Counterterrorism Paper

Colombia's government and the rebel group FARC reached an agreement May 17, 2014 on ending the illegal drug trade. The deal called for FARC to cooperate with the government in convincing farmers to grow crops other than coca, which is used to make cocaine. The announcement was made Friday in Havana where the two sides have been negotiating an end to a 50-year-old insurgency. Colombia was the world's leading producer of cocaine until Peru recently overtook it in cultivation of coca. The cocaine industry has been the major source of funds for the Marxist rebel group and a cause of crime and instability in the South American country. With the agreement on ending the drug trade, the two sides have resolved three of the six points on their agenda. Previously FARC and the government had reached deals on agrarian reform and political participation.
Colombia and FARC rebels had engaged in a bloody civil war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Since 1964, the militant group has engaged in political kidnappings and carried out attacks on security forces in its battle against the government. The FARC has been hammering out peace terms with government negotiators since November 2012 to bring an end to five decades of war. The government wants a peace agreement signed by the end of 2013. Negotiations between the two sides began in October 2012 in Norway and moved to Cuba in November 2012.
The first topic on the agenda was the complicated issue of land reform. Other equally thorny topics will follow, including a mechanism to end hostilities, the political future of FARC, the illegal drug trade, and compensating victims of the conflict. On May 26, 2013 the government of Colombia and the country's largest rebel group, FARC, agreed on land reform, after more than six months of peace talks. Their deal called for the economic and social development of rural areas and providing land to poor farmers. Land reform was one of the most contentious issues in the talks on