Author Topic: Colombian president who hunted down Pablo Escobar: Don't fight the drug war the way I did  (Read 561 times)

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Offline TomSea

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Colombian president who hunted down Pablo Escobar: Don't fight the drug war the way I did

 Thrust onto the presidential campaign trail after the assassination of Luis Galan in late 1989, Cesar Gaviria won Colombia's highest office in late 1990, and over the next four years he worked closely with the US (and other more suspect allies) to track down lethal drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.

The hunt for Escobar was just one element of the brutal, years-long drug war in Colombia, which has been criss-crossed by drug cartels, criminal gangs, right-wing paramilitaries, and left-wing rebel groups, all of which have had some role in the drug trade.

In a New York Times op-ed published on Tuesday, Gaviria turned his attention to the Philippines, where the bloody crackdown on drugs and the drug trade mounted by President Rodrigo Duterte has killed more than 7,600 people since Duterte took office last summer.

"Illegal drugs are a matter of national security, but the war against them cannot be won by armed forces and law enforcement agencies alone," Gaviria writes. "Throwing more soldiers and police at the drug users is not just a waste of money but also can actually make the problem worse. Locking up nonviolent offenders and drug users almost always backfires, instead strengthening organized crime."

Continued: http://www.businessinsider.com/colombia-president-op-ed-rodrigo-duterte-philippines-drug-war-2017-2