Word: ecuador
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Wisps of evaporating water rise from the dark green Amazon rainforest as an Ecuadorian military helicopter swerves along the San Miguel River. Each day, slim boats with outboard motors ferry dozens of people between the hamlets of Puerto Nuevo, Ecuador, and Teteye, Colombia, across the brown and winding border waterway. Most are doing business or visiting relatives. But this year boatmen are increasingly carrying Ecuadorian mourners to retrieve the bodies of loved ones. Most, they say, were killed by Colombian troops because they were suspected of aiding the Marxist guerrillas known as the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, or FARC...
Border life inside the dark green Amazon rainforest is murky and dangerous enough without guerrilla politics mingled in. But along the San Miguel River, communities are feeling squeezed as never before by the FARC, which makes a habit of encamping inside Ecuador, and the Colombian military, which for the first time ever has the FARC on the run. Now, in its pursuit, the Colombians feel emboldened enough to ignore the frontier. Last month Colombian special forces made a raid into Ecuador and killed the FARC's No. 2 comandante, Raul Reyes...
That incursion spurred an Andean diplomatic crisis: an angry Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa severed relations with Colombia, and the Organization of American States called the attack a violation of sovereignty. But conservative Colombian President Alvaro Uribe accused Ecuador and its left-wing government of harboring the FARC, which has fought the Colombian government in a bloody civil war for 44 years. Uribe claims that data on Reyes' laptop computer reveals ties between the FARC and Ecuadorian Security Minister Gustavo Larrea. Correa vehemently denies it, insisting his military has removed FARC camps inside Ecuador and that Colombia - whose own military...
...imbroglio has exposed enough weaknesses inside Ecuador's military establishment to prod Correa into a shakeup this month. He sacked his defense minister - his third in 14 months as President - along with other top brass. The new defense chief, Javier Ponce, has a long history as a critic of Ecuador's military and has promised to strengthen civilian control and transparency. Ecuador has also pledged to implement a long-delayed plan to beef up the state's border presence, which is almost non-existent beyond the army, and improve public services. On Thursday Correa announced that foreign lenders have agreed...
...FARC's presence in Ecuador may be shadowy, but it's no secret. Ecuador spends more than $100 million each year to patrol the area. But for about 20 years FARC units like the 48th Front have regularly slipped across the porous border into Ecuador - there are only two points along the 250-mile (400 km) frontier where passports are even checked - under cover of the rainforest's lush vegetation to retreat, rest or replenish supplies. Half a million Colombians are estimated to have moved into Ecuador with them. (Ecuador has recognized about 60,000 as war refugees.) Muddy Ecuadorian...