Colombia scored a big victory in its fight against the Hugo Chavez-backed FARC terrorist group today with the surrender of a key commander. “Karina” ran Force 47, one of the toughest FARC units, and surrendered after spending the last two years running for her life. She called for the entire FARC organization to surrender, saying that they had already lost:

The commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia’s Force 47 told reporters in Bogota Monday — a day after surrendering — that “the solution is not through war. There must be dialogue.”

Nelly Avila Moreno, 45, whose nom de guerre was Karina, said she and her longtime male companion made the decision jointly to abandon the FARC group, based in the jungle, at 5 a.m. Sunday.

She said pressure from Colombian soldiers had been key to their decision, and she called on her fellow rebels to follow her example.

“I invite them to change the sensibility that is among the guerrillas,” she said, seated by her companion, who said nothing during the news conference.

Moreno also says she wants to reintegrate into Colombian society and spend time with her family after 24 years of failed terrorism and revolution. Colombia may have a few issues with those plans. Moreno committed uncountable acts of terrorism and rebellion, including atrocities like this:

Miguel Antonio Paez told CNN en Espanol that he remembers well the woman who, with a band of guerrillas, stopped the bus he was on in 2004 in northwest Colombia, ordered him and the other passengers off and the bus be burned.

“The commander of that guerrilla group — a dark-haired woman, tall, with one eye missing — called herself Karina,” he said.

“She ordered me tied up. Here, I have the marks from the wires, and there, while I was tied up, she lopped off my penis and testicles and I remained castrated for all my life.”

This news won’t be good for the rest of FARC and its supporters. Moreno says she knows little about the rest of the organization and called FARC “compartmentalized”, but as the commander of Force 47, she knew where money and supplies originated. She will have to give Colombia a lot more than a shrug if she expects to return to normal life after the kind of atrocities she committed and she ordered in her life as a revolutionary.

Just as with the Interpol confirmation of the data on captured FARC laptops, this will likely prove very embarrassing for Hugo Chavez. When authorities begin tracking down Moreno’s lines of communication, they will almost certainly lead towards Venezuela. As they track down more FARC terrorists, that intel will grow, and both Chaves and Evo Morales in Ecuador may have a lot more explaining to do about their involvement in terrorism and rebellion in Colombia.

For Alvaro Uribe, he may be looking at the light at the end of a very long tunnel. He has succeeded in crippling FARC, perhaps irreversibly so, and has exposed his enemies in Venezuela and Ecuador and sent them scurrying for the shadows. Uribe can take pride in these accomplishments, especially since they have come on the heels of a daring cross-border raid that made the point in the region that Colombia would not allow its neighbors to fight a proxy war against his government without consequences. (via Michelle)