Colombia

[Barquentine]

I was thinking about a holiday in Colombia, having seen some of its tourism posters on the Tube, but after reading the F.O. travel advice I think it's still too dangerous to visit. This is really irritating. I have often argued that, given sufficient willpower, it would be very easy to eliminate all criminal elements in a country. Everyone disagrees with me, but they never explain in detail why. Maybe I am just too thick to understand, but can anyone try to explain , if you know where drugs are being cultivated, and the approximate locations of druglords and gangs, why would it be difficult to bomb them out of existence? I understand there would be considerable loss of non-combatant life, but surely it's worthwhile to snuff out all the drugs and the harm they cause? And as soon as others replace the dead criminals, kill them too. Why is there such reluctance to eliminate the scourge? Is it purely a moral question? Or is it physically impractical? I would genuinely welcome your attempts to make me understand why my suggested approach is useless and stupid.

[boxtops]

If you blast the population of Colombia out of existence, the drug trade will just pop up somewhere else.

[bednobs]

lol, so say you lived near a town that had loads of crime - would you advocate bombing out of existence, considering YOU might be one of the lives lost?

[237SJ]

There aren`t many places in the world I would never go to but Colombia is one of them. I don`t know the answer to the drug problem but they`re trying to combat it in Mexico and there`s all out war in some places. So many people have so many fingers in pies and vested interests that even the government is struggling. I was in Mexico City the other week and there were police with riot shields literally everywhere. It turns out a major drugs baron was in court that day and they thought there would be trouble. The Mexicans are trying very hard to combat the drug industry but it`s proving to be very difficult indeed.

[jno]

a friend of mine's just come back from a tour of Colombia and loved it.

[FredPuli43]

Well,the people are exuberantly friendly (and that's not drug-induced!). If you want quiet, rural, people, go next door to Ecuador. Ecuador is a gem.it has everything: volcanoes (mostly dormant), rain forest, beautiful and impressive scenery, cheap travel by taxis across country (it has its own oil), llamas and alpacas, rural markets with 'horse trading' locals,in a country of small size and, if you wish, the Galapagos.

Take F and C O warnings with a pinch of salt. Of course there are places in Colombia which are not great: Medelin is not the world's safest place, but why would you go to Medelin ? A good guide book is essential: The South America Handbook is the best, if still available.

[Brinjal]

Also try Chile. Great country from the Atacama to Patagonia.

[FredPuli43]

Or , for a safe place, you could always ask my ex where she's going next, and avoid it. Throughout the marriage she contrived to pick places where a revolution, uprising, or mass rioting was on within days of our arrival; I reckon she knew in advance and picked them because she'd get last minute cheap hotel deals. We even had an armed guard outside the hotel room on our honeymoon (in Vienna; there was an OPEC meeting there)

And here's a clue to the Foreign Office: we were in the south of Israel when the intifada started, and were due in Jerusalem. I rang our man in the Embassy to ask about travelling. He said "Well, I have had no trouble; I'm driven in every day in an embassy car" (Er..yes..in some ruddy great limousine with a flag on it !) and then added "You have a hire car? The hire ars have a line around the number plate. They won't attack a hire car, seeing that.... unless of course , they are very short -sighted terrorists " Er..yes. (We travelled, after three attempts to persuade the Hilton that we wanted to book, not cancel, a room. They gave us room 13-13, for added luck. It, of course, had an armed guard outside)

[KerrAvon]

"This is really irritating. I have often argued that, given sufficient willpower, it would be very easy to eliminate all criminal elements in a country. Everyone disagrees with me, but they never explain in detail why." - could it possibly be because of the phrase "it would be very easy"? It would not be easy - crime free society is a Utopian dream, if you think it is easy to achieve then you have no understanding of the problem. Snuffing out the drugs will not eradicate crime. Crime, especially the organized variety will always find new things to concentrate on. For example organized crime in the UK has a huge dept smuggling legal drugs, how would you cope with that?

[ichkeria]

The FCO advice for Colombia actually points out that most visits to Colombia are "trouble-free". They have to err on the cautious side.

One issue to be aware of in your master plan for the eradication of drug-related crime is that it's most likely a large number of the law-enforcement authorities and government are in the pay of the drugs producers.