While guerrillas and paramilitaries do not appear to have a significant support base, but most are well-funded and control vast amounts of territory.
All combatants commit serious abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law.
According to the guerrilla group's version of events, the May 1964 raid pitted 16,000 military personnel against a community of 1,000, of which forty-eight were armed. S urvivors of the Marquetalia raid founded the FARC shortly afterward, led by Manuel Marulanda, a peasant guerrilla who had fought since 1948 in a period of partisan bloodletting known as La Violencia. Still headed by the septuagenarian Marulanda, the FARC now has about 18,000 members in almost 70 fronts plus mobile columns and urban militias. The group controls or operates freely in 40 to 60 percent of country, much of it sparsely populated jungles and plains east and south of the Andes. Its leadership has declared that it expects to grow to 30,000 within the next few years.