Now that Colombia’s crackdown on the FARC has significantly weakened the group, there are signs that it is setting up in neighboring Venezuela and preparing for a rebirth of sorts, Samuel Logan writes for ISN Security Watch. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) made an unusual appeal on 23 August to UNASUR, South America's multilateral security forum, to explain its political and strategic goals in Colombia. Within 24 hours, Colombian Defense Minister Rodrigo Rivera, part...

A complaint brought against Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez at the International Criminal Court and another complaint against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has legal effects, as opposed to what some experts purport. This is what Asdrúbal Aguiar, former judge at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, thinks. Everything depends on the contents of the materials submitted to the Commission and the Court. "I reckon...

The long-running feud between Venezuela and Colombia escalated into outright hostility this week, as Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez abruptly severed diplomatic relations between the two South American neighbors. Chávez closed his country's embassy in Bogotá, expelled Colombian diplomats, and accused rival President Alvaro Uribe of attempting to provoke a war. Could it really come to that? Here's a brief guide: (Watch a report about the conflict ) What is this dispute...

After 40 years of fighting to keep its revolutionary war alive in the jungles of Colombia, the world's oldest armed rebel group could finally be brought down by its increasing dependence on technology. In an unprecedented computer-assisted analysis of FARC data from more than 50 guerrilla computers and electronic equipment seized by Colombian soldiers and police, Semana magazine gave a rare inside look at Colombia's largest and oldest rebel group that, in "their own words,"...

The Miami Herald few months ago reported that the Colombian FARC has likely already fulfilled its long-time goal of purchasing surface to air missiles to be used against U.S.-supplied helicopters in Colombia. The FARC has long placed a very high strategic priority on acquiring SAMs, going back to at least 2003. The commanders officially requested money from Libya and Nicaragua at that time to purchase the weapons because the insurgency was being so badly hurt by helicopters acquired by the...

The decision on whether to change the constitution to enable President Álvaro Uribe to seek a third consecutive term in 2010 will have important consequences for Colombia’s efforts to resolve its armed conflict and tensions with its neighbours. ,* the latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines the process of enabling a third presidential term and why the decision on this fundamental issue needs to be accompanied by a recognition that pressing questions of...

The possibility of an imperialist war in the Americas came a step closer on October 30, when Colombia and the United States finalised a 10-year accord. The agreement allows the US to hugely expand its military presence in the Latin American nation. It comes as the US seeks to regain its dominance over Latin America, which has declined over the past decade in the context of a continent-wide rebellion against neoliberalism - spearheaded by the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. To regain...

South American presidents expressed deep concerns over a United States plan to increase its military presence in Colombia at a Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) Summit in Quito, Ecuador, on Monday. Full details of the U.S.-Colombia military plan have not been released, but the U.S. is expected to have a significant presence at three air bases and two naval bases, in addition to the two Colombian military bases it currently operates in. The discussion of the U.S.-Colombia plan was...

President Barack Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderón are in Guadalajara, Mexico, today for the North American Leaders' Summit. They will discuss, among other topics, what to do about the explosion in drug-trafficking violence on the continent. But they are also expected to address the political situation in Honduras. Honduras's Partido de Unificación Democrática (UD) is on the list. The party has only a small representation...

Luis Adolfo Cardona worked as a forklift operator at an American-owned bottling company that packages 50,000 cases of Coca-Cola’s famous fizzy beverages a month. On an unassuming morning, Cardona narrowly escaped death when right-wing paramilitary troops attempted to kill him. Unfortunately, not all labor union activists are so lucky. Isídro Segundo Gil, the gatekeeper and the union’s chief negotiator at another Coca-Cola bottling plant in the small, rural town of Carepa,...