As St. Olaf students sit studying happily, Colombian citizenry are being forced from their homes. As St. Olaf students worry about their next round of exams, 10 political killings occur per day in Colombia. And as St. Olaf students wonder what will be served tonight in the caf., Colombian children as young as 8 are forced to carry arms and join the ranks of Colombia's guerillas or Paramilitaries.
Unbeknownst to many St. Olaf students, Colombia rages an ongoing civil war that has lasted for decades. The war's key players include the 15,000-20,000 strong left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC; the 5,000 strong Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional, or ELN terrorist organization; the 11,000 strong right-wing Paramilitaries; Colombia's severely out-numbered army; and millions of dollars in cocaine and heroin.
The fighting begins
The fighting in Colombia began in 1946, when Conservatives won the presidency and began reprisals against their Liberal rivals. In 1948 the war escalated with the assassination of populist leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan. Before the war, appropriately named La Violencia, ended in the mid-1960s, as many as 300,000 people had been killed.
Continuing unrest triggered successive administrations to invoke a "state of siege" that gave them exceptional power to govern. Yet citizens simultaneously started arming themselves, and the state gradually lost its monopoly of force.
In the mid-1960s, several leftist guerrilla groups including the FARC and ELN arose, offering a presence in spots where the state was absent. They relied initially to a large extent on foreign aid from Communist countries such as Cuba. When those sources dried up at the end of the Cold War, the guerrillas increasingly resorted to kidnapping as a source of revenue.
Continuing strife
Twenty years later, in the mid-1980s, the rash of kidnappings by the guerillas induced a backlash among landowners, merchants and others that resulted in the emergence of the Paramilitaries. The overwhelmed armed forces were often accused of collaborating with them.
In their determination to extinguish guerillas, the Paramilitaries introduced large-scale killings. Revenues came from protection they offered landlords, businessmen and the all-powerful drug lords. With the rise of drug lords in the late 1970s, nearly all Colombian military groups became increasingly corrupt.
Today these groups fight viciously for control over Colombia's vast coca fields, the shrub used to make cocaine. Colombia is the source of more than 90 percent of the cocaine that comes into America and more than 70 percent of the heroin, according to Barry McCaffrey, director of the White House office on drug control policy. The production of cocaine, which the government says provides guerillas and Paramilitaries hundreds of millions of dollars per year, is booming.
Yet surprisingly, the Paramilitaries, FARC, ELN and Colombian government hold very similar dreams for their country. Each group speaks of land reform, of opening the political landscape for new movements, of investing more in education and health, and of Colombians gaining greater benefits from the country's natural resources. Even the right-wing Paramilitaries question the value of an unfettered free market. With such similar values, many wonder why the opposing groups cannot somehow unite to create peace.
U.S. involvement
The United States recently gave Colombia $1.3 billion in foreign aid, a package heavy on military assistance that provides the Columbian army special training and helicopters to hunt down narco-traffickers and to destroy the coca and poppy fields that supply them. Yet non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, protest that insufficient funds are planned for the defense of human rights and for social initiatives. They argue that throwing money at Colombia's problems will not solve anything. Scientists and environmentalists argue that spraying herbicides to eradicate the coca will lead to ecological ruin.
Dangers of daily life
In Colombia the risk of being kidnapped is greater than in any other country, and the risk of being murdered is eight times greater than in the United States, according to the U.S. State Department. Since 1985, 200 bombs‹half of them massive enough to take down entire buildings‹have blown up in Colombian cities, according to former Colombian defense minister Rafael Pardo. During that 15-year period, four presidential candidates, 200 judges and investigators, 1,200 police officers, 151 journalists and more than 300,000 ordinary Colombians have been murdered, says Pardo.
Street crime has also elevated to a terrifying new dimension with the drug scopolamine. Thugs spike bar drinks and cigarettes with the odorless and tasteless drug, locally known as burundanga, that puts victims in a zombie-like trance‹awake but powerless to resist commands to remove their money from the bank or hand over their car keys.
The Colombian city of Medellin is famous for its teenage assassins, known as sicarios, who are available to settle scores. Between 5,000 and 7,000 young people in the city alone have committed murder for pay at least once, according to the travel guide "The World's Most Dangerous Places."
In a country boasting of such alarming statistics, creating peace has never been more crucial. The future will tell if peace is obtainable for the country of Colombia.