(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

BY STEVEN SPARKMAN

The government of Colombia has dealt a major blow in one of South America’s longest-running armed conflicts. In a military operation involving roughly 1,000 troops, the top commander of the FARC rebel forces was killed. Euronews has the story.

“The Colombian army says it’s killed the top FARC rebel leader Alfonso Cano in combat. The government, backed by the U.S., has been fighting the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia since 2002. Several FARC commanders have been killed in recent years.”

Cano, with his full beard and glasses, looked like much more of a bookish intellectual than a military-minded FARC leader. In fact, he began his adulthood as an anthropology student. He became involved with the Communist Party while in university.

Al Jazeera fills us in on Cano’s rise to power.

“In the 1970’s, he served jail time for so-called ‘revolutionary activities.’ And by the early 1980’s he had officially joined the FARC. He rose quickly in the ranks, and served as a negotiator in talks with the government. Cano became FARC’s leader in 2008, after the group’s founder Manuel Marulanda, or ‘Sureshot,’ died of a heart attack.”

Colombia’s president Juan Manuel Santos used the occasion to call on FARC rebels to lay down their arms. With up to $700 million a year in U.S. military aid, the government has killed several FARC commanders in recent years.

The Washington Post writes about the group’s recent struggles.

“Cano’s death also comes after several years in which the group has sustained punishing blows from an increasingly effective armed forces. … The rebel group that in the 1990s had the manpower, equipment and strength to outmaneuver large army units, and even storm bases, has since been relegated to the far corners of this large country.”

While many are hopeful FARC will now enter negotiations to end the conflict, a writer for the Miami Herald takes a different view of the group’s strength. He says the group may actually be gaining ground.

“His death comes amid fears that the FARC was seeing a resurgence. During the last three years, rebel attacks have been on the rise … During the first half of 2011, there were 1,115 FARC attacks -- that’s up 10 percent versus last year … Analysts said Cano’s death could bring a new bout of violence as the group tries to prove it’s still viable.”

FARC is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. Cano was 63.