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.

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).

Judge frees chief of Cali drug cartel

Sibylla Brodzinsky in Bogota
Friday November 8, 2002
The Guardian

"One of the world's most infamous drug lords was due to walk out of a maximum security prison last night after serving just seven years for shipping tonnes of cocaine around the world as the leader of a notorious drug syndicate.

Late on Wednesday a judge ordered the immediate release of Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, 56, thwarting government efforts to keep him and his brother Miguel, who once led the Cali cartel, behind bars."

And this has been happening in Colombia!...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/colombia/story/0,11502,835950,00.html

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.