FARC Leader Alfonso Cano Killed

Shortly after midnight Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos announced that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) leader Alfonso Cano (the nom de guerre for Guillermo Saenz Vargas) was killed in a commando operation outside the town of Suarez. 

This is the first time Colombian security forces had ever killed the supreme commander of the FARC.  Although an air strike killed the FARC's legendary military commander Victor Julio Suarez in 2008, Manuel Marulanda (who founded the insurgent group in 1964) died of a heart attack in 2008. 

Although the FARC's fortunes have been on the wane in the last decade as Colombia's military becomes more effective (in part because of the roughly $700 million in military aid they receive from the United States), the group will likely survive.  It still has as many as 9,000 fighters, and has evolved into more of a narco-terrorist group than a Communist insurgency, and these ties to the cocaine trade will likely sustain it for the foreseeable future. 

The key, as it usually is in combating such groups, is a sustained counterinsurgency campaign that targets the FARC's broader leadership network.  The Colombians have been consistently improving in this regards, and the commandos recovered seven computers and 39 thumb drives from Cano's headquarters.

Alfonso Cano, now-former leader of the FARC