Colombia: December 5, 2000

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  The FARC has welcomed UN condemnation of AUC killing of civilians. FARC needs all the help it can get, as the AUC has proven more successful at guerilla warfare than the leftist rebels. This form of conflict depends on terrorizing civilians who support the opposition. This includes killing civilian informers. The AUC has killed three times as many civilians as the FARC this year. While this has provided bad publicity for the AUC in the past, the right wing fighters have overcome this by beating FARC and ELN rebels at their own game. In the south, the ELN has been severely beaten by AUC fighters. As a result, the AUC has enormous popularity among the urban middle class. While most of the population lives in the countryside, and tends to support the left wing rebels, everyone is getting pretty tied of the decades of fighting and violence. The increasing use of kidnapping by rebels, especially the left wing groups, has made the middle class desperate for a solution to war. Many middle class families are leaving the country, making it more difficult to maintain the national infrastructure (medicine, transportation, power, education and the like.)

 

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