Anyone here know about a place called Colombia?

[Jimbo]

Colombia Sees Gains in Its War With Rebels
By Carol J. Williams
Times Staff Writer

January 21, 2004

BOGOTA, Colombia — For years, eerily abandoned highways testified to Colombians' fear that anyone rich enough to go by car into the countryside was a target for guerrillas raising funds for their insurgency through ransoms.

Over the last month, however, almost a third of Colombia's 44 million people hit the road to visit family and friends for the holidays, many venturing from crowded cities for the first time in a decade.

No one in the 17-month-old government of conservative President Alvaro Uribe is ready to declare victory in the 40-year war against the leftist guerrillas, whose factions still hold more than 5,000 hostages, including politicians, industrialists, foreign tourists and middle-class citizens mistaken for pescas milagrosas — "miraculous fish" that would yield riches.

But last year, government forces trained by U.S. advisors captured top rebel commanders, destroyed half the coca crop that bankrolls the guerrillas and retook most of the Switzerland-sized territory ceded to the rebels under an ill-fated 1998 peace plan. Rebel desertions, up 80% last year, according to the Defense Ministry, have thinned the insurgents' ranks and provided police and prosecutors with information to find and convict key guerrillas.

"It's going to take several more years. We can't say we have won, because they still have a lot of power. But in the strategic sense, there has been a shift to our side," said Gen. Carlos Alberto Ospina, commander of the Colombian armed forces, which lately have racked up what even government critics acknowledge are impressive gains.

The Jan. 3 capture of Ricardo Palmera, the highest-ranking rebel figure nabbed in the civil war, provided a resounding victory in Uribe's campaign to unmask the fighters for the criminals he says they've become and wrest back the countryside from them. Colombian authorities say Palmera helped oversee the illicit finances of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — at 20,000, the biggest group, known by its Spanish acronym, FARC.

Colombian troops also have captured about a dozen "brigadier-general-level commanders" within the main left-wing rebel groups and right-wing paramilitary vigilantes, said a U.S. official here, elaborating on a Defense Ministry memo about the damage inflicted on the insurgents in 2003.

Waging more than 2,300 battles against the rebels during the year, government troops killed nearly 3,000, captured 10,000 and seized cocaine with an estimated street value of $2 billion, the Defense Ministry said. Officials concede, however, that about 30,000 members of various factions remain in the mountains and jungles.

Uribe supporters and detractors alike attribute the gains to deep investment in the army as well as a five-year, $3-billion U.S. aid plan. Although they are aware that even one successful guerrilla attack could undermine last year's advances, officials exude confidence that the army and police will continue to roll up the insurgents, whom the public no longer views as romantic idealists.

"We finally had the political will that was lacking for so many years," Ospina said in an interview. "The main factor is our president's attitude and the people's support."

Coinciding with the blow against the guerrillas was a substantial drop in crime and violence. Homicides dropped 22% last year to a rate of about 50 per 100,000 — still high in comparison with less-troubled neighbors but the lowest rate for Colombia in 18 years. The number of victims of rural massacres fell 37%, according to the Security and Democracy Foundation, an independent think tank here in the capital.

Those accomplishments "have brought a substantial improvement in the perception of security within the population," the foundation reported in its annual security assessment.

What began as a leftist fight for equality and justice inspired by the Marxist ethos popular throughout Latin America in the 1960s metamorphosed after the collapse of the Soviet Union into a drug-running terrorist enterprise dedicated to maintaining Colombia's position as the cocaine capital of the world, charged Defense Minister Jorge Alberto Uribe, who is no relation to the president.

"People learned to live with it, like a big wart on your nose that you get used to," he said of Colombians' tolerance of the chaos and insecurity around them. "This guy running the country now — Uribe, the good one — has changed the whole outlook of the country."

Colombians are showing their support with approval ratings for the president exceeding 70% and their recent exodus into regions still infested by rebels.

"I think that the improved security on the roads is more important than many of the captures, as traveling by car inside the country used to be quite an adventure," said Otty Patiño, head of the Observation for Peace social research group and a leading figure in Polo Democratico, a left-of-center party opposed to Uribe. "By dismantling various fronts that were situated around the capital, the government has generated relief for those who use the roads."

Like 14 million of his countrymen, Patiño spent the recent holidays on a car trip visiting family. The roads to the Pacific Coast province of Valle del Cauca came to life during the vacation season, he recalled, with farmers setting up their fruit and snack stands to earn money. That return of rural commerce has government officials predicting 3.5% growth in the economy this year.

But Patiño contends that the government has exaggerated the significance of some rebel captures to win popular applause. He warned that the FARC retains an intact leadership and is savvy enough to lie low until the government offensive subsides.

Other analysts see the security improvements as more durable in light of the stepped-up government investment in Plan Colombia, a U.S.-supported blueprint for wiping out the insurgency and the drug trade. They warn, however, that the gains are fragile and that FARC still boasts quantities of fighters, weapons and money sufficient to engage government forces for years to come.

"FARC has not renounced its aim of taking power and wants political, social and economic change. But it has lost popular support by resorting to drug trafficking, kidnapping and extortion to finance its military operations," said Alfredo Rangel, head of the Security and Democracy Foundation.

"I don't think there is any ideology involved in FARC," said the U.S. official, who requested anonymity for security reasons. "Maybe there was 40 years ago, but it has evolved into a criminal organization, and the people know that."

Many Colombian observers fear that having the rebels and drug kingpins on the run could provoke a wounded-bear syndrome. Guerrillas have executed several hostages in recent months, some in reaction to the president's spurning an offer to swap prisoners.

Although the risk of hostage executions remains ominous, Ospina, the army commander, said that the president had signaled his readiness to negotiate with rebels who laid down their arms and that the amnesty program was luring growing numbers of insurgents out of the underground.

The general suggested that leniency would be in order for FARC members who had been forcibly conscripted. "The FARC is 99% composed of people captured from the fields," he said, "uneducated people who don't know what they're doing. People who are just trying to escape poverty."

[Cazador 01]

Looks like it is getting a bit harder to be a FARC commandante, at least in Cundinamarca!

We'll see if they can stick it to them out in Caqueta and Meta.

[Roguish Lawyer]

It's a very good school in NYC, right? LOL

[NousDefionsDoc]

People's Weekly World Newspaper, 01/29/04 11:05


The beginning of the new year coincided with a new, menacing increase in U.S. hostilities against the Colombian guerrilla movement, particularly against the 40-year-old Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). A number of signs point to a possible U.S. invasion of that country in the months ahead.

Since 2000, the U.S. government has poured over $2 billion in military aid into Colombia to “combat narco-trafficking.” According to critics of the program, such aid has been a thinly disguised way of fighting one of Latin America’s oldest and most deeply rooted movements for independence and social justice. The FARC commands a rebel army of approximately 18,000.

Under the U.S.-backed “Plan Colombia,” the Colombian military has been equipped with scores of Black Hawk helicopters, armored personnel carriers, drone aircraft, and other counterinsurgency equipment. Colombian troops have been trained by elite, U.S. “special forces” units in anti-guerrilla warfare technique. But it appears that the Pentagon may be readying its own forces for a direct military intervention from outside.

On Jan. 3 the Mexican newspaper La Jornada published an expose by reporter Carlos Fazio describing the Pentagon’s quiet military occupation of Ecuador near the Colombian border. Fazio details the dramatic growth of the Manta naval and air base, located on Ecuador’s Pacific coast, only an hour’s flight from Colombia.

U.S. Orion C-130 spy planes depart from Manta each day and fly over Colombia on reconnaissance missions.

The base “is under the exclusive jurisdiction of the U.S. Armed Forces’ SouthCom (Southern Command),” he writes, and is a “command center directing key mercenary operations under contract to Dyncorp, a Pentagon private subcontractor, conducting the installation of three logistics centers in the provinces of Guayas, Azuay and Sucumbios.” Currently Manta is home to 162 U.S. officers and 231 employees of Dyncorp.

The three logistic centers were authorized last September, Fazio says, by Ecuador’s foreign minister, Patricio Zuquilanda, in a secret agreement with the U.S. military attaché in Quito, Arnold Chacón. The stated purpose of these centers is to serve populations affected by natural disasters caused by El Niño.

Miguel Morán, leader of the Tohalli movement, an organization opposed to the base, said, “Ecuador is already a U.S. base, not only Manta. They inaugurated seven military detachments in Amazonia and are now after key ports. … The construction of the logistic centers is a smokescreen to conceal military activity.”

Fazio reports that Gen. Wendell L. Griffin, SouthCom Planning and Strategy Director, and U.S. special envoy for Western Hemispheric Affairs, Otto Reich, visited Ecuador recently and, in the case of Griffin, toured the border near Colombia. Many see that visit as a sign that “Washington is accelerating preparations to unleash military skirmishes inside Colombian territory” and that Ecuador will serve as a “U.S. aircraft carrier in an undercover war of aggression,” Fazio says.

Launching the invasion from Ecuador, he says, would facilitate giving the action a multinational or multilateral cover, one that Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutierrez would readily vouch for.

Meanwhile, Colombian government repression of trade unionists and right-wing paramilitary attacks on villages deemed sympathetic to either the FARC or the other guerrilla movement, the ELN, continue. Just after New Year’s, a group of 500-800 armed men in the uniform of the “United Self-Defense of Colombia,” a fascist-like group allied to big landowners in the country, reportedly terrorized several villages in the Arenal municipality. Two villagers were killed, many were savagely beaten, and more than 200 families fled the area out of fear.

On Jan. 2, one of the FARC’s top commanders, Simon Trinidad, 53, was seized in Quito by U.S. and Colombian security agents. While initial news reports said that he was in Quito for medical treatment, the FARC said that Trinidad was there for a secret diplomatic initiative, seeking to arrange a meeting with United Nations General-Secretary Kofi Annan, UN Special Adviser James LeMoyne, and representatives of the French government to discuss a prisoner of war exchange.

Trinidad is a distinguished political leader of the FARC, and was a top negotiator in peace talks with the Colombian government in 2002. Those talks eventually broke down.

The FARC leadership sees Trinidad’s arrest as part of a larger picture of “ever-increasing interference of the U.S. government” in Colombia’s affairs, and urges worldwide solidarity with the Colombian people.

The author can be reached at malmberg@pww.org.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Gaviria's Risky Foray into Colombia's Peace Process

By Marcela Sanchez
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, January 29, 2004; 4:10 PM


This city awoke to a storm of sorts this week that had nothing to do with snow or freezing rain. It was a diplomatic commotion triggered by the sudden and risky move of Cesar Gaviria, secretary-general of the Organization of American States.

Gaviria and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe announced over the weekend that the OAS would send a mission to monitor Uribe's initiative that intends to disband Colombia's illegal self-defense groups, aka paramilitaries, and help them re-enter society. With that, Uribe gained what he so urgently needed -- international backing for his peace plan.

Gaviria did not bother to tell his bosses at the OAS that he planned to negotiate the deal. Instead, by fiat, more or less, he committed the member states and the organization to virtually irrevocable support for a proposal that even the Colombian Congress has yet to approve and that many in the international community, including the United Nations, still question.

Gaviria's haste is cause for concern. Yet next Wednesday, when he is scheduled to explain his actions to the OAS Permanent Council, its members will likely give Gaviria a slap on the wrist for his presumptuous move, followed by a resolution approving his agreement with Uribe.

But if this is all they do, OAS ambassadors will have squandered the opportunity to question Gaviria about the current initiative and whether the OAS should be backing a process that doesn't address the culture of impunity at the core of Colombian paramilitary violence.

The paramilitaries are some of Colombia's most vicious killers, responsible for the murders of hundreds of leftist politicians, labor leaders and innocent civilians. They have been collaborating with drug traffickers for years. Opposite the leftist guerrillas, paramilitaries have stood on the front lines of Colombia's long and brutal internal conflict. Both groups are considered terrorist organizations by the United States and some of their leaders face extradition to the United States for drug trafficking.

But unlike the guerrillas, the paras have a twisted claim of legitimacy -- the dirty little secret behind Colombia's dirty war. The proliferation of armed self-defense was long ignored by polite society, and not long ago Colombian laws granted them legal status.

As it stands, Uribe's initiative tries to offer the fighters and their leaders a deal attractive enough for them to lay down their weapons. But a real effort to dismantle the paramilitary legacy in Colombia needs to do much more than disarm those who pull the triggers.

Those who legitimized paramilitary activity into law, those who supported their actions financially or by conveniently looking the other way as they committed their atrocities, must own up to their responsibility in a public manner. It is exactly this segment of Colombian society that must demonstrate real contrition to pave the road to lasting peace.

If anyone understands what's at stake, Gaviria ought to. It was Gaviria, as president of Colombia less than 15 years ago, who negotiated a deal with drug traffickers who feared extradition to the United States so intensely that they declared war against all Colombians. The deal was initially very tough and required traffickers to confess to every crime and be prepared to face long prison sentences.

But the traffickers balked and continued their car-bomb war killing scores of people and effectively coercing Gaviria into accepting their own terms of surrender. The negotiations ended with Pablo Escobar, the leader of the ruthless Medellin Cartel, banished to "La Catedral,'' a Colombian "prison" of unmatched luxury, replete with Jacuzzis, large-screen televisions and computers.

Eventually, Escobar got bored and escaped, only to be killed on the rooftops of Medellin by Colombian police. Gaviria had successfully hunted Escobar down. But lopping off the main branch didn't get to the root.

In fact, many Colombians would say, it took the scandalous, partially narco-financed election of Gaviria's successor, Ernesto Samper, for Colombians to seriously address another of Colombia's dirty secrets: the penetration of drug trafficking into Colombia's society and institutions.

Gaviria has taken a disrespectful, arrogant and unilateral action to deliver OAS' support to Colombia. The haste of Gaviria's move should well raise some eyebrows, and not for the egos he may have hurt by his audacity.

The crucial question now is what kind of process Uribe is willing to deliver for Colombia's future. Haste and history should make us wary of half measures and of the motivations of a part of Colombian society that would rather not face the truth of their culpability in Colombia's conflict.

Marcela Sanchez's e-mail address is desdewash@washpost.com.

[Airbornelawyer]

Originally posted by Cazador 01
Looks like it is getting a bit harder to be a FARC commandante, at least in Cundinamarca!

We'll see if they can stick it to them out in Caqueta and Meta. Capturado cabecilla de milicias del frente 42 de las farc (http://www.mindefensa.gov.co/fuerza/20040129capturado_cabecilla_milicias.html)

29 de enero de 2004 (SNE) La Policía Metropolitana de Bogotá capturó a Oscar Giovanni Rojas Arias, alias 'Orejas', presunto jefe de las milicias urbanas de la zona de Viota (Cundinamarca) del frente 42 de las Farc.

El guerrillero está sindicado de participar en la toma guerrillera al municipio de Pulí en abril de 2003 y la emboscada a una patrulla de la policía en Quipile (Cundinamarca) el 7 de enero del año pasado, donde murieron ocho uniformados y fueron heridos tres más.

...
____________________

Story goes on for a few more paras, but maybe too much Spanish for an English-language forum?

[Airbornelawyer]

And if you want your very own illustrated list of FARC and other guerrilla/terrorist leaders (in PDF format):

http://www.mindefensa.gov.co/actuacolombia/recompensas_actua_colombia.pdf

Number 16 on page 3 they identify as Ermilo Cabrera Diaz (a. Bertulfo), but I'm pretty sure that's Mandy Patankin (a. Inigo Montoya).

Dave

[Psywar1-0]

Please refrain from using the phrase "Dyncorp Merc's" in all future traffic. It is not of Equittable benifit to all. They should be refered to as

"Lombardi's Army of Northern Virginia"
"Non-Compounded D- Boys"
or by their Spanish Acronym GDSC (Gente Delta Sin Cuartel)

I now return you to your program LOL

In all seriousness, Dyncorp and Mercs thrown together has become the Mongul Hoards of the 21st Century in the Liberal Media.

[NousDefionsDoc]

This is a good month for me.

1966/02/15 - In Patio Cemento (Santander) the Colombian Army KIAd Camilo Torres Restrepo in his first op. (May he rot in hell).

1998/02/14 - Colombia - Manuel Perez Martinez died of hepatitis (may he rot in hell).

Yep, good month for me, bad month for the ELN and renegade Catholic priests.

I may stay drunk celebrating all month.

[Psywar1-0]

Just remember is also "Mes de la historia de las negritas" so head on down to Tumaco and do some learn one on one all about their history and culture LOL

[Spartan]

BBC Article on connections being made between the FARC and just about every other disruptive group down there:

Article HERE (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3459177.stm)

[CRad]

Originally posted by Spartan
BBC Article on connections being made between the FARC and just about every other disruptive group down there:

Article HERE (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3459177.stm)

Makes for good press; long reach before opposition

[NousDefionsDoc]

Colombia General Wants Rebel to Surrender
Thu Feb 19, 5:18 PM ET

By JUAN PABLO TORO, Associated Press Writer

BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombia's armed forces chief on Thursday urged Colombia's top rebel commander, who reportedly is dying of prostate cancer, to surrender.


Gen. Carlos Alberto Ospina told a news conference that the military is unable to confirm a magazine report that Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, 73, is expected to live only a few more months.

Marulanda is the commander and a co-founder of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Along with a smaller leftist rebel group, the FARC continues to wage a war against the government in which some 3,500 people are killed each year.

The monthly magazine Diners said in an article that appeared Tuesday that Marulanda was dying of cancer and no longer wanted treatment.

"In case this is true, the best thing he could do to take advantage of his remaining days is to put right all the damage he has caused and help end the war quickly by surrendering," Ospina said.

The writer of the magazine article is the veteran and highly respected Colombian journalist Patricia Lara. She said her information came from "very reliable sources" close to the FARC.

Marulanda has not been seen in public since August 2001, when he attended peace talks in southern Colombia. The government broke off the talks six months later after FARC rebels hijacked a plane and kidnapped a senator who was aboard.

Since the end of the peace talks, the government has gone on the offensive, entering strongholds of the FARC and the National Liberation Army, or ELN, in the country's remote jungles and Andean mountains.
______________

I need to get me a job doing this intel stuff! I've been saying for a year I thought he was either dead or dying. I like being right - a lot.

[NousDefionsDoc]

AP
Thu Feb 26, 3:45 AM ET

By VANESSA ARRINGTON, Associated Press Writer

BOGOTA, Colombia - A top U.S. general visiting Colombia warned that leftist rebels may launch a new offensive to offset mounting losses on the battlefield, a day after guerrillas killed 11 soldiers in the nation's south.


AP Photo



Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Wednesday that more kidnappings and attacks by insurgent groups were likely as "they see all that your (Colombian) armed forces and police are doing, and as they recognize that your elected officials are getting stronger and stronger in the war against terrorism."


During Pace's two-day visit, suspected members of the nation's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, attacked the town of Santa Maria in Huila state. At least eleven soldiers and four guerrillas were killed in the fighting, which began late Tuesday.


Simultaneously, police foiled an attempted mass kidnapping by suspected FARC rebels disguised as army commandos in the nearby city of Neiva, Huila's provincial capital, police said.


The rebels raided an upscale apartment building late Tuesday with plans to abduct up to 20 residents, but only made off with three after being spotted by a police patrol, police said. As they fled, the rebels tossed a grenade at the patrol, injuring two officers and a civilian.


President Alvaro Uribe immediately demanded the resignation of Gen. Hector Martinez Espinel, who commands all army forces in Huila, the president's office said Wednesday. Uribe has repeatedly warned that he will not hesitate to fire military commanders who fail to show results. It was not clear exactly when Espinel will give up his command.


Pace, who served as the U.S. military commander for Latin America and the Caribbean from 2000 to 2001, applauded Uribe's stepped-up campaign to crush the insurgents, saying that Colombia is "much, much improved" since his last visit here two years ago.


He said the lack of support by average Colombians was also weakening the FARC and the main right-wing paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC.


"I hope the FARC and the AUC realize that the Colombian people want them to stop what they're doing," said Pace, speaking at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota during a two-day visit to Colombia.


Under the so-called Plan Colombia, the United States has donated nearly $2.5 billion in mostly military aid over the last four years to fight Colombia's outlawed groups and drug trafficking.


Pace declined to offer details on how the United States and Colombia intend to retrieve three American military contractors kidnapped by the FARC in February of 2003 after their plane crash-landed in the jungles of southern Colombia.


"We do not want our enemy to know what we're thinking," he said.

[NousDefionsDoc]

COLOMBIA

AUTHORITIES CAPTURE REBEL COMMANDER

BOGOTA -- Colombian authorities captured a top rebel commander who was allegedly instructing a group of youths to carry out suicide attacks against President Alvaro Uribe and other government officials, the country's secret police chief said Wednesday.

Luis Hipólito Ospina, alias ''The Muslim,'' a senior member of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, was arrested Tuesday in the capital, Bogotá, said Jorge Noguera, the head of the secret police known as the DAS.

Noguera said Ospina, who reportedly speaks Arabic, German and English and has traveled extensively abroad, was trying to indoctrinate 22 youths into launching suicide attacks.

Neither the FARC nor Colombia's smaller Marxist group, the National Liberation Army, or ELN, have carried out a suicide strike in 40 years of civil war.
--------------------

Wonder where this bastard learned German and Arabic?

[NousDefionsDoc]

was trying to indoctrinate 22 youths into launching suicide attacks.

Jimbo? 7th Group guys?

[ktek01]

Originally posted by NousDefionsDoc

Wonder where this bastard learned German and Arabic?

Didnt the East Germans train terrorists way back when? Or maybe hiding out in German Communes in Argentinia maybe?

[NousDefionsDoc]

Might have a German family member as well.

[Jimbo]

Originally posted by NousDefionsDoc
was trying to indoctrinate 22 youths into launching suicide attacks.

I'm satisfied with any of the answers I've seen on this question.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Originally posted by Jimbo
I'm satisfied with any of the answers I've seen on this question.

Not following

[lrd]

What do you all think of this?

Hostages for Prisoners: A Way to Peace in Colombia? (http://crisisweb.org/home/index.cfm?id=2535&l=1)

[Roguish Lawyer]

Originally posted by lrd
What do you all think of this?

Hostages for Prisoners: A Way to Peace in Colombia? (http://crisisweb.org/home/index.cfm?id=2535&l=1)

I think it would be foolish to do that. It would encourage more hostage-taking.

I would just unleash NDD on them.

[desafiamos]

NDD, this guy "Musulman" as he is called in Colombia is for real and was going to give each of the kids who decided to do this $500 thousand pesos for the job. Targets included Colombian President Uribe. He was grabbed at the transmellenio ( busstop) at Av. Caracas and 72. ( Pretty nice neighborhood). "Chatting " with him is ongoing. :D

[NousDefionsDoc]

Just down from the Oxy office. Mmmm

[NousDefionsDoc]

Colombia New FARC Center for Operations, Drugs Located in Narino, near Ecuador
from El Tiempo on Monday, March 22, 2004
Article ID: D142042
El Tiempo visited the area where the Army has destroyed 114 laboratories so far this year; an area that the rebels share with the self-defense groups. From the beginning of January the Army has been venturing into the heartland of the so-called crystallizers of the drug: a rustic coca-processing "network" buried deep in the jungle that is home to more than 140 laboratories used to process the alkaloid. This "coca city" is located in the vicinity of the Nulpe River, which is entirely a jungle area. Residents of the region told journalists that the FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] is the group that authorizes sailing on the Guiza River, which is located in the southwestern part of Narino department.

The Army Intelligence officer who is in charge of the operations explained: "We found the laboratories organized, if one can describe it that way, in groups of three per 'farm.' Each group was about four kilometers away from the other, and so on."

In this area El Tiempo found peasants trying to "save" the hectares of coca from the glyphosate that is being sprayed from the Plan Colombia airplanes. The largest amount of plants can be found on the banks of the streams between the two rivers. The residents -- some of them natives of the region while others are people who were displaced from Putumayo and Caqueta -- maintain their families with the crop from two or three hectares of coca.

Elisa, a mestizo woman, told us in broken Spanish: "They don't pay us much, but it is enough for us to get by. We do not have an opportunity to sell anything else because there are no prospective buyers. The only thing that has a market here is coca." While she keeps an eye on the crops, her five-year-old son -- who has a runny nose and is usually running barefoot among the plants -- clutches to her skirt.

As we move along we run across an old man trying to save the coca from the crop-dusting. He shies away from the camera and repeats, without being asked, that he is being paid to spray the leaves, but is not the owner of the plants. In a container strapped to his back the old man is carrying five gallons of water mixed with sugar. The woman explained: "This gooey liquid stays on the surface of the leaves, and when the chemical is sprayed it gets stuck to the liquid. Afterward the liquid is washed off, and the plant does not die. This is the technique that is being used so as not to lose the crop. Others do the same thing with caked brown sugar diluted with water, or try to hide the plants among the plantains.

FARC and 'Paramilitaries'

None of the peasants dares to reveal who the coca leaves are being sold to, but all of the local authorities as well as the Government security organizations know for a fact that control over the area is being "shared" by the FARC's 29th Front and 'Daniel Aldana' and 'Mariscal de Sucre' columns and the self-defense group's 'Libertadores del Sur' bloc. Each armed group controls a segment of the Nulpe and Guiza rivers that flow into the Mira. In turn, the Mira flows until Cape Manglares, where its waters pour into the Pacific Ocean. This is also where the drug-laden boats and launches converge, according to the information provided by the residents of the region.

A member of the 'Daniel Aldana' rebel column who turned himself in to the Navy in Tumaco explained that once the coca leaves the laboratories it is sold to other people who are in charge of shipping it out of the country. The deserter told the military officials: "Civilians in 'Los Chongos' purchase the drug already crystallized, and move it out by land and on vessels. I never saw any light planes." Referring to one of the laboratory areas, the deserter added: "They often purchase between 80 and 100 kilos per week, and pay 2.5 million per kilo."

This has been one of the country's most inhospitable areas. As a matter of fact, during its initial attempts in August of last year the Anti-Drug Trafficking Brigade (Brcna) lost one of its officers during skirmishes with the rebels, who would not allow the troops to get any closer. This new phase of the operation began late last year. The aforementioned officer noted: "The first step was to locate the crops via satellite and then, with assistance from the Navy and the Air Force, the area was checked out with technical intelligence means. Planning of the operation began on 21 December."

A count made in the area showed 35,000 hectares sowed with coca plants toward the end of last year, which means that cultivation has spread since there were only 15,000 hectares in 2002.

The Operation

The last week of December the 450 Brcna members assigned to carry out the task arrived at the Marine base in Tumaco. General Carlos Suarez Bustamante set up the command post and the first landing was coordinated. The soldiers set out along the northern border of Narino, passing through the municipalities of Roberto Payan, Panga, and Barbacoas. The found several crystallizing laboratories and many crops along the Patia and Telembi rivers.

[NousDefionsDoc]

As the days passed, however, the troops pushed deeper into the Narino jungle up to the Nulpe River. After cutting through the jungle for 10 days -- without receiving any supplies because neither the terrain nor the weather allowed air support -- the soldiers ran across a veritable network of enormous crystallizers and laboratories camouflaged among the trees.

Structures made out of wood and fronds served to shelter stoves with ovens, grinders, large power generators, dryers, and mixers. The Army believes that this equipment has the capacity to process close to 15 tons of coca leaves per week. After processing, each week these leaves turn into 4 tons of coca base and between six and seven tons of coca paste, which sells on the international market for US$25,000 per kilo.

Once the soldiers found the crystallizers, crop-dusting of the area began. One of the officers who is participating in Operation "Dynasty" said: "In three months of operations 27,000 out of a goal of 35,000 hectares have been dusted."

Trade in Llorente

After leaving the rural area and getting back on the highway that goes from Tumaco to Pasto, one comes to the corregimiento of Llorente -- a town that is 90 minutes away from the port. Llorente has 2,000 inhabitants, but on weekends this figure swells to 8,000. Captain Edgar Cardozo Quintero, commander of the Police station that was inaugurated a month and a half ago, said: "On Saturdays and Sundays the main street of Llorente is teeming with people." Cardozo is the sole authority in the town, which did not have a mayor, inspector, or any other public official for quite a while.

The coca pickers take advantage of Saturdays and Sundays to have a good time, and the main street of Llorente -- which is part of the same road that leads to Pasto -- becomes a mall of sorts with stores, barber shops, restaurants, telephone call centers, bars, and boutiques where one can purchase a pair of jeans for between 200,000 and 300,000 pesos and a bottle of whisky for 200,000 pesos.

Freddy, who owns a fruit store, explained: "We have a price list for weekdays and a price list for weekends." Consequently, a blended fruit juice costs 4,000 pesos on Tuesday and 9,000 pesos on Saturday. The same thing happens with the cost of the services of the close to 500 prostitutes that the policemen have tallied up (only 117 are registered with the health center). According to some of their customers, on Sundays the prostitutes charge up to 700,000 pesos per hour.

The Telephones

The story is the same with the "telephone call centers." These are some 30 small wooden booths with signs offering cellular telephone calls at 300 pesos per minute. The puzzling thing about this is that cellular signals do not make it into Llorente, and yet the calls are being made thanks to illegal antennas and state-of-the-art equipment. Both townspeople and merchants will tell you, sotto voce, that this "prosperity" comes from the coca crops business. They note: "If this did not exist, we would not have anything to eat, much less maintain our families."

Regarding the owners they prefer to say as little as possible. Some of them were daring enough to say that the vast majority of hectares are rented out to the rebels; that the 'paramilitaries' collect a tax to sail on the rivers; and that the "gentlemen from Cali" have sub-leased several hectares to the FARC. Occasionally these "gentlemen from Cali" come all the way to Llorente to close a deal. However, the meeting place has been changed to locations such as La Playa, on the Mira River, or La Honda, which is three hours away from Ecuador on horseback.

One of the men who is on his way to La Guayacana, a settlement close to Llorente, said: "That is a good place for coca pickers." La Guayacana is on its way to becoming another boom town. However, even though everyone admits that nowadays business is down due to the crop-dusting, the question is: "How long will the crop-dusting be effective?"

In the Brcna's opinion, it has accomplished a titanic task. The officer in charge of the operation said: "We made a tremendous effort to cover such an extensive area, with dense vegetation, and to neutralize so many hectares. The results speak for themselves (see graph)." District Administration officials in Tumaco, the base of the operation, hope that this crop-dusting will come hand-in-hand with social investment. A peasant said: "We will not be able to stop growing coca until we are able to grow plantains and sell them as well."

Are the Crops Increasing?

According to the statistics, over the past several years the hectares sowed with coca in Narino have increased considerably. In 1999 there were 4,000 hectares sowed with coca throughout the entire department. The figures for the year 2000 showed that the amount had increased to 7,494 hectares, and in 2001 it shot up further to 9,300 hectares.

The figures for the year 2002 mentioned 15,000 hectares, and by the end of 2003, when a study was made prior to the launching of Operation "Dynasty," 35,000 hectares were detected. Of this amount, 27,000 hectares have already been dusted, so 8,000 hectares still have to be fumigated.

The discovery of this "new coca city," which belongs to the rebel groups, has taken place 20 years after the Police dealt a blow to the largest coca production center of the erstwhile powerful Medellin Cartel. On that occasion, in March 1984, the police destroyed a network of 14 laboratories, set fire to 13.8 tons of cocaine, and confiscated seven airplanes as part of the famous takeover of "Tranquilandia" in the plains of Yari (Caqueta).


Copyright 2004 Bogota El Tiempo. All rights resered.

[NousDefionsDoc]

04/03/23 – BogotaThe police found an explosive device inside a public service vehicle that had been reported stolen just hours earlier. Bogota Metropolitan Police Commander, General Hector Garcia Guzman said the police have been working for one month on intelligence reports signaling that the FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] guerrilla are trying to commit some sort of terrorist act in the capital city. Gen Garcia said: "Together with the Cundinamarca Department Police, the Intelligence Directorate, and the Dijin [Judicial and Investigative Police Directorate] we are carrying out coordinated operations to guarantee the safety of all Bogota residents." The high-ranking official made these statements during a press conference that was convened to report on the details of finding a cylinder loaded with shrapnel and incendiary material in central Bogota very early yesterday morning. According to the official information, Bogota and Cundinamarca police officers located a Chevrolet Sprint taxi with license plates SIL706, which had been stolen a few hours earlier, at 20th Street and Carrera 12 (in the city's downtown area). After searching the vehicle a police patrol unit called on the explosives experts who determined that the car did indeed contain a device that could explode. The cylinder was 90 centimeters long, 40 centimeters wide, and contained another similar device inside. Technical tests determined that the smaller cylinder was filled with shrapnel and incendiary material and that it was connected to the taxi's battery. The vehicle was immediately taken to the Mondonedo area south of the city where the device was detonated. "It did not have very great explosive power but it was capable of causing a small fire," the officer explained. "We believe the device was being transported and was to be detonated at another site because the place where we found the vehicle is sparsely populated. We believe the persons responsible fled out of fear of being captured by the police," said Colonel Yesid Vasquez Prada, commander of the Cundinamarca Department Police. Police officers were deployed throughout the area after the device was found and three persons apparently connected with the [FARC's] 42nd Front were arrested.

[Roguish Lawyer]

[bear with me -- i am typing on oe of those hotel room tv internetthings]




Good stuff, NDD.
I take it that crop substitution has not been a successful program?

[Jimbo]

Originally posted by Roguish Lawyer
I take it that crop substitution has not been a successful program?
It won't be as long as the infrastructure is in such a condition that the cost of moving legal crops to market is greater than the profit.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Originally posted by Roguish Lawyer


Good stuff, NDD.
I take it that crop substitution has not been a successful program?

It has worked a little following extensive propaganda and social reform. I, however, am not willing to pay $300/oz for corn, yucca or coffee.

[Roguish Lawyer]

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/413641.html

Ministry probes how IDF choppers got to Colombia

By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent

The Defense Ministry is investigating a complaint that a company called Globus Aviation Ltd. was involved in a transaction in which surplus IDF helicopters ended up in Colombia, violating an agreement with the ministry. The possibility that the helicopters have ended up in the hands of criminal elements in Colombia is under investigation.

The ministry's inquiry is being conducted in cooperation with U.S. investigators, and Colombia's Defense Ministry.

Major General (res.) Yossi Ben Hannan, who heads the Defense Ministry's Defense Export branch, has asked Colombian authorities to help with the investigation of Globus Aviation and its role in the helicopters affair.

Though the transaction's origins go back several months, suspicions about possible wrongdoing arose two weeks ago. Globus Aviation received permission from the Defense Ministry to purchase five DM-500 helicopters that were in IDF surplus. The helicopters were made in America, and they were delivered to the Israel Air Force as part of U.S. defense assistance to Israel.

The IAF removed them from active service, and the choppers were put under Defense Ministry authority, for sale as IDF surplus. Globus Aviation, owned by Gabi Meidar, signed a contract to purchase the choppers for $100,000 apiece.

Under the terms of the agreement with the Defense Ministry, Globus Aviation was to sell the helicopters via a Canadian intermediary to purchasers who would use them for fire-fighting in Spain's Catalonia region; alternatively, the helicopters were to end up with the federal police in Mexico.

At one stage, Globus Aviation received permission to turn the helicopters into civilian aircraft; once they were revamped for civilian purposes, Globus Aviation transferred the helicopters to Miami, and their shipping invoice states that they were destined for Vera Cruz, Mexico.

But the helicopters ended up in the possession of a Colombian company called Aviel. Not long ago, U.S. Federal Aviation Administration officials turned to Israel with an inquiry about the choppers, asking why they have ended up in Colombia.

Senior Israel Defense Ministry officials have expressed concern that the sale of U.S.-manufactured helicopters to Colombian purchasers, without American consent, could harm defense relations between Jerusalem and Washington. Such tensions could compound existing problems that surfaced in recent years from other misunderstandings and affairs involving the use or sale of military items.

A Defense Ministry spokesperson corroborated the facts in the case of the five helicopters, but she stressed that "all the documents presented to the Defense Ministry were appropriate and confirmed," which is why the case is now under investigation after the helicopters ended up in Colombia.

As part of the inquiry, Yossi Ben Hannan has already met with Meidar, who apparently is arguing that once the helicopters were converted to civilian use and certified as civilian craft by the Defense Ministry, their sale was no longer a military matter. Ra'anan Har-Zahav, Meidar's attorney, told Haaretz: "Gabi Meidar is not a party to a sale of the helicopters that involves the Defense Ministry. Signatures for the sale involved a Canadian company and the Defense Ministry ... Meidar has done all that he can to help the Defense Ministry clarify how the helicopters were moved to Colombia."

[NousDefionsDoc]

Probably the same way the Colombian military ended up with those crappy Galil rifles.

Nice sig line. LOL

[lrd]

Top Colombian gunman goes into hiding

Bogota, , Apr. 20 (UPI) -- One of Colombia's top paramilitary leaders has gone underground following an assassination attempt on him, local news sources reported Tuesday.

Yet unknown assailants opened fired on Carlos Castano last week. Though he escaped, several of his bodyguards were killed.

El Espectador reported Castano's wife said her husband had not been seen following the early Friday morning shootout.

In additional to his reputation as one of Colombia's leading cocaine smugglers, Castano is the founder and leader of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, a right-wing paramilitary group fighting against the nation's left-wing rebels.

The group, however, was in the midst of talks with the Colombian government about putting down their arms and demobilizing its 13,000 soldiers.

There is speculation elements within the AUC wanted Castano dead, fearful he was set to cut a deal with the United States where he is wanted on drug smuggling charges.

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040420-082313-4921r.htm

[The Reaper]

NDD, what have you been up to??

TR

[NousDefionsDoc]

LOL - its not me! They said on the news this morning that he called a friend to say goodbye, that he was going to the US to meet with the gov. The Embassy denies any knowledge.

That is the most dangerous man in LATAM IMO. He knows way too much on too many people.

[Sacamuelas]

Originally posted by lrd
...following an assassination attempt on him
...his reputation as one of Colombia's leading cocaine smugglers

...Castano is fighting against the nation's left-wing rebels.


Originally posted by NousDefionsDoc

That is the most dangerous man in LATAM IMO. He knows way too much on too many people.

HHHMMM, I am with TR on this one. Everything listed implicates NDD. I would call the Colombian Police/US Embassy accept for one VERY important fact...
"Yet unknown assailants opened fired on Carlos Castano last week. Though he escaped.."

Nope.. our angry lookin' Doc would never have missed. That is my story and I am sticking to it. :D LOL

[NousDefionsDoc]

I would certainly make sure I didn't miss with him. He has about 10,000 very tough friends.

They've been trying to get him for years. He's been killing FARC since he was about 14. Very, very tough man.

[The Reaper]

Originally posted by NousDefionsDoc
I would certainly make sure I didn't miss with him. He has about 10,000 very tough friends.

They've been trying to get him for years. He's been killing FARC since he was about 14. Very, very tough man.

IMHO, if they put as much effort into killing the FARC and locating their leadership as they have the AUC (must be because the AUC is a "right-wing" paramilitary), the conflict would be over much more quickly.

TR

[NousDefionsDoc]

Originally posted by The Reaper
IMHO, if they put as much effort into killing the FARC and locating their leadership as they have the AUC (must be because the AUC is a "right-wing" paramilitary), the conflict would be over much more quickly.

TR

Well, a lot of that is to keep the money flowing to the mil. There are Congressional compliance issues for continued aid that must be met.

They are doing a damn damn on the FARC as well.

Plus, the military hasn't forgotten the ass whippin' the FARC gave them last time they mounted an op after the leadership - Casa Verde in late 1990/early '91. Lost a Battalion basically.

Its starting to surface now that the FARC and AUC have been "cooperating" in certain high coca areas - imagine that!

[The Reaper]

Originally posted by NousDefionsDoc
Well, a lot of that is to keep the money flowing to the mil. There are Congressional compliance issues for continued aid that must be met.

They are doing a damn damn on the FARC as well.

Plus, the military hasn't forgotten the ass whippin' the FARC gave them last time they mounted an op after the leadership - Casa Verde in late 1990/early '91. Lost a Battalion basically.

Its starting to surface now that the FARC and AUC have been "cooperating" in certain high coca areas - imagine that!

I am stunned.

Next thing you will be telling me is that the ELN and the FARC cooperate occasionally as well.

One thing those groups are not is socialist or communist. They are all pretty good market capitalists out to make a profit.

TR

[Psywar1-0]

I wonder what effect this will have on the AUC's protection of US folks in certain areas.


Colombia warlord Castano strangled to death-friend


BOGOTA, Colombia, April 30 (Reuters) - Colombian warlord Carlos Castano, whose disappearance has rocked peace talks between the government and far-right paramilitaries, has been strangled to death by former comrades, one of Castano's friends said on Friday.

The outlaw Castano, who was political chief of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, went missing after a shootout with gunmen commanded by rival AUC chiefs at his hidden ranch in northern Colombia on April 16.

"They caught Commander Carlos alive that very day and they killed him two days later, after they kept him for two days with his hands and legs bound, in his underwear," his friend told Reuters, saying he had spoken to witnesses.

Military intelligence and state prosecution service officials who have spoken to the friend and colleague of Castano said they believed his report but still had no definitive evidence.

President Alvaro Uribe was cautious.

"What can I say about a Reuters news report? One has to respect all of them. ... The government, faced with this, must be respectful. But I cannot comment," he told reporters.

Proof Castano was killed could be a fatal blow to year-old negotiations the government hoped would lead to the disarmament of 20,000 paramilitary gunmen waging an illegal war against Marxist rebels and trafficking in cocaine.

Government officials fear the loss of Castano would fracture the AUC and make talks impossible.

Castano aides said rival AUC members heavily involved in cocaine trafficking had attacked him because he was planning to give information about their activities to U.S. authorities.

But other senior commanders from the group said Castano's guards had mistakenly opened fire on their own comrades and he ran away in the confusion.

If he is dead, it was a violent end to a violent life for a man who personally admitted to dozens of killings and forged links between his militia and Colombia's armed forces in a bloody war of revenge against Marxist rebels.

COCAINE TRAFFICKERS SUSPECTED

The negotiations, central to Uribe's hopes of pacifying a country locked in a 40-year guerrilla war, had already run into trouble due to the paramilitaries' refusal to serve jail sentences or be extradited for their crimes.

Castano's friend, as well as intelligence and prosecution officials, blamed his killing on AUC political commander Salvatore Mancuso and another AUC chief, Diego Murillo, also known as "Don Berna."

U.S. officials say Murillo is one of Colombia's biggest cocaine traffickers, and also accuse Mancuso of smuggling.

On Thursday, Mancuso denied he was a drug trafficker on local television. He said he did not know where Castano was and wanted peace talks to continue.

Castano's friend said Don Berna sent the warlord's own brother, Vicente, and a paramilitary known as "18" to kill him. "That damned 18 strangled him with his own hands," he said.

Castano's aides said he was hoping to bargain reduced jail time in the United States -- which wanted him for cocaine smuggling -- in return for information.

U.S. officials deny they were in contact with the gruff-voiced Castano, who had become something of a media star in Colombia in recent years, making television appearances from hidden locations as he tried to make the AUC politically respectable.

Together with his late brother Fidel, Castano founded what later became the AUC after Marxist guerrillas kidnapped and killed their father, a poor farmer, in the early 1980s.

Often working in cooperation with renegade sectors of the army, they killed thousands of people they suspected of collaborating with the rebels, mainly peasants, and became notorious for their methods, which even included chainsaws.

[FILO]

Show me the body and the DNA, then I will believe that Castano is dead..... maybe! How many times has the immenient dealth of Marlunanda been reported-----suffice to say more than half a dozen. IMHO someone is giving papaya..LOL I am not taking.

[Roguish Lawyer]

http://money.cnn.com/2004/05/11/news/international/chiquita.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes

Chiquita paid alleged terror groups

Banana producer says Colombian unit made protection payments to groups U.S. regards as terrorists.
May 11, 2004: 7:09 AM EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. government is investigating Chiquita Brands International Inc. for making "protection" payments to certain Colombian groups which the U.S. says are terrorist organizations, the company said Monday.

The announcement came on the same day the Cincinnati-based distributor of bananas and other fresh fruits reported first-quarter net income falling to $20 million, or 46 cents per share, from $25 million, or 62 cents, a year ago.

Chiquita Chief Executive Fernando Aguirre said in a conference call with analysts that the company is taking the investigation "very seriously, but believe it's manageable."

"I want to stress that this issue only involves our Colombia subsidiary," Aguirre said.

The Department of Justice recently indicated it will be evaluating the role and conduct of the company and some of its officers into a matter involving Chiquita's banana subsidiary in Colombia, Chiquita said.

In April 2003, the company's management and audit committee voluntarily disclosed to the Justice Department that its subsidiary had been forced to make "protection" payments, according to Chiquita.

The payments went to certain groups in Colombia that have been designated as foreign terrorist organizations under U.S. law, the company said.

Chiquita said the groups made threats against the company's workers and that it made the payments only to protect its employees.

Chiquita disclosed the matter to the Justice Department when the company learned that supporting such a federally labeled terrorist organization is a criminal act under a U.S. statute, the company said.

It is an open secret in Colombia that companies are occasionally forced to buy off illegal armed groups fighting in the country's four-decade-old war, but Chiquita's admission appeared unprecedented.

Chiquita ships bananas from plants in northern Colombia in areas with a heavy presence of the outlawed far-right United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, which is responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in recent Colombian history.

Known by its Spanish initials AUC, it has killed thousands of people, mainly peasants, for suspected links to Marxist rebels over the past few years. It also traffics cocaine, according to U.S. officials.

Human rights groups say the AUC worked closely with the army in a push against rebels in the Uraba banana growing region in the 1990s. The government says any soldiers caught cooperating with the AUC will be prosecuted.

The AUC, now negotiating peace with the government, has targeted unions, which it often accuses of being guerrilla fronts.

A Colombian union is currently trying to sue Coca Cola (KO: Research, Estimates) for the murder of a worker by paramilitaries at a bottling plant in 1996. The soft-drink company says it had nothing to do with the incident.

Banana prices this year fell sharply from the year-earlier period, when flooding in Costa Rica and Panama limited supply.

Net sales for the quarter rose to $793 million from $471 million a year earlier. Atlanta AG, a German fresh produce distributor acquired at the end of March 2003, accounted for $283 million of the increase, Chiquita said.

The remainder resulted from favorable European exchange rates and increased sales of other fresh produce, the company said.

The company said it is cooperating with the Justice Department investigation.

Shares of Chiquita (CQB: Research, Estimates) fell 21 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $17.10 on Monday on the New York Stock Exchange before the company's late-day announcement.

[The Reaper]

Interesting spin on things.

TR

Los Angeles Times
May 16, 2004
Pg. 1

Riding Shotgun On A Pipeline

Going beyond the war on drugs, the U.S. backs Colombian troops in a campaign against rebels that protects an oil company's operations.

By T. Christian Miller, Times Staff Writer

Last fall, the United States and Colombia launched an extraordinary military operation that sent thousands of troops into Arauca, a remote region of this South American country plagued by warring rebel factions and the cocaine trade.

By outward appearances, Operation Red Moon opened a new front in the two countries' long war on drugs.

This time, however, the fight also was over oil.

U.S.-trained Colombian troops, backed by U.S. intelligence and private contractors, unleashed the offensive to stop rebel attacks on a pipeline that Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp. depends on to transport oil. They also had another goal, company officials said: secure an area deep in the heart of rebel territory so Occidental could explore a new field believed to hold 20 million barrels of oil.

The three-month campaign was carried out under a little-noticed shift in U.S. policy in Colombia after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The United States had previously confined its role in Colombia to battling drugs. But with the Bush administration urging a global war on terrorism, Congress lifted restrictions on counterinsurgency aid to allow the U.S. to help Colombia fight its leftist groups, who are listed by the State Department as terrorist organizations.

Arauca and its oil were the first big test of the new policy. The U.S.
regarded the hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties Colombia received from Oxy's oil operations as vital to shoring up its ally.

Colombia's stability, in turn, was seen as crucial to a region that had become one of the most important and reliable sources of U.S. oil imports.

Latin America - including Mexico - long ago surpassed the volatile Middle East as the No. 1 supplier of oil to its northern neighbor.

Colombia and two of its neighbors - Ecuador and Venezuela - were among the top 15 oil suppliers to the United States in 2002, according to the Energy Department. If Colombia collapsed under the weight of civil war and the drug trade, the trouble could easily spread to those two countries. Venezuela, the biggest supplier of the three, poses a particularly acute problem for Washington. The U.S. has been tangling regularly with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a fiery leftist.

"If the Colombian state can't assert itself and take care of its territory, then regional security is undermined," said a State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "A variety of U.S. goals in the region are compromised, and the overall security of the U.S. is undermined."

But human rights groups say the new U.S. policy in Colombia repeats a common error in Washington's dealings with Latin America: To protect its own interests, the U.S. is taking sides in an internal conflict and embracing a government with a spotty human rights record - echoes of its close alliance with former military regimes in El Salvador and Chile.

The groups acknowledged that the U.S.-backed crackdown in Arauca had resulted in fewer attacks on the pipeline, but at the expense of basic democratic freedoms.

Mass arrests of politicians and union leaders have become common. Refugees fleeing combat have streamed into local cities. And killings have soared as right-wing paramilitaries have targeted left-wing critics.

"Everyone here is terrified," said Martin Sandoval, a left-wing activist and former provincial assembly member. "There is no freedom of expression, no freedom of assembly, no freedom of anything."

Mixing Oil and War

At a military post here one day last fall, a U.S. Special Forces trainer barked an order to a Colombian soldier. The air exploded as Colombian trainees opened fire. Machine guns rattled. Bullets slammed into a target 100 yards away. The base throbbed with sound.

At the same time, in a nearby region thick with Colombia's leftist guerrillas, Oxy contractors drilled toward a lake of oil 8,700 feet beneath the surface.

The pipeline links the two scenes.

Oxy pumps nearly 100,000 barrels of oil per day through it, a black stream worth about $3 million a day on the world market.
Colombia says the money from the pipeline is crucial to helping defeat insurgents. Through its revenue-sharing arrangement with Oxy, Colombia gets about $500 million a year for its treasury, about 5% of the country's annual budget.

But the Colombian government isn't the only beneficiary. Rebels siphon off some of the oil money that is returned to local governments, and also extort millions of dollars in cash each year from local companies. They use the money to finance their war effort.

U.S. military and State Department officials say that protecting the
pipeline serves two purposes: It shores up Colombia's fighting capability, and it deprives rebels of cash.

The oil is not of major importance to the United States, they say, because Occidental's daily production - about 20% of Colombia's output - amounts to only a fraction of U.S. demand.

"This isn't about corporate welfare, it's not about protecting Oxy," the State Department official said. "It's a security argument, not a U.S. economic interests argument."

Although Oxy has benefited, it neither pushed for the pipeline protection nor helped in the planning, company officials said.

"The Colombian government was far and away the primary beneficiary," said Larry Meriage, the company's chief spokesman. "But there's no question that better conditions in Arauca would be better for us."

The perception among many in Colombia is that Washington stepped in to benefit a U.S. company, and that has raised cries of Yankee imperialism.

Critics of the program question why the State Department recommended funding to protect only Oxy's pipeline - not a pipeline carrying oil from British-owned BP or pipelines controlled by Colombia's state-run oil company, Ecopetrol. State Department officials respond that BP's pipeline is not attacked frequently, and that Ecopetrol's pipeline generates only a fraction of the revenue that the Oxy pipeline does.

"The cost doesn't matter, whether it's blood or money," said Oscar Garcia, a local union leader for Oxy workers. "The U.S. is not going to allow a shortage of oil."

The Rebels That Oil Built

Arauca's natural beauty is stunning. The Andes soar to the west, a saw blade of black and purple in the equatorial sunlight. The province unfolds to the east as a swampy grassland dotted with villages and towns.

A land of cattle, prairie and not much else, the province was long forgotten by the national government in Bogota, high in the Andes. There were no roads, no electricity and few bridges across the many rivers that laced the plains.

Then came the oil.

In 1983, Occidental discovered one of the world's biggest oil fields, Caño Limon, which held about 1.3 billion barrels of high-value medium crude.

Money generated by the oil field flows not only to Oxy and the Colombian government, but also back to Arauca. The province received $60 million to $80 million a year in royalties, suddenly making one of the country's poorest provinces into the wealthiest per capita.

Not much wound up in the hands of locals. But those riches became a treasure chest for the ELN rebel group, an organization whose Spanish initials stand for the National Liberation Army.

The ELN, a small army of about 3,000 fighters created in 1964, was inspired by Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba a few years earlier. But by the early 1980s, the Colombian army had almost wiped it out.

Then Occidental and the pipeline contractor began funneling money, jobs and food to the group to buy its cooperation, according to Colombian law enforcement and locals who participated in some of the deals. It is estimated, all told, that millions flowed to the ELN in the early years of operations.

The rebels used the money to gain new recruits and weaponry. In effect, Occidental rescued the group that later turned against it. Oxy today denies acceding to any extortion demands.

Arauca became a haven for the ELN. There were ELN mayors, ELN journalists - even ELN priests. The rebels extorted money from local merchants. They skimmed government contracts. And they bombed the pipeline, taking a cut from the crews that went in to repair it.

Average citizens of Arauca usually cooperated with the rebels, out of either sympathy or fear of being killed.

"They were like kings," said one man, who was summoned to a meeting with the guerrillas after receiving a government contract to print a newsletter.

"They would sit there and receive people one by one."

The ELN is not Colombia's only rebel group. In the late 1990s, the largest rebel army, also founded in 1964 and known as the FARC - the Spanish initials for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - also waded into the local mix. Funded by the exploding cocaine market, it expanded into Arauca, taking over the countryside while the ELN held on to the cities.

As the two groups clashed, the FARC stepped up attacks on the pipeline in 2001. Each time it bombed the pipeline, it shut down the ELN's main funding source and weakened the rival rebel group.

The ELN's attacks had rarely stopped production. Oxy continued pumping, storing the oil in tanks until the pipeline was repaired.

But the FARC's fierce onslaught, with a bombing on average about every two days, forced Oxy to halt production for 240 days in 2001.

TBC

[The Reaper]

By the end of that year, the ELN had had enough, said a source with close ties to a former Arauca governor and to the guerrillas.

The two rebel groups reached an accord. The pipeline attacks would continue, but not at levels high enough to hamper mutual extortion profits.

Oxy's statistics show that by January 2002, the number of attacks was dropping dramatically.

A New Direction

A few months later, Colombia and the U.S. began their effort to reassert control over Arauca.

The U.S. Embassy in Bogota, after consultations with the Colombian government, began sending memos to the State Department urging that the United States fund a pipeline protection brigade, State Department officials said. The State Department responded by pushing the proposal on the Hill.

The United States had never been directly involved in pipeline protection in Colombia. But the authority to do so came in summer 2002, when Congress passed a counter-terrorism measure that lifted the old restrictions on aid to anti-drug operations.

Oxy downplays its role in the push for pipeline protection.

Meriage, the company spokesman, said Occidental never explicitly asked for it, just provided information as requested by the U.S. Embassy. Oxy provided lawmakers with documents that highlighted threats to the company's operations and the consequences of disruptions for the United States and
Colombia, he said.

The company hired lobbyists to advocate on one issue, Meriage said: to beat back an unsuccessful attempt by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who has long been critical of the U.S. government's role in Colombia, to require the company to reimburse the government for the costs of training.

One senior Democratic Senate staffer who was involved in the debate over the pipeline rejected the idea that Oxy was not lobbying for pipeline protection. "Why else were they here?" the staffer asked. "The whole point was that they wanted protection from the daily attacks against the pipeline."

Over the next six months, Congress approved funding totaling $99 million for U.S. Special Forces to train Colombian troops to protect the pipeline. The money also paid for eight new Huey and two Black Hawk helicopters, as well as night vision goggles and other equipment.

In September 2002, newly elected Colombian President Alvaro Uribe issued an emergency decree suspending some constitutional guarantees in the three Arauca counties through which the pipeline passes. The military could detain for up to 24 hours anyone not carrying identification.

The decree was later overturned by the nation's Supreme Court, but it still was part of a massive effort to regain control of the region: The police force tripled from 400 to 1,200. A special prosecutor's task force was sent from Bogota to arrest those responsible for bombing the pipeline. The army saturated the area around the pipeline.

By November 2002, Special Forces soldiers from Ft. Bragg, N.C., had arrived to set up an outpost at the headquarters of the Colombian military's 18th Brigade in the provincial capital, also called Arauca, to train Colombian soldiers to better protect the pipeline.

The fort within a fort looks like a big garage, a spare cinder-block
building surrounded by sand bags and a 30-foot-high chain-link fence to stop incoming mortar shells. U.S. soldiers sit listlessly inside the sweltering base, lifting weights or reading paperbacks, unable to leave because of danger in the surrounding community.

There have been no attacks against the troops, but rebels have
handed out fliers offering a $33,000 reward for each captured U.S. soldier.

"Is it dangerous? Absolutely," the company commander said. "The threat is always out there."

In June 2003, the first U.S.-trained battalion, Counter-Guerrilla Battalion 30, completed training. Mobile Battalion 5 is now in the process.

Army Gen. James T. Hill, head of the Miami-based Southern Command, which oversees U.S. military activities in Latin America, in testimony to Congress in October praised the end of the restrictions on military aid other than for counter-narcotics activities. He said the ability to directly help the Colombian military was "the single most important factor for us to continue
building success in Colombia."

"While this is primarily Colombia's fight to win, we have the opportunity to tip the balance by augmenting their efforts decisively with our unwavering support," Hill said.

Even as he spoke, that support was on display in Arauca.

Operation Red Moon

In September, the Colombian army's Battalion 30 got the chance to put its U.S. training to use in Operation Red Moon.

Working with U.S. military advice and after consulting with Occidental, the Colombian army decided to take the offensive in Arauca. Rather than simply post soldiers along the 60 miles of pipeline running through the province, the military planned to keep the guerrillas on the move and unable to plant bombs.

The area chosen was around Panama de Arauca, a village about 20 miles south of the pipeline in the center of Arauca's fertile prairie. Officially, there were two reasons: It was a FARC stronghold. And it was a center of cocaine growing and production.

As the Colombian military pushed guerrillas southward away from the pipeline, State Department fumigation planes began spraying coca crops.

Although the planes regularly fly missions in coca-heavy regions in the south and north of Colombia, it was the first time they had hit Arauca. They wiped out 30,000 acres of coca. Poor farmers who were growing it streamed into area towns and cities.

"We are not against the destruction of the crops, but they support many families," said Pedro Quintero, director of a nonprofit organization that helps refugees.

Although Colombian army officials denied it, Occidental executives said there was a third reason that Panama de Arauca was chosen: Occidental suspected that there was as much as 20 million barrels of oil waiting beneath the surface in a new field they called Harvest.

Finding new oil fields has taken on major importance for Colombia, which relies on petroleum for as much as a third of its foreign exchange. With several fields nearing exhaustion, the country could become a net importer of oil within four years.

New wells also are important for Oxy. The Caño Limon field pumped its billionth barrel in March 2003. New fields would ensure that the operation remained profitable until 2008, when the company's license expires. It is still uncertain whether exploration of the Harvest field paid off. One of two test wells produced oil, and the company is trying to determine whether
it is economically viable.

Occidental officials in Colombia said they did not ask the Colombian army to attack rebels in the region. They said they told the army about their interest in drilling in the area, as is standard practice.

The army drew up plans to attack guerrilla camps in the area, wipe out cocaine crops and provide the security that Oxy needed to conduct its explorations, company officials said.

"Of course, we had conversations with the army, and this allowed us to be ready" to explore the area, said one Oxy executive who, like all company employees in Colombia, did not speak on the record for security reasons. "We can't go in without security."

Use of the U.S.-trained troops to help Oxy conduct drilling brought sharp condemnation from environmentalists and human rights groups.

The activists complained that the U.S. investment in providing security for Oxy's production amounted to a $3-a-barrel subsidy from the U.S. taxpayer.

With this development, they said, the U.S. was actually helping the company drill new wells.

"It's outrageous if there's a clear relation between a U.S.-funded military operation and a private U.S. company," said Adam Isacson, who tracks Colombia for the left-leaning Center for International Policy, a Washington think tank. "We should not be paying for an oil company's security."

[The Reaper]

Mass Arrests

Complementing its attack against the FARC in the countryside, Colombia also hit the ELN in the cities with the help of U.S. intelligence.

According to Colombian sources, a U.S. intelligence officer set up a
listening post inside the 18th Brigade's headquarters.

The U.S. began sharing cellular phone and radio frequencies with the military and the special prosecutor's office to pinpoint rebels and their collaborators.

"One of the reasons for success has been their intelligence," said Gen. Carlos Lemus, head of the 18th Brigade and the man responsible for pipeline security. "This is also part of the American aid we are receiving."

Besides helping the army fight rebel units, intelligence from wiretaps and radio interceptions became important in gathering evidence for the prosecutor to order a series of arrests.

The first were in October 2002, followed by more in November, and the next April and August. Another round, in October 2003, came just three days before municipal elections. More than 200 people were charged with being linked to the guerrillas. At least 40 were freed for lack of evidence. A few were convicted. Most remain in jail pending trial.

Local politicians and human rights activists said the detentions, including those of union leaders, human rights workers, journalists, elected officials and political candidates, were politically motivated.

One detainee was Jose Murillo, the leader of the area's best-known human rights group. Another was a priest, Father Jose Helmer Muñoz, the leading candidate for governor and a frequent critic of the government's hard-line policies. A third man, Antonio Jose Ortega, won election as Saravena's mayor despite being in jail.

Few in the province deny meeting with the guerrillas, but they insist that they did nothing wrong. With no state presence, the guerrillas were the law.

Despite the heavy military presence, right-wing paramilitaries, illegal private armies dedicated to wiping out the guerrillas, have moved into the area. Left-wing critics of the authorities have been killed. Arauca now has one of the highest homicide rates in Colombia, which has one of the highest homicide rates in the world.

"We have to coexist in the middle of four different groups, the ELN, the FARC, the paramilitaries and now the government," said Arianis Barrera, whose husband was arrested while he was running for mayor. "It is totally traumatic."

But Juan Hernando Poveda, the tough-talking prosecutor, said the arrests were justified. He showed The Times seized documents that included correspondence in which a former governor sent guerrilla leaders a detailed list of the oil royalty payments he had sent them. Another document had the former governor addressing a guerrilla leader by his first name: "Dear Pablo," the communication began.

"The ELN has infiltrated everything - politics, economics and social
spheres," Poveda said. "But we find them. Rats lie down with rats."

Satisfaction

Whether the operation was a success remains unclear.

Pipeline attacks are down - but they began declining before the U.S. effort started with the arrival of the Special Forces trainers. After a high of 170 attacks in 2001, the pipeline was hit 36 times in 2002 and 34 times in 2003. So far this year, there have been just five attacks - one of the lowest numbers in the pipeline's history.

Instead, rebels began blowing up the electrical towers that provide the power for Oxy's pumps. But those attacks also have dropped off this year.

"We have taken important steps, steps never before taken," Lemus said. "But there's still a lot left to do."

On a helicopter ride between Arauca and Saravena, a U.S. Special Forces crew flew over the main Occidental compound, only a few yards from Colombia's border with Venezuela.

Huge clouds of steam rose from the plant, appearing as low, massive thunderheads looming over glinting rivers and green prairie.

The Special Forces company commander said he had no problem putting his life at risk to protect the oil pipeline.

"The Colombian government and its infrastructure is very important for the stability of the state, which ultimately is important to the stability of the U.S.," he said, shouting over the thump of the blades overhead.

"Whatever the infrastructure - oil or whatever - if it supports the
government here, it adds stability to a region that is important for the United States."

Times special correspondent Ruth Morris in Colombia and researcher Mark Madden in Washington contributed to this report.

[Roguish Lawyer]

Interesting article, TR. Thanks.

[Roguish Lawyer]

Miss Colombia

[FILO]

Originally posted by Roguish Lawyer
Miss Colombia

Not bad RL but on any given weekday during lunch hour, you could see dozen or more mujeres of this caliber walking on the Septima near the National Museum in Bogota.

[FILO]

Originally posted by The Reaper
Mass Arrests
"The Colombian government and its infrastructure is very important for the stability of the state, which ultimately is important to the stability of the U.S.," he said, shouting over the thump of the blades overhead.

"Whatever the infrastructure - oil or whatever - if it supports the
government here, it adds stability to a region that is important for the United States."



Good post TR!

VERY FEW folks here in the U.S. truly understand this concept and at some point we may have to pay a significant price for our neglect. The 7th SFG does wonderful and important work, but we are fooling ourselves if we think this military contribution and a few economic pacts will foster any long term political stability. The politicians in D.C. have to get very serious and address some of Latin America's major political/economic/social issues in a substantive and collaborative manner with Latin American govts. This also means IMO that we need to work with both Chavez of Venezuela and especially Lula of Brazil. The Darien Gap or the Rio Grande will not be able to hold back the massess if things get really ugly.

[NousDefionsDoc]

We helped set up the 18th. I know General Lemus. Good man.

[pulque]

Congress just approved a doubling of US troops on Colombia (to 800), and increased funds for an additional 200 civilian contractors.

Maybe they can find Keith Stansell, Thomas Howes, and Marc Gonsalves (contractors kidnapped February 13 2003)

[NousDefionsDoc]

Army Winning (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&e=1&u=/ap/20041111/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/colombia_army_chief)

Well, this won't do at all. Its going to get boring quick.

[lrd]

Army Winning (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&e=1&u=/ap/20041111/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/colombia_army_chief)

Well, this won't do at all. Its going to get boring quick.
If the Army wins, do you think the rebels will relocate?

[NousDefionsDoc]

A lot of them already have - along the border regions with Ecuador and Venezula.

[NousDefionsDoc]

HR NGOs should be held accountable for these deaths for forcing investigations and trials.

Suspected Rebels Kill Colombian Official

Sat Nov 13, 9:01 PM ET World - AP Latin America



BOGOTA, Colombia - Suspected Marxist rebels gunned down a state attorney in southern Colombia who had been prosecuting captured guerrilla commanders, police said Saturday.



Mario Canal, 43, was traveling in a taxi along a highway Friday near the city of Popayan, 230 miles south of Bogota, when a group of gunmen stopped the car and shot him six times, said regional police chief Col. Pablo Gomez. The assailants later vanished into nearby mountains.


Canal had been investigating alleged crimes committed by captured leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country's main leftist rebel group known by its Spanish acronym FARC.


Preliminary evidence indicated that a FARC militia was behind the attack, Gomez said. Authorities were also looking into why Canal was driving without an escort down a highway known to be teeming with rebels.


The FARC and a smaller rebel group, called the ELN, have been battling to topple the government and establish a Marxist-style state in Colombia for 40 years.

[NousDefionsDoc]

9 COLPOL KIA (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&e=1&u=/ap/20041117/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/colombia_violence)

[FILO]

Hey NDD,

Looks like the CIC will be stopping in for lunch. IIRC the last CIC to visit Colombia was the current CIC's dad. Also according to this article, it seems like the folks over at the Latin American section of the DOS may have some work to do in the next 4 years---will see; albeit I wouldn't hold my breath.

BTW: I not only had lunch but stayed at the El Caribe in Cartegena. Very nice place, the dinning room in the open air courtyard of the hotel had a minature zoo which was quite impressive; if you ignored all the animal droppings. The only problem we had at the hotlel was when we checked in and the staff realized that we were 4 gringos. After a few confused looks, our rooms were changed to the gringo section of the hotel. See I booked the hotel from in-country and the staff at the hotel assumed that we were going to be natives---wrong. During that visit, I was there during La Reina week-----OH MY GOD, is all I can say. Funny little story; during our stay there, one of my buddies lost his glass eye in the pool, no kidding. He opened his eyes while under water and the glass one slipped out of it's socket. He surfaces and says to one of my buds; hey is my eye still in it's socket. Immediately we launched a SAR mission dubbed, "Eye Recovery." That little operation consisted of a couple of gringo's scouring a pool yelling at the tops of our lungs: "que usted visto mi amigo's ojo---que usted visto mi amigo's ojo." LOL... The mission was a success when eventually it was found after securing a dive mask from the pool boy. :D


http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1119/p02s01-usfp.html
USA > Foreign Policy
from the November 19, 2004 edition

A push for cooperation - on American terms

With a packed agenda of international trips, Bush sets out to mend fences and address Latin American concerns.

By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON – That President Bush intends to make diplomatic bridge- building a priority of his second term can be seen in his heavy travel schedule over the coming weeks.
But it won't be bridge-building at the expense of what the president perceives as US interests. With critical elections on the horizon in Iraq, the next two months will be about cultivating as much international good will and cooperation as possible - without compromising Mr. Bush's core beliefs.

Friday the president flies to Santiago, Chile, for a three-day trip that includes a summit with Asian and Pacific leaders, a large number of bilateral meetings, a state visit to Chile, and a stop for lunch in Colombia Monday. Secretary of State Colin Powell will travel from Santiago to the Middle East to meet with Israelis and Palestinians to try to take advantage of the window opened by Yasser Arafat's death.

Later this month the president goes to Canada, before a postinauguration trip to Europe for a NATO summit and a visit to Britain. Other European stops might still be added.

The Chile state visit is particularly instructive. Like many of the countries Bush will visit or whose leaders he will meet, Chile opposed the war in Iraq and failed to support the US position in the United Nations Security Council in 2003. But since then both sides have made an effort to overcome that split.

The US has approved a free-trade agreement with Chile, while Chile answered a US request to send peace-keeping troops to troubled Haiti. It also shuffled its diplomatic team at the UN to include an ambassador who is a friend of National Security Adviser and Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice.

That kind of mutual accommodation may serve as an example as Bush approaches the more onerous task of repairing relations with estranged European partners, including Germany, Spain, and France. Still, no one expects Bush, convinced of a mandate to forge ahead even in ways that are unpopular abroad, to pull in America's sails.

"The president would like to mend as many fences as possible, but not at just any cost," says David Lampton, an Asia and foreign-policy expert at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. "I don't see any inclination to change the underlying policies that are giving rise to the disquiet."

An example is North Korea's nuclear-arms program. White House officials discussing Bush's trip to the Asian-Pacific Economic Conference (APEC) say the US will stick to demands for resumption of the six-party talks that have involved the US, China, Japan, Russia, and North and South Korea. In a briefing this week the officials played down growing signs of dissatisfaction with the pace and limited scope of those talks, especially from China and South Korea, saying, "We don't see the split."

Mr. Lampton says he sees no indication that the US will now show "any more flexibility with North Korea than we have in the past" - even though that is what some of the six-party partners are looking for. And he says that what is seen as US rigidity is causing problems for some governments in nations where US policies are not popular.

"Governments in our allied countries are facing populations that are not very supportive" of US policies generally or specifically in regard to North Korea, says Lampton, who just returned from a visit to South Korea. "Governments are only going to get out so far ahead of their own populations."

The South America component of Bush's trip will allow the president to refocus on a region that he had said early in his first term would be a priority, but which fell off the White House radar after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

By making a stop in Cartagena, Colombia, for lunch with President Alvaro Uribe, Bush is recognizing the efforts of a leader who successfully recast in terms of terrorism - a word bound to get the attention of the Bush administration - the stiff challenge his country faces internally from Latin America's last significant guerrilla groups.

Noting how Mr. Uribe has focused on the connection between "drugs and terrorism," one White House official says the Colombian leader "has linked the two, [and it's] a message we hope will resonate through the region."

Still, Latin America watchers are unsure that a second Bush administration intent on addressing the Middle East will pay significantly more attention to the south.

"In addition to the president's visit, we've had [Defense] Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld in Ecuador for a regional defense ministers' meeting, and Powell and [Homeland Security Secretary Tom] Ridge in Mexico right before that, so that does suggest some diplomatic current towards Latin America," says Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington.

But the real test of whether the US truly plans to fortify relations with Latin America will take place over coming months as key issues are addressed, including:

• The Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). It's already signed, but Congress must ratify it. "If it does pass, it may only be by a half-dozen votes," says Mr. Hakim. "Bush would have to spend some of the political capital he's talked about if he wants this."

• Plan Colombia. Will the administration press to continue pouring money into Colombia to fight the drugs-guerrilla nexus? Bush's stop in Colombia would suggest so.

• Andean Free Trade Agreement. The Bush administration this year initiated discussions with Colombia on a free-trade agreement to include Peru and Ecuador.

• Haiti. The hemisphere's poorest country continues to be wracked by political turmoil and violence that show no signs of abating on their own, but the US has tended to get involved reluctantly and only at moments of deep crisis.

• Regional migration. While Mexico remains the major focus for the US on immigration, Central America and the Andean countries are also important contributors to the northward flow of migrants.

"How this agenda is addressed will tell us if these latest forays are just a diplomatic flurry," says Hakim, "or if we really are going to see more attention to the region."

[NousDefionsDoc]

Yeah, the maid told me he was coming about a wekk ago. She's from up there.

[Roguish Lawyer]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americas/11/22/colombia.bush/index.html

Bush hails Colombia's efforts against drug trade
Says he wants 'Plan Colombia' aid package renewed
Monday, November 22, 2004 Posted: 6:03 PM EST (2303 GMT)

CARTAGENA, Colombia (CNN) -- President Bush heaped praise Monday on Colombia's government for battling drug gangs and corruption and said he will ask Congress to renew a U.S. aid package next year.

Bush equated Colombia's battle against the cocaine trade with the United States' struggle against terrorism, and said Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has made progress in fighting the kidnappings, killings and drug trafficking that have wracked Colombia for decades.

"My nation will continue to help Colombia prevail in this vital struggle," he said.

Asked whether he would seek the same level of aid currently provided under "Plan Colombia," the package President Clinton pushed through Congress in 2000, Bush said he will work with lawmakers "to achieve a level that will make the plan effective."

Under Plan Colombia, the United States gives Colombia training, equipment and intelligence to root out drug traffickers and destroy coca crops. The $3.3 billion, five-year package expires next year, The Associated Press reported.

Uribe took office in 2002 and launched a crackdown on the country's drug cartels and Marxist guerrillas who taxed the drug trade to fund their decades-old revolt.

"There have been significant results," Bush said. "The number of acres under [drug] cultivation are down significantly. The number of arrests are up. The number of murders is down.

"In other words, this man's plan is working, and there is a focused strategy."

Bush made the brief stop in Colombia on his way back to Washington after attending the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Chile. That visit was marred by a scuffle between Secret Service agents and Chilean security guards and the cancellation of a state dinner for Bush after the United States insisted on security measures the Chileans called unacceptable. (Full story)

Bush dismissed a question about the incident Monday, saying the small dinner held instead was "fabulous."

"I appreciated the hospitality of our Chilean friends, just like I appreciate the hospitality of our Colombian friends," he said.

Bush also said Monday in Colombia that he hoped Iran's assurance that it has frozen its uranium enrichment work is true, but that "there needs to be some verification."

[Roguish Lawyer]

Asked whether he would seek the same level of aid currently provided under "Plan Colombia," the package President Clinton pushed through Congress in 2000, Bush said he will work with lawmakers "to achieve a level that will make the plan effective."

So what level is that? More $, less, or the same? :munchin

[CRad]

Hey NDD,

Looks like the CIC will be stopping in for lunch. IIRC the last CIC to visit Colombia was the current CIC's dad.

Clinton visited Colombia while Pastrana was President. I don't think 41 visited Colombia

[lrd]

Paramilitary Fighters Disarm in Colombia

Friday, November 26, 2004


TURBO, Colombia — Some 450 right-wing paramilitary fighters left Colombia's (search) crowded battlefields, turning in their weapons and asking society to let them back into its fold.

Wearing camouflage uniforms and rubber boots, the members of the "Banana Bloc" of the outlawed United Self-Defense Forces (search), or AUC, sang the national anthem Thursday, then laid down hundreds of rifles, grenade-launchers and mortars on a long table.

"We have been given hope again," government Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo (search) told the disarmament ceremony at a soccer stadium in Turbo, 310 miles northwest of the capital, Bogota.

The ceremony completes the disbandment of the Banana Bloc, which for more than a decade held sway over much of Colombia's main banana-growing region in Antioquia state.

AUC leader Salvatore Mancuso said in a speech at that the paramilitaries were ready to "forgive our enemies and ask society to receive us in its bosom and believe in our decision to liberate ourselves from the war."

The fighters will now head to a nearby country estate where authorities will review their individual legal status, health, education and job prospects. Once deemed fit to return to civil society, they will be allowed to leave as free men.

Critics of the process, however, warn there is nothing to prevent them from regrouping under a different name and continuing to commit crimes and traffic drugs. The United States considers the AUC a "terrorist organization" and is seeking the extradition of several of its leaders, including Mancuso, on drug-related charges.

Villagers have also expressed concern that Marxist rebels driven away by the paramilitaries could return to fill the void left by the demobilization. The army says it has sent 500 additional troops to secure the region.

Peace talks between the government and the AUC began in July in a safe haven in northwest Colombia and aim to demobilize the AUC's 15,000 right-wing fighters by 2006. Hundreds have already demobilized, though the fate of commanders and fighters accused of gross human rights abuses has yet to be decided.

Colombia's paramilitary groups were created two decades ago to combat leftist guerrillas. The paramilitaries, like their rebel foes, finance themselves through drug trafficking and extortion.

While the paramilitaries press forward with the demobilizations, two leftist rebel groups that have been battling the government for 40 years have shunned appeals by the government to declare a cease-fire and start talks.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,139643,00.html

[NousDefionsDoc]

"Banana Block" - LOL

Its Bananero, not Banano.

This is a bad AO, up there. Very hard core people.

[Roguish Lawyer]

Festive avatar!

[Roguish Lawyer]

True, you think? :munchin

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americas/11/27/bush-plot/index.html

Colombian official: Rebels planned to kill Bush
Saturday, November 27, 2004 Posted: 3:38 PM EST (2038 GMT)

(CNN) -- U.S. President George W. Bush was targeted for assassination by Marxist rebels this week when he visited the city of Cartagena, a Colombian official said Saturday.

"We found out through informers and various sources that groups within the [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] had been instructed from its leadership to make an assassination attempt on President Bush," Colombian Defense Secretary Jorge Alberto Uribe told Caracol TV, a Bogota-based satellite network.

Uribe said no evidence of the alleged plot by the group -- Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia or FARC -- has been recovered.

The U.S. Secret Service declined to comment on the alleged plot.

"The Secret Service does not comment or release information regarding our protective intelligence and protective methods," said spokesman Jonathan Cherry. "Secret Service does not discuss any alleged threats to our protectees."

Security was heavy during Bush's visit, and no incidents occurred.

FARC has frequently been accused of targeting visiting international leaders for assassination.

"The administration of George W. Bush is everything that Marxist rebels hate in a U.S. government," journalist Toby Muse in Bogota, Colombia, told CNN.

"The plots against the president's life don't seem to have advanced very far," Muse said.

The president stopped briefly in Colombia on November 22 on his way back to Washington after attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Santiago, Chile. (Full story)

Established in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party, FARC is Colombia's oldest, largest, most capable and best-equipped Marxist rebel group, according to the U.S. Department of State. The group, which has about 13,500 members, conducts bombings, murders, kidnappings and hijackings, the State Department said.

The State Department has classified FARC as a terrorist group.

Colombia has seen decades of civil warfare, involving government troops, leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary groups.

CNN's Suzanne Malveaux contributed to this report.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Government BS to stay on the radar screen. Muse is an asshole.

[CRad]

Paramilitary Fighters Disarm in Colombia


AUC leader Salvatore Mancuso said in a speech at that the paramilitaries were ready to "forgive our enemies and ask society to receive us in its bosom and believe in our decision to liberate ourselves from the war."



Forgive their enemies? That for damn sure -


COLOMBIA


Paramilitaries ally with rebels for drug trade

Formerly archenemies, Colombian right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing guerrillas have put their differences aside, working together in the illicit-drug trade.
BOGOTA - In Colombia, drug trafficking and war can make for strange bedfellows.

In recent months, U.S. and Colombian authorities have noticed an alarming amount of direct contact between right-wing paramilitary groups and left-wing guerrillas from the country's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. They are not fighting, authorities say, but working or doing business together.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/front/10268889.htm

[NousDefionsDoc]

''These are more local arrangements,'' said Alfredo Rangel, a former military consultant with the Ministry of Defense. ``The FARC is trying to divide the paramilitaries and the narcos.''

Alfredo Rangel has forgotten more about the Colombian conflict than most people will ever know. I consider him to be one of the few worth listening to and read his column religiously.

There will be those on both the US and Colombian sides that try to make many connections all over, as it will keep the money flowing. It doesn't do them any good to have a local problem. It all needs to be part of a big conspiracy and a threat to the US.

What Rangel says makes sense to me. The Paras, with narco money, are the one thing the FARC truly fear. it only makes sense they would try to divide and conquer. Also, many of the paras are former Gs. Not hard to believe they would work out some local arrangements for good business.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Told you so (http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20041129-063748-4732r.htm)

LOL :lifter

[NousDefionsDoc]

Another One Busted (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&e=2&u=/ap/20041212/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/colombia_captured_rebel)

[Roguish Lawyer]

Another One Busted (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&e=2&u=/ap/20041212/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/colombia_captured_rebel)

"Rebellion," now that's a sweet crime! LOL

[lrd]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,142559,00.html


Colombian Marxist Rebels Kidnap 10 Tourists

Sunday, December 26, 2004

BOGOTA, Colombia — Marxist rebels have abducted up to 10 tourists celebrating Christmas at a lakeside spa in northwestern Colombia (search), officials said.

Fighters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (search), or FARC, raided a cluster of bungalows late Friday near San Rafael, 230 kilometers (140 miles) northwest of Bogota, and herded between 8 to 10 vacationers into vehicles, Jorge Mejia, deputy governor of Antioquia state, told The Associated Press.

"Unfortunately, witnesses did not report the kidnapping to authorities until late today, so the guerrillas have had plenty of time to reach their hideouts deep in the mountains," Mejia said Saturday.

He said army troops and counterinsurgency police forces, supported by helicopters, have launched a large-scale search and rescue operation.

"This is a criminal action, in no way justifiable. The victims were middle-class families enjoying a Christmas break," Mejia said. He said the FARC probably seized the group for ransom.

The abductions came despite the deployment of more than 100,000 security forces to safeguard highways and popular tourist spots during the busy holiday season.

A security crackdown ordered by President Alvaro Uribe (search) has sharply reduced the number of kidnappings and killings in the past two years, making Colombians feel it was safe to venture into what used to be effectively no-go areas.

"It's a specially hard blow because San Rafael had been very peaceful recently," Mejia said.

The FARC kidnaps hundreds of people every year, mainly for ransom, to help fund its 40-year-old war to topple the government and establish a Marxist state in Colombia. The conflict involving leftist guerrillas, government troops and right-wing paramilitary militias kills more than 3,000 people every year.

[Roguish Lawyer]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/01/01/colombia.killings.ap/index.html

16 peasants massacred in Colombia
Saturday, January 1, 2005 Posted: 7:54 PM EST (0054 GMT)

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Suspected Marxist rebels massacred 16 peasants, including women and children, in a remote area in lawless Arauca province, police said Saturday.

The attack came last Friday less than an hour before the New Year arrived in the village of Puerto San Salvador, 230 miles northeast of Bogota, Arauca police chief Col. Rodrigo Palacio told The Associated Press.

He said the killers, believed to be members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, accused the peasants of collaborating with right-wing paramilitary militias. The dead included six men, six women and four children.

Leftist rebels have long battled the outlawed paramilitary fighters of the United Self-Defense Forces, or AUC, for control of Arauca, one of Colombia's most violent provinces that is a strategic corridor for smuggling drugs and arms across the border to Venezuela.

The AUC is involved in a peace process with the government and has demobilized more than 3,000 fighters this year. The FARC has shunned government offers to start negotiations.

The massacre came the same day that President Alvaro Uribe took the unprecedented step of extraditing a top FARC commander to the United States on drug trafficking and terrorism charges, raising fears of reprisal attacks.

Colombia's armed forces chief put his troops on high alert after Ricardo Palmera, a former FARC peace negotiator believed to have been heavily involved in the group's financial operations, became the first FARC leader to be sent for trial in a U.S. federal court.

The extradition came after the FARC failed to comply with an ultimatum from Uribe to free 63 hostages, including three Americans.

Colombia's 40-year-old conflict kills more than 3,000 people every year.

______________________________________________

Photo caption:

Ricardo Palmera, a former FARC peace negotiator, is escorted by special forces after his arrest in Ecuador, January 3, 2004.

[NousDefionsDoc]

I used to work in Arauca. Law of the Gun applies in ever sense of the term.

[Sigi]

Oliver North on Colombia (http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ollienorth/on20050114.shtml)

[Roguish Lawyer]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/02/01/colombia.rebel.ap/index.html

Rebels kill 14 Colombian soldiers
Tuesday, February 1, 2005 Posted: 4:07 PM EST (2107 GMT)

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Leftist rebels attacked a Colombian marine post in southwest Colombia with homemade rockets early Tuesday, killing at least 14 soldiers and wounding about 25, the commander of the Colombian navy said.

Government forces in river gunboats, an airplane outfitted with machine guns and helicopters were pursuing the rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, who attacked the marine outpost in the village of Iscuande, the navy said. Scattered clashes were reported in the region, which is in the heart of one of Colombia's cocaine producing areas.

A lieutenant who commanded the jungle outpost and 13 other marines were killed in the pre-dawn attack, said Adm. Mauricio Soto, the commander of the Colombian navy.

"We deeply regret the death of our men but this was a group of Colombians who died defending their country and its people," Soto told a news conference in the capital, Bogota. He said marines and police in Iscuande, 490 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of Bogota, prevented the insurgents from overrunning the town and attacking its police headquarters.

It was the bloodiest attack by the FARC in two years and came amid a government offensive, called Plan Patriot, deep into the rebel's jungle lairs in southern Colombia, more than 150 miles (240 kilometers) from the site of Tuesday's attack.

The navy said FARC rebels used large gas cylinders converted into rockets to attack the marine outpost, which is located near where the Iscuande River empties into the Pacific Ocean. Soto said drug traffickers transport chemicals used to produce cocaine along the river to clandestine labs inland and use the waterway to send purified cocaine out to boats at sea.

The rebels, who control a large share of cocaine production in Colombia, apparently launched the attack to wrest control of the river from authorities, Soto said.

Some of the troops who were attacked are so-called campesino marines, or peasant marines, who are natives of the area where they are stationed and who receive three months of military training.

The deployment of thousands of campesino troops in Colombia to protect their own villages and farms from the rebels is a major component of hardline President Alvaro Uribe's strategy to bring Colombia's 40-year-old insurgency to its knees.

The attack occurred in Narino state, a major cocaine-producing center near the Ecuadorean border that is dotted with coca fields that provide the main ingredient of cocaine, and rudimentary processing labs. Colombian counternarcotics troops were assisting in the pursuit of the rebels, the navy said.

The United States has provided about US$3 billion (euro2.3 billion) in mostly military aid to Colombia since 2000 to combat the rebels and drug production whose profits fuel the war. U.S. Special Forces have trained Colombian counternarcotics troops.

While the Plan Patriot offensive has rocked the FARC onto its heels, the attack Tuesday shows that the rebels retain the capability of striking in diverse points of this Andean nation.

It was the bloodiest FARC attack since the rebels wired a house in the southern city of Neiva with explosives and detonated it on February 14, 2003 as police entered, killing 17 people, including nine police officers, a prosecutor and several civilians.

[Roguish Lawyer]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/06/26/colombian.soldiers.ap/index.html

Colombia mounts counterattack against rebels

Sunday, June 26, 2005; Posted: 7:33 p.m. EDT (23:33 GMT)

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- President Alvaro Uribe flew to the battlefields of southwest Colombia to oversee a massive counterattack against leftist rebels on Sunday, a day after 25 soldiers were killed in attacks across the country.

As many as 300 members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, on Saturday attacked oil wells near Puerto Asis and ambushed an army convoy, killing at least 19 soldiers. Rebel casualty figures were not known.

More than 1,000 troops backed by helicopter gunships hunted down several hundred rebels believed to be heading for the nearby border with Ecuador to seek refuge from the fighting, army officials said.

Uribe insisted that his government won't retreat from the decision to defeat the rebels. "Terrorism is an obstacle to democracy," Uribe said in brief remarks to reporters before traveling to Puerto Asis, 530 kilometers (330 miles) southwest of Bogota.

Another 19 soldiers who went missing during the combat were found alive early Sunday, said Acting Army chief Gen. Hernan Alonso Ortiz.

"They are in good health," Ortiz said in a statement. The soldiers got separated from their unit during the clashes Saturday and had been unable to contact their commanders.

A further six soldiers died Saturday when they clashed with rebels blockading a road in northeast Colombia -- making it the deadliest day for the military since Uribe came to power three years ago on pledges of crushing the 40-year-old insurgency.

Before going into a meeting with Uribe in Puerto Asis, Mayor Jorge Eliecer Coral said he was going to ask the president to boost security along the border with Ecuador to curb the flow of rebels and arms.

"We are fed up that insurgents cross over from Ecuador to commit crimes in our lands," Coral told reporters. For years, FARC guerrillas and have slipped across the 640-kilometer (400-mile) border into Ecuador's northern jungle region to seek refuge from battle and to buy supplies.

Dozens of desperate family members, meanwhile, gathered outside the regional army headquarters in the city of Cali on Sunday to find out if their loved ones were among the dead.

"I'm so worried, we haven't had any news from him for several days and he is supposed to leave the army in two months," Efrain Rodallega, whose brother was sent to guard oil wells near Puerto Asis, told RCN television.

The FARC has this year launched some of its boldest attacks on the military since peace talks collapsed in February 2002, killing more than 130 soldiers.

The rebel offensive came after military commanders at the start of the year said the rebels were being brought to their knees and that a U.S.-backed, 3-year-old military buildup ordered by Uribe had forced the FARC into irreversible decline.

Analysts say the FARC wants to undermine Uribe's re-election hopes by showing that his security crackdown has failed and that only peace talks with a leader more sympathetic to the rebels can lead to peace.

"These attacks are a sign that the FARC is gearing up for a military escalation ahead of the May 2006 elections to show that (Uribe's) democratic security policy is a failure," said professor Roman Ortiz, a terrorism expert at Los Andes University.

The Constitutional Court, the country's highest judicial authority, has yet to rule on whether Uribe can seek a second consecutive term.

Army officials maintain the FARC is made up of 12,000 fighters now, down from 18,000 a year ago, due to deaths, captures and desertions brought on by the government offensive.

Concern has mounted recently that the rebels could gain a foothold in areas currently controlled by outlawed right-wing paramilitary militias, which are due to disband by the end of the year under a peace process with the government that critics say will let killers off the hook.

Colombia's drug-fueled conflict pits the FARC and the smaller National Liberation Army against the paramilitary militias and government forces, killing more than 3,000 people every year.

[NousDefionsDoc]

"These attacks are a sign that the FARC is gearing up for a military escalation ahead of the May 2006 elections to show that (Uribe's) democratic security policy is a failure," said professor Roman Ortiz, a terrorism expert at Los Andes University.
Yup

[FILO]

Right in time for my visit in August.


Edited by the Team Sergeant

[FILO]

Latest poll shows 54 percent in favor of giving Uribe the opportunity to run for re-election. 77 percent favorable rating, considering his two previous counterparts were in the low 30s at this point in their term, this is amazing. This is significant and he may very well get the opportunity to run. Ironically he is in the Liberal not Conservative party. How the left will squeal if he gets the chance because he will win, again!!! :p




El sondeo no alcanza a reflejar el rifirrafe entre el ex presidente Gaviria y el presidente Uribe. En la foto aparecen cuando Gaviria todavía era secretario general de la OEA.
Archivo / EL TIEMPO



Presidente tendría la probabilidad de continuar en el poder si se aprueba la reelección, dice Anif




Junio 26 de 2005
54 por ciento de los colombianos cree que la reelección del presidente Álvaro Uribe sería positiva

Así lo revela una ecuesta contratada por el Partido Liberal a la firma Napoleón Franco. El Primer Mandatario mantiene favorabilidad del 77 por ciento.

Otra de las principales conclusiones es que la mayoría cree que el país va por mal camino.

La encuesta 'Cómo va Colombia' fue realizada en 8 ciudades capitales del país (Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, Ibagué, Santa Marta y Montería). La medición es la primera de una serie de encuestas que buscará entregar a la opinión pública información longitudinal, "es decir no fotos sino fotogramas para poder ver la película completa" afirma Napoleón Franco.

Otras conclusiones

Otras conclusiones reveladoras de la encuesta son:

El liberal sigue siendo el partido más fuerte (32 por ciento frente a 13 por ciento de los uribistas)
Se empieza a erosionar el apoyo a la reelección (54 por ciento la apoya frente al 63 por ciento según la encuesta revelada por EL TIEMPO el 19 de junio)
La mayoría de los colombianos cree que los grupos armados siguen fuertes y peligrosos (51 por ciento en general, 63 por ciento las Farc y 50 por ciento los paramilitares)
Hay una alta infiltración de los grupos paramilitares en la vida política y económica del país (57 por ciento a nivel nacional).
La muestra fue tomada entre el 26 de mayo y el 3 de junio pasados lo que quiere decir que la encuesta tiene en cuenta la crisis del proceso de paz con los 'paras' por el caso 'don Berna' y gran parte de la discusión del proyecto de 'justicia y paz'. La pelea entre el presidente Álvaro Uribe y el ex presidente César Gaviria no alcanza a ser cobijada pero es probable que los resultados de la medición hayan servido de insumo para las decisiones del Congreso Liberal del 10 y 11 de junio e inclusive para el tono crítico del discurso de Gaviria en ese escenario. Este sondeo resulta, en términos generales, menos favorable al presidente Uribe que la encuesta revelada por El TIEMPO el 19 de junio. Cabe aclarar, sin embargo, que tanto la muestra como el cubrimiento geográfico de esta son menores a los de la encuesta previamente publicada.

68 por ciento cree que las cosas siguen igual o peor

La encuesta revela que los independientes son los más pesimistas seguidos de los del Polo Democrático y los liberales. Los uribistas son de lejos los más optimistas. Los resultados también muestran un estancamiento en este punto pues un 68 por ciento de los encuestados cree que en los últimos 6 meses las cosas en el país están iguales o empeorando.

Aunque la ventaja del Partido Liberal es clara en cuanto a la filiación política de los colombianos vale la pena aclarar que el partido uribista no existe como tal. Este resultado puede reflejar una fortaleza para los liberales frente a las elecciones parlamentarias de marzo del 2006.

Reelección

En cuanto al tema de la reelección la encuesta muestra que a pesar de que la figura mantiene un apoyo mayoritario hay una clara disminución de los simpatizantes y se empieza a ver una tendencia hacia la polarización. Los segmentos de la población que más apoyan la reelección son la clase alta, los hombres y las personas que tienen entre 36 y 55 años. En cuanto a la filiación política, los uribistas y los conservadores están más a favor de la figura. Resulta revelador que los independientes, quienes conforman el sector político más grande del país, son, junto al Polo Democrático, quienes menos apoyan la reelección.

Hay una pregunta interesante sobre la votación en un eventual referendo si la Corte tumbara la reelección. El 50 por ciento de los encuestados votaría a favor de la figura mientras que el 25 por ciento no votaría y el 21 por ciento votaría en contra.

Uribe mantiene favorabilidad del 77 por ciento

El presidente Uribe mantiene una altísima favorabilidad (77 por ciento) pero la aprobación de su gestión en algunos temas específicos como la economía (37 por ciento), el desempleo (29 por ciento) y los impuestos (22 por ciento) es muy baja. Según Napoleón Franco esa diferencia entre la favorabilidad y el desempeño se explica porque la primera es una idea más generosa mientras que la segunda es más concreta y se refiere a temas específicos. "Uno puede tener una imagen favorable de Juan en el colegio pero también uno puede pensar que Juan no es bueno para las matemáticas", explica Franco.

[Peregrino]

FILO - !La proxima ves que quisiera apostar algo - Haganos el favor de traducir lo todo a Ingles para los quienes no hablan Espanol! Peregrino

[Roguish Lawyer]

FILO - !La proxima ves que quisiera apostar algo - Haganos el favor de traducir lo todo a Ingles para los quienes no hablan Espanol! Peregrino

Si! Que es su problemo? LOL

[Roguish Lawyer]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/08/01/colombia.tourism.reut/index.html

Colombia pushes international tourism

Monday, August 1, 2005; Posted: 9:15 p.m. EDT (01:15 GMT)

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- To hear Colombia's minister of tourism tell it, conditions are ripe for a major push to attract foreign tourists to a country better known for drugs, wars and kidnapping than for its beaches, mountains and virgin forests.

Things are looking up in Colombia, according to Jorge Humberto Botero, who also holds the commerce and trade portfolios in the government of President Alvaro Uribe.

After the success of what he termed Phase I in tourism development, now is the time to move to Phase II.

Phase I was meant to boost domestic tourism and featured "touristic caravans," or convoys of dozens of cars escorted by 120-strong contingents of police and military, bristling with assault rifles and machine guns along roads considered unsafe because of guerrilla activity.

Most of the roads to vacation spots are safe, Botero said, the result of a series of offensives since Uribe took power in 2002, which pushed the guerrillas back from towns and cities.

"Now the conditions are in place to make a big effort to attract foreign tourists," Botero said. "We have beach resorts on the Caribbean, we have virgin jungle in the Amazon and along the Pacific, we have high mountains in the Andes," he said in a recent interview.

What Colombia does not have is an image that might persuade foreigners to visit Latin America's fourth-largest country and one of its most ecologically and geographically diverse.

Guidebooks invariably refer to Colombia as a land of myths and magic. They rarely fail to mention that it spawned Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude," the masterpiece of a literary genre known as magic realism.

Colombia has a lot of catching up to do. Government figures show that it had just over 1.7 million visitors in 2003. Mexico, in comparison, attracts around 19 million tourists a year and France 80 million.

Holding back foreign visitors are fears for their safety because of a war which is now in its 42nd year and involves the armed forces, two left-wing guerrilla groups, right-wing paramilitary forces, several private armies and the peasants who grow coca leaf and opium poppy, the plants from which cocaine and heroin are made.

Dark image
That has all conspired to give the country a dark image. But, said Botero, "All the figures show that we have made notable advances in improving security. Even the U.S. government's travel warning reflects that."

He was referring to U.S. Department of State advisories about countries it considers dangerous. The latest on Colombia, in May, said "violence by narcoterrorist groups and other criminal elements continues to affect all parts of the country, urban and rural. No one can be considered immune on the basis of occupation, nationality or any other factor."

The warning, however, also noted that violence had decreased markedly in the cities of Bogota, Medellin, Barranquilla and Cartagena. "They (the U.S.) modified the warning in a positive sense," said Botero, referring to a previous blanket recommendation not to go to Colombia at all.

The government takes pride in statistics which show that murders have declined by 34 per cent and kidnappings by 56 per cent since 2002. According to international figures, that still leaves Colombia at the top of the world league for kidnappings and near the top for murders.

But safety for tourists is relative. Without using the words tsunami or bomb attack, Botero said Colombia might benefit from the fears inspired by the devastating Indian Ocean floods which killed more than 170,000 people last Christmas and the coordinated blasts last month in the London subway and bus system which killed 50.

So far, Colombia has done little to portray itself as a tourist destination. At least in the United States, Juan Valdez, the mustachioed farmer in commercials for Colombian coffee, is better known than Cartagena, the historic Caribbean port city on the U.N.'s list of world heritage sites.

Botero described the tourism ministry's promotion budget as "small and utterly insufficient." Hotels and restaurants are supposed to make compulsory contributions to a fund for advertising, but the minister admitted that this had not been properly enforced.

Botero said airlines and companies running toll roads leading to tourist destinations should also pay into the fund.

"Colombia can't even put up a good stand at an international tourism fair," he said. "If we want foreign tourists to come, we need to increase tourism promotion."

The government places its hopes for increased tourism on Latin America and Europe, particularly Spain, the leading foreign investor in Colombia. Botero is sure that once Colombia and the United States sign a free trade agreement, more U.S. business executives will visit to conclude deals.

"It will be relatively easy to turn these business travelers into tourists," he said.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Freakin' great! Now I got to find a new country and move...

[Roguish Lawyer]

Freakin' great! Now I got to find a new country and move...

Sure you don't want to start a new tour guide business? :D

[FILO]

FILO - !La proxima ves que quisiera apostar algo - Haganos el favor de traducir lo todo a Ingles para los quienes no hablan Espanol! Peregrino
Si Senor! :) Translation: I guess all of my Spanish postings from now on will consist of: "donde esta mi diccionario?

[Mike792]

Bill Coming back down in a few days. Do you need Copehagen?

[NousDefionsDoc]

Yes please. Lots.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Si! Que es su problemo? LOL
Cual es su problema.

54% is low. The poll was probably taken only with Bogota people. He will be re-elected if they let him run again. The problem is they got used to rotating and the other side wants their turn.

[DoctorDoom]

x

[NousDefionsDoc]

Which NGO's are "forcing" investigations? I thought the Colombians themselves wanted these criminals prosecuted? What options are there without trial and punishment?

Apparently, anti-pipeline activity directed against Oxy's assets in Ecuador is picking up. That and the Ecuadorean political morass recently is making my friend in Quito pull his hair out.
All of them. The FARC are terrorists. You don't send a DA in a taxi to investigate and try terrorists. You send shooters to shoot them in the face. Terrorism is not a law enforcement issue.

[DoctorDoom]

x

[NousDefionsDoc]

They are arresting and trying them because the cowards won't stand and fight, they surrender. As long as they keep deporting them to the US, I don't really have a problem with it. The jails in Colombia are a joke and there is no death penalty.

They aren't focusing on it anymore and most of that was done as a condition of aid. Since 9-11, the focus is different.

Make no mistake about it, what progress haqs been made has been made at the end of an iron fist.

What's wrong with "secret military actions"? :munchin

[Jimbo]

The attempt to fight FARC solely with shooters in the past had failed and lead to the rise of the paramilitaries, hardly an improvement in the situation.

That is not what gave rise to the paramilitaries.

[Jimbo]

The jails in Colombia are a joke and there is no death penalty.

I've been in tutoring sessions to get my Spanish back up to a 3+ and my prof is a former lawyer and Colombian MI officer. We were talking the other day about one of the prisons where there had been a massive firefight between the paramilitary and guerrilla inmates. Another prison has different levels of rooms you can 'rent'. Some have flat panel tvs, desks, computers. The same prison also has an Italian resturant (the chef is in on drug smuggling).

[FILO]

DD: the use of the LE approach as adding some kind of “legitimacy” may seem like a useful or rational method but it's rather naive in its implementation in Colombia. Since FARC and ELN traditionally garner less than 5% of political support WITHIN COLOMBIA, your suggestion would have very little practical impact except in Paris, Berlin or the coffee houses in Berkeley, CA. If you ask the Jose or Maria on the streets of Bogotá he/she wants a resounding military defeat of the G with the G leaders hanging from the nearest tree.

Not until Uribe has any Col Govt. made a serious attempt at resolving this conflict. Pastrana tried, but he was naive and failed. That’s why Pastrana in the last year of his Presidency was forced to forgo the political process and launched a military offensive to re-secure the "safe-haven" which was turned over to FARC at the on-set of his presidency.

I have said this before and I will say it again, it's all about the money. I agree that the Col Govt. needs to use traditional LE SOP's in fighting FARC, as part of its tool box, but this conflict will only end once the senior leadership of FARC is feeding worms and the big three money sources (narco, kidnapping and extortion) are effectively attacked. Making dead Gs, tracking and seizing G funds, are the keys to success. Arresting G commanders and doing the perp walk will accomplish nothing except to centralize the G’s C&C.

Prior to 1993, FARC and ELN were a nuisance and not much of a threat, WHY? If you are looking to resolve this conflict, then understanding and appreciating the answer to this question would be a good place to start. The answer is truly IRONIC, especially given the LE recommendation!

[NousDefionsDoc]

I've been in tutoring sessions to get my Spanish back up to a 3+ and my prof is a former lawyer and Colombian MI officer. We were talking the other day about one of the prisons where there had been a massive firefight between the paramilitary and guerrilla inmates. Another prison has different levels of rooms you can 'rent'. Some have flat panel tvs, desks, computers. The same prison also has an Italian resturant (the chef is in on drug smuggling).
"Patios" - each group has their own. It is outrageous.

[Roguish Lawyer]

Cual es su problema.


Gracias. Mi espanol es muy malo.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Pesimo, pero no es tu culpa, nadie te entreno. No hay problema.

[NousDefionsDoc]

State Department Certifies Colombia's Cooperation on Human Rights
Rice determines that Colombia meets statutory criteria for U.S. aid

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has determined and certified that the government and armed forces of Colombia meet statutory criteria on respect for human rights, says Tom Casey, the U.S. State Department's acting spokesman.

Rice's August 1 decision, announced by Casey in a statement released August 3, ensures that Colombia will receive the final 12.5 percent of withheld U.S. foreign-aid funding that was obligated during Fiscal Year (FY) 2004, as well as the first 12.5 percent of withheld FY 2005 funds. "The last 12.5 percent of withheld FY 2005 funds cannot be obligated until the Secretary makes another certification and determination" at a later date, Casey explained.

"Promoting respect for human rights is central to our policy in Colombia," Casey said. He added that Colombia's "President [Alvaro] Uribe and other senior Colombian officials have assured us they are committed to working with us on concrete measures" to further improve Colombia's protection of human rights.

Following is the text of Casey's statement:

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesman
August 3, 2005

STATEMENT BY TOM CASEY, ACTING SPOKESMAN

Colombia: Determination and Certification of Colombian Government and Armed Forces with Respect to Human Rights-Related Conditions

On August 1, 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice determined that there is sufficient progress to certify to Congress that the Colombian Government and Armed Forces are meeting statutory criteria related to human rights and severing ties to paramilitary groups.

Promoting respect for human rights is central to our policy in Colombia. While there has been progress, we also recognize that more needs to be done to improve the human rights situation, sever military-paramilitary ties, and end impunity in Colombia. Under Secretary R. Nicholas Burns met with President Uribe and key members of his cabinet and staff during a July 26-27 visit to Bogotá. In those meetings, the Government of Colombia agreed to expedite resolution of the most critical cases of human-rights abuses and further demonstrated its commitment through new appointments to its senior leadership.

We expect continued high-level attention to resolving human-rights concerns from the government of Colombia. President Uribe and other senior Colombian officials have assured us they are committed to working with us on concrete measures the Government of Colombia should take to achieve these important objectives.

This August's determination and certification by Secretary Rice, which is effected pursuant to Sections 563 (a) (3) and 556(a) (2) of the FY 2004 and FY 2005 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act (FOAA), permits the final 12.5 percent of withheld FY 2004 funds, and the first 12.5 percent of withheld FY 2005 funds, to be obligated. The last 12.5 percent of withheld FY 2005 funds cannot be obligated until the Secretary makes another certification and determination. Under Section 563(a)(1) of the FY 2004 FOAA and Section 556(a) (1) of the FY 2005 FOAA, 75 percent of assistance to the Colombian Armed Forces has already been obligated without conditions, and the first 12.5 percent of withheld FY 2004 funds were obligated following the Secretary's certification for Colombia in September 2004.