The government of Colombia refuse to report what happened with the oil pipeline…

The government of Peru say that the helicopter had a mechanical failure only…

The government of Brazil say that they have the control over all the border with Peru and Colombia…

The government of Venezuela say that not have terrorists camps in your territory…

The government of Ecuador say that control all the national territory…

My correspondent seems to believe that the region’s governments know Al Qaeda is in business in their shadowlands and are cautious about the possibility of their being in possession of surface-to-air missiles.

Instead of sending out helicopter gunships for “hunting”, there may be some corresponding preference for ferrying troops to the vicinity of sightings and march them in for search and destroy.

The country that fails to control the terrorists groups in the jungle is Brazil.

Colombia, Peru and Ecuador have a hard battle against terrorists groups, every day even fighting body with body against them.

One day, I looked over the map of my friend’s nation and noticed how thin the infrastructure was — well, major highways and their secondary feeders — were outside the large cities and then out over the mountains and down to the jungle.

No one who care to look can miss these dark regional spaces in which multiple states may have declared boundaries and official “writ of government” for administration; however, such lands remain to this day wild frontier.

The country is poor, has no roads, bridges, military bases, which can guarantee the presence of the state in the remote places of the country….

For any who may wish to corroborate this assertion, Google Earth or other maps may suffice.

There are yet on earth places that are so Out There that their rural districts haven’t exactly bought into ecotourism and placid farming (and some international mining): such remote enclaves may be — depending on who is in the neighborhood — still the redoubts of bandits, and these days, those fly all kinds of banners.

I’ve mentioned to the correspondent, “You may need a new war of conquest Out Back to subdue the Cartelites and the Islamists.”

On the other hand, the values of the unnatural or out-of-bounds, all those a bit Out There and Out There in the Outback, have ways of stimulating some local action in their disfavor. Continue reading →