Colombia’s Eternal Agony
Revelations about Colombian politicians' complicity with vicious paramilitary units and drug lords now threaten to sink not only the country's pending free trade agreement with the United States, but also the renewal of funding for America's lavish aid program, Plan Colombia. President Alavaro Uribe may not deserve this fate, but tying trade and aid to respect for human rights is long overdue.
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Colombia is in better shape today than it has been for years, thanks largely to President Alvaro Uribe’s leadership, but it remains a bizarre place, one facing strange and intractable challenges. Colombia’s FARC guerrillas have held some of their kidnapping victims for many years. Child soldiers still linger in paramilitary groups, and there are compromising video recordings of leading Colombian politicians and drug lords. Perhaps weirdest of all, there are imprisoned guerrillas who refuse to be set free, and a government that insists on liberating them, even against their will.