To celebrate their 40th anniversary today, FARC has made a series of attacks in the last week that have left 14 dead and over a hundred wounded. FARCs operations over the last four decades have left several hundred thousand people dead, and many more wounded and impoverished. Although FARC began as a force for social change, the only impact FARC has had is negative. It's 15,000 armed members are currently seen as bodyguards for drug gangs and the principal practitioners of kidnappings and random violence in the country. 

At the moment, 300,000 police and troops are unable to eliminate the FARC, or the even more numerous gunmen in the drug and kidnapping gangs. Colombians are growing tired of this endless civil disorder and fear. Millions of middle-class and educated Colombians have fled in the last decade. The country will slip into poverty and anarchy if the government cannot provide peace and order throughout the country. But so far it's uncertain if the majority of Colombians are willing to make the sacrifices, in money and lives, required to defeat the private armies.