For most of the year, some 18,000 troops have cleared FARC fighters from many areas of southern Colombia, and allowed commerce to resume. This includes drilling for oil, and shipping the stuff out via tanker truck. But the rebels are still around, and the truck drivers, and their army escorts, often find themselves fighting for their lives on isolated jungle roads. The rebels stick around, because this area is also used to grow coca, the raw material for cocaine.

A senior FARC leader, Hernando Buitrago, escaped from a government prison.