Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Irregular Warfare 101
- Part One The American Revolution to Chasing Sandino, 1776–1930s
- Part Two The Cold War, 1940s–1989
- Part Three Latin America and the Cold War, 1950s–1980s
- Part Four Post–Cold War, 1990s–2000s
- 26 Dirty Wars after the Cold War
- 27 Colombia
- 28 Iraq
- 29 Intermezzo
- 30 Post-9/11 COIN in the Philippines
- 31 Intermezzo
- 32 The Longest War
- 33 The Fall of Muammar Qaddafi, 2011
- 34 Intermezzo
- 35 Conclusion
- Epilogue “I Feel More Like a Monster”
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
27 - Colombia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Irregular Warfare 101
- Part One The American Revolution to Chasing Sandino, 1776–1930s
- Part Two The Cold War, 1940s–1989
- Part Three Latin America and the Cold War, 1950s–1980s
- Part Four Post–Cold War, 1990s–2000s
- 26 Dirty Wars after the Cold War
- 27 Colombia
- 28 Iraq
- 29 Intermezzo
- 30 Post-9/11 COIN in the Philippines
- 31 Intermezzo
- 32 The Longest War
- 33 The Fall of Muammar Qaddafi, 2011
- 34 Intermezzo
- 35 Conclusion
- Epilogue “I Feel More Like a Monster”
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
On February 7, 2003, a car containing 200 kilograms of explosives blew up in the parking garage of the exclusive El Nogal social club in one of Bogotá’s most upscale neighborhoods. The blast killed 36 and wounded more than 200. No one claimed responsibility for what was Colombia’s worst terrorist attack in over ten years in its decades-long internal war. Yet, the government soon declared that it had evidence linking the attack to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country’s oldest and largest guerrilla insurgency.
The rebels had apparently recruited a young squash champion, John Freddy Arellán, to join the club as a squash instructor. While it is not clear whether Arellán was willingly carrying out the terrorist attack, he drove the car into the garage on that fateful day. A FARC operative detonated the bomb remotely while Arellán was still inside; Arellán and his uncle, Oswaldo Arellán perished in the explosion and the operative was captured three weeks later. The El Nogal bombings shook the nation’s elites, who had become accustomed to living largely normal lives despite the low-level guerrilla presence that had existed for more than forty years. But the violent and brazen blast made it appear as though no place was safe from the guerrillas’ reach.
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- America's Dirty WarsIrregular Warfare from 1776 to the War on Terror, pp. 345 - 362Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014