ruling secretariat in the past two years. "Mono Jojoy spent all his life in the FARC," said Bogotá political analyst Armando Borrero. "He was a historic figure. That makes him irreplaceable."
Wednesday's military raid also provided a huge boost for President Santos, a former defense minister who was sworn in last month. At the United Nations General Assembly, Santos plans to outline how improved security has opened the door to new foreign investment and Colombia's steady economic growth. He was also one of three world leaders selected to speak to the UNGA on Wednesday about his nation's progress toward meeting the U.N.'s 2015 Millenium Development Goals.
Colombia's path to prosperity would be a lot easier if the 46-year-old war could be brought to an end. The demise of Mono Jojoy may help. Some predict a wave of desertions among demoralized guerrillas and chaos within the FARC's command structure, which is isolated and often incommunicado. Intelligence officials believe FARC supreme leader Alfonso Cano is hiding in the mountains of western Tolima state, while other members of the secretariat may be in Venezuela or Ecuador.
But, like the mice Santos referred to, guerrillas can be opportunistic survivors. Knowing they'll be outgunned, the rebels rarely stick around for firefights these days. Instead, they depend on landmines, IEDs, and snipers. The FARC has teamed up with criminal bands to extort business owners and traffic cocaine, while some ambushes have been carried out in tandem with the National Liberation Army (ELN), a smaller Marxist group founded in the 1960s that the army has also been unable to snuff out. "They can still cause a lot of damage," Rivera, the defense minister, told Time.
Santos hopes to eliminate the problem with both carrots and sticks. Besides operations like the one that took out Mono Jojoy, the President is promoting what he calls "The Consolidation Plan" to promote economic development in former rebel strongholds. Once these areas are relatively secure, government teams will build roads, schools, and clinics, hand out land titles, and offer farmers alternatives to growing coca, the raw material for cocaine.
But, as Americans learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, nation-building is often more complicated than fighting. In Colombia's Deep South, many people have brothers, uncles, and cousins who are guerrillas. In rural areas, there is little government presence. The guerrillas may not control this territory, but they remain a menacing presence. And they can be spoilers.
In the tiny southern river hamlet of Barranco Colorado, village residents asked for government help to build a dormitory so poor children from far-away homesteads could live in town and go to high school. To keep Barranco Colorado in its grip, the FARC threatened local officials, who are now too scared to break ground. So bags of cement and other construction supplies delivered by riverboat at great expense sit idle in a village warehouse.
That combination of fear, family ties to the FARC, and resentment over years of government neglect sometimes deter citizens from cooperating with the army and police. For example, it would have taken FARC rebels a fair amount of time and planning to carry out the ambush that killed the fourteen policemen near El Doncello. It's likely some of the townsfolk knew what was going on, but they kept mum.
But with enough time and money— as well as close coordination between government agencies— Santos' Consolidation Plan might have a chance. It was first launched in the war-ravaged area of La Macarena in 2007 when Santos was defense minister. There, the coca crop has been reduced by more than half. In fact, it was near La Macarena where Mono Jojoy met his violent end. And, according to Rivera, the raid was made possible by members of the rebel leader's inner circle— who split with their boss and came over to the government's side.