Colombian troops kill 22 rebels

[Judi Lynn]

Colombian troops kill 22 rebels

ISN SECURITY WATCH (Monday, 3 April 2006: 16.30 CET) - Colombian troops reportedly have killed 22 rebel fighters in an operation to prevent guerrilla attacks during campaigning for May presidential elections.

The Colombian army said its forces had killed 14 members of the country's largest rebel group, the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and eight members of the National Liberation Army (ELN).

According to a military statement carried by news agencies, the offensive was launched in six different regions over the weekend.

Presidential elections are scheduled for 28 May.
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http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?id=15349

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U.S. Willing to Deploy Combat Troops to Colombia
by Garry Leech
April 02, 2006

While the U.S. mainstream media widely-reported the U.S. Department of Justice’s recent indictment of 50 rebel leaders belonging to the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), an announcement by the State Department the next day received surprisingly little coverage. On March 24, Assistant Secretary of State Anne Patterson told Colombia’s Radio Caracol that, while the United States would not initiate any unilateral military action to capture FARC leaders, it would intervene if invited by the Colombian government. Given that the U.S. government’s intervention in Colombia already involves everything but the deployment of U.S. combat troops, it is clear that Patterson’s comments were intended to illustrate the Bush administration’s willingness to deploy U.S. troops to Colombia to combat FARC guerrillas.

The indictment of the FARC leaders further illustrates the Bush administration’s strategy to portray the FARC as the greatest perpetrator of violence and drug trafficking in Colombia. The reality, however, is very different from the Bush White House’s fictitious portrayal. The U.S. indictment provided no evidence to support its claim that FARC leaders have earned $25 billion from drug trafficking and are responsible for 60 percent of the cocaine shipped to the United States.

Meanwhile, most Colombia experts agree that the country’s right-wing paramilitaries are far more deeply involved in drug trafficking than the rebels, a fact supported by the numerous drug busts in which the seized cocaine was traced back to paramilitary groups. In fact, former associates of Pablo Escobar, the notorious leader of the now-defunct Medellín cartel, established some of Colombia’s most prominent paramilitary groups.

At the same time that the Bush administration is making the FARC the focus of its drug war propaganda, it is becoming increasingly evident that the U.S.-backed paramilitary demobilization is nothing more than a charade. Last week, demobilized paramilitary leader Ivan Roberto Duque confirmed publicly on Caracol Radio what Amnesty International, the United Nations and many analysts had been alleging for more than a year: that demobilized paramilitaries are taking up arms again. According to Duque, ex-militia fighters are offering their services to drug traffickers or “private justice” groups, also known as paramilitaries. As a result, the number of killings by paramilitaries in 2005 more than doubled that of the previous year.
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http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=9&ItemID=10031



_{George Bush} + Alvaro Uribe

[pocket]

1. rebel = villager

just like insurgent = villager in Iraq