𝑊𝐼𝐿𝐵𝐸𝑅𝐹𝑂𝑅𝐶𝐸

The project was well organised that in 1999, UNESCO accepted Libya’s offer to fund the Great Man-Made River. It also won the International Water Prize, an award that is only given to remarkable scientific research work. At the time of inauguration of the first phase in 1991, Muammar Gaddafi had said: “After this achievement, American threats against Libya will double. The United States will make excuses, but the real reason is to stop this achievement, to keep the people of Libya oppressed.”

At its peak, his cartel controlled about 80% of the world’s cocaine supply. Eighty percent. That’s not an exaggeration. He was smuggling about 15 tons of cocaine a day into the United States alone. That kind of volume made him richer than some countries. By the late 1980s, Forbes had listed him as one of the richest men in the world. At the time, his estimated net worth was more than 25 billion dollars. In today’s money, that’s about 80 billion dollars. Cash was coming in so fast that they couldn’t launder it quickly enough. His brother, Roberto Escobar, said they were losing about 10% of it each year to rats, water damage, and other things. That was 2 billion dollars gone just like that. That’s how much excess money they had. But Escobar didn’t just want money. He wanted power, respect, and love. So he started positioning himself as a man of the people. He built football fields, schools, and clinics, and handed out cash in the slums. He built entire neighborhoods for the poor. In Medellín today, some people still call him Don Pablo, and they pray at his grave. There’s even a barrio named after him. But all that charity was also a strategy. He was buying loyalty. Behind his Robin Hood image was a man running the deadliest criminal empire. When the Colombian government decided to come for him, he declared full-on war, literal war. He had judges, journalists, police officers, presidential candidates, and anyone else who stood in his way targeted. His motto was “Plata o plomo,” silver or lead: take the bribe or take a bullet. And if you thought you were untouchable, think again. When presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán refused to back down from his anti-drug stance, Escobar had him shot at a rally in front of a large crowd. Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla spoke out against him and was gunned down too, on Escobar’s instructions. Escobar even funded an attack on Colombia’s Supreme Court in 1985. He used M-19 guerrillas to storm the building and burn extradition documents. More than 100 people died, including 11 Supreme Court justices, all to erase his name from one list. This man didn’t care. But the worst was probably Avianca Flight 203. In 1989, Escobar got information that another presidential candidate, César Gaviria, was flying on that commercial plane. So he planted a bomb. The plane exploded midair, killing 107 people. Gaviria wasn’t on the flight; he survived. Everyone else died. Just to kill one man, Escobar took out an entire plane full of innocent civilians. With help from the U.S. DEA, the Colombian government declared all-out war. They formed a special unit called the Search Bloc to hunt him down. But Escobar still found a way to win, temporarily. In 1991, he made a deal. He agreed to surrender and stop his crimes in exchange for not being extradited to the United States. He also wanted to build his own prison, and the government agreed.