You also find some really shocking numbers. Take combat deaths, for instance.
Between 2002 and the end of March 2010:
- 13,653 members of “subversive groups” have been killed.
- 1,611 members of “illegal self-defense groups” were killed between 2002 and 2006 (source is an older version of the same report – PDF).
- 1,080 members of “criminal gangs” have been killed since 2007.
- 4,571 members of the security forces were killed in acts of service.
That’s a total of 20,915 people. Most of them young Colombians — many under 18 years of age — serving as foot-soldiers or low-level recruits in the armed forces, the FARC, the ELN or the paramilitaries.
And that’s combat deaths only. This horrifying statistic does not include civilians killed or disappeared in conflict-related violence, which the Colombian Commission of Jurists estimates (PDF) at 14,028 people between mid-2002 and mid-2008. It does not count people wounded, whether by combat, terror attacks or landmines. It does not include the 2.4 million people that CODHES (PDF) estimates were displaced since 2002. (It may, unfortunately, include thousands of civilians falsely presented as armed-group members killed in combat.)
Had the FARC and the Colombian government successfully concluded good-faith negotiations between 1998 and 2002, these 20,915 people would be alive today. That is the cost of the failed peace process of the Pastrana years. It is also the cost of the “successful” security policies of the Uribe years.
Perhaps the most important task Colombia’s next president will face is how to avoid the combat deaths of another 20,915 Colombians over the next eight years. (Plus the civilian dead, disappeared, wounded and displaced.) How to break with a war of attrition which — with as many as 20,000 guerrillas and “new” paramilitaries still active in Colombia — promises to drag on for many more years.
Proposing and pursuing a policy other than continued war will take great political courage. But if a Colombian leader chooses this path, the Obama administration must support him or her unequivocally. The numbers alone demand it.
3 comments:
Mario:
Por favor contactame. Te escribi a WBAI pero tu correo esta lleno.
Alvaro, antes de New Jersey ahora de Florida.
netstar53@aol.com
Ciao
The most truthful is "Perhaps the most important task Colombia’s next president will face is how to avoid the combat deaths of another 20,915 Colombians over the next eight years."
In this distress he was received into the house of Mr. Waldron, where he lay concealed for some time. When the place of his retreat was at length discovered, he took refuge in Flanders, whore he died after a mbt trainers few months' residence, in the summer of 1791.Under the hospitable roof of this worthy and amiable man, Whalley resumed the care of Jonson ; but want of books, and, perhaps, of sufficient composure of mind, rendered his attcmpte ineffectual, and the manuscript was finally abandoned to his friend, who, in the year 1792, coach outlet store online commenced the publication of it in numbers. The success apparently fell short of the expectations of the editor, as the work was not continued beyond the second number.Mr. Waldron neither possessed, nor pretended to be possessed of, scholastic learning; but he was laborious, accurate, conversant with the stage, and imbued with a rational love of the ancient drama, which he had studied coach bags outlet with success. He appears to have collated Whalley's copy with the early editions ; and, on attentively retracing his steps, previously to the arrangement of the text for the present publication, I found much to approve in the caution andI Whalley'« text was that of the booksellers' edition, five finger shoes in Svo. This had been in Theobald's band«, and an incidental remark by him, of no moment whatever, here and there appeared in Ule margin.judgment with which he had uniformly proceeded. His friendship for Whalley, however, has led him to form far too high an estimate of that gentleman's qualifications ; and beyond the revision which I have just mentioned, he seems to have contemplated no alteration of the papers left in his hands.Many years had elapsed since the failure, last mentioned, when the republication coach outlet coupon of Joneon w»s proposed to me by Mr. George Nicol, to whom Whalley'e corrected copy had been consigned by Mr. Waldron. I was well aware of the labor and difficulty of the task ; but my objections were overcome by the encouragement of my friend, and I undertook the edition, confident that I was not about to coach purses outlet encumber the public with a superfluous work, for Jonson had now been long out of the bookseller's hands. One motive there yet was, which had some influence on my determination — a desire, though late, to render justice to the moral character of the author, and rescue him from the calumnies of his inveterate persecutors. My mind had been prejudiced at an early period by the commentators on our old dramas, and I verily believed, as they repeatedly assured me, that " tho great mbt shoes clearance object of Jonson's life was the persecution of Shakspeare ; " nor was it until I became acquainted with the dates of his respective performances that I ventured to question the accuracy of the critics, or to entertain a suspicion that they were actuated by unworthy motives, and could only be relieved 5 finger shoes from the charge of wanton malevolence by the plea of incorrigible folly.Previously to the arrangement of the text, it became necessary to collate the old editions. In the execution of this part of the work, the mode adopted in the revision of Maesinger was carefully followed.
Post a Comment