Markets coincide with boogeymen

By Fester:

Poliblogger is looking at FARC, the leftist insurgency/cog of multiple drug cartels, while also looking at a stupid question from someone who is either naive or trying to score some cheap political points.  The good doctor outlines some brief history and explains that markets work --- when groups have money and seek reasonably common and available goods, they tend to get those goods:

Here�s the deal: the FARC became an active guerrilla group in Colombia in the 1960s. Hugo Ch�z became president of Venezuela in 1998. As such, the FARC were able to get guns for over three decades before Tirofijo³ and friends had ever heard of Hugo.

The sad fact of the matter is, the FARC can easily obtain weapons these days via the profits they make over their involvement in the drug trade, as well as via kidnapping. While it would not surprise me to find that they have found aid from Venezuelan quarters in their weapon-gathering activities, it is also the case that Hugo Ch�z could be beamed into space tomorrow and the FARC would still be able to get their weapons.

There is a global arms market and it services consumers who are not always nice or honest or friendly to the United States.  And it is global and pervasive with one significant constraint.  Its customers better have cash.  And given that the international drug trade is predominately a cash and carry business, FARC does not face that constraint. 

And this is common.  I believe that the same type of relationship networks exist between many of the Shi'ite militias and elements of the Iranian government but even if the Iranian government was replaced wholesale with US bureaucrats tomorrow morning, the Shi'ite militias (JAM, Badr et al) would still be heavily armed and have reasonably flexible and resilient arms acquisition networks as there is too much money to be made selling them weapons. 

Markets exist and they flow to where the money is and sometimes that is next to the daily boogeyman.