BY SIBYLLA BRODZINSKY
Special to The Miami Herald

Colombia's FARC is working to reinvent itself after suffering almost seven years of sustained military pressure under President Alvaro Uribe -- a period that has seen its top leaders killed, mid-level cadres captured and the rescue of its top hostages.

As part of ''Plan Rebirth,'' the rebels are working to reduce large-scale desertions, and have also sought to cut down on combat by increasing the use of mines and snipers.

This latest effort to adapt comes after hundreds of foot soldiers have deserted and its command and control structure was disrupted.

''One of the biggest problems the FARC has at this moment is that there is no command and control at the highest level,'' Gen. Freddy Padilla, commander in chief of the armed forces and recently named defense minister, said in a recent interview with The Miami Herald.

`NO COHESION'

According to military intelligence, only three of the seven members of the ruling secretariat are permanently in Colombia, while others slip over the borders of neighboring countries. ''There is no cohesion in the upper echelons of the FARC,'' he said.

However, the FARC appears to be trying to prove otherwise 45 years after first rising up against the state.

''Phoenix,'' who had never considered joining the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, could only think about escape after he was forcibly recruited and throughout his brutal training in the jungles north of thePacific port town of Tumaco.

He played along while he and 75 other new recruits received indoctrination and military training, then fled to Tumaco earlier this month. But in three months he spent as an unwilling rebel, Phoenix got a glimpse of the guerrilla army's plan to remain relevant.

Holding the cards today is the FARC's new leader, Alfonso Cano, who took charge last year after the death from natural causes of founding leader Manuel Marulanda. In January, Cano announced the FARC had to ''retake the initiative'' in what has been dubbed "Plan Rebirth.''

Part of the plan, according to computer files seized by the government that lay out the new strategy, includes reinforcing political indoctrination to prevent desertions.

''We would spend hours listening to how the FARC were fighting a just struggle, that communism could not be allowed to die,'' said Phoenix a week after turning himself in to government troops in Tumaco.

The FARC has been hit by massive desertions in the past several years. Deserters say they fled because the FARC had lost its Marxist-Leninist ideology, and because the government offers judicial leniency, financial aid and vocational training for those who turn themselves in. In 2008, 2,940 FARC fighters deserted. By the end of April this year, there had been 544. From a peak of an estimated 18,000 fighters in 2002, the FARC is believed to have 9,000 today.

Colombia has seen an uptick in FARC activity since the start of the year -- from a ''canoe bomb'' detonated on an estuary near Tumaco to ambushes in the mountains bordering Venezuela and at least 488 clashes with government forces. The FARC also has killed at least two dozen soldiers and policemen.

''It's like a poker game. They [the FARC] have lost a few hands and lost a lot of chips but they still have enough to keep playing,'' said Luis Eduardo Celis, a conflict analyst with the Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris in Bogotá.

Born after the May 27, 1964, attack of government forces on a small peasant self-defense force at a village called Marquetalia, the FARC went from a rag-tag band of rebels to a mighty army that threatened to destabilize the state.

It started off as the armed branch of a political party, then decades later formed its own political arm. It has negotiated with four different presidents, survived paramilitary offensives, and saw its coffers fill with ransom money and proceeds from drugs. Today, the FARC is Latin America's largest and longest-running leftist insurgency.

Another part of its rebirth plan is to use mines and snipers to hit army units while avoiding combat.

Phoenix said the troops were ordered to avoid engaging government forces directly. ''We would watch silently as the patrol boats came up the rivers, but we were told not to attack because that could bring an air response,'' he said.

DRUG ROUTES

Part of the task his unit had was to extend control over lowlands of Nariño province, a major corridor for cocaine shipments headed to the United States.

''We were told to prepare for a territorial fight,'' he said, principally to control cocaine routes, another part of the new FARC strategy, according to the government.

''We were told to plant bombs to divert military attention from where the drugs would pass,'' he said.

At the same time the FARC has stepped up military actions, it also continues to seek a ''prisoner swap'' of hostages in exchange for jailed rebels.

From a peak of more than 50 politicians and servicemen that the FARC considered ''swappable'' hostages, escapes, rescues and unilateral releases have left the rebels with just 22 police and army officers with which to try to seek a prisoner swap.

The FARC recently offered to release another hostage, Pablo Emilio Moncayo, but the issue has become tangled in a political test of wills. Uribe is wary of playing into rebel hands and has refused to allow Sen. Piedad Cordoba -- an outspoken critic of the president who has successfully negotiated the release of other hostages -- to participate.

Uribe said in March that if the guerrillas truly want peace he would be willing to sit down to talks with the FARC if they did not carry out any ''terrorist activity'' for four months.

That won't happen, said Markus Schultze-Kraft, Latin America program director for the International Crisis Group, a worldwide think tank on conflicts.

''The FARC is not close to defeat, and under Alfonso Cano is having some success in adapting to the changed strategic scenario and regaining internal cohesion,'' he said.