Guerrilla expansion alleged

[bemildred]

So, what is it? Is "Plan Colombia" emboldening and empowering
the FARC or is this story a crock of merde? Or maybe, just
maybe, the Drug War is a colossal failure and this is an attempt to
blame that on FARC? After all, what good are enemies if you can't
blame things on them?

BOGOTA · Speedboats laden with tons of rebel-produced cocaine slip through Caribbean waters to the palm-fringed coasts of Central America and return to Colombia stuffed with weapons for the guerrillas.

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In April, Honduran police intercepted a cache of more than 200 weapons, including machine guns and rocket launchers, which investigators say was to have been delivered to the FARC in exchange for cocaine. The weapons, leftovers from Central America's 1980s wars, were bound for the FARC in the jungles of southern Colombia's Caqueta state, they say.

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Venezuelan authorities captured FARC commander Juan José Martínez Vegas on Feb. 18 for allegedly abetting the kidnapping in Venezuela of the mother of Detroit Tigers pitcher Ugueth Urbina.

FARC member Rodrigo Granda, arrested in Venezuela in December, was linked to the kidnapping and murder in Asuncion, Paraguay, of Cecilia Cubas, daughter of a former Paraguayan president.

Sun-Sentinel

[ugarte]

1. Noriega and Co. are dazed and confused

For a while they tried to pin the dreaded 'terrorist' tag on FARC. When that didn't play (since FARC predates modern terrorism by several decades), they went back to the old standard War on Drugs speak.

The trouble is, no one's listening. The natives won't play by the old colonial rules anymore.