From Peace Activist to FARC Guerrilla
Sunday, November 25, 2007 at 11:04PM 
Let this be a lesson to those alleged peace activists who harbor romantic visions of Che Guevara while bashing capitalism and feeling guilty about their existence.
Joining up with the bad guys can be hazardous to your health.
Dutch Woman Joins Guerrillas in Colombia
The army stumbled on the handwritten diary during a raid on a guerrilla camp. It lay near the embers of a communal kitchen where fleeing rebels left their breakfast untouched.
"I'm tired, tired of the FARC, tired of the people, tired of communal living. Tired of never having anything for myself," wrote the author, a 29-year-old Dutch woman.
Sucks, doesn't it? Maybe you should have thought about that before aligning yourself with terrorists.
Colombia's government couldn't have hoped for better propaganda against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. It leaked excerpts from the diary found last June to the media, even making available an English translation of the Dutch entries.
The first known person from outside Latin America to join the region's largest rebel army wasn't just disillusioned. Like most FARC foot soldiers, Tanja Nijmeijer apparently wasn't permitted to leave."This would be worth it if I knew I was fighting for something. But I don't really believe that anymore," she wrote on Nov. 24, 2006, according to the excerpts released by the government.
What exactly impelled Nijmeijer, a child of Europe's bourgeoisie, to take a journey from peace activist to guerrilla fighter with the nom- de-guerre "Eillen" remains largely a mystery—even to people who knew her well before she joined the FARC in early 2003.
More than a dozen friends, former colleagues and fellow peace activists interviewed by The Associated Press described a young woman deeply disturbed by social inequalities and guilt-ridden over her privileged life. Nijmeijer's family refused to discuss her plight, saying doing so could endanger her life.Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, meanwhile, was happy to use the case to counter "guerrilla chic" in Europe, where the FARC—classified a terrorist group by both the United States and the European Union—has a small but determined group of supporters who run pro-rebel Web sites.
In the diary, Nijmeijer abhors the strict discipline imposed by FARC's male commanders—no smoking, no phone calls, no romantic relationships without their consent. She says the rank and file are hungry and bored, and describes FARC leaders as both materialistic and corrupt.
"How will it be when we take power? The wives of the commanders in Ferrari Testa Rossas with breast implants eating caviar?" she writes.
Funny how that works. It's amazing how long it takes these useful idiots to catch on.
Santos told AP that the Nijmeijer case should help dispel foreign leftists of the notion that the FARC is heroic.
"In certain circles in Europe, there still exists the romantic image of the guerrillas as Robin Hood, or Che Guevara, fighting the bad guys for the benefit of the poor," he said. "Nijmeijer fell into this trap."
Now, nobody can tell for sure where she is, if she's even alive. Useful idiots do indeed have a limited shelf life once they no longer prove useful.
Also at JWF.
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Reader Comments (20)
Great post, Jammiefool. Very interesting story.
yep. now do one on Jack Idema.
Maybe she's just gone birdwatching like the 3 nice Irish lads
Yeah, like it's only leftists that get involved in terrorism.
Remind us all, was the Oklahama bomb carried out by deluded leftists or deluded right-wing white-supremacist survivalists? Here's a link, to help you guys remember:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing
Peter
Whether its left or right, the issue is naivete. Fatal naivete
"Yeah, like it's only leftists that get involved in terrorism."
It isn't only leftists but it would be nonsense to pretend that the likelihood to develop infatuations with terrorists is something that is evenly split along the left right axis. It is an overwhelmingly left wing phenomenon. Even the example of a supposedly right wing terrorist, Timothy McVeigh, supports that conclusion when you consider that the only mainstream media figures who were interested in contextualising his atrocity were from the likes of Gore Vidal.
Ross
Gore Vidal merely pointed out the right-wing racist swamp from which McVeigh emerged. And there are more McVeighs out there, no question, encouraged by the US loony-right.
What a dumbass. I pray to God right now: Please do not allow my girls to be dumbasses when they grow up. Amen.
I'm afraid that she might be dead.
I have a hard time generating sympathy for someone who is unhappy with terrorist camp (Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda, greeting from Camp Farcawatha). A little further down on my list of concerns.
Perhaps if she picks up her guitar and sings a rousing version of 'kumbaya' that will help.
Well, what do you know...Chavez is right in the middle of Farc and Columbia. Not too surprising since he's also a Communist.
Tensions between Colombia and Venezuela soared Sunday, with President Alvaro Uribe charging Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was seeking a Marxist FARC government in Bogota and the spread of leftist regimes across Latin America.
"We need a mediation with terrorists, and not people who try to lend legitimacy to terrorism," Uribe said referring to Chavez.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h38LF1xlbHKvSwV8pfmsfWV93Ddw
The progressive left youngsters are obsessed with communism as a means to end all poverty and inequality; this girl's parents said she was carried away by her 'ideals' - I think she was poorly educated.
The only countries were you see a paucity of poverty are those governed by strong democracy, robust capitalism, fair rule of law, and a bedrock belief in the human rights of it citizens to hold their governments accountable to the people they serve. This girl, and others like her, have been spoonfed a communist propaganda soup of lies. That's a real shame.
If you took all of these committed young people and had them pointed in the right ideological direction they might actually have some solid impact on the third world and it's suffering people.
And look at this crap....
"One of the main activist groups opposing U.S. assistance to Colombia is the New York-based International Action Center (IAC). Headed by former attorney general Ramsey Clark, the IAC is staffed by veteran leaders of the Workers World Party (WWP), a Marxist-Leninist fringe group with a history of street theater going back to the Vietnam War and the Attica Prison uprising. The IAC openly supports an array of terrorists, cop-killers and even convicted communist spies on its Website (see "Domestic Front in the War on Terror," Jan. 7). From a 2002 Insight News report."
The U.S. has recently awarded a new contract to Blackwater for services that include air training support against anti-narcoterrorism in Columbia. Since Clinton initiated it, the U.S. has been helping Columbia to fight a war against FARC using private security firms under various government contracts - none of them DOD as far as I can find - under the cover of the drug war on Columbian cocaine. Farc is a major distributor of cocaine, used to fund its terrorism against the government. Apparently the justification for this under the radar type of serious military support is a fear of American backlash for another "Vietnam" type of situation.
Sorry to go all OT Jammie - this is just fascinating stuff when you dig below this girl's particular story.
To ease the tension, Nijmeijer picked up her guitar and led 60 fellow activists in a sing-along of "One Love" by U2.
Priceless. Truly, only the pampered, self-obsessed western liberal can provide such moments.
>>It's amazing how long it takes these useful idiots to catch on.<<
I'd say it's more amazing how little it takes for useful idiots to swallow such a propaganda story hook, line and sinker.
>>Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda,
greeting from Camp Farcawatha<<
LOL, mahons.
>>The only countries were you see a paucity of poverty are those governed by strong democracy, robust capitalism, fair rule of law, and a bedrock belief in the human right<<
Daphne, you've already told us you haven't travelled. You don't have to prove it again! :)
The simple fact is that many of the pampered rich are rather thick: look at the Mitfords as an example - split between admiration for Hitler and Stalin. Now we read of this Dutch clown who never understood whaty she was signing up for. A suitable outcome would be her to become a hostage.
This sympathy for terrorism and any anti-western totalitarianism (islam - as evil as anything invented by deranged man) is almost entirely a phenomenon of the left.
One of the most stupid peace activists to date was Norman Kember - the christian peace activist who had to be rescued by the SAS.
He had gone to Iraq to demonstrate his 'opposition to the invasion of the country by the United States-led coalition and to show solidarity with the Iraqi people'.
He didn't even have the cojones to thank the men who had risked all to get him out of the predicament he had placed himself in.
Yet another little window into the political insight of local FARC cheerleaders Sinn Fein.
Far from being a movement dedicated solely to removing the Brits from NI through a mixture of murder and propaganda, SF remain a grubby little Marxist organisation, allying their EU representatives with the far left, appointing an 'envoy' to Cuba and encouraging their ornithologists to give the FARC a few tips in Colombia.
Thankfully the ROI electorate realised that SFs economic policies had more holes than a cheese grater and gave them the bums rush. Whether the NI electorate will be quite as savvy come election time is rather more doubtful.
Yeah, how dutch. Her and Joran Van der Sloot should hook up....