Word: guerrillas
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...share of accidental shootings and fog-of-war screwups, but the matter-of-fact Kill neither assails nor excuses them. Some are racist toward Iraqis--or "hajjis"--while others are respectful even of their enemies. When a Marine urinates in a bag of rice at a destroyed guerrilla camp, another scolds him: "The men have been living here on rice and beans, sleeping out here in the cold on these rags. These are some f___ing hard men. You ladies bitch if you get an MRE [Meal Ready to Eat] without a f___ing Pop-Tart...
...duty on every sale and purchase of unrefined cocaine in that area. Similar tariffs nationwide - and ransoms earned from kidnapping - are said to net the FARC hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The Colombian government, as well as its allies in Washington, have long used the term "narco-guerrillas" to describe the FARC, which they accuse of morphing from a guerrilla force into a drug cartel. "If not for drug trafficking, the FARC would not exist today," argues Colombian Foreign Minister Fernando Araujo, who spent six years as a FARC hostage, not far from the 18th Front's territory...
FARC commanders dismiss the "narco-guerrilla" portrayal as government propaganda and insist they're still a viable rebel movement whose survival doesn't depend on drug income. For his part, Alberto points to his unit's spartan housing conditions - mountain and jungle shacks often without electricity or running water - as proof that they're not exactly living as sumptuously as famous cocaine kingpins like Pablo Escobar...
...understood clearly the reason for our struggle or who have let themselves be influenced by state propaganda," he says. "We have to study the situation so this doesn't keep happening." But he insists that in his rebel bailiwick, retention is still high, despite the fact that any guerrilla who wanted to bolt the 18th Front could be free and clear in a nearby town within a couple of hours...
...from its large network of civilian informants. Many of them rely on FARC-protected coca cultivation for their livelihoods, but others are simply poor rural residents who have been beaten down for decades by the military and still believe in the FARC's original social-justice crusade. The guerrillas dress in civilian clothes and can be hard to distinguish from local farmers, and the difficult terrain is perfect for hit-and-run guerrilla warfare. The government "could not sustain an offensive on this scale without U.S. help," says Alberto. "They use American money to set up high mountain battalions...