Officials Say Rebel Strongholds Too Dangerous But Some Call It Choice Of Force Over Help BOGOTA, COLOMBIA - Although the southern jungles of Colombia are ground zero for the war against Marxist guerrillas and cocaine traffickers, a U.S.-backed program to persuade some of the region's drug farmers to switch to legal crops has been suspended. In southern Caqueta state, a longtime rebel stronghold, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, has pulled out of the campaign because the region lacked economic potential and was considered too dangerous for the agency's workers, according to a Colombian government memo. [continues 667 words]
U.S. Likely Will Back Effort, Officials Say BOGOTA, COLOMBIA - Colombia to the rescue? Overwhelmed by a flourishing opium trade, Afghanistan's government is getting help from a country that knows about narcotics operations. A team of Colombian narcotics police, which spent two weeks in Afghanistan, has come up with a series of recommendations, including better evidence-gathering, airport surveillance, training and organization. U.S. State Department and congressional sources said this week they support Colombia's suggestions and would push for implementation. [continues 474 words]
The Colombian Government Is Getting Criticized For Admitting Drug Traffickers Into The Paramilitary Peace Process Some 32,000 illegal paramilitary fighters have surrendered and their top leaders are in custody. But the Colombian government now finds itself on the defensive about the peace talks with the so-called paras, amid complaints that top drug traffickers infiltrated the paramilitaries to avoid extradition to U.S. courts. "It's a farce," said one longtime U.S. government investigator of drug trafficking in Colombia whose agency's regulations do not allow him to be further identified. "Some of these guys were never paramilitaries before." [continues 930 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia -- The latest chapter in America's long war on drugs - -- a six-year, $4.7 billion effort to slash Colombia's coca crop -- has left the price, quality and availability of cocaine on American streets virtually unchanged. The effort, begun in 2000 and known as Plan Colombia, had a specific goal of halving this country's coca crop in five years. That has not happened. Instead, drug policy experts say, coca, the essential ingredient for cocaine, has been redistributed to smaller and harder-to-reach plots, adding to the cost and difficulty of the drug war. [continues 2465 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia The latest chapter in America's long war on drugs - a six-year, $4.7 billion effort to slash Colombia's coca crop - has left the price, quality and availability of cocaine on American streets virtually unchanged. The effort, begun in 2000 and known as Plan Colombia, had a specific goal of halving this country's coca crop in five years. That has not happened. Instead, drug policy experts say, coca, the essential ingredient for cocaine, has been redistributed to smaller and harder-to-reach plots, adding to the cost and difficulty of the drug war. [continues 2465 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia - The latest chapter in America's long war on drugs - - a six-year, $4.7 billion effort to slash Colombia's coca crop - has left the price, quality and availability of cocaine on American streets virtually unchanged. The effort, begun in 2000 and known as Plan Colombia, had a specific goal of halving this country's coca crop in five years. That has not happened. Instead, drug policy experts say, coca, the essential ingredient for cocaine, has been redistributed to smaller and harder-to-reach plots, adding to the cost and difficulty of the drug war. [continues 2465 words]
'Plan Colombia' Produces No Effect BOGOTA, COLOMBIA - The latest chapter in America's long war on drugs - a six-year, $4.7 billion effort to slash Colombia's coca crop - has left the price, quality and availability of cocaine on American streets virtually unchanged. The effort, begun in 2000 and known as Plan Colombia, had a specific goal of halving Colombia's coca crop in five years. That has not happened. Instead, drug policy experts say, coca, the essential ingredient for cocaine, has been redistributed to smaller and harder-to-reach plots, adding to the cost and difficulty of the drug war. [continues 303 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia - Despite environmental concerns, Colombian authorities have for the first time used U.S.-supplied planes to spray a pristine national park where leftist rebels have grown coca - the raw ingredient for cocaine. Anti-narcotics police said they chemically fumigated the Sierra Macarena national park last week, clearing its entire 11,370 acres of coca. The spraying destroyed coca capable of producing 17.5 tons of high-grade cocaine and was likely a major blow to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. [continues 503 words]
Acreage Has Increased Despite Record Levels of Aerial Spraying Under a U.S. Eradication Plan. Julian, a peasant farmer in this mountainous region of Colombia, wants to stop growing coca but says leftist guerrillas won't let him. If they catch you pulling up any coca plants, he says, they give you 12 hours to leave your land or they kill you. Under Washington's multibillion-dollar "Plan Colombia," much of the drug-fighting money has gone to pay for the eradication of 1.8 million acres of coca, which is used in the production of cocaine. [continues 1118 words]
Drug Traffickers Find It's Getting Harder To Smuggle Earnings Back Into The Country BOGOTA, Colombia -- Colombian police routinely try to detect travelers attempting to smuggle drugs to the USA and Europe. This year, they have turned their attention to travelers coming into Colombia -- not with drugs, but with hundreds of thousands of dollars and euros believed to be profits from the illegal drug trade. Colombia is the world's largest source of cocaine. Most of the estimated $35 billion annual cocaine market in the USA is supplied by Colombian drug traffickers, despite $4 billion in U.S. aid since 2000 to assist the Colombian government's counternarcotics efforts, including spraying herbicide on the crops that yield cocaine and heroin. [continues 692 words]
The area where the Lost City was built centuries ago now is home to one of the most lucrative and destructive businesses in the world: cocaine trafficking. And for a $10 fee, those who come to see the Lost City can take a detour to see the first stage of the dirty process involving gasoline and sulfuric acid, among other appetizing ingredients, that makes a simple, hard-edged leaf into a deadly and addictive powder. On my recent trip, three travelers accompanied by myself and a photographer, paid close attention to all the details, then asked questions of Adan Bedoya, a 62-year-old campesino from the Santa Marta mountain range, who showed us through the process step by step. The tourists then toyed with the ingredients and took some photos in the so-called "factory" for their parents. One of them asked Bedoya for some cocaine and was disappointed to find that Bedoya rarely has contact with "the actual stuff." [continues 69 words]
Around The World BOGOTA, COLOMBIA -- Colombia's interior minister said Wednesday that his country should double its coca eradication effort, a day after a UN report said cultivation of the plant used to make cocaine jumped 8 percent last year. Aerial fumigation of coca fields reached a record last year in Colombia as authorities used 20 U.S.-supplied airplanes to spray nearly 345,000 acres. Despite that, the UN estimated that cultivation rose in 2005 for the first time in five years, to 330 square miles, or more than 211,000 acres. Interior Minister Sabas Pretelt urged a doubling of efforts, even as he tried to downplay the UN report, telling W Radio, "If we didn't fumigate as much as we did, Colombia today would be submerged in a sea of coca." [end]
BOGOTA, Colombia - A key component of the U.S.-backed war on drugs appears to be failing. Despite record drug seizures and spraying of herbicides, production of the plant used to make cocaine increased by 8 percent in Colombia, to 330 square miles, the United Nations said Tuesday - even as authorities sprayed coca fields totaling 25 times the size of Manhattan. [end]
JAMUNDI, Colombia -- On a dirt road dotted with country homes near the western city of Cali, three trucks carrying an elite squad of anti-narcotics police pulled up to the gates of a psychiatric center for a planned raid about an hour before dusk. Within minutes, all 10 officers in the U.S.-trained unit were dead in a ferocious attack that stunned Colombians and severely embarrassed President Alvaro Uribe just as he was savoring a crushing re-election victory. That's because the alleged killers were no typical outlaws. The gunmen firing from roadside ditches and from behind bushes were a platoon of 28 soldiers who unleashed a barrage of some 150 bullets and seven grenades, according to a ballistics investigator. [continues 815 words]
JAMUNDI, Colombia -- On a dirt road dotted with country homes near the western city of Cali, three trucks carrying an elite squad of anti-narcotics police pulled up to the gates of a psychiatric center for a planned raid about an hour before dusk. Within minutes, all 10 officers in the U.S.-trained unit were dead in a ferocious attack that stunned Colombians and severely embarrassed President Alvaro Uribe just as he was savoring a crushing re-election victory. That's because the alleged killers were no typical outlaws. The gunmen firing from roadside ditches and from behind bushes were a platoon of 28 soldiers who unleashed a barrage of some 150 bullets and seven grenades, according to a ballistics investigator. [continues 446 words]
Prosecutor Alleges Soldiers Worked for Traffickers JAMUNDI, Colombia -- About an hour before dusk, on a dirt road dotted with country homes near the western city of Cali, three trucks carrying an elite squad of anti-narcotics police pulled up to the gates of a psychiatric center for a planned raid. Within minutes, all 10 officers in the U.S.-trained unit were dead. An informant who led the police squad to the scene promising they would find a large stash of cocaine was also found dead. When investigators removed his ski mask, they found a bullet hole in his head. In May, members of the Colombian prosecutor general's office visited the site in Jamundi, Colombia, where 10 undercover police and a civilian died in a firefight with a military patrol. "The army was doing the bidding of drug traffickers," Prosecutor General Mario Iguaran said. [continues 940 words]
JAMUNDI, Colombia - On a dirt road dotted with country homes near the western city of Cali, three trucks carrying an elite squad of anti-narcotics police pulled up to the gates of a psychiatric center for a planned raid about an hour before dusk. Within minutes, all 10 officers in the U.S.-trained unit were dead in a ferocious attack that stunned Colombians and severely embarrassed President Alvaro Uribe Velez just as he was savoring a crushing re-election victory. [continues 782 words]
On a dirt road dotted with country homes near the western city of Cali, three trucks carrying an elite squad of anti-narcotics police pulled up to the gates of a psychiatric center for a planned raid about an hour before dusk. Within minutes, all 10 officers in the U.S.-trained unit were dead in a ferocious attack that stunned Colombians and severely embarrassed President Alvaro Uribe just as he was savoring a crushing re-election victory. That's because the alleged killers were no typical outlaws. The gunmen firing from roadside ditches and from behind bushes were a platoon of 28 soldiers who unleashed a barrage of some 150 bullets and seven grenades, according to a ballistics investigator. [continues 1039 words]
Colombia -- After suffering years of conflict at the hands of guerrillas, militias, and drug traffickers, Colombians reelected President Alvaro Uribe yesterday by a landslide as a reward for dramatically reducing violence and presiding over the strongest economic recovery in a decade. The election was largely peaceful. With 99 percent of the ballots counted, Uribe had 62 percent of the vote, ensuring four more years for the Bush administration's most loyal ally on a continent dominated by leftist governments. At a time when neighboring Andean countries are nationalizing resources, the 53-year-old center-right Uribe has been Washington's biggest collaborator in the war on drugs and the push for free trade in South America. "Uribe got a much stronger mandate than four years ago -- he's won 1.5 million more votes than last time, and that's going to give him a lot of room to maneuver," said Alejandro Vargas, a political scientist at National University in Bogota. [continues 1007 words]
U.S. Ally Has Led Fight vs. Rebels BOGOTA, Colombia, May 28 -- President Alvaro Uribe was reelected in a landslide Sunday in Colombia's most peaceful elections in more than a decade, strengthening the U.S. ally's mandate to crack down on armed groups and drug traffickers. Uribe's win marks the first time in more than a century that an incumbent Colombian leader has been reelected, and bucks a trend of leftist leaders taking office across South America. With 96 percent of ballots counted, the conservative Uribe won a stronger-than-expected 62 percent of the vote, according to official results. A majority was needed to win in the first round and avoid a runoff. [continues 559 words]
Inside Colombia
