Word: farce
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Although the FARC doesn't cultivate or trade narcotics itself, it provides an almost impenetrable wall of protection for the farmers and traffickers in the dense jungles and swamps of the south. And its improbably large treasury has fueled the movement's growth into a well-armed nationwide fighting force of some 17,000. The guerrillas, who are holding some 500 members of the government's security forces prisoner in their zone of control, are believed to have their own helicopters, and Colombians who are stopped at their roadblocks on national highways have reported having their driver's licenses entered...
...Attempts by the Pastrana government to negotiate a peace deal with the rebels have broken down, after the guerrillas violated a cease-fire agreement by expanding their operations well beyond the south, where the government recognized their control. "Pastrana is hoping that when the FARC see this massive influx of U.S. aid to his government, they'll get weak-kneed and be willing to get serious about negotiating a truce," says TIME Latin America bureau chief Tim McGirk. "After all, this war has been going on for more than 40 years and that gives the FARC a strong vested interest...
...concerned. "The U.S. military is reluctant to be drawn into a counterinsurgency war," says TIME Pentagon correspondent Mark Thompson. "They don't think it's possible to say you're going to go down there and help the Colombian military shoot drug traffickers without shooting at the FARC, and that makes them very nervous. It's a rebellion that's been going on for some 40 years, and it's plainly not going to come to an end soon - the Pentagon fears it's a whirlpool that's going to suck them...
...taking some $6 million in campaign contributions from drug barons. "There's general agreement that President Pastrana is pretty clean," says McGirk. "But it's hard to know how deep the corruption in the military goes. It's definitely there, because it's plain to see that the FARC sometimes has access to intelligence about raids by the military before they occur...
...allegiance is to those who guarantee it the speediest, safest passage to market. With Colombian government economists calculating that the drug accounts for some 5 percent of the country's GNP, it's a safe bet that even if the U.S. aid package helped the Colombian military eliminate the FARC from the jungles of the south, Colombia's cocaine crop may yet find its way to the ever-hungry U.S. market. The drug war's greatest successes have been to substantially slash cocaine production in Peru and Bolivia, but Colombian expansion has for the most part filled the shortfall...