Colombia

Colombia's government has mobilized its soldiers and helicopters in the hunt for Roman Catholic Bishop Jorge Enrique Jimenez, one of Colombia's leading clergymen, who was kidnapped along with another priest while traveling north of Bogota, the Colombian capital, last Monday.

With dramatically beautiful rainforests, mountains and beaches, lovely cities and enchanting people, Colombia should be among the world's most attractive and intoxicating destinations.

Unfortunately, the current guerrilla war, combined with ongoing activities of cocaine cartels, has made much of Colombia – dubbed »Locombia« (the mad country) by the press – off limits to all but the most foolhardy travelers.

A 40-year insurgent campaign to overthrow the Colombian Government escalated during the 1990s, undergirded in part by funds from the drug trade. Although the violence is deadly and large swaths of the countryside are under guerrilla influence, the movement lacks the military strength or popular support necessary to overthrow the government.

An anti-insurgent army of paramilitaries has grown to be several thousand strong in recent years, challenging the insurgents for control of territory and illicit industries such as the drug trade and the government's ability to exert its dominion over rural areas. While Bogota continues to try to negotiate a settlement, neighboring countries worry about the violence spilling over their borders.

Colombia has gone from bad to worse since February 2002, when President Andres Pastrana cut off peace negotiations with the Marxist rebel organization FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).

Farc video shows Colombian political hostages

Martin Hodgson in Bogota
Thursday July 25, 2002
The Guardian

"Five months after kidnapping the presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) have released a videotape in which she accuses the government of leaving the rebels' hostages to rot in the jungle.

Farc seized Ms Betancourt and her campaign manager, Clara Rojas, on February 23 as they headed into rebel territory after the collapse of three years' peace talks ended the zone's status as a safe area.

The video appeared to have been made on May 15, two weeks before the presidential election which gave the hardliner Alvaro Uribe a landslide victory.

Ms Betancourt says: »It's been a tremendously lonely 82 days.«

Ms Rojas, who was named as Ms Betancourt's running mate after the kidnapping, looks pale and thin and remains silent throughout.

Ms Betancourt says she still supports peace talks with her captors and condemns the government for failing to find a political solution to nearly 40 years of civil war."

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/colombia/story/0,11502,762595,00.html