the FARC’s Honduran friends

The FARC is a major player in the cocaine trade, and documents found in computers captured by the Colombian military in a raid last year on a FARC camp in Ecuador show that the rebels have been active in Honduras. A number of those documents came into my possession last week. One is a March 2005 letter to the now-deceased rebel leader Raúl Reyes from another FARC honcho. It provides a list of “political contacts” that have been established around the region and in Spain to provide “support” and help “coordinate the work” of the FARC.

Honduras’s Partido de Unificación Democrática (UD) is on the list. The party has only a small representation in Congress, but it is the only political party that supports the return of Mr. Zelaya. Wherever there are violent demonstrations and roadblocks advocating for Mr. Zelaya, the UD is there.
[...]
Mr. Calderón has been waging a “war” on drug cartels in Mexico that has cost the lives of 1,077 law-enforcement agents since December 2006. Now both he and Mr. Obama are going to have to explain their support for a political faction in Honduras that is allied with organized crime. According to the evidence collected by Colombian intelligence that came to me indirectly, that’s exactly what they are doing.

Hondurans don’t want Mr. Zelaya in their country because he leads a violent, antidemocratic mob, and he tried to use it to undermine the country’s institutions in exactly the same way that Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez has done.
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The FARC connection could go a long way in explaining why Mr. Chávez is pushing so hard for Mr. Zelaya to be restored to power. It is already well established that the Venezuelan strongman actively supports the FARC in South America. Rebels have a safe haven across his border and just last month a Colombian army raid on a FARC camp yielded a cache of Swedish-made anti-tank rocket launchers that originally had been sold to Venezuela. Mr. Chávez has still not come up with a credible explanation of how the Colombian terrorists got hold of them.
[...]
The leaders at the summit today are going to talk about their war on drugs. Perhaps Mr. Calderón and Mr. Obama will tell us why they are backing an ousted Honduran politician whose supporters make common cause with drug-trafficking terrorists. All North Americans deserve an explanation.

- Mary Anastasia O'Grady, Wall Street Journal

More journalistic excellence from one of the Heroes of June 28. Bravo, Ms. O'Grady!