“Win the war against drugs and you will win the war against terror—they are two sides of the same coin" that was the view of the Colombian Vice Minister of Defence as a small British parliamentary delegation toured the former coca plantations of La Macarena on the frontline of the battle against FARC guerrillas.
Seven years ago Colombia was the most violent country on the planet: Its murder rate was 32 times that of the UK and today it is still 50% higher than Iraq. Decades of appeasement by government ministers of the terrorists/drug-traffickers had created a lawless country, a collapsed economy and grinding poverty.
Then Alvaro Uribe was elected as president, who, with US support took on the FARC attacking them at source—the coca plantations which the terrorists had operated with impunity through fear and corruption.
These coca plantations were not a ‘Colombian’ problem they were a ‘global’ problem as they spewed their produce onto the streets of affluent countries chiefly in the United States and Europe (the UK being the largest market in Europe accounting for 40% consumption).
Carrying its twin diseases of violence and anarchy through illicit drug routes in West Africa and Mexico, cocaine is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands and many times more through the networks of crime and gangs which live off its proceeds. This compares to total deaths from terrorist attacks around the world of 15,765 (2008).
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