As I was watching TV late the other night, a cool story came on that I would like to share.
For over fifty years, Columbia was extremely torn and isolated, with its never ending amount of problems including gangs, drugs, and crime. There was an ongoing war and slowly, the Columbian government began to regain control. As they looked for a way to end the war, one man came up with a particularly creative idea. His idea was to use Christmas as a tool to get the Guerrillas to demobilize.
His first plan was to go deep into the guerrilla territory and set up Christmas trees along with signs pleading for the troops to come home for Christmas. His second plan was to get photos from the mothers of guerrillas and string them up throughout the forest. These included signs with quotes pleading their sons to come home.
Another idea included dropping hundreds of soccer balls throughout the enemy territory. This showed a sign of unity between the two sides. These campaigns got almost 18,000 rebels to demobilize and brought negotiation talks to the table.
What I like about this story is it shows how killing is not always the answer to winning a fight. Through creativity, the government nearly brought an end to the fighting with significantly fewer lives lost than what would have been.
It also brings out the humanity of both sides and shows how all human life is sacred. While not every conflict in the world can be played out exactly like this, I think this is a good example to the rest of the planet.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-colombia-after-civil-war-lara-logan/
Hi Nathan,
This is story is truly amazing and gives me hope for this world. I appreciate you posting about this. You also did a great job with summarizing the material. It was easy to understand and to the point. Great job! You have caught my attention and made me want to learn more.
Well done!
-Emily
Well done! This is an interesting topic, because not many people know about the warfare going on Columbia, myself included. This article and experience is something that proves that the world is not all bad and good things can come out of bad. Thank you for sharing this.
I’m interested to see your research on this topic. I never knew anything about this type of “warfare” and wonder how it was achieved and how this affects the citizens of Columbia.