The book Killing Peace, by Garry Leech

Garry Leech

Garry Leech is a British-born American independent journalist, author and editor of the online publication Colombia Journal, which analyzes U.S. foreign policy in Colombia...

, documents the four-decade armed conflict

Colombian Armed Conflict

The Colombian armed conflict or Colombian Civil War are terms that are employed to refer to the current asymmetric low-intensity armed conflict in Colombia that has existed since approximately 1964 or 1966, between the Colombian government and peasant guerrillas such as the Revolutionary Armed...

 in Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

.

Details

Killing Peace: Colombia's Conflict and the Failure of U.S. Intervention,
by Garry M. Leech. Published by the Information Network of the Americas (INOTA), 2002,
Paperback, 116 pages with photos. ISBN 0-9720384-0-X.

Description

Over the past half-century, Colombia has been plagued by violence—its people caught in the middle of a civil conflict raging between the army, leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, narco-traffickers

Illegal drug trade

The illegal drug trade is a global black market, dedicated to cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of those substances which are subject to drug prohibition laws. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs by drug prohibition laws.A UN report said the...

, and U.S. anti-drug warriors

Office of National Drug Control Policy

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy , a former cabinet level component of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, was established in 1989 by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988...

. Killing Peace: Colombia's Conflict and the Failure of U.S. Intervention provides an overview of the war that is ravaging Colombia including its root causes in the country's gross social and economic inequalities.

Though rarely in the headlines, Colombia is not only by far the largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the Western Hemisphere

Western Hemisphere

The Western Hemisphere or western hemisphere is mainly used as a geographical term for the half of the Earth that lies west of the Prime Meridian and east of the Antimeridian , the other half being called the Eastern Hemisphere.In this sense, the western hemisphere consists of the western portions...

, it is also the worst human rights catastrophe. The rampaging process of economic globalization

Globalization

Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...

is further brutalizing the war-weary Colombian people.