Ender Finds a Job

[LV426]

Earn Easy Cash in Your Spare Time... (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=757&e=10&u=/nm/20050113/od_nm/colombia_rewards_dc)

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Colombia on Wednesday invited the world's bounty hunters to scour its jungles and mountains and drag back rebel chiefs in return for cash rewards.

"It would be great if all the bounty hunters in the world came to capture those bandits. The money's there for them, and the rewards are good," Vice President Francisco Santos told reporters.
http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20050112/i/r2722491321.jpg
The Colombian government has put rewards of up to about $2 million on the heads of outlaws like Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, veteran Marxist commander of the 17,000 fighters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Santos' comments came after officials said they had paid an unspecified reward to an anonymous informant who helped them catch Rodrigo Granda, a top rebel who authorities called the FARC's "foreign minister."

Granda's capture has caused a diplomatic squabble with neighboring Venezuela, which says he was kidnapped from a street in Caracas. The Colombian government, which has long suspected Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez of sympathies for the FARC, insists they nabbed Granda within their borders.

Colombia's war with the FARC and other illegal armed groups has lasted 40 years and claims thousands of lives annually.

President Alvaro Uribe owes his 70-percent approval rating to a military campaign against the FARC but the group's top commanders keep safe in hideouts in the country's extensive mountains and jungles.

But Colombia is outgunned in the reward stakes by its ally the United States, which has offered up to $25 million for information leading to the arrest of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).

[Darth Cluich]

As humorous as the title of this thread is, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), or FARC, is a serious problem in Colombia. Although the Colombian government has had some recent successes in coming to terms with the FARC's rival insurgent group -- the Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (Army of National Liberation), or ELN -- the FARC continues to control large swaths of the country. Though claiming to be a Marxist rebel group, the FARC is basically a gang of thugs, engaged in terrorism, extortion, kidnapping, and narco-trafficking -- and not a small one either. The FARC is estimated at 9,000 to 12,000 strong in terms of armed combatants, but they have thousands of other supporters as well, mostly in rural areas, where government control is lax or even non-existent.

The FARC is also believed to have international ties as well. In 2001, three members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) were arrested in Colombia on suspicion of providing explosives training to the FARC.

FARC activities do a great deal to undermine the country's economy. Let's face it, would you want to invest in any enterprise that could find itself or its personnel the target of these guys? Moreover, having an armed rebellion underway on a country's soil, carrying out random bombings and other attacks doesn't really lend itself to much confidence -- be it international or domestic -- in that country's economy. Who suffers then? Ironically, the poor and working classes that the FARC claims to champion.

So, in short, I say...go get him, Ender! :cool:

[Ender]

The FARC is also believed to have international ties as well. In 2001, three members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) were arrested in Colombia on suspicion of providing explosives training to the FARC. DAMN!

[Reformer56]

Columbia is just one example of how, for lack of a better phrase, messed up. Latin/Central America is. Is it not columbia that is also dealing with severe guerilla warfare or is that Peru? I know one or the other undergoes a government change as often as the winds change. It's really sad and many people don't know about it.

[Darth Cluich]

Columbia is just one example of how, for lack of a better phrase, messed up. Latin/Central America is. Is it not columbia that is also dealing with severe guerilla warfare or is that Peru? I know one or the other undergoes a government change as often as the winds change. It's really sad and many people don't know about it.

Um...yeah, it's Colombia. That what the first and second posts in this thread said. Colombia has the worst of it, but there are terrorist groups in many Latin American countries, Peru included.

[Reformer56]

Well I just knew about the Columbian situation to the point of a Marxist government constantly taking control over military action usually through guerillas...I do know a little of Peru's situation in that their trade has almost been outlawed by the entireity of Latin/Southern America...

[Ender]

Wow, Cluich took the apex on that one.