Colombia

With dramatically beautiful rainforests, mountains and beaches, lovely cities and enchanting people, Colombia should be among the world's most attractive and intoxicating destinations.

Unfortunately, the current guerrilla war, combined with ongoing activities of cocaine cartels, has made much of Colombia – dubbed »Locombia« (the mad country) by the press – off limits to all but the most foolhardy travelers.

Colombia's government has mobilized its soldiers and helicopters in the hunt for Roman Catholic Bishop Jorge Enrique Jimenez, one of Colombia's leading clergymen, who was kidnapped along with another priest while traveling north of Bogota, the Colombian capital, last Monday.

Colombia has gone from bad to worse since February 2002, when President Andres Pastrana cut off peace negotiations with the Marxist rebel organization FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).

A 40-year insurgent campaign to overthrow the Colombian Government escalated during the 1990s, undergirded in part by funds from the drug trade. Although the violence is deadly and large swaths of the countryside are under guerrilla influence, the movement lacks the military strength or popular support necessary to overthrow the government.

An anti-insurgent army of paramilitaries has grown to be several thousand strong in recent years, challenging the insurgents for control of territory and illicit industries such as the drug trade and the government's ability to exert its dominion over rural areas. While Bogota continues to try to negotiate a settlement, neighboring countries worry about the violence spilling over their borders.

Colombian drug lords to go free

Government fury as judge grants Cali cartel leaders release from jail for good behaviour

Sibylla Brodzinsky in Bogotá
Sunday November 3, 2002
The Observer

»Two of the world's most notorious drug lords could be free in Colombia within days after a judge granted them parole for good behaviour, a decision that has surprised and infuriated the government.«

http://www.observer.co.uk/drugs/story/0,11908,825117,00.html

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