BOGOTÁ — Colombia hailed the death last month of a top rebel commander as the most significant blow against the guerilla insurgency in its 46-year history. Jorge Briceno Suarez, known as Mono Jojoy, was the No. 2 leader of Colombia’s largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). “The symbol of terrorism in Colombia has fallen,” said Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who ordered the air strike on the jungle guerrilla camp. Mono Jojoy was a veteran leader who was considered invincible. He masterminded a series of fatal attacks on southern towns and military bases during the 1990s [...]
Compared to their predecessors of three or four decades ago, U.S. national security officials are thinking in new terms, about new categories of threats. To an unprecedented degree, they must monitor the social, political, economic and psychological trends and processes that will determine the security environment in the years ahead. The kinds of things they are likely to worry about include the factors that will encourage Pakistan to take more aggressive action against militants or impede it from doing so; the conditions under which narco-violence could threaten the stability of Mexico; the likely lifespan of Tehran’s theocracy; the causes and [...]
MADRID — For more than 40 years, the separatist terrorist group Basque Homeland and Freedom (ETA) was a major force in Spanish politics and society. The group’s attacks claimed more than 800 lives, including many senior government officials, and in its prime, it exerted de facto control over vast swathes of the Basque Country, in both Spain and France. This combination of hard and soft power allowed the group to define the parameters not only of the political and academic debates over Basque autonomy, but also of wider discussions of regionalism in the late-Franco-era and, later, in democratic Spain. However, [...]
