Word: farce
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...much of the world during her captivity, especially in Europe, the three U.S. military contractors were, until their rescue, little more than a tragic footnote in the U.S.-backed war on Colombia's narco-guerrillas. The Americans were kidnapped by Marxist rebels of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) on Feb. 13, 2003, after the single engine on their drug-surveillance plane conked out in southern Colombia. Not only did they crash on top of a platoon of insurgents, but they had the bad luck of being snatched just weeks before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. With all eyes...
...victory in 1998. So it should have come as no surprise that many Latin American Presidents took issue with Obama's suggestion, in a Univision interview last month, that the Venezuelan leader aids terrorists. After all, last summer Chávez all but disowned Colombia's Marxist FARC guerrillas, declaring unambiguously that violence no longer had a place in the politics of the left in Latin America...
...release of the politicians was less moral reawakening than practical compromise. Keeping prisoners for years on end requires territorial control, supply lines and a large number of rebel guards. The FARC maintains those things in some areas. Alan Jara, a kidnapped former governor who was released on Feb. 3, recalls pulling into a rebel camp that lacked kitchen gear. Though they were deep in the Amazon forest, the rebels overnight procured a gasoline stove and a 13-quart pressure cooker to prepare their beans and lentils. But even so, holding hostages has become increasingly difficult. The FARC is losing ground...
Some journalists and high-level Colombian politicians who are close to the FARC say the group is moving toward ending kidnappings. But even as the number of abductions drops, authorities say the FARC is turning to extortion as an easier way to raise cash. An explosion that killed two people and damaged a Blockbuster outlet in north Bogota last month was one of several recent bombings that security officials have linked to the FARC. Meanwhile, the rebels continue to traffic cocaine, a lucrative business that provides the guerrillas some 70% of their income. In addition, the guerrillas still hold...
With an eye to repair the damage, the guerrillas last year began releasing its remaining political hostages in dribs and drabs. The aim of the new policy is to sow the seeds for future peace talks and eventually to help the FARC regain the status of legitimate war combatants, which the international community still refuses to confer on it. The strategy is partly the doing of Alfonso Cano, who was named the FARC's maximum leader last March following the death, at the age of 78, of Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, the guerrillas' cunning but stubborn founding father. Though a hard...