Thursday July 3, 2008
Why the Colombian Rescue Mission Matters
As my colleagues Jonathan Winer and Aaron Mannes have written on the Counterterrorism Blog, the spectacular operation by the Colombian military to rescue 15 high-profile hostages was a tremendous blow to the FARC in Colombia.
In the interest of full disclosure, Ingrid Bentancourt is a friend of mine, and I have written about her in the past because of her tremendous courage in acting as a beacon of light in a narco-corrupted congress, and in defiance of her own political party. On a personal level, this was tremendously good news.
As I wrote in this paper published by the NEFA Foundation just before the hostages were freed, the FARC is in a period of decline that will likely end with its implosion and fragmentation into small criminal groups.
Since March the FARC has been pummeled, lost three of its seven members of the directorate, and now, its prize hostages.
The FARC's historic leader, Manuel Marulanda, the unifying force of the organization, is dead. His hand-picked successor, Raul Reyes, was killed in an army attack on his camp in Ecuador. Another member of the high command, Ivan Reyes, was killed by his own bodyguards, who collected the reward money.
Dozens of senior and mid-level commanders have deserted, including Karina, the highest-ranking woman in the FARC's ranks.
Now, a brilliantly executed rescue operation by a military that has often (and rightly) been accused of gross incompetence and corruption, takes the one thing of value (besides the cocaine laboratories) the FARC still had.
This is not random, but the product of years of work in human and signal intelligence, almost always hand-in-hand with U.S. counterparts. It is worth studying because it was done right.
Here are some of the highlights from my sources who are familiar with the operation:
The operation took more than three years to develop. The penetration of the rebel rank over time provided much of the human intelligence that was vitally needed. The infiltrators worked their way up the ranks, until they had access to both the force that protected the hostages and the FARC's general secretariat. The reports of the undercover operatives were wedded, with U.S. help, to signal intelligence, and the combination of the two fed off each other.
This type of patience is extraordinary in operations these days. There was also a systematic debriefing of captured FARC members and deserters. It was not long ago when the military simply killed everyone captured-not only a severe human rights violation, but countless lost opportunities to develop intelligence on the FARC structure.
Finally, the FARC's key weaknesses-communications and the fact that many members were motivated by money rather than ideology-were identified and exploited to maximum effect.
On a macro sense, that will be beneficial to Colombia and the region, because the coherence of the group will be permanently ruptured and it will no longer present a threat to the state.
On a local and regional level internally, however, crime will likely get worse, local kidnappings will escalate and local criminal groups will get an infusion of well-trained and well-armed members in their ranks.
The war is not over, but several important battles have been one. The new leadership of the FARC under Alfonso Cano already was under significant pressure to demonstrate it could carry out significant operations. This will be even harder now.
One must also not forget the rest of the hostages still being held by the FARC. Their fate is precarious now, and any rescue operation will be much more difficult because of the success of this one.
But, one has to say, it was one hell of an operation. My hat is off and my gratitude deep to all who participated.
In the interest of full disclosure, Ingrid Bentancourt is a friend of mine, and I have written about her in the past because of her tremendous courage in acting as a beacon of light in a narco-corrupted congress, and in defiance of her own political party. On a personal level, this was tremendously good news.
As I wrote in this paper published by the NEFA Foundation just before the hostages were freed, the FARC is in a period of decline that will likely end with its implosion and fragmentation into small criminal groups.
Since March the FARC has been pummeled, lost three of its seven members of the directorate, and now, its prize hostages.
The FARC's historic leader, Manuel Marulanda, the unifying force of the organization, is dead. His hand-picked successor, Raul Reyes, was killed in an army attack on his camp in Ecuador. Another member of the high command, Ivan Reyes, was killed by his own bodyguards, who collected the reward money.
Dozens of senior and mid-level commanders have deserted, including Karina, the highest-ranking woman in the FARC's ranks.
Now, a brilliantly executed rescue operation by a military that has often (and rightly) been accused of gross incompetence and corruption, takes the one thing of value (besides the cocaine laboratories) the FARC still had.
This is not random, but the product of years of work in human and signal intelligence, almost always hand-in-hand with U.S. counterparts. It is worth studying because it was done right.
Here are some of the highlights from my sources who are familiar with the operation:
The operation took more than three years to develop. The penetration of the rebel rank over time provided much of the human intelligence that was vitally needed. The infiltrators worked their way up the ranks, until they had access to both the force that protected the hostages and the FARC's general secretariat. The reports of the undercover operatives were wedded, with U.S. help, to signal intelligence, and the combination of the two fed off each other.
This type of patience is extraordinary in operations these days. There was also a systematic debriefing of captured FARC members and deserters. It was not long ago when the military simply killed everyone captured-not only a severe human rights violation, but countless lost opportunities to develop intelligence on the FARC structure.
Finally, the FARC's key weaknesses-communications and the fact that many members were motivated by money rather than ideology-were identified and exploited to maximum effect.
On a macro sense, that will be beneficial to Colombia and the region, because the coherence of the group will be permanently ruptured and it will no longer present a threat to the state.
On a local and regional level internally, however, crime will likely get worse, local kidnappings will escalate and local criminal groups will get an infusion of well-trained and well-armed members in their ranks.
The war is not over, but several important battles have been one. The new leadership of the FARC under Alfonso Cano already was under significant pressure to demonstrate it could carry out significant operations. This will be even harder now.
One must also not forget the rest of the hostages still being held by the FARC. Their fate is precarious now, and any rescue operation will be much more difficult because of the success of this one.
But, one has to say, it was one hell of an operation. My hat is off and my gratitude deep to all who participated.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Wednesday July 2, 2008
Why Zimbabwe Won
The tragic failure of the African Union to take any steps to sanction the fraudulent and violent regime of Robert Mugabe was a given as soon as the despot sat at the table. Because Mugabe knew his audience, or what was to be his jury.
Mugabe, correctly, told many other leaders that "their claims to power were no more legitimate than his," and chastised other for holding even worse elections than he did.
The tragedy for Africa is that Mugabe is right. And because he is right, Africa, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, remains an open wound, hospitable to radical Islamist groups (Somalia, Kenya, South Africa etc. for al Qaeda. The west coast, from Sierra Leone to Cameroon, for Hezbollah, and the Congo as a free for all, for criminals, terrorists and rogue states) and rapacious militias (the Lord's Resistance Army) and countless criminal gangs (Nigeria being the prime example.)
It didn't help that host Egypt and main AU financier and mover, Libya have such wretched histories of their own in terms of elections.
In addition to Mubarak and Gadaffi, here is a partial list of those sitting in judgement of Mugabe and his thuggish regime, as I wrote about for the Washington Post
Outlook section in April 2006:
-Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, who has plundered his tiny but oil rich country since seizing power from his bloodthirsty uncle in 1979. He routinely wins 90 percent of the votes cast in his elections, but is greeted as a "good friend" by Condoleezza Rice when he visited Washington in 2006.
-Blaise Campaore of Burkina Faso, in power since 1987 (following his participation in the murder of his best friend and predecessor in the presidency, Thomas Sankara). Campaore was a prime player in fueling the wars that swept Liberia and Sierra Leone, and a staunch ally of Liberia's Charles Taylor. (Taylor is the unlucky one who got caught, and is now standing trial for crimes against humanity in the Hague).
-Omar Bongo, who has ruled Gabon with an iron hand since 1967, when LBJ was trying to decide how to get out of Vietnam. He has made his son the minister of defense to ensure loyalty in the armed forces and brooks no dissent. Concerned about his international image, he was in contact with now-disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff in the summer of 2003. Abramoff asked for $9 million to help Bongo cozy up to the Bush administration, according to documents later released by Congress. It is not clear if the deal was consummated, but on May 26, 2004, Bongo met with President Bush.
Idris Deby, who has ruled Chad since 1990 and routinely racks up large margins of victory because he keeps his opponents locked up or in exile. Deby agreed to a series of stringent conditions on how his country's new oil wealth would be spent on health and education in exchange for the World Bank financing needed to build a pipeline from his landlocked nation to the Gulf of Guinea. His first purchase with the oil money was weapons worth $4.5 million for his security apparatus.
The list goes on, but I am out of time. Who among these giants of democracy, freedom and good governance could cast a stone at Mugabe's antics? Not one. The verdict had to be acquittal on every count, lest they be the subject of action next time.
And so the continent will suffer, and the security of all of us is at peril.
Mugabe, correctly, told many other leaders that "their claims to power were no more legitimate than his," and chastised other for holding even worse elections than he did.
The tragedy for Africa is that Mugabe is right. And because he is right, Africa, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, remains an open wound, hospitable to radical Islamist groups (Somalia, Kenya, South Africa etc. for al Qaeda. The west coast, from Sierra Leone to Cameroon, for Hezbollah, and the Congo as a free for all, for criminals, terrorists and rogue states) and rapacious militias (the Lord's Resistance Army) and countless criminal gangs (Nigeria being the prime example.)
It didn't help that host Egypt and main AU financier and mover, Libya have such wretched histories of their own in terms of elections.
In addition to Mubarak and Gadaffi, here is a partial list of those sitting in judgement of Mugabe and his thuggish regime, as I wrote about for the Washington Post
Outlook section in April 2006:
-Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, who has plundered his tiny but oil rich country since seizing power from his bloodthirsty uncle in 1979. He routinely wins 90 percent of the votes cast in his elections, but is greeted as a "good friend" by Condoleezza Rice when he visited Washington in 2006.
-Blaise Campaore of Burkina Faso, in power since 1987 (following his participation in the murder of his best friend and predecessor in the presidency, Thomas Sankara). Campaore was a prime player in fueling the wars that swept Liberia and Sierra Leone, and a staunch ally of Liberia's Charles Taylor. (Taylor is the unlucky one who got caught, and is now standing trial for crimes against humanity in the Hague).
-Omar Bongo, who has ruled Gabon with an iron hand since 1967, when LBJ was trying to decide how to get out of Vietnam. He has made his son the minister of defense to ensure loyalty in the armed forces and brooks no dissent. Concerned about his international image, he was in contact with now-disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff in the summer of 2003. Abramoff asked for $9 million to help Bongo cozy up to the Bush administration, according to documents later released by Congress. It is not clear if the deal was consummated, but on May 26, 2004, Bongo met with President Bush.
Idris Deby, who has ruled Chad since 1990 and routinely racks up large margins of victory because he keeps his opponents locked up or in exile. Deby agreed to a series of stringent conditions on how his country's new oil wealth would be spent on health and education in exchange for the World Bank financing needed to build a pipeline from his landlocked nation to the Gulf of Guinea. His first purchase with the oil money was weapons worth $4.5 million for his security apparatus.
The list goes on, but I am out of time. Who among these giants of democracy, freedom and good governance could cast a stone at Mugabe's antics? Not one. The verdict had to be acquittal on every count, lest they be the subject of action next time.
And so the continent will suffer, and the security of all of us is at peril.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Wednesday July 2, 2008
A New Look at the Demise of the FARC
Today the NEFA Foundation published a paper I wrote on the overall weakening of the FARC in Colombia and the likely options for its future development.
The new paper, "The FARC in Transition: The Fatal Weakening of the Hemisphere's Oldest Guerrilla Movement," is a followup to one I did analyzing the publicly released documents taken from the computer of the FARC's second in command, Raul Reyes, killed by Colombian troops in raid into neighboring Ecuador.
The paper posits that in the near term, the new FARC leadership-for the first time in its 44-year history dominated by urban, educated leaders rather than peasants lacking formal education-will try to launch a major military strike in order to prove its legitimacy to the rank and file.
In the long term, however, this group may be in a better position to negotiate an end to the conflict. However, in mid-term the FARC is likely to devolve into more isolated, criminal groups. Those commanders who control cocaine production and/or engage in kidnapping for ransom will survive in alliance with criminal groups, and those that have few outside sources of income will likely wither away. The consequences for the government will be the weakening of a major threat to the state, but increased criminal and drug trafficking activity.
The new paper, "The FARC in Transition: The Fatal Weakening of the Hemisphere's Oldest Guerrilla Movement," is a followup to one I did analyzing the publicly released documents taken from the computer of the FARC's second in command, Raul Reyes, killed by Colombian troops in raid into neighboring Ecuador.
The paper posits that in the near term, the new FARC leadership-for the first time in its 44-year history dominated by urban, educated leaders rather than peasants lacking formal education-will try to launch a major military strike in order to prove its legitimacy to the rank and file.
In the long term, however, this group may be in a better position to negotiate an end to the conflict. However, in mid-term the FARC is likely to devolve into more isolated, criminal groups. Those commanders who control cocaine production and/or engage in kidnapping for ransom will survive in alliance with criminal groups, and those that have few outside sources of income will likely wither away. The consequences for the government will be the weakening of a major threat to the state, but increased criminal and drug trafficking activity.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Monday June 30, 2008
Two Interesting Trends
There are two stories today that point to ongoing problems and the future contours of the conflicts in which we will be emerged in coming years.
The first is the extensive New York Times piece on who lack of resources, bureaucratic infighting and lack of unified vision (coupled with a high tolerance for Pakistan's game-playing) has helped allow al Qaeda to regroup in the tribal regions.
Perhaps the most disturbing item in the piece, which chronicles numerous disturbing elements that show how much the inter-agency process is returning to its pre-9/11 mindset the further the memories recede, is the following:
Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda now has a band of terrorist camps from which to plan and train for attacks against Western targets, including the United States. Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired C.I.A. officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago.
Radical Islamist groups (as well as most radicalized groups) desperately need areas where they can gather to mutually reinforce their beliefs, weed out unbelievers and build a joint narrative that allows them to tell their stories to themselves in which they are doing the will of Allah.
Without that, members grow in doubt, drift away from the core beliefs and lessen in their ardor for the cause. Joint experiences are also vital to forging the kind of comraderie that needs to exist among groups that are prepared to kill and be killed.
To allow these camps to be reconstituted is perhaps one of the single most dangerous failures we face. Part of the failure, is, of course, the moving of all assets to Iraq while Afghanistan slowly smoldered back into a full-blown threat. All the intelligence operatives with field experience were shuttled over there, and few with any depth of knowledge or experience were left minding the Afghanistan/Pakistan store.
A second story is of the Pentagon's expanding reach into counter-drug activity in West Africa.
The rationale given by Joseph A. Benkert, the nominee to become the first assistant secretary of defense for global security affairs is one that I have argued is valid in several previous writings on the criminal terrorist nexus:
"Global illegal drug trade has connections to terrorism, financial crimes, corruption of governmental systems, weapons smuggling, human trafficking, major gang networks, insurgency and instability in many places worldwide."
As a general premise, he added that "trafficking, whatever the commodity . . . provides trans-national criminal organizations and terrorists revenue to purchase weapons and plan operations that threaten U.S. security interests" and that "by widening the [Defense] Department's role to trafficking networks -- drugs, weapons, people or money -- the Department provides critical support to undermine trans-national networks that threaten the nation."
The contradiction I see is that while the Pentagon certainly can have a role to play, particularly in areas like West Africa, because ultimately these criminal activities tie back to terrorism.
But that role should not be to the exclusion of other USG organizations, particularly the Drug Enforcement Administration, with years of experience in tracking these groups and knows, far better than the military can or should, the possible relationships among different trafficking organizations, their methods, money movements etc.
This propensity to throw everything on the military highlights, to me, the weakness of traditional institutions such as the State Department and other branches of government.
Drug trafficking in West Africa, is not, at its heart, an issue for the military to assume a leadership position on. The State Department should, along with DEA and others. But State, in the new world order, is not much of a player in counter-drug policy.
While the DEA has the largest foreign presence of any non-Pentagon agency, its mother ship, the Department of Justice, is not particularly good at the bureaucratic infighting and does not have the budgetary and bureaucratic heft that DOD does.
DOJ does not have the budget, in the end, to expand the DEA to deal with the new areas of threat. DOD does. It is much better than nothing, but, at a time of deep institutional strain, perhaps one should be thinking more about the military focusing on its core missions and not casting about for new fields of endeavor.
The first is the extensive New York Times piece on who lack of resources, bureaucratic infighting and lack of unified vision (coupled with a high tolerance for Pakistan's game-playing) has helped allow al Qaeda to regroup in the tribal regions.
Perhaps the most disturbing item in the piece, which chronicles numerous disturbing elements that show how much the inter-agency process is returning to its pre-9/11 mindset the further the memories recede, is the following:
Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda now has a band of terrorist camps from which to plan and train for attacks against Western targets, including the United States. Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired C.I.A. officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago.
Radical Islamist groups (as well as most radicalized groups) desperately need areas where they can gather to mutually reinforce their beliefs, weed out unbelievers and build a joint narrative that allows them to tell their stories to themselves in which they are doing the will of Allah.
Without that, members grow in doubt, drift away from the core beliefs and lessen in their ardor for the cause. Joint experiences are also vital to forging the kind of comraderie that needs to exist among groups that are prepared to kill and be killed.
To allow these camps to be reconstituted is perhaps one of the single most dangerous failures we face. Part of the failure, is, of course, the moving of all assets to Iraq while Afghanistan slowly smoldered back into a full-blown threat. All the intelligence operatives with field experience were shuttled over there, and few with any depth of knowledge or experience were left minding the Afghanistan/Pakistan store.
A second story is of the Pentagon's expanding reach into counter-drug activity in West Africa.
The rationale given by Joseph A. Benkert, the nominee to become the first assistant secretary of defense for global security affairs is one that I have argued is valid in several previous writings on the criminal terrorist nexus:
"Global illegal drug trade has connections to terrorism, financial crimes, corruption of governmental systems, weapons smuggling, human trafficking, major gang networks, insurgency and instability in many places worldwide."
As a general premise, he added that "trafficking, whatever the commodity . . . provides trans-national criminal organizations and terrorists revenue to purchase weapons and plan operations that threaten U.S. security interests" and that "by widening the [Defense] Department's role to trafficking networks -- drugs, weapons, people or money -- the Department provides critical support to undermine trans-national networks that threaten the nation."
The contradiction I see is that while the Pentagon certainly can have a role to play, particularly in areas like West Africa, because ultimately these criminal activities tie back to terrorism.
But that role should not be to the exclusion of other USG organizations, particularly the Drug Enforcement Administration, with years of experience in tracking these groups and knows, far better than the military can or should, the possible relationships among different trafficking organizations, their methods, money movements etc.
This propensity to throw everything on the military highlights, to me, the weakness of traditional institutions such as the State Department and other branches of government.
Drug trafficking in West Africa, is not, at its heart, an issue for the military to assume a leadership position on. The State Department should, along with DEA and others. But State, in the new world order, is not much of a player in counter-drug policy.
While the DEA has the largest foreign presence of any non-Pentagon agency, its mother ship, the Department of Justice, is not particularly good at the bureaucratic infighting and does not have the budgetary and bureaucratic heft that DOD does.
DOJ does not have the budget, in the end, to expand the DEA to deal with the new areas of threat. DOD does. It is much better than nothing, but, at a time of deep institutional strain, perhaps one should be thinking more about the military focusing on its core missions and not casting about for new fields of endeavor.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Friday June 27, 2008
More on the Growing Criminal-Terror Nexus
Those who are skeptical of the growing ties between drug trafficking organizations and terrorist groups-which I think will be the real war we will be fighting for many years, given the resources obtainable by drug trafficking organizations-should read the latest UN Office of Drugs and Crime report.
Among the many interesting findings is that the two areas of greatest increase in illicit production of drugs in the world are in the hands of designated terrorist groups: the Taliban in Afghanistan and the FARC in Colombia.
A third party involved in the expansion of drug production is Burma, a rogue criminal state. This bodes ill for the rest of the world.
As Antonio Maria Costa, director of the agency, told the AP:
"The explosion of narcotics in those areas is explained by their presence (the terrorist groups) and the protection they offer," Costa told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday.
"I believe that slowly these people, although politically motivated at the beginning, are becoming a kind of organized crime," he said. "Money tends to stick to fingers, and a big lump of money becomes very problematic."
The numbers should alarm policy makers and the intelligence and law enforcement communities.
Afghanistan saw a 17 percent increase in opium production, and now accounts for 92 percent of the world's heroin. Some 80 percent of the poppy was grown in five southern provinces where Taliban fighters profit from drugs.
Burma, which is able to control the country so that almost no disaster relief can reach starving citizens, somehow managed to let its opium crop increase 29 percent. It's poppies are not as productive as those in Afghanistan, so it share of the world market is not so high.
But, if you can block the arrival of clean drinking water and emergency foodstuffs, one would think that controlling poppy crops with the state security apparatus would be a piece of cake. Unless the state did not want to.
Colombia saw a 27 percent increase in coca production, and continues to produce about two-thirds of the world's cocaine. Most of that coca came from regions under the FARC's control, "just like in Afghanistan," Costa said.
"Recent major increases in drug supply from Afghanistan and Colombia may drive addiction rates up because of lower prices and higher purity of doses," he warned.
But the equal danger is that these groups will use their wealth to wreak havoc in areas where 1) the US has a vital and ongoing interest and 2) where fragile states are struggling mightily, and perhaps in vain given that they are outgunned and out financed by the narcos, are trying to make life more bearable for their peoples.
The independent sources of financing for the Taliban and the FARC, as well as the cartels now threatening the Mexican state and their encroaching on ever-greater swaths of Central America, are a significant national security crisis.
It is a crisis not just for the United States, but for each country that the cartels touch. Mexico is now paying a terrible price for confronting the cartels. Some 4,150 people have been killed, including 400 law enforcement and military personnel, in the past 18 months of confrontation.
There are some interesting indications that the FARC is, indeed in serious trouble, however. The report states that, while coca production is up, cocaine production is not because the coca plants are of poorer quality and not as well tended as in the past.
This means the people tending the fields are not as well protected by the FARC and cannot take the time to clean the fields and maintain the necessary facilities.
This is the type of war we will be fighting for decades. It is time we started to pay attention to it, and our options. Thinking has not changed in 20 years, so perhaps it is time to come up with new approaches.
Among the many interesting findings is that the two areas of greatest increase in illicit production of drugs in the world are in the hands of designated terrorist groups: the Taliban in Afghanistan and the FARC in Colombia.
A third party involved in the expansion of drug production is Burma, a rogue criminal state. This bodes ill for the rest of the world.
As Antonio Maria Costa, director of the agency, told the AP:
"The explosion of narcotics in those areas is explained by their presence (the terrorist groups) and the protection they offer," Costa told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday.
"I believe that slowly these people, although politically motivated at the beginning, are becoming a kind of organized crime," he said. "Money tends to stick to fingers, and a big lump of money becomes very problematic."
The numbers should alarm policy makers and the intelligence and law enforcement communities.
Afghanistan saw a 17 percent increase in opium production, and now accounts for 92 percent of the world's heroin. Some 80 percent of the poppy was grown in five southern provinces where Taliban fighters profit from drugs.
Burma, which is able to control the country so that almost no disaster relief can reach starving citizens, somehow managed to let its opium crop increase 29 percent. It's poppies are not as productive as those in Afghanistan, so it share of the world market is not so high.
But, if you can block the arrival of clean drinking water and emergency foodstuffs, one would think that controlling poppy crops with the state security apparatus would be a piece of cake. Unless the state did not want to.
Colombia saw a 27 percent increase in coca production, and continues to produce about two-thirds of the world's cocaine. Most of that coca came from regions under the FARC's control, "just like in Afghanistan," Costa said.
"Recent major increases in drug supply from Afghanistan and Colombia may drive addiction rates up because of lower prices and higher purity of doses," he warned.
But the equal danger is that these groups will use their wealth to wreak havoc in areas where 1) the US has a vital and ongoing interest and 2) where fragile states are struggling mightily, and perhaps in vain given that they are outgunned and out financed by the narcos, are trying to make life more bearable for their peoples.
The independent sources of financing for the Taliban and the FARC, as well as the cartels now threatening the Mexican state and their encroaching on ever-greater swaths of Central America, are a significant national security crisis.
It is a crisis not just for the United States, but for each country that the cartels touch. Mexico is now paying a terrible price for confronting the cartels. Some 4,150 people have been killed, including 400 law enforcement and military personnel, in the past 18 months of confrontation.
There are some interesting indications that the FARC is, indeed in serious trouble, however. The report states that, while coca production is up, cocaine production is not because the coca plants are of poorer quality and not as well tended as in the past.
This means the people tending the fields are not as well protected by the FARC and cannot take the time to clean the fields and maintain the necessary facilities.
This is the type of war we will be fighting for decades. It is time we started to pay attention to it, and our options. Thinking has not changed in 20 years, so perhaps it is time to come up with new approaches.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH