When the US Drug Enforcement Administration announced in December that it had arrested three suspected Al Qaeda operatives in Ghana and brought them to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges, investigators unveiled some astonishing allegations. The defendants had offered to help rebels of South America’s oldest active guerrilla front, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), traffic cocaine into Spain using North African routes. While there had been speculation regarding such a connection in the past, this was the first time US law enforcement authorities had linked the dots between Islamic extremists and the FARC in a criminal indictment. Then in early March, … [Read more...] about FARC, ETA and Al Qaeda: the terror connection
Colombia
Unmasking the weaver of dreams
There is an unforgettable scene in Gerald Martin’s biography of Gabriel García Márquez, when the Colombian writer, who is leading a hungry and desperate existence in Paris, spots his hero Ernest Hemingway wandering down the street in Paris one morning in 1957. García Márquez, shy but determined not to let his idol walk on by, shouts out: “Maestro!” Hemingway replies: “Adiós, amigo!” and disappears. The image of a young, still undiscovered García Márquez chasing after a writer he reveres contrasts sharply with that of the García Márquez we have come to know. For at least the last 20 years he has been an easy-going grandfather figure, oozing gnomic bonhomie and magical tales. In the … [Read more...] about Unmasking the weaver of dreams