ABSTRACT
Colombia is a large country, which places it third in Latin America after Brazil and Mexico. Like all of the Andean states, there is a sharp contrast between the coastal plains, the mountains and the eastern lowlands. Since the 1980s there has been some level of civil war in Colombia and this has posed the most serious long-term security threat to the region. The chief opposition to the government has been provided by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) which has grown increasingly powerful. FARC now operates across 70 per cent of rural Colombia and the National Liberation Army (ELN) has also expanded. FARC effectively administers the southern half of Colombia and exacts taxes, particularly on coca transactions. The drug problem brings Colombia into direct conflict with the USA and increasingly with other Western countries. While Colombia remains a focus of the international drug trade, it must be considered a major geopolitical flashpoint.
