Over on Hit & Run, I found a link to this fascinating article about a young, Dutch woman who joined the terrorist group FARC in 2002. What’s so interesting is that recently her diary was found and it shows a picture of someone who might not be quite so in love with the communist insurrection as she was a few years back.

Among the entries was: “24 November, 2006. I am tired, tired of the FARC, tired of the people, tired of communal life. Tired of never having anything for myself. And this might be worth it if I knew what we were fighting for.”

That woman, known in the FARC as “Eillen”, is actually Tanja Nijmeijer, 29 - her identity was confirmed by the Dutch after a photo of her stored on the captured computer was published. Her parents live a middle-class neighbourhood in Denekamp, near the German border.

She is a languages graduate from the University of Groningen, who first went to Colombia in 2000 as part of a university exchange to improve her Spanish. She returned in 2002 and entered guerrilla ranks.

The FARC have long recruited women, who make up about a third of the 12,000-strong army. The group, founded in 1964, is now the most powerful insurgency in the western hemisphere and, as a result of the drugs trade, perhaps the richest in the world. Despite having so much cash, guerrillas receive no salary, yet once in the ranks cannot leave and are subject to fierce discipline that controls every facet of life.

On 23 August last year, “Eillen” wrote: “I called home! Mum cried and Dad too. Now all I have to wait for is my punishment.”

I would love to read the rest--communist insurgent groups like these have always seemed just a few steps away from Lord of the Flies territory to me, and some of what she wrote did nothing to shake that feeling. A bunch of idiots playing army in the forest who have built a society based on brutality, privilege, power, and fear and justified it by saying that it’s all for the poor, downtrodden people. If FARC ever won their struggle, I wonder how the leadership would survive the trip from Camp Commie to the corridors of legitimate government (or, at least, more legitimate government) where not everyone is quite so pliable as the boneheaded, Che-loving Dutch girl who unhappily waits for her punishment after calling home to mum and dad.

If it weren’t for the terrorist attacks and ruined lives, it would be utterly hilarious to read Ms. Nijmeijer complaints.

Read the rest.