The beginning of the end

WHEN Juan Manuel Santos took over as Colombia’s president in August, he said that the door to peace talks with his country’s guerrillas was “not locked”. The response of the FARC, the main guerrilla army, was a wave of attacks and ambushes. In little more than six weeks it killed more than 40 soldiers and police, raising concerns that the improvement in security under the outgoing president, Álvaro Uribe, might be in jeopardy and that army morale was slipping.

Such doubts were quelled in the most dramatic way possible on September 22nd, when government forces staged a lethal and carefully planned bombing raid that killed Víctor Julio Suárez, the FARC’s senior military commander, who is better known to Colombians by his nickname of “Mono Jojoy”. It was, said Mr Santos, the “most resounding blow against the FARC in its entire history”, and marked the “beginning of the end” of the guerrillas.
 
Read more here.

Semana International delivers news about Colombia in English. Find more in our home.