"See you at the cities", said
"Mono" Jojoy, number 3 at the farc at the very heyday of the
failed peace talks in the Pastrana administration. Politicians, bankers and clergymen from all over the world,
NYSE's chairman included, visited
San Vicente del Caguan or received
Raul Reyes (number two in the organization) in a trip with colombian government officials to
Europe. Just everybody wanted to be in the history books. ¿And what was what the farc had to offer? Just to extend the war from the jungle to the colombian cities, where the most part of the population live. And in the late nineties, they were in pretty good shape to do that (they've got a lot of help btw, even from
outside Colombia).
That was between 1999 and 2002, and then the tide turns against the farc: Reyes is
killed, the organization is in
disarray, Jojoy is on the run and
Tirofijo, the legendary leader died without being nearer to his final goal: to size absolute power in Colombia.
Now, today Dr. sipmac read an
article written by Mr. Ray Fisman about 5 billion dollars wasted in the war against drugs in Colombia. The article is based in a
Center for Global Development report. Sip won't go into the legalization debate, not for now. But Mr. Fisman surely does not mention how was the situation in the late nineties: it was more than possible that the guerrilla could win the war. Because it wasn't only a
guerrilla war but pure terrorism used against
innocent civilians, too. Anybody who cared to travel by car or by bus outside the big cities risked dear life by being caught by guerrilleros, and spent years
kidnapped, for starters.
In a nutshell, this situation changed thanks to the U.S. aid, those 5 billion dollars reported in Mr. Fisman's article and allegedly to have no positive outcome after being spent. It is interesting how it is mentioned both in the
CGD report and the article the truly evil (and very condemnable) deeds of the paramilitary forces but not all the damage caused by the guerrilla all these years. Not to mention that in
Wikipedia's entry on CGD it is mentioned the
Foreign Policy Magazine, the one that works very closely with
Slate, all with the same political orientation.
All of this is to say, the U.S. aid to Colombia may have not been 100% succesful, but it has done a lot of good to the majority of colombians that want to live in peace, and they are thankful for this. Dr. sipmac remembers about one or two years ago an american cartoonist horrified by the colombian paramilitary and asked not to drink colombian coffee. I'd rather been suggesting him not to blow any coke.
