The air force attacks on the Cañon de Limon and the army incursion of the valley just north of the town of Chaparral forced the FARC leader to move out of the Tolima highlands, first southward and ultimately into the more western Cauca department.
Military sources told weekly Semana that this operation was the beginning of the end of Cano, who had been protected against Army and Air Force by the extreme cold and almost constant fog in the mountain valley.
Following the attack, the military created a militarized corridor from north to south, preventing provisions and reinforcements from the FARC’s Eastern Block to reach Cano’s Central Block, Semana said. This forced Cano to seek reinforcements from the Western Block which had been enforced over the year’s with some of the best guerrilla fighters.
This is fantastic news. Cano did have a bounty on his head, but as you can see from the quote up top, this was purely a military operation. I think this is also a very interesting operation in terms of smoking out tough opponents located in hard to reach zones.
Cano was in a great location, because the fog and terrain was limiting the effectiveness of aircraft, and probably drones for that matter. Although I am sure they were able to get some ISR going up in those hills. Perhaps reconnaissance teams were the best option for locating and targeting?
But the big component here to this operation, looks to be the militarized corridors that were north and south of that position. To basically deny Cano supplies and reinforcements, and force him to move in order to operate. Couple that with the constant bombing runs on his camps, and that was a great combination for getting him out in the open.
Perhaps there are some lessons here for the hunt for Joseph Kony in Africa? Perhaps the strategists in this operation had a metaphorical ‘Trojan Horse’ to defeat Cano with, hence the Odysseus operation name? I would have to think that if you could get one mole into Cano’s group up in those mountains, then you could get the kind of information that could be advantageous. Good job to the Colombians! -Matt
Alfonso Cano, leader of Colombia’s FARC rebels, killed in raid
By Juan Forero
November 5, 2011
The bookish communist intellectual who led the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, one of the world’s oldest insurgent groups, was killed Friday in a military strike in the biggest blow against that organization in its 47-year history.
Guillermo Saenz Vargas, who was better known to Colombians and American military advisers by the nom de guerre Alfonso Cano, was shot in a firefight with Colombian security forces during an operation in which the military bombed his position and deployed elite commandos, military officials said early Saturday morning.
The death occurred outside the town of Suarez in Cauca, a mountainous state in Colombia’s southwest that for years has been an epicenter of conflict between the armed forces and the FARC.
“The death of Alfonso Cano, the No. 1 commander of the FARC, has been confirmed,” President Juan Manuel Santos said in a brief nationally televised address shortly after midnight. “It is the biggest blow against the FARC in all its history.”
