FARC
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Cross-posted with Public Diplomacy Musings The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as the FARC, has been listed as a “foreign terrorist organization” by the U.S. State Department since 1997. Many Colombians also refer to the FARC as terrorists, including former president and current Senator Álvaro Uribe as well as the country’s armed forces. However, the
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Last week, representatives of the Colombian government and the FARC rebel group began a 29th round of peace negotiations in Havana. Over the coming days, victims of the conflict will give testimony to the negotiators, who will eventually decide on the process for recognizing and compensating the many victims of the decades-long civil struggle… Check out this new
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On August 22, in the first of ten drug policy forums to be held around the country, Colombian Justice Minister Yesid Reyes expressed his belief that the nation must find “more efficient” policies than prohibition and imprisonment to deal with drug use. “The evaluation that should be made is how much has imprisonment affected the control
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The multi-billion dollar US-backed “Plan Colombia” initiative that began in the late 1990s and continued in various forms throughout the 2000s has been cited by a number of officials and commentators recently as an example of a counter-insurgency/anti-narcotics operation that has achieved significant progress in dismantling criminal and paramilitary groups operating within that country. Dan Restrepo,
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When Colombians elected President Juan Manuel Santos to a second term on 15 June 2014, many attributed his victory not to the voters who supported him, but to those who opposed his rival, Oscár Iván Zuluaga. In fact, Santos lost the first round of the election process to Zuluaga on 25 May 2014. Surveys indicated
Mike LaSusa 