In addition to a cease-fire, the rebels — known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or the FARC — agreed to lay down their arms. In 1999, the two governments announced Plan Colombia, an aid package in which the United States poured some $10 billion into Colombia in the succeeding years to fight drug traffickers. Many FARC leaders have been killed and the group has suffered from mass desertions in its ranks. The FARC, whose origins date to the early 1960s, was founded as a Marxist-Leninist group that vowed to defend the country’s peasants from right-wing governments in Colombia. An estimated 220,000 people have been killed in more than 50 years of fighting between the guerrillas and the government.

Source: New York Times June 22, 2016 15:22 UTC