International Review of Business Research Papers
Vol. 5 No. 4 June 2009. pp. 1-10
Oliver Villar *
*Dr Oliver Villar is a Lecturer in Politics at the School of Social Sciences and Liberal Studies, Charles Sturt University (CSU).
For half a century, the United States and its client state in Colombia have been unsuccessful in eliminating Latin America’s oldest and most powerful Marxist insurgency the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), via the Cold War, the ‘War on Drugs,’ and the ‘War on Terror’ after 9/11. This is an astonishing feat for a so-called ‘terrorist’ organisation in the twenty-first century. This paper will explore an area much eluded in Washington’s ‘Axis of Evil,’ the US ‘War on Narcoterrorism’ in Colombia with a particular focus on the cocaine drug trade and the FARC. Continue reading »
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Note: as of August 5th, 2009, Uribe´s government refers to 7 miliary bases in Colombia, surpasing the 5 announced when this article was published (note by Peace & Justice for Colombia)
On June 29 US President Barack Obama hosted his Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe at the White House and weeks later it was announced that the Pentagon plans to deploy troops to five air and naval bases in Colombia, the largest recipient of American military assistance in Latin America and the third largest in the world, having received over $5 billion from the Pentagon since the launching of Plan Colombia nine years ago.
Six months before the Obama-Uribe meeting outgoing US President George W. Bush bestowed the US’s highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom, on Uribe as well as on former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Continue reading »
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Colombian social, armed conflict: Part one
An Unending Violence Over Land, Peace, and Bread
Waldo Xavier III
In PART ONE of the Colombia History Series we shall begin by discussing an important period in Colombian history known as La Violencia (1948-1958). This period of history is fundamental to an understanding of Colombia in a historical context as well as to an understanding of the political and social crisis which has shaped much of the country. Because much of what we know about Colombia today is presented by the mass media and other popular commentary through “drugs”, “terrorism”, and “conflict” here and throughout the series we shall present an alternative perspective to the many challenges facing the country. Continue reading »
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