Colombia: Cocaine Crunch Continues

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November 14, 2007: Much of the war is now being fought along the coasts, where the drug gangs ship their cocaine out. Air shipments are too dangerous, as the air force shoots down aircraft that are not where they are supposed to be, and refuse orders to land. These battles for the sea shipping routes has resulted in large seizures of cocaine, along with the boats and submarines used to ship the stuff out.

November 13, 2007: The army revealed that it had arrested a female public relations specialist, who had worked inside the army, but was also a spy for FARC. Corruption continues to be a big problem, with the attitude that "everyone has their price" the prevailing one. For some, the price is ideology, but for most, it is money, or immunity from assassination.

November 12, 2007: The government refuses to participate in Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez's public spectacle involving FARC offers to trade fifty prominent kidnapping victims for imprisoned FARC leaders. Chavez is getting lots of headlines for trying to arrange meetings between himself and senior FARC leaders. He wants to do this by getting the FARC brass a safe-passage pledge from Colombia. But the Colombian government says it will arrest or kill any of those FARC bosses if they show themselves. The government is beating FARC and sees no reason to show the rebels any concessions.

November 8, 2007: The U.S. believes the drug gangs are getting hurt in Colombia. This accounts for the 43 percent increase in the price of cocaine in the U.S. during the first nine months of this year, accompanied by a 15 percent decline in that cocaine's purity. There have been a lot of large seizures, as well as attacks on cocaine production and shipment facilities in Colombia. However, the capture of an exceptionally large number of drug gang documents in the past year appears to indicate that the increasing government success against FARC is hurting the drug gangs badly.

 

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