Gabriel Marcella*
Foreword
This monograph is an important contribution to the special series, "Shaping the Regional Security Environment in Latin America," published jointly by the North-South Center of the University of Miami and the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College.
The report comes at a critical juncture, a time of promise for greater economic integration between the United States and Latin America, but also a time of profound concern about the deteriorating security situation in a number of countries in the region. Moreover, the events of September 11, 2001, have radically changed the strategic imperative for the United States. Within this larger context, American strategy towards Colombia shifted from a counternarcotics focus to more comprehensive support for that nation's security. The shift recognizes that Colombia's problems are deeply rooted and go beyond illegal narcotics. In the last year the Bush administration committed the United States to help Colombia defend democracy and to defeat the illegal armed groups of the left and right, doing so by promising to help that nation extend effective sovereignty over national territory and provide basic security to the people.
The author, Dr. Gabriel Marcella, identifies the strategic challenge of Colombia within the framework of the weak state and ungoverned space, made more complicated by the violence and corruption generated by the international organized criminals sustained by illegal drugs. He argues that the lessons learned in dealing with the security challenges that Colombia faces will have powerful consequences for the adaptation of American strategy to the conflict paradigm of the 21st century.
The Strategic Studies Institute and the North-South Center are pleased to offer this report as part of the continuing effort to inform the debate in the United States and abroad on the best way to support the government and people of Colombia.
DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.
Director
Strategic Studies Institute
Director
Strategic Studies Institute
Preface
Like Dr. Gabriel Marcella's previous monograph on Plan Colombia, this monograph is eloquent and powerful. It is also urgent testimony to the immense stake that the nations of the Western Hemisphere - including the United States - have in the outcome of Colombia's continuing crisis. That crisis goes well beyond the question of illegal drug trafficking and terrorism. The related social violence, criminality, corruption, human suffering, and instability lead to more violence and strife, as well as compromised democratic processes. In turn, the resultant political, economic, and social instability challenges the de jure and de facto sovereignty of the Colombian state, and it undermines the vital institutional pillars of regime governance and legitimacy. Ample experience demonstrates that this kind of political deterioration leads to some form of "narco-socialism" or state failure.
At the same time, the Colombian crisis extends past the political boundaries of that country. The spillover effects permeate hemispheric neighbors, the United States, and the entire global community. In these terms, Colombia is a revealing paradigm for 21st century conflict. The implications of these harbingers of crises to come to other weak states are grave. The powerful combination of ungoverned national territory, insurgent terrorism of the left and right, transnational organized crime based on illegal drug trafficking, a deeply rooted elite culture characterized by a lack of accountability, violence, and impunity breed the viruses that threaten stability and prosperity. (And, again, the consequences include violence, crime, corruption, conflict, human agony, the erosion of democracy, and possible state failure).
The consequences of the crisis and its overlap effects preclude a vibrant community of democracies working toward the common goal of economic integration, peace, and prosperity in the hemisphere. On the other hand, if the countries of the hemisphere want to achieve that positive vision, they - as well as the United States - must go beyond past and present U.S.-mandated, myopic, ad hoc, piecemeal, tactical and operational military solutions-based on the current "politically correct" issue for the control of narco-terrorism. Rather, we must all embrace Gabriel Marcella's "Journey from Ambiguity to Strategic Clarity." Such a coordinated long-term U.S.-Latin American exercise may be difficult, but it is absolutely necessary given the obvious alternatives. Continued neglect and indifference to hemispheric instability problems will profoundly affect the health of the U.S. economy - and the concomitant power to act in the international security arena. Indeed, strategic access or denial of Latin America to the United States is at stake.
The Dante B. Fascell North-South Center is pleased to collaborate with the U.S. Army War College. We offer, through a recent conference and now through a series of studies such as this, an ongoing analysis of the policy issues that are of critical importance to this country and to the Western Hemisphere.
Ambler H. Moss, Jr.
Director
Dante B. Fascell
North-South Center
University of Miami
Director
Dante B. Fascell
North-South Center
University of Miami
Summary
There has been a remarkable turnaround in the policy of the United States towards Colombia. It has gone from an exclusive focus on counternarcotics to a comprehensive recognition of that nation's deeply-rooted problems. The factors that drove this change are the tragic events of September 11, 2001, as well as the increased terrorism of the insurgents that threaten the state and society in Colombia. The evolution of American policy takes into account a recurring global geopolitical reality, of which Colombia is a paradigm: the problem of weak states and ungoverned space.
Colombia's weak state is beset with a complex interaction of violence and corruption from the terrorist left and right, as well as the workings of international organized crime that prospers on the movement of illicit narcotics. At stake for the United States and the hemispheric community is the security of the immediate Andean and adjacent areas. Given the region's worsening economic situation and the fragility of democratic institutions, the strategic denial of Latin America is taking shape.
In this context the successive administrations of Andrés Pastrana and Alvaro Uribe have taken decisive measures to strengthen the institutional capacity of Colombia to deal with the multiple challenges it faces. These include expanding the size of the police and armed forces to provide security; conducting aggressive eradication of illicit narcotics; mobilizing people, money, and programs to reestablish the effective presence and services of the state across the national territory; building international support to isolate the terrorists and control international borders; and developing a more comprehensive relationship with the United States. The George W. Bush administration and the Congress have jointly developed expanded legal authorities to support Colombia's needs, but the resources allocated are still relatively modest. The United States, as well as the international community, needs to provide more robust assistance to Colombia. It will require a generational effort. Unless such support is forthcoming, Colombia and much of Latin America may well become ungovernable.
THE UNITED STATES AND COLOMBIA:
THE JOURNEY FROM AMBIGUITY TO STRATEGIC CLARITY
In Colombia, we recognize the link between terrorist and extremist groups that challenges the security of the state and drug trafficking activities that help finance the operations of such groups. We are working to help Colombia defend its democratic institutions and defeat illegal armed groups of both the left and right by extending effective sovereignty over the entire national territory and to provide basic security to the Colombian people.
President George W. Bush
The National Security Strategy
of the United States,
September 2002
The National Security Strategy
of the United States,
September 2002
Introduction.
President Bush's sweeping support for Colombia underlines a remarkable turnaround in U.S. policy. Driven for years by the ambiguity of a counternarcotics-only approach, the United States has now adopted a more comprehensive recognition of Colombia's deeply rooted and complex security problem. Indeed, Colombia is a revealing paradigm for 21st century conflict. It is a surprisingly weak state under assault by a powerful combination of ungoverned national territory, insurgent terrorism of the left and right, international crime organized around drug trafficking, a deeply rooted counterculture of violence and impunity, ecological damage, and institutional corruption. Unlike the Cold War military and ideological confrontation between two superpowers, a country's debilities, rather than its strengths, breed the viruses that threaten the international community and the United States.
State weakness is one of a number of forces battering away at the Westphalian state system that has prevailed since 1648. That system raised respect for sovereignty as the basic organizing principle of international order. Accordingly, all states, whatever their internal differences and religious makeup, are beneficiaries of international order and are obligated to reciprocate by upholding the same principles.
Sovereignty is being violated with impunity by criminal nonstate actors, who take advantage of ungoverned space, weak to nonexistent border controls, the facility offered by globalization, and the corresponding corruption of government officials and institutions. David C. Jordan, a prominent scholar of Latin America, comments on this pattern:
- Finance, trade, and organized crime are globalized phenomena and operate in a de facto integrated system. This integrated economic system has a tendency to create a transnational criminal oligarchy undergirded by state rivalries. Political rivalry facilitates the growth of an unchecked transnational elite-an important part of which is criminal. At the same time, the processes within the states assist the rise, transformation, and persistence of unaccountable rulers despite formal democratic procedures.[1]
The corruption of emerging democracies follows, a process that Jordan terms "narcostatization." [2] In January 2003, for example, Mexico shut down for the second time in 6 years its equivalent of the U.S. Department of Justice Drug Enforcement Agency, the Federal Special Prosecutor's Office for Drug Crimes. The reason: its 200 employees were being questioned for corruption by drug traffickers.[3] Since the year 2000, more than 800 employees of Mexico's attorney general's office have been suspended, fired, or charged with crimes, and another 1,300 were or are being investigated.
Similarly, in late January 2003, Guatemala became the 23rd nation cited by President George W. Bush for having "failed demonstrably" to meet its obligations under international counternarcotics agreements because of a "heightened level of corruption." [4] The list includes Afghanistan, the Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, Burma, China, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Thailand, Venezuela, and Vietnam. The same 22 nations were listed in 2002.
Narcostatization works the vulnerable seams of sovereignty and renders states poor Westphalian partners. An excellent illustration came in May 1999, when the Venezuelan government denied overflight rights to American reconnaissance craft monitoring airspace for drug flights moving north and east from Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. Moisés Naim, editor of Foreign Policy and one time minister of finance in Venezuela, commented on the irony of the decision: "Venezuelan authorities placed more importance on the symbolic value of asserting sovereignty over air space than on the fact that drug traffickers' planes regularly violate Venezuelan territory." [5] Sovereignty can thus become a refuge for states unwilling to uphold their international obligations.
The export of illegal drugs from weak states in the Andean region, especially Colombia, and their accompanying violence and corruption have a powerful effect on regional security and U.S. society. Indeed, despite the seeming hyperbole, Colombia's President Álvaro Uribe called narco-trafficking "a greater threat than Iraq" and urged that after the war in Iraq is over the United States lead a coalition with a massive deployment of naval and air power to attack it and terrorism. [6]
The strategic and operational lessons learned as the United States responds to the Colombian crisis will have significant implications for Latin America as well as for the U.S. role around the globe in succeeding years. U.S. grand strategy envisions a hemispheric community of economically integrated democracies cooperating on the world scene for common purposes. Narcostatization, if it continues, threatens to deny Latin America strategically to the United States, something that neither the Nazis in World War II nor the Soviets during the Cold War could do. Colombia is then both a paradigm of 21st century conflict and a critical test case for U.S. strategy. This monograph analyzes the nature of Colombia's complex problems, looks at the evolution of U.S. strategy, and makes recommendations for new directions.
Why Colombia Matters.
Colombia's importance to U.S. national interests cannot be overstated. Its 43 million people and location astride two oceans make it geopolitically significant. It is the fifth largest trading partner in Latin America for the United States, with two-way trade exceeding US $11 billion annually. Direct U.S. investment in Colombia exceeds $4 billion. Colombia is the tenth largest supplier of oil to the United States and could rise in that ranking if petroleum extraction could be conducted in a more secure environment. An estimated 2.5 million Colombians live in the United States, and more come every day, including some of the country's most talented people.[7] Colombia has an immensely diverse and valuable ecosystem and is a partner with Amazon Basin nations in efforts to protect it. As the anchor of Andean security, Colombia's internal troubles export violence, corruption, drugs, and ecological damage to the immediate region.
Colombia provides some 90 percent of the cocaine entering the United States and produces 70 percent of the world's total. Illegal drug use kills some 50,000 persons each year in the United States. The costs of health care, accidents, policing, and lost productivity related to addiction and crime reached $160 billion in 2000. Illegal drugs are one of the main causes for the swelling prison population in the United States and the serious crime problem among communities. A permanently addicted population is an enormous social and economic burden.
From the context of the post-September 11, 2001, heightened security consciousness, Colombia's internal problems represent a formidable international threat. Unlike the threat paradigm that defined the East-West conflict during the Cold War, Colombia belongs to a class of countries that threaten the international community, not with their individual or collective strength but with their weaknesses. A "broken windows theory" of international relations would argue that the decline of the regional neighborhood threatens the international community in untraditional ways: international organized crime, the violation of sovereign borders, contraband, the illegal shipment of arms, chemicals, laundering of dirty money, suborning of public officials (members of the police, military, legislative bodies, judiciaries, and so on), the corruption and intimidation of the media, displaced persons, and the formation of an international demimonde within which terrorism breeds and intersects with organized crime. A January 2003 article in Bogotá's El Tiempo made this point in reporting that more than 50 Colombian criminal gangs, with perhaps a total of 2,000 members, were responsible for robberies and narco-trafficking in Madrid, Spain. [8] That country is home to more than 400,000 Colombian immigrants of the Colombian diaspora.
This melancholy brew puts at risk not only the ideals of democracy and human dignity, but also threatens to derail the ambitious hemispheric integration agenda of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the accompanying package of social, economic, political, and ecological advances to which the presidents at the Summits of the Americas have committed themselves since the Miami Summit of 1994. For the United States, it is even more pertinent because homeland defense is taking on renewed prominence in strategic planning. Illegal drugs, violence, contraband, illegal migration, and corruption directly affect homeland defense because of the easy penetrability of air, land, and maritime borders.
The Colombian crisis occurs within the context of a broader Latin American crisis of authority, governance, and legitimacy. Economies are declining, with unemployment at politically unsustainable levels. The institutions of democracy are fragile, while social delinquency and citizen insecurity are reaching intolerable proportions. Moreover, environmental degradation continues, reducing the quality of life and breeding the frustration that engenders more violence. As a result, the legitimacy of democracy as the preferred political form is under assault by a new wave of populism that promises much but so far has delivered little to the people. In this troubled environment, achieving the FTAA, with a potential market of 800 million by 2005, becomes a stretch.
Latin America's deterioration has five critical implications for the U.S. strategic position. First, U.S. investments and exports to the region will decline in the face of shrinking markets. Second, Latin America (notably Venezuela and Mexico) once provided a large amount of U.S. energy imports, but the political polarization in Venezuela between the supporters of President Hugo Chávez (who preaches a combination of anti-American nationalism, populism, and class warfare) and the political opposition led to the interruption of the flow of petroleum in the winter of 2002-03 from what was once the United States' most secure source. Third, the support of Latin American countries is fundamental to the United States over a spectrum of transnational issues that affect the health and security of U.S. society: illegal drugs, terrorism, international crime, contraband, global warming, environmental degradation, and dealing with contagious diseases. Fourth, the deterioration of socioeconomic conditions and citizen insecurity accelerates illegal migration to the United States.
Fifth, the delegitimation of democracy in Latin America could become a strategic defeat for the influence of U.S. principles around the globe, from human rights to democracy to free trade. [9] Already evident is another leftward drift in the politics of certain Latin American countries, as leaders try to meet the unfulfilled promise of democracy for a better life for the masses. This is visible in the form of an informal "axis of populism, or axis of popular rhetoric," [10] alleged to be taking shape among Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Ecuador's President Lucio Gutiérrez, Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez, and Cuba's President Fidel Castro. Though this is an unlikely lot (Lula and Gutiérrez, neither reckless populists nor communists, are, in fact, pragmatists) and the rhetoric may be overblown, support for U.S. global policy is declining in Latin America. Echoing this view, Peru's Foreign Minister, Allen Wagner, stated in 2002 that because of inattention to Latin America's economic problems, the United States was losing its strategic partner - namely, Latin America. In 2002 the aggregate economy of Latin America contracted by 0.5 percent, taking it back to 1997 levels. [11] In the meantime, the United Nations Children's Fund reported that half of the 120 million children in Latin America are poor, with 20 million working in the streets.
Colombia's Uniqueness.
Colombia is sometimes referred to as the Tibet of Latin America because it is geographically enclosed and relatively unknown by the academic community. One of the leading authorities on the country, David Bushnell, states, "Colombia is the least studied of the major Latin American countries, and probably the least understood." [12] Colombia's history and politics do not conform to some of the classical patterns of Latin America. A two-party system, Liberals versus Conservatives, has dominated political life since independence, with few legitimate leftist alternatives, including having a weak Communist Party. These are reasons for the emergence of a militarized left, composed of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - FARC), the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional - ELN), and smaller offshoots. They are the oldest guerrilla groups in the world and are self-sustaining by virtue of internal sanctuaries and income from drug trafficking, extortion, and kidnapping. Unlike the rest of Latin America, Colombia, until recently, always stood out for its consistently solid economic performance. Moreover, the military has been subordinated to civilian authority, though, as will be discussed later, at a significant cost for civil-military relations and national defense.
Though the Vice-royalty of New Granada was an important component of Spain's system of imperial defense, the area of modern Colombia was a relatively backward part of the Spanish empire and remained a poor country until the coffee boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. No country in Latin America has the difficult geography, divided by three massive chains of the Andes, and the pattern of dispersed settlements, poor national integration, and poor communications. The airplane literally transformed internal travel. [13]
Regional autonomy has been a strong factor in national politics. Independent states within the larger Colombia, for example, had their own armies in the 19th century.
Colombia also experienced the national trauma of La Violencia, an undeclared civil war that began in 1948 and killed an estimated 200,000 people in the next 10 years. This searing experience led to the National Front Agreement of 1957, by which the two parties agreed to alternate the presidency and apportion political power. The arrangement actually weakened the political parties and democracy by foreclosing competition. It also marginalized the military even more. Moreover, the National Front generated corruption. An Athenian democracy controlled by a few families characterized the country until the Constitution of 1991 was passed. Colombian political life is represented by two clashing cultures: one of legality designed to limit the abuse of power and one of impunity. An astute Colombian states, "Our judicial system is full of restrictions for tyranny, but is very lax with respect to crime." [14] As will be seen later in this monograph, Colombians continue to pay a high price for this dualism.
Anatomy of a Weak State.
Though few states have it in complete form, sovereignty has four components: a sovereign state should exercise complete political authority over its national territory, monopolize the instruments of legitimate use of force, control its borders, and conduct foreign policy freely with other governments who recognize it as independent. At the same time, a sovereign state has responsibilities to uphold these principles in the international system, so that the other members benefit from the association.
Sovereignty is not absolute; scholars debate whether a state can lose its sovereignty. They conclude in the affirmative for states that commit genocide, thereby legitimating foreign intervention for humanitarian purposes. The concept of sovereignty evolves, and its application in a globalized world is becoming less and less absolute. A controversial example of this is extending the authority of the International Criminal Court to any citizen of any country thought to be guilty of human rights violations; for example, Chile's Augusto Pinochet was wanted by Spanish justice and detained accordingly by British law. [15]
The evolving concept of conditional sovereignty is central to the National Security Strategy promulgated by President George W. Bush in September 2002. Arguing on its behalf, Richard Haass, director of the Policy Planning Staff of the Department of State, asserts, "When states violate minimum standards by committing, permitting, or threatening intolerable acts against their own people or other nations, then some of the privileges of sovereignty are forfeited." [16] Making sovereignty conditional and contingent has enormous policy implications. It allows, argues Haass, the use of force against states that support international terrorism and preemptive force against states that threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. The legitimation of a strategy of preemption against such rogues is the most innovative and controversial aspect of the Bush National Security Strategy of 2002. Historian Philip Bobbitt, former director of Strategic Planning at the National Security Council, admonishes:
- We are at a moment in world affairs when the essential ideas that govern statecraft must change. For five centuries it has taken the resources of a state to destroy another state. . . . This is no longer true, owing to advances in international communications, rapid computation, and weapons of mass destruction. The change that will accompany these developments will be as profound as any that the State has thus far undergone. [17]
Colombia has the last two attributes of sovereignty but not the first two. It is indeed a vigorous member of the international community and enjoys diplomatic relations with the majority of the states of the world. [18] Colombia is an active member of the United Nations (a rotating member, holding the presidency of the Security Council in 2002, and participating in multinational peacekeeping operations under UN auspices), the Organization of American States, and countless other multilateral organizations. It does not, however, exercise complete political authority within its national boundaries, nor does it monopolize the instruments of coercion. An estimated 40 percent of the national territory is not controlled by the government, both in rural and urban areas. The problem becomes more severe because neighboring states - Panama, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru - do not exercise sovereign control over their own borders with Colombia (though Ecuador does much better than the others). These defects are at the heart of Colombia's impact on international order and the policy dilemmas they pose for the United States, Latin American countries, and European states.
In Colombia, five competitors vie for political authority and for the monopoly of force, and they make war against the state, themselves, and society. They are: criminal gangs with no apparent agenda other than materialism; internationally organized drug trafficking criminal gangs (estimated to number 162 drug cartels within Colombia) of extraordinary international reach; the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - FARC), with 17,000 to 18,000 members; the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional - ELN), with perhaps 5000 members; and the Colombian Self Defense Forces (Fuerzas de Autodefensa de Colombia - AUC), estimated at 12,000. These three insurgent/terrorist groups enjoy little standing in the international community, though for decades the FARC and ELN laid claim to a revolutionary agenda of social justice and enjoyed some international legitimacy. Since the mid-1980s they have become financially dependent on criminal activities, such as drug trafficking, extortion, and kidnapping, and thereby lost any semblance of revolutionary legitimacy. In 2002, through the effective personal diplomacy of President Andrés Pastrana, even the reluctant European Union recognized the FARC and ELN as terrorist groups.
The five groups deploy enough armed power to maintain a level of violence that makes "colombianization" a metaphor for interminable violence and the corrupting influence of illegal drugs. The Colombian state infrastructure of judicial system, police, military, schools, and communications is nearly absent in major portions of the national territory, precisely where the five contenders occupy space, apply their de facto legal systems, and conduct foreign operations with traffickers, assorted criminals, gun runners, soldiers of fortune, international terrorists, and corrupt government officials of various countries.
It is important to underscore that Colombia is not a failing state. [19] (See Table 1.) It is, instead, a geographically large state that has historically been enfeebled by strong regionalist tendencies and an elite preference for weak central authority. However, the narcotics-related violence of the past 2 decades has generated immense insecurity that has national and international resonance, as well as a serious negative impact on economic growth. Some basic facts will illuminate the challenges to internal sovereignty and international order.
Table 1. Basic Statistics on Colombia.
| Population | 43,000,000 |
| GDP | US $90 billion |
| GDP growth rates | 1.4% (2001), 1.6% (2002) |
| Unemployment (urban) | 18.2% (2001), 17.6% (2002) |
| Underemployment (urban) | 30% (2000), 33% (2002) |
| Poverty* | 54.9% of population (1999), 54.8% (2000), 54.9% (2001) |
| Indigence* | 26.8% (1999), 27.1% (2000), 27.6% (2001) |
*Poverty means a person earns the equivalent of US $2 per day,
indigence $1 per day.
Source: Abstracted from the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, 2003, Social Panorama of Latin America, 2001-2002 (Santiago, Chile: United Nations).
indigence $1 per day.
Source: Abstracted from the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, 2003, Social Panorama of Latin America, 2001-2002 (Santiago, Chile: United Nations).
Weak Military.
Colombia measures three times the size of Montana and is endowed with a very difficult geography. (See Figure 1.) In mid-2002, Colombia's military had only 60,000-80,000 soldiers available for combat against the FARC, ELN, and AUC; to protect the electrical infrastructure, roads and communications, and oil and gas pipelines (5,000 critical points) from sabotage by these insurgent groups; and to patrol 18,000 kilometers of roads and rivers. The rest of the troops were in support roles or in training. Additionally, 6,242 corregimientos (districts) needed military presence, but only 980 had it, while the AUC, FARC, and ELN were present in some 5,300 districts. Military resources were concentrated in zones of higher population density and greater economic activity.
This is nothing new; a weak military has been the historical pattern. Colombian elites historically have preferred a weak central government and a weak military. A vicious cycle developed: civilians preferred a weak military for fear that it would take political power, but then gave it missions it could not possibly fulfill because of lack of resources. Not until 1997 did the Colombian Army, for example, acquire an aviation wing. This occurred very late, even by Latin
Figure 1.
American standards, and was especially telling, given Colombia's extraordinary size, difficult topography, communications, and the pervasiveness of the violence. The military was often forced to improvise to get resources. For example, to protect itself from extortion by the FARC and ELN, a Colombian coal mining company in the department of César had to pay the army to provide security because the army did not have the resources to deploy soldiers for that purpose. [20] Many examples of such ad hoc arrangements, wherein the Army did not have the resources for the mission assigned to it, exist. Over time, a military commander's promotion potential also depended upon his ability to improvise resources.
Through most of the 19th century, the army seldom counted more than 2,000 soldiers. During the U.S.-Colombian crisis over Panama of 1903, which led to Panama's independence, the digging of the Canal, and the long-term U.S. military presence, Bogotá had a mere 500 troops and an insignificant navy. The reasons for a small and weak military are deeply embedded in Colombian history. Independence from Spain was received in 1819 from an army largely led by the foreign Venezuelan officers of Simón Bolívar. A strong sense of anti-militarism emerged early on among Colombian elites. Additionally, elites in Colombia's autonomous regions did not want to empower Bogotá with too much authority in the form of the military or in taxing power. Civilian leaders have also preferred to maintain the armed forces at arm's length from society, thus creating a communication breach between civilians and military institutions. The institutional bias against the military impedes the nurturing of mutually supportive civil-military relations and development of the strategic instrument of legitimate coercive authority.
As recently as the mid-1990s (during the Ernesto Samper administration), Colombia experienced a time of intensified internal violence. The government reduced the military budget instead of increasing it. The modern Colombian Army originated with the participation of a battalion in the Korean War alongside the U.S. Army, which was under the command of the father of General Barry McCaffrey, former Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Southern Command and later Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the Clinton administration. The Colombian army's evolution was deeply influenced by operations against La Violencia, which began in 1948, and by the wave of insurgency initiated by the FARC in 1964, later joined by the ELN and smaller groups. [21] Unquestionably, the Colombian Army is one of the most experienced counterinsurgency armies in the world. It has been conducting counterinsurgency and counterterrorist operations for 5 decades, but civilian governments have rarely provided it with the necessary resources, a reality that began to change after President Pastrana came to power in 1998.
Lack of Civilian Ability to Oversee the Military. Another debility is that Colombia civilian authorities lack the experience of working with the military in integrating strategy, intelligence, and operations - a costly deficiency for a society at war for so long. This is not to argue that the Colombian military is autonomous from civilian control. Far from it; it is one of the most obedient. For a long time civilian leaders have held the attitude that the military can be left to itself to take care of national defense, doing so without the civilians establishing clear expectations, providing the strategic guidance, and holding military commanders accountable.
The problem of civilian involvement is deeply rooted; civilians appear to lack the intellectual know-how and political will to direct the legitimate armed instrument of the state in a strategic manner. Even though Colombia has one of the best civilian-headed ministries of defense in Latin America, not enough professional civilians are qualified in strategic and military affairs. Among civilian intellectuals, there is a general indifference regarding military affairs. Civilians and the members of the military rarely socialize and have few professional interactions. [22] This suggests that civilians do not bear their full responsibility in national defense. [23] As part of its assistance, the United States has mounted an ambitious civil-military relations program to help Colombian officials develop the skills for strategic planning. [24] However, it will take a significant investment of time in civilian professionalization to create the depth of expertise required to inspire confidence and trust between civilians and the military. A civilian career service in defense would be a welcome innovation.
Minimal Defense Budget. The defense budget, which includes the police (the police are part of the Ministry of Defense), increased from $2.965 billion to $3.256 billion in 2001, still a small 3.5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) for a nation at war. Colombia's defense budget also covers such costs as traffic control in the capital. The actual percentage of GDP spent on the military in 2000 was a meager 1.89 percent. Colombia's average annual defense spending in the 1990s of 1.35 percent of GDP ranked low, compared with other countries in Latin America, none of whom had the internal security threat of the magnitude of Colombia's. Chile and Argentina had few internal security threats. The comparison with countries experiencing internal conflicts was even less favorable. (See Table 2.)
Table 2. Percentage of GDP for Defense Spending.
Countries with Few Internal Security Threats
| Chile | 2.06
| Argentina | 1.48
| Countries with Internal Conflicts
| Algeria | 3.9
| Colombia | 1.35
| Lebanon | 3.2
| Turkey | 4.4
| Venezuela | 1.38 | | ||
According to the highly respected National Association of Financial Institutions, located in Bogotá, adding 10,000 troops per year to the Colombian army would cost a mere 0.15 percent of the GDP, which could be financed by eliminating unnecessary expenditures and internal corruption. [25] Despite this record of insufficient resources, the Colombian military was performing better in 2002-03 because of the restructuring and expansion that began with the Pastrana administration. It was still too small and lacked the tactical mobility to "take and hold" territory.
The Colombian military is transforming itself to fight more effectively and take the offensive against the three terrorist groups. As part of this transformation, it is critical that the military strengthen its societal linkage. For example, according to a law passed in 1962, high school graduates - bachilleres - were exempt from combat risk while serving in the military. This measure was akin to the college student deferments for Americans during the Vietnam conflict; while well-intentioned, it weakened what the Prussian military thinker, Carl von Clausewitz, called the trinitarian relationship among the people, the armed forces, and society that is so crucial to winning in war. Consequently, until recently, the army had some 35,000 soldiers who were deskbound and not available for combat operations in the field.
A U.S. State Department official calculated that a Colombian high school graduate has a 1 in 50 chance of being drafted, while the humble nonhigh school graduate of the lower class has a much better chance. Moreover, to poor people, being a member of the military is a paying job. So, of course, they are the ones who will do the dirty work of fighting and dying. Thus, Colombia exemplifies the "rich man's war and the poor man's fight." [26] Even though some high school graduates do indeed serve in combat, current practice still reflects an elite view that military service is suitable only for those of the lower class. Such an attitude is not conducive to the collective sacrifice that is crucial to winning wars. President Uribe, in January 2003, called for legislative approval of mandatory military service.
Weak, Dysfunctional Judicial System.
Colombia's judicial system is weak and dysfunctional, with 95 to 98 percent of crimes committed going unpunished. This amazing statistic is true, despite the fact that Colombia's allocation is the second highest percentage of a national budget to its judicial system in Latin America: 4.5 percent in the late 1990s. On a per capita basis, it employs one of the highest numbers of judges of any democracy, 17.1 per 100,000 people. In comparison, the United States employs two and Spain three judges for the same number of citizens. [27] The ineffectiveness is compounded by the lack of police presence in 157 of over 1,000 municipalities; thus the absence of the capacity for law enforcement and an invitation to the FARC, ELN, and AUC to do what they want. Much of the impunity originates from the intimidation and bribing of judges and witnesses, and some from the complexity of the system itself. Also, a general disregard for law in Colombian political culture has deep roots in Spanish imperial administration and the Laws of the Indies promulgated by the distant metropole: "Hecha la ley, hecha la trampa" (Once a law is made, corruption begins). Members of the Colombian legislature who do not resist the temptation of bribes and intimidation often will water down or defeat legislation aimed at strengthening the government's ability to deal with drug trafficking.
Corruption. Corruption is a pervasive problem. Speaking of the societal impact of corruption and criminality, distinguished Colombian scholar Francisco E. Thoumi warns against the dishonesty trap:
- . . . when criminal behavior is tolerated and accepted, the socialization process ends, producing a generation of individuals with weak internalized constraints. In these cases, it may be argued that a society falls into a "dishonesty trap" from which it is very difficult to escape. The problem is simply that where most people are dishonest, it is very costly for anyone to be honest. [28]
The data support Thoumi. For example, Bogotá's El Tiempo reported in a January 2003 poll that Colombians expect 10 percent of public officials to be corrupt, while 57 senators and representatives, 83 former legislators, and a former comptroller general had been accused of "influence peddling." [29]
The same newspaper reported that 4,000 legal proceedings were underway against people accused of bribing. "In Colombia," it said, "almost everything can be bought or sold." [30] It is reported that half of the Colombians who solicit visas to the United States, approximately 150,000 per year, present one false document. [31] For this crime, 591,000 legal proceedings are underway. A World Bank-sponsored study concluded: "The capture of the state, meaning the capacity of interest groups to influence through corrupt practices the higher levels of state decisions, appears as one of the most dominant forms of corruption in Colombia." [32]
Lack of State Presence and Control.
The state does not exercise control over an estimated 40 percent of the national territory, precisely the areas where illegal drugs are cultivated and where the FARC, ELN, the AUC, and the narco-traffickers are active, in a sense filling the void with de facto administrative systems in place of the state. This is especially true of the northwestern areas of Urabá and Chocó as well as those of eastern and southeastern Colombia, the lightly populated departments of Arauca, Guaviare, Meta, Guainía, Caquetá, Vaupés, Vichada, and Putumayo, parts of which make up the llanos (plains) of the Amazon Basin, where permanent habitation is difficult and the presence of the state is minimal.
Colombia at the dawn of the 21st century still has numerous expanding internal frontiers, zones of initial colonization by peasants and entrepreneurs seeking quick wealth in the form of valuable wood or other commodities. The agencies of government are scarcely, if at all, present in these areas. This is notably the case in the remote southern department of Putumayo, the locus of much of the coca cultivation and the citadel of the FARC for many years. With good reason, one senior Ecuadorian officer said of Putumayo, "We don't have a border with Colombia but with the FARC." Of all the neighboring countries, Ecuador is the most deeply affected by spillover violence and corruption. It has also made the greatest efforts to place military forces as a security cordon along the Colombian border, as well as to coordinate border security with Colombian counterparts. [33]
As noted before, Colombia, much like its neighbors, does not control its borders. The unpopulated border with Panama is frequently traversed by both the FARC and AUC, who enter the remote jungle of eastern Darién to get supplies and to fight each other, with little challenge from Panama's police. [34] Panama is hard put to control the area with its police force, having disbanded its despised military after the 1989 U.S. operation JUST CAUSE. Even before JUST CAUSE, the area was essentially beyond the sovereign control of Panama. Illegal armed groups (either the FARC or AUC) entered the Darién in January 2003 and killed four Panamanian citizens, prompting another bilateral meeting between Bogotá and Panama City to try to beef up security.
The long Venezuelan frontier is easily penetrated by the FARC and ELN for rest and recreation and for logistical support, with apparent compliance by the Chávez government (which has been accused of playing a double game of sympathy, if not support, for the FARC and ELN along with support for the Colombian government), according to public statements made by military opponents of the Venezuelan government. The Colombian defense minister in February 2003 asserted concern about Venezuela's attitude, "With the government of Venezuela [cooperation] has been very difficult. We shall see how things evolve in Venezuela but we really have difficulties there, above all because Colombian guerrillas have moved with certain liberty in that boundary area." She went on to contrast Venezuela with increasing cooperation from Brazil, Peru, and Ecuador to control borders. [35] Ecuador keeps reinforcing its troops and police on the border with Colombia. [36]
The long, unpopulated, and jungle-covered Brazilian and Peruvian borders are practically open, though both countries in recent years have made greater efforts at border control. [37] Brazil is constructing the extensive Amazon System of Surveillance to protect the security of the vast region more effectively, while the Brazilian Army's Amazon Military Command, located in Manaus, attempts to provide security to the distant borders by establishing a presence (presencia) in garrison communities in the upper Amazon. All of the borders afford the freedom to move guns, ammunition, precursor chemicals (for drug production), drugs, money, and people and to conduct hot pursuit against any enemy. [38] Violence often spills over into the territories of Panama, Ecuador, and Venezuela.
Another telling deficiency is the absence of the Colombian National Police in many areas in sufficient numbers to deter crime. Though there has been significant growth in police and supplementary military forces since 1993, the gap between Colombia and peaceful law-abiding societies is impressive. Table 3 indicates comparative statistics of the distribution of police per population for 1993 and shows that Colombia is at the very lowest of international rankings.
Table 3. Comparative Police Forces per Million People. [39]
| Colombia | 1,670 |
| Switzerland | 2,000 |
| U.S., Australia | 2,500 |
| Canada, Sweden | 2,500 |
| France | 3,500 |
| Austria, Peru | 3,500 |
| Malaysia | 4,700 |
| Uruguay | 7,600 |
The Uribe administration promised to place a minimum of 46 police in each municipal capital by September 2003. When Uribe took office in August 2002, there were 79,000 professional police. Plans are to increase the total to 100,000 by the end of 2003. [40] At that rate, Colombia will have approximately 4,300 police per million people. The return of policemen was already having a notable impact. In the town of Chalán, the Sucre department had been without public security since 1996, when the FARC detonated a "burro bomb" that killed 11 policemen. On December 29, 2002, 55 policemen returned to duty, and the life of the small town resumed a more normal rhythm. [41]
Weak Tax Collection System.
Two critical measures of the effectiveness of a modern state are its ability to legitimately coerce compliance to the rule of law (monopoly of force) and the ability to collect taxes (what political scientists call extracting resources) to provide governance. [42] The two are intimately related. Tax revenues provide the resources for extending the benefits of the social contract between the state and the people. On both counts Colombia is deficient. The tax system is complex, repressive, inequitable, and suffers from extensive evasion. The following statistics are eloquent.
The government collects half of its budget in taxes and finances the rest. Eight tax reforms in the 1990s increased collections by a mere 3 percent. In a country of 43 million, 4,500 large tax contributors account for 90 percent of the income tax. Only 10 percent of the population pays taxes of any kind. In some regions, such as La Guajira, contraband accounts for 60 percent of the economy. Penalizing tax evasion is made difficult by the fact that less than 8,000 employees are available for the task, and 20,000 are needed. Finally, on a comparative basis, tax collection corresponds to 4 percent of gross domestic product, versus in 11 percent in developed countries. According to Carlos Ossa, Comptroller General under President Andrés Pastrana: "Colombia has not made a serious effort. We have agreed on how much to spend but not on the size of our state, nor on how much to collect from taxes." [43]
Upon taking office, President Uribe declared a state of emergency in the nation and imposed a new tax on wealthier citizens and businesses. The new tax of 1.2 percent affected those with $65,000 of liquid assets. An estimated 400,000 people would qualify for the tax, raising approximately $800 million for the defense budget. [44] It seemed certain that this would not be a one-time tax.
The Nature of the Conflict.
- Colombia today would be a completely different country if it had not suffered for the last twenty years all the perverse effects of narco-trafficking. . . . It would be more secure, more governable and more democratic (Ministry of Defense of Colombia).[45]
The Colombian conflict is generated by a complex mix of historical contention over land ownership, common criminality, narcotics related crime, and insurgency (FARC and ELN) that once had an ideological foundation but now has been corrupted by money from narcotics, kidnapping, and extortion, as well as the AUC paramilitary response. [46] The AUC's response to insecurity also relies on money derived from narcotics to sustain operations. Colombia's violence can be divided into negotiable and nonnegotiable forms. [47] Negotiable violence has a political quality, while nonnegotiable violence has a criminal one. The lines between the two, however, are becoming less distinct. In the environment of early 2003, for example, the AUC offered a cease-fire and the possibility of negotiations with the government. The purpose was clear: to gain political legitimacy in view of the charge by U.S. foreign policy that they, like the FARC and ELN, were terrorists. Yet, the prospect of removing the AUC's 12,000 combatants from the field to reduce violence was difficult to refuse. The Uribe government would offer lenient terms, therefore, a form of legitimation to those paramilitaries not guilty of crimes.
Since the mid-1980s, narcotics have totally transformed the conflict by providing larger amounts of funding to support military operations against the state and society. Colombia thus joins a number of states where a peculiar combination of "greed and grievance" is the factor that drives violence. [48] Cocaine and to a lesser extent heroin are the equivalent of diamonds in Sierra Leone and Angola: the fuel that feeds violence. There is a symbiosis, a pragmatic strategic alliance between narco-traffickers, the insurgents/terrorists, and the paramilitaries. Eduardo Pizarro Leongómez, Colombia's leading scholar on the insurgent groups, states, "Given this complex symbiosis, between drug trafficking and the armed actors, we see in Colombia - much like other areas of the world - a war economy, in which merge the drugs market and the market of light arms." [49]
The conflict is not a civil war, where the major competitor to state authority represents a coherent political program and a substantial base of popular support. [50] In fact, the FARC, the largest force making war against the state and society, forcibly recruits and enjoys, at best, only 2 to 4 percent of popular support, the ELN about the same, and the AUC slightly more at 6 percent. The FARC does not have a large base, unlike the AUC which has a higher level of support in some areas. Given the atrocities they perform and the corruption engendered by wealth, the FARC's political agenda of reform and social justice no longer is credible. The FARC also reject the laws of humanitarian conduct in war, because they regard these as a foreign imposition designed to undermine them. The war can best be described as one driven by greed, the residues (perhaps the camouflage) of revolutionary ideology, the will to power, and pervasive insecurity in a country where the rule of law does not apply throughout major portions of the rural and urban national territory.
The insurgents' tactics run the gamut: terrorism, intimidation, bribery, kidnapping, and assassination. Colombia annually leads the world in kidnapping, with those motivated by ransom money doubling to 1,174 (out of a total of 2,986 for all kidnappings) in 2002 from the year before. [51] The FARC and ELN took 75 percent of the victims. The Colombian army depicts the target of actions by the three groups as shown in Table 4.
Table 4. Target of Actions. [52]
| Group | Against Civilian Population | Against Armed Forces
| FARC | 45% | 55%
| ELN | 90% | 10%
| AUC | 90% | 10% | |
The amount of violent crime is extraordinary. Colombia's homicide rate is three times higher than in Brazil and Mexico and 10 times the rate of the United States and Argentina. Moreover, some 60 percent of all the kidnappings in the world take place in Colombia. [53] Violence annually costs some 25 percent of the growth in GDP. The average cost of violence for Latin America is 14.2 percent of the region's GDP, estimated at US $168 million annually and up to half of the private capital invested. Colombia ranks with El Salvador for the economic toll of violence in Latin America in recent years, asindicated in Table 5.
Table 5. Comparative Economic Costs of Violence as Percent of GDP. [55]
| El Salvador | Colombia | Venezuela | Brazil | Peru | Mexico
| Direct Costs | 9.2 | 11.4 | 6.9 | 3.3 | 2.9 | 4.9
| Loss of Wealth | 4.3 | 5.0 | 0.3 | 1.9 | 1.5 | 1.3
| Material Losses | 4.9 | 6.4 | 6.6 | 1.4 | 1.4 | 3.8
| Indirect Costs | 11.7 | 8.9 | 4.8 | 5.6 | 1.6 | 4.6
| Productivity,
Investments | 0.2 | 2.0 | 2.4 | 2.2 | 0.6 | 1.3
| Work, Consumption | 11.5 | 6.9 | 2.2 | 0.4 | 1.0 | 3.3
| Transfers [54] | 4.0 | 4.4 | 0.3 | 1.6 | 0.6 | 2.8
| TOTAL | 24.9 | 24.7 | 11.8 | 10.5 | 5.1 | 12.3 | |
Violence is the principal cause of death and the greatest public health problem in Colombia. Among men between 15 and 44 years, homicides represent 60 percent of the causes of death. At birth, Colombian men can expect to lose an average of 4 years of life expectancy to the risk of homicide.
With respect to confidence in the judicial system, some 52 percent of the lower class victims of armed robberies did nothing, and only 5 percent went to the police. In the higher social classes, the figures were 34 and 22 percent, respectively. The lack of confidence in public security spawns the privatization and decentralization of security. The impact on the social fabric is devastating, literally destroying the bases of civil society. A recent report, sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank and written by Mauricio Rubio, a leading student of crime and violence in Colombia, states,
- The incentives for the privatization and decentralization of security are much stronger when there are channels of communication between [illegal] armed groups and delinquency: if the group that protects a certain territory sustains itself with criminal activities in other areas, it will diminish the financial pressure on the community which receives protection that is subsidized by victims of crime outside that territory. [56]
Commenting on the national problem, General Enrique Mora asserted, "We Colombians have historically accepted living with violence." [57]
The Massacre at Bojayá.
Colombia is beset by a vicious, multidimensional, irregular conflict with no well-defined lines of territorial demarcation between the contenders. The following case studies will illuminate some of these dimensions. The massacre of 119 innocent civilians at Bojayá in May 2002, the worst massacre of this nature in Colombia's long-running violence, amply demonstrates this. The difficult to access town of some 1,000 people lies 235 miles northwest of the capital. The tragic events are an excellent case study of the strategic and operational consequences of an ineffective state that does not provide sufficient governance and security to its people. The Afro-Colombian Chocó department, endowed with the highest rainfall in the world after Bangladesh, is the poorest in Colombia, with 80 percent unemployment. It has virtually been abandoned by the central government in terms of infrastructure and services. After the massacre, El Tiempo published these editorial comments: "Since the beginning it has been condemned to die living, separated from the economic and social projects of the state. . . . [I]t will always be the back yard of a centralized Colombia, remembered only when tragedy touches its inhabitants." [58]
The area around this town, which lies adjacent to the long Caribbean-bound Atrato River, has been contested between the FARC and the AUC for years because the Atrato has strategic value as a conduit for shipping cocaine to the Caribbean and Pacific and for importing guns and ammunition from Central America and Panama. The Chocó itself is strategically convenient for illegal activities because it is the only department of Colombia with coasts on the Pacific and Caribbean. It is important to note that the Drug Enforcement Agency of the U.S. Department of Justice estimates that some 65 percent of the cocaine entering the United States comes through the eastern Pacific, Central America, and Mexico. [59]
In 1996, the AUC took control of the town. The FARC, in turn, evicted them in 2000 in order to exercise control over the Middle and Upper Atrato area. They attacked the only police station in the area, in Vigía del Fuerte across the river, killing 21 policemen. Some of the bodies were found mutilated. Moreover, the FARC executed six people they accused of collaborating with the paramilitaries, including the local mayor. The meager response of distant authorities was to order restrictions on the sale of food and fuel. [60]
In an effort to retake control, between April 21 and April 30, 2002, approximately 250 paramilitaries established themselves in the area to the displeasure of the local citizens, who wanted to avoid being caught in the crossfire once again between what El Tiempo called the narco-rightists and the narco-leftists. The people requested of the paramilitary commander, alias Camilo, in writing that the illegal armed groups locate themselves outside the urban area so that the civilian population could avoid the fighting. Camilo, who later would be killed in combat, answered that the paramilitaries were going to "cleanse the Atrato area," and that, therefore, they would stay in place. [61] On April 26, the Public Defender's office, which is responsible for citizen security with representatives across the nation, issued an early warning about the risks of an impending battle between the two illegal groups. It was the most recent of about 50 warnings that local and national authorities had received but failed to act upon, either because some were thought to be unsubstantiated or because there simply were not enough people and resources to investigate.
On May 1, at about 6 o'clock in the morning, combat began. Paramilitary forces took up positions near the church, and the FARC did so on the periphery of the town. Assisted by three priests, some 300 people took sanctuary in the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, the only concrete structure in town, and ostensibly a place of genuine security. Churches historically are off limits to combatants, according to the universally accepted humanitarian principles contained in the laws of armed warfare, the millennial notion of the "Peace of God." To force out the paramilitaries, on May 2, at about 10:45 in the morning, the FARC launched a third crude gas cylinder bomb from about 400 meters from the church. [62] The depleted propane cylinder, known in Spanish as a pipeta, was filled with 40 pounds of dynamite. The FARC developed this notoriously inaccurate and devastating primitive artillery. It is a noisy, lethal terror weapon. The bomb exploded on the church altar, killing 119 (including 40 children) and injuring 98.
The survivors, led by priests, crossed the firing lines waving white flags and shouting repeatedly: "What do we want? That you respect our lives. Who are we? The civilian population." [63] On May 3, the FARC announced that they had retaken the town and permitted a commission of locals to reenter, evacuate the wounded, and identify and bury the bodies. Burials were completed by May 5, however without the presence of government officials to oversee and legally record the procedure. Almost all of the town's survivors fled across the river to Vigía del Fuerte.
On May 7, the 50th Navy Infantry Battalion, located in distant Turbo on the Caribbean coast, reached Bojayá, doing so by four launches capable of carrying 90 soldiers at a time up the Atrato, a very dangerous operation without adequate ground and air support. Moreover, only one boat was available to refuel the launches moving up the Atrato. The military was spread very thinly and lacked the mobility for quick response. For example, the Manosalva Army Battalion in Quibdó, the departmental capital, has the responsibility to cover 27,000 square kilometers of difficult if not impassable territory. The Quibdó unit, located much closer than Turbo, could not reach Bojayá quickly enough because of the lack of roads and aircraft.
The FARC publicly admitted they had committed an "error," though there was no indication that either commanders or troops responsible for the massacre were in any way disciplined for war crimes. The United Nations Mission admonished, "This 'error' constitutes an infraction of humanitarian norms, because it openly violates international laws to that effect." [64] The conduct of the FARC constituted an attack against a civilian population, a violation of Articles 3 and 13 of the Geneva Convention, which sets forth the principles of humanitarian distinction, discrimination and proportionality, as well as the immunity of the civilian population. There is an absolute obligation to refrain from attacking civilian populations and to limit the effects of military operations that can potentially affect protected persons, in this case, noncombatant civilians. The imprecision and the indiscrimination of the pipetas added to the ethical burden of the attackers.
By attacking the church, the FARC also violated the obligation to protect the security of places of worship. Finally, the FARC violated Article 17 of the Geneva Convention by forcing the displacement of people. The UN Human Rights Mission added that these infractions constitute war crimes. Though the paramilitaries received less attention in the mission report, they were also adjudged guilty of violating humanitarian norms and committing war crimes. They had exposed civilians to the dangers of military action and thus violated the principles of discrimination and immunity. Moreover, they were guilty of not respecting places of worship and of forcing the displacement of people.
Finally, the government was criticized. "It is clear," stated the report, "that the absence or insufficient presence of the agents of the State [sic] in the area of conflict increased the vulnerability and risk of the civilian population in the Middle Atrato, leaving it exposed to the action of two illegally armed groups." [65] The UN Human Rights Mission report also implied that some collusion between government officials and the paramilitaries in the area existed, though it could not prove it with evidence.
The lessons from Bojayá are many and profound. First, although the loss of life was enormous, it is not unique in Colombia's complicated conflict. Countless events of this nature have taken place and continue throughout the national territory. [66] Semana magazine reported, for example, that illegally armed groups were responsible for 46 such massacres, in addition to 300,000 people being displaced in the first 9 months of 2002. [67] Massacres of civilians clearly manifest the inability of the state to provide minimal security to its citizens. Powerless to block the two illegal groups from moving into place and engaging, the legitimate coercive authority of the state, in the form of the armed forces, arrived in Bojayá to retake control four days after the civilians were slain and injured. Impunity reigns for both the FARC and the paramilitaries. There is no rule of law because the police and judicial system, essential elements for controlling and adjudicating conflict, are not present in sufficient numbers, and if present, are not backed by the ultimate dissuasive power of the armed forces. Colombia's military troops are too few, too distant, and lacking in the tactical mobility to react quickly and cover the vast national territory effectively.
Fernandinho and Perverse Globalization.
The interplay of ungoverned space, weak state authority and presence, as well as the international reach of drug trafficking are manifest in the story of the capture of Fernandinho. [68] On April 21, 2001, as part of operation Gato Negro, the Colombian armed forces captured Brazil's top drug dealer, who reputedly controlled 70 percent of Brazil's cocaine distribution. Luis Fernando da Costa, 33 years old and nicknamed Fernandinho Beira Mar (Freddy Seashore) was caught in the vicinity of Barrancominas, in the lightly populated Vichada department of eastern Colombia, next to Venezuela and not far from the Brazilian border. The FARC's 16th front used that department, along with Guainía and Guaviare, as a staging base for operations; a mobility corridor; and an area for coca cultivation, refining, and shipment into Venezuela and Brazil. The Colombian military reported that these three departments accounted for more than 80 percent of the cocaine that the FARC itself produced. Fernandinho was the largest foreign trading partner of the FARC, swapping $10 million per month in guns and ammunition for cocaine. Within days, he was deported back to Brazil, reportedly because of fears that he could escape from a Colombian prison.
Barrancominas had become a center of cocaine activity totally under the control of the FARC. The taking of the town by the military culminated a 3-month operation spearheaded by the Rapid Reaction Force, the Fuerza de Despliegue Rápido (commonly known as the FUDRA), involving some 3,000 troops and netting the following: more than 60 cocaine laboratories, 22 airstrips, and 16 rebel camps "scattered across the jungle like craters on the moon," plus 50,000 acres of previously unknown coca plantations. [69] Fernandinho stated that Barrancominas had become the principal gathering point for the transshipment of cocaine to Europe via Suriname, Guyana, and Holland. After his arrest, he revealed the following details about the intersection of the motivation of the FARC, ungoverned space, drugs, guns, and the international market:
- The FARC are the richest and strongest guerrillas in the world. Their leaders live like millionaire capitalists: beautiful women, good food and liquor. . . In Colombia not a kilo of cocaine moves without the permission of the FARC. . . . I was but a peon in the drug traffic in Brazil and Paraguay. . . . For each kilo I sent they paid me $3,000. . . . The drug business is pretty good for the FARC; for each kilo that is ready to be shipped they charge $500, for each flight . . . $15,000. . . . I paid the FARC $10 to $12 million a month. Each flight carried between 700 kilos and a ton of coca. . . . Each pilot was paid $25,000 and the co-pilot $5,000 . . . and a little bit was paid to the air controllers so that they would not cause problems with the flights. . . . Part of the payment for the coca was made to the FARC in 3,000 guns and three and a half million rounds of ammunition, which came from Paraguay. . . [70]
The cocaine business had completely distorted the local economy. The town of 600 had some 20 bars, billiard halls, houses of prostitution, and even a carpeted cockfighting ring. Barrancominas had once been a delightful destination for eco-tourism.
The tale of Barrancominas demonstrates the unholy linkage between vast ungoverned space, narco-terrorism, ecological destruction, and a perverse form of globalization that regularly violates international borders. These boundaries are a minor impediment to traffickers, particularly in the expansive Amazon Basin. For example, in August 2000, Peruvian officials announced that they had broken up a ring that had air-dropped 100,000 AK-47 rifles to the FARC in eastern Colombia. The weapons were bought in Amman, Jordan, and dropped over Colombia by a Peruvian Air Force plane. The deal was apparently coordinated with the approval of President Alberto Fujimori's security advisor and keeper of intelligence secrets, the notorious Vladimiro Montesinos (who would later be jailed for various criminal activities; Fujimori himself fled to Japan to escape Peruvian justice). Similarly, the Russian mafiya was involved in attempting to assemble a submarine in Colombia to ship cocaine out. Opined Alfredo Rangel Suárez, one of Colombia's leading security experts, "It's globalization. Weapons come into Colombia in exchange for cocaine that goes to New York and Europe. It's pure capitalism, a primitive and effective form of barter." [71]
White Horse and Parallel Power.
Perverse globalization has a powerful reach. On January 18, 2001, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno announced that U.S. and Colombian law enforcement authorities had concluded a 10-month investigation, called "White Horse," that had led to the arrest of more than 50 individuals in both countries who were part of a heroin smuggling operation between Colombia and the United States, specifically between the cities of Pereira and Philadelphia. [72] More than 110 individuals would be arrested, and 22 kilos of heroin, 10 of cocaine, 15 weapons, and $1.3 million in U.S. currency would be seized. An entire drug smuggling operation was dismantled, at least for the time being.
Pereira and Philadelphia are separated by 2,400 miles. Between 1998 and 2001, the Pereira-based network sent "mules" north to carry an average of 20 kilos of pure heroin, some in the form of pellets secreted in the stomachs of the carriers. Each mule swallowed between 50 and 100 pellets. It is reported that the Pereira organization sent 15 mules per month, 12 of which completed the journey undetected by customs officials or not killed by the leaking of heroin into their stomachs. Some of the heroin-derived profits made in North Philadelphia's crime-ridden "Badlands" ghetto would be sent to Pereira, at times also via the mules' stomachs. One man reportedly swallowed $171,000 in tightly folded rolls. [73]
Pereira and North Philadelphia are linked by poverty, hopelessness, and crime; in sum, lawlessness and ineffective governance, in addition to Colombian diaspora ties. Countless variations to this theme are ongoing in the Western Hemisphere. Brazil was once a transit point for illicit drugs. Now it is the world's second largest consumer after the United States as well as an important transit country. Prospering from this business are the urban drug gang "commands" that have grown so much in wealth and armed power as to threaten the state with their own "parallel power." Well-equipped with automatic rifles, grenades, and rocket launchers, they have established "parallel power" in the major cities. On September 30, 2002, the Red Command (Comando Vermelho) of Rio de Janeiro deployed its members from the favelas (shanty towns) to the fashionable business-tourist districts of Ipanema and Leblon, ordering businesses to close, taxis and street vendors to leave. One report states that it was a protest against the jailing of Fernandinho, who apparently uses his cell phone to run Red Command from jail. [74]
Warned a local businessman: "What is clear to me is that the government is losing the war against the traffickers--they are the ones who are in control." [75] Similarly, the First Capital Command, São Paulo's strongest gang, threatened to blow up Bovespa, Latin America's largest stock exchange. One of the consequences of such high levels of delinquency is the growing requirement for the police, military, and intelligence services to work together in border control and public security. Still lacking, however, is multinational cooperation because of sensitivities about sovereignty; poor intelligence collection and sharing; and the lack of political will and resources to conduct the adequate intelligence, police, and military operations to control borders. [76] Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld addressed this problem at the Defense Ministerial of the Americas meeting in Santiago, Chile, November 19, 2002: "In this hemisphere, narco-terrorists, hostage takers and armed smugglers operate in ungoverned areas, using them as bases from which to destabilize democratic governments. . . . Elected governments have the responsibility to exercise sovereign authority . . . throughout their national territories." [77] He proposed that military forces in the Americas work together to meet the challenge.
The Collar Bomb.
Another dimension of Colombia's conflict is the irrational dehumanization, the growth of a veritable counterculture of violence, what distinguished Colombian scholar Gonzalo Sánchez calls "the desacrilization of death and the banalization of life." [78] On May 15, 2001, the barbaric incident of the collar bomb occurred, which reverberated around the globe and put pressure on President Pastrana to end the peace process. Elvia Cortez, a rural property owner and community activist, was killed by a bomb placed around her neck, literally a collar bomb. The criminals demanded $7,500, or the bomb would be allowed to explode. They left the note: "To unlock the collar there are numerous ways, mechanical, hydraulic, electrical, and digital. It's important to note that it can only be unlocked at a specific hour either during the day or night." The sophisticated device, which was sensitive to body temperature for detonation, decapitated her and killed the technician sent to disarm it. The main perpetrator, thought to be one of nine common criminals not associated with any of the three terrorist groups, was convicted 1 year later and sent to prison for 32 years, while an investigation against eight others began.
The judge conducting the proceedings commented that the bomb had not been manufactured nor installed by members of the FARC, that the delinquents had received advice from the Basque group Fatherland and Liberty (Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna - ETA) and Middle East terrorist groups. This assessment, he stated, came from U.S. anti-explosive experts. These experts added that the bomb was so sophisticated that the equipment to disarm it was not available in Colombia. [79]
One-and-a-half months later, the FARC kidnapped and held for ransom a mother, Luz Amilbia, and her five-year-old daughter, Luisa Fernanda. They were forced off a bus traveling in Antioquia and taken into the mountains. Colombian intelligence released recordings of phone negotiations conducted between the FARC and Jorge Cano, husband of Luz Amilbia and father of Luisa, and a common worker of limited means. After Cano paid 23 million pesos, the FARC negotiator requested another payment of 150 million pesos to liberate not just the mother, but also the daughter, who was now sick from respiratory complications. Finally, after much delay, the FARC negotiator, known as Paisano in the conversation, agreed to release both for the 23 million. [80]
Operation ORION: Retaking Comuna Trece in Medellín.
Medellín's Comuna Trece slum neighborhoods are home to 129,000 people. For 10 years, until October 2002, it was a stronghold of the FARC and ELN, which terrorized, extorted, kidnapped, and murdered with impunity. Evidence of the lack of government control was the fact that the AUC itself had penetrated about 70 percent of the other slum areas of the city, doing so with the support of some 400 armed gangs numbering 10,000. The amount of crime in Comuna 13 was extraordinary: homicides were six times the national rate. The terrorists took over homes and schools and forcibly recruited males to fight in their ranks. In the past, the military and police would mount occasional forays, but nothing of a magnitude that would regain control and free the people from the repression.
President Uribe put security first, demanding that the armed forces, long accustomed to a defensive attitude, take the offensive. Defense Minister Martha Lucía Ramírez affirmed, "Our public forces [in the past] had retreated, were more defensive. Today they are taking the offensive." [81] On October 16, 2002, Uribe ordered 3,000 troops backed by helicopters to retake the area. Instead of pulling out quickly, the military stayed for days, establishing a sense of permanent security, followed by the reinsertion of the police and the construction of two military posts. The commander of the Fourth Army Brigade, General Mario Montoya, commented, "Last time, we went in to Comuna 13 for 24 hours. . . . This operation is going to take 8, 10, 15, 21 days, whatever it takes." [82]
Operation ORION resulted in 18 dead, 34 wounded, 250 arrests, and the freeing of 20 kidnap victims. In addition, quantities of arms were captured. With the eviction of the terrorists, a sense of normalcy was restored. The minister of defense promised that the government would follow up with economic and social recovery programs. Similar operations would be mounted in Cali, Cartagena, Bogotá, and other cities, which were also ringed with densely populated slums that were the breeding grounds of violence and had come under various levels of penetration by the FARC and the ELN.
The Emergence of the Strategic Relationship: United States and Colombia.
Understanding the nature of the conflict is key to understanding the evolving response of the United States. Colombia has been receiving U.S. assistance for decades, beginning with the Cold War-oriented military assistance pacts of 1952. Colombia was an important theater for U.S. military and economic support in the 1960s, which in 1964-65 temporarily set back the FARC. A modest but steady level of military and economic assistance and legal training continued into the 1990s. Both the strategic imperative and the kind of assistance changed radically with the inception of the "drug war" in 1989 and the mandate given to the U.S. military to take on a counternarcotics mission, followed soon by the intensification of the security problem in Colombia.
By 1997-98, the United States had spent nearly a decade of effort in Peru and Bolivia to reduce coca production and shipment. The strategic breakthrough came in the mid-1990s through the combined application of interdiction, eradication (voluntary and forced by means of aerial spraying of glyphosate, commercially known as Roundup), and the implementation of alternative crop production (called alternative development) for peasants who lost out by no longer being able to produce coca. The United States funded much of this, including the costs of providing alternative development. The lesson learned here was that the three elements must go together for success. But Colombia would severely test this thesis, because the conditions there were far different from those in Bolivia and Peru.
Success in these two countries forced the enterprise north (the balloon effect) into eastern and southern Colombia. In these remote areas beyond government control, soil, moisture, and temperature conditions can produce four crops of coca in 12 months. An estimated 300,000 acres of coca were under cultivation by the end of 1999. This allowed Colombia to produce an estimated 520 metric tons, compared with 245 produced by Peru and Bolivia combined. Until 1997, most of the coca was grown in Peru and Bolivia, while coca base was shipped to Colombia for processing and distribution into the markets of the United States, Canada, Europe, and elsewhere. Table 6 shows the dramatic shift in production patterns.
Table 6. The Shift in Andean Cocaine Production (Metric Tons.)
| 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999
| Peru | 460 | 435 | 325 | 240 | 175
| Bolivia | 240 | 215 | 200 | 150 | 70
| Colombia | 230 | 300 | 350 | 435 | 520
| Totals | 930 | 950 | 875 | 825 | 765 | |
The successes in Bolivia and Peru increased coca production in Colombia and intensified an already bad security problem there. This frustrated officials in Washington who had invested so heavily in the programs for Peru and Bolivia. Further disappointment came from another quarter. By 1997-98, the Colombian army was being beaten in battalion size formations by the FARC. Such poor performance by a professional and very experienced counterinsurgency army was unheard of in the history of modern Latin America. At the same time, citizen support for the paramilitaries was increasing, ostensibly the result of the government's inability to provide security in the face of the FARC's offensives and atrocities against the civilian population. The fall of Colombia to the FARC with the emergence of a veritable Farclandia as a drug state was not a far-fetched prospect among policymakers in Washington, Caracas, Quito, Lima, and Brasilia.
For some time, senior officials in Washington had been thinking that Colombia needed a major boost of U.S. support and a more comprehensive strategy that could be sustained beyond an administration. In November 1999, the U.S. Congress voted a $165 million supplemental aid package for Colombia, which, added to the $124 million appropriated earlier, made Colombia the third largest recipient (though far behind Israel and Egypt) of U.S. aid in the world. At that time, Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering, an experienced hand in Latin American affairs, argued for a long-term national plan rather than the fitful short-term steps that each year had to be acted upon through the U.S. political process. It was also felt to be imperative that the Colombian government become more proficient in linking a long-term plan with operations in the field, thus mobilizing resources and personnel across the ministries to do a more effective job. This would demonstrate to the U.S. Congress and the American people that the creative talents and resources of Colombians would be committed to the cause of rebuilding the nation.
Common wisdom prevails that little of magnitude happens in the Western Hemisphere without leadership from the United States, especially on such a controversial, sovereignty-laden issue as fighting the scourge of narcotics at the international level. Accordingly, U.S. economic and military assistance would be critical in encouraging Colombians to sacrifice for their own survival and in prodding the international community, namely the Europeans, to assist. The original 5-year plan that was developed envisioned a total contribution of $7.5 billion, with $4 billion to be provided by Colombia, $1.3 billion by the United States, and the balance by Europe. Such an allocation responded to the notion of "co-responsibility" for drug production (Bolivia, Peru, Colombia) and drug consumption (United States, Europe), which was accepted as a principle for equitably sharing the burden of solving the problem.
The main elements of the original U.S. aid package are critical to understand because Plan Colombia has not been an easy sell, due to misinformation and plain lack of information. Moreover, the allocations demonstrate that this was not merely a narrow military assistance program, contrary to criticism both in the United States and abroad:
- Support for human rights and judicial reform - $122 million.
- Expansion of counternarcotics operations in Southern Colombia - $390.5 million (for helicopters, humanitarian assistance, and development assistance).
- Alternative economic development - $81 million for Colombia, $85 million for Bolivia, and $8 million for Ecuador.
- Increased interdiction efforts - $129.4 million.
- Assistance for the Colombian police - $115.6 million.
(These dollars were an emergency supplement to the $330 million earlier provided and $256 million committed for 2001.)
Despite increased dollars for the various programs, the U.S. commitment to Colombia was defined only as counternarcotics support. Eventually, 18 Black Hawk and 30 Huey II helicopters were sent to Colombia, to be used for counternarcotics operations, force protection, and eradication of coca fields, lab destruction, and, if necessary, humanitarian assistance. Then Secretary of Defense William Cohen prohibited all Department of Defense "personnel from engaging in actual field operations or deploying to areas where hostile confrontation is imminent." [83] While the counternarcotics restrictions were strictly observed, it remained to be seen whether they made good strategic and operational sense in the complex security environment of Colombia.
The Price of Strategic Clarity and the End of the Peace Process.
While Plan Colombia was in its second year of implementation, the international system was shaken to its foundations by the events of September 11, 2001. Those events had important ramifications for U.S. policy around the globe, created new alliances, and radically changed the definition of threats. The events also had a profound impact on the strategic equation in Colombia. The challenge of what U.S. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld called "draining the swamp" of terrorism with global links resonated deeply in Bogotá and among the FARC, the ELN, and the AUC. Though these groups already appeared on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist organizations, after September 11, they were viewed as part of a broader international threat assessment, even though Colombia was never formally made part of the global war on terrorism.
Senior U.S. diplomats who dealt with Colombia explained that all three insurgent groups needed to be placed on the same list for policy reasons, to achieve consistency in U.S. policy toward Colombia. If the AUC were on the list, the diplomats argued, then so must the FARC and ELN. This made it easier to justify counterterrorism support to Colombia, especially after September 11. Although the three groups lacked the classical characteristics of international terrorist groups, they were, nonetheless, present in at least 18 countries, including diplomatic missions, and to this day regularly cross borders to conduct illegal activities in Panama, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru, and Brazil. [84]
Much like his predecessors, President Pastrana began a "peace process" with the FARC in 1999, one fraught with great contradictions and the high risk of failure from the very beginning. As part of the bargain and as a confidence builder, he gave the FARC a demilitarized area (despeje) the size of Switzerland, inhabited by a small population of 96,000. This is an old tradition with precedents in Colombian history: the central government's weak authority results in surrendering sovereignty in the form of virtual sanctuaries to insurgents in outlying areas. Given the government's inability to control vast areas of the national territory, de facto despejes have come to exist, areas of practical autonomy for irregular forces, since independence in 1819. The despeje (literally, an area "cleared" of government presence) was located in the Caguán region south of Bogotá. Herein the FARC established complete control, without interference from Bogotá and much to the dismay of Washington, which could hardly disagree in public with the modalities of a "peace process" undertaken by Colombia. The "peace process" went nowhere and was resuscitated at regular intervals because of Pastrana's commitment and the international expectations it had raised. The peace talks were resumed one final time before an impending military offensive by the government against the FARC was started to retake the despeje. [85] President Pastrana, "risking all for peace," had extended himself, his negotiators, and his government's credibility as far as he could for 3 years - with nothing to show for such extensive efforts other than his administration's and the Colombian citizens' frustration and virtual surrender to the FARC of national sovereignty over national territory.
The FARC had used the despeje as a logistical support base for military operations beyond it, to kidnap and assassinate, and to grow coca. In spite of the government's renewal of negotiations in good faith, the FARC conducted some 170 armed attacks in the next 30 days, culminating on February 20, 2002, in the hijacking of a civilian aircraft and the kidnapping of one passenger, Senator Jorge Eduardo Gechem Turbay, head of the Senate Commission on Peace and member of a large and politically prominent family. President Pastrana thereupon announced the end of the process and ordered Colombian armed forces to retake the despeje that had been given over to the FARC as a goodwill gesture to start the peace process. Days later, former senator and then presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt was kidnapped by a FARC column, making a total of six parliamentarians being held hostage by the FARC. [86] Betancourt had not been released as of May 2003. Analysts believe that such a high-level captive will be useful to the FARC in a future exchange of prisoners with the government.
One month earlier, on January 20, 2002, under the auspices of UN representative James Lemoyne and the support of the Catholic Church and 10 "friendly countries" (Canada, Cuba, Spain, France, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Venezuela), an agreement had been made between the Colombian government and the FARC to try to reach a cease-fire by April 7, 2002. [87] It was clear to many observers that a cease-fire was not likely to occur by this deadline for a number of reasons. Peace, especially in internal conflict, can be defined as a "pattern of stability acceptable to those with capacity to disturb it by violence." [88]
Achieving such a peace did not stand a chance in the political climate of January 2002. First and most important, the FARC had shown by their actions for the previous 3 years that they were not interested in peace, which would require surrendering their strategic objective of taking power by force of arms, the only way they could achieve it. [89] Second, students and practitioners of peace processes, such as former Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front Comandante Joaquín Villalobos of El Salvador, pointed out that Colombia's peace process was ill-conceived because it had the following serious procedural and substantive defects: 1) a poorly defined agenda; 2) unclear goals on the part of the government; 3) the FARC's unrealistic reform agenda, which addressed some of the nation's economic and social problems (while these reforms are unquestionably needed, few could be implemented in wartime by a weak government under assault from the left, right, and international organized crime); 4) the very difficult task of verifying and enforcing compliance with a cease-fire with some 100 widely dispersed and mobile insurgent fronts throughout Colombia (because of their wide dispersal, Commanding General of the Armed Forces Fernando Tapias earlier recommended putting all the FARC inside the despeje); 5) the absence of an effective third-party negotiator (until James Lemoyne of the United Nations became involved); and 6) too much personal involvement by President Pastrana. [90]
The leader of the nation should have delegated the responsibility of negotiating with the FARC to lower level officials and avoided putting at risk the prestige of the presidency, which raised expectations too high. The peace process and the cease-fire were doomed for even more fundamental reasons. The FARC had little incentive to negotiate seriously because the military balance in the battlefield was at that time not sufficiently unfavorable to them to want to seek the best deal before it was too late. The Colombian military could not hold the ground it won back from the FARC because it did not (and still does not) have sufficient forces to exercise permanent local control across the nation. A cease-fire by April 7, 2002, was simply not an achievable goal, given the military strength of the FARC, its immediate resumption of attacks on the infrastructure and innocent bystanders after January 20, and the probability that the FARC's central command could not control some of its autonomous front commanders. Moreover, given the insurgents' low popularity, their economic dependence on the drug business and other illegal activities, and the past inability of the state to guarantee the survival of insurgents who put down their guns in an attempt to reintegrate themselves into society, the FARC had more to lose than to gain by agreeing to peace.
Finally, the incentives to negotiate a peace in a civil war, which Colombia's conflict is not, are far different from the incentives that drug-trafficking terrorists have for negotiating. Most of the experience of the United Nations and other third parties to broker peace negotiations deals with civil wars, where the two opposing forces have competing political objectives. Yet, those forces are united by the common objective of building a sustainable peace. Terrorists are criminals who, by definition, do not have a legitimate political objective. Indeed, peace would be the ruination of the FARC's agenda to make money unimpeded. It would also entail their practical extinction as a political and military movement. Moreover, there are the difficult ethical, political, and security problems of how to reintegrate them into society once the shooting stops. This issue would surface in a dramatic way in January 2003, when the Uribe government offered an amnesty to members of the AUC who put down their arms. At that time, two of the main paramilitary groups refused the deal. Those charged with crimes against humanity, such as assassination, torture, and political persecution, were excluded from the offer.
The frustrations with the peace process and the post 9/11 international environment underscored an important reality: the FARC and the ELN were almost completely delegitimated at home and abroad by the time of the January 2002 negotiations. Their claims to a political agenda of reform and social justice stood in naked contrast with their campaigns of assassinations, kidnappings, extortions, and indiscriminate attacks against civilian populations; forced recruitment of child soldiers (over 6,000 children, according to the United Nations); [91] direct involvement in promoting and deeply benefiting from the drug trade; inflicting ecological damage by blowing up oil pipelines; [92] and even developing a training link between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the FARC (three IRA explosives experts were caught after they had left the despeje). [93]
The events of September 11 and the emergence of an international coalition against terrorism raised sharper questions about the legitimacy of insurgent movements around the globe. In the January 2002 negotiations, the FARC put forth among its demands the requirement that Pastrana recognize them as "valid political interlocutors in the peace process." This assessment highlighted a dilemma. How could a legitimate democratic government, aspiring to apply the rule of law, justify the contradiction of granting legitimacy to terrorists, who repeatedly rejected the rules of humanitarian warfare enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, especially in the post-September 11 global environment of anxiety and extraordinary security precautions? The FARC's behavior suggested two possible reasons: that they were out of touch with reality and could only talk behind the security of the gun or that they regarded themselves to be so criminal as to be beyond any concept of legitimacy.
The Colombian government virtually had surrendered its authority in 1999 by setting aside the despeje for the FARC, a huge risk that backfired, and then early in 2002, government representatives engaged the FARC in internationally and domestically sanctioned negotiations. The Papal Nuncio to Colombia, Monsignor Beniamino Stella, identified the ethical quagmire as "the great deception of the international community because of the guerrilla terrorism." [94] It was surreal to watch the political theater of representatives of well-meaning organizations, such as the United Nations and other members of the international community, earnestly trying to broker the cease-fire agreement with the terrorists and, thus, bestow a form of legitimacy upon them.
Though President Pastrana and the international organizations apparently viewed the negotiations as worth one last-ditch push for peace, the FARC's actions following the January negotiations proved that they had not come to the table in good faith. Unfortunately, the outcomes were ethical obfuscation and loss of thousands of human lives since the inception of the "peace process." But it achieved an important strategic breakthrough for Pastrana that laid the foundation for his successor: the international isolation and delegitimation of the FARC, the major antagonist that Colombian society faced. It also opened up new strategic options for the United States and for the international community to assist Colombia more fully.
Evaluating Plan Colombia.
These policy developments serve as a backdrop for an assessment of the impact of the multiyear Plan Colombia: Plan for Peace, Prosperity, and the Strengthening of the State (usually referred to by its shortened form, Plan Colombia). The Clinton administration had for some time urged Pastrana to develop a national strategy so that the United States could support Colombia in a comprehensive manner. Plan Colombia was the brainchild of Dr. Jaime Ruiz, senior advisor to President Pastrana. Ruiz, who holds a doctorate in engineering from the University of Kansas, argued that strengthening the capacity of the state, especially the military capability, was key to the success of any national plan. [95]
The strategic theory behind this plan was very simple: economic development, security, and peace are directly linked. Taking the money generated by drugs out of the market reduces the warmaking capacity of all three terrorist groups, thereby reducing the level of violence and enhancing the prospects for peace. There was, thus, a convergence of the U.S. strategic interest - reducing the flow of narcotics - and the more comprehensive interest of Colombia for getting U.S. military support. But the convergence, as will be seen later, was only partial and led to strategic and operational distortions from which the United States is attempting to emerge.
The central premise of the U.S. component of Plan Colombia was that money from the trade in illegal drugs feeds the coffers of the guerrillas, whose attacks give rise to citizens' self-defense organizations - the paramilitaries. If the narcotics funds could be stopped or drastically diminished, the guerrillas could not mount their ambitious military campaigns against the state and society and would become much less threatening. Moreover, Carlos Castaño's paramilitaries would have less reason for being. With their main source of funds cut off, a less powerful FARC and ELN would be more likely to negotiate seriously, and the paramilitaries would also have a greater incentive to join them and government representatives for serious peace talks to end the fighting and rebuild Colombia. Indeed, part of this calculation may be proving correct. In late 2002, the paramilitaries offered to cease fighting, and negotiations for that purpose appeared forthcoming.
Additionally, it was anticipated that as these armed threats to the state and society were eliminated, the forces of public order (police and military) would be able to regain effective control of the entire national territory, making it easier to eradicate illegal narcotics. Restoring security throughout Colombia would allow the rule of law to be established because the state would have the monopoly of force and regain its citizens' trust. From the U.S. perspective, the strategic dilemma was and continues to be that even if drug production were significantly reduced, the FARC, the main force in the field fighting against the government, would adapt its strategy and retain significant war-making capacity. Thus, the complementary objectives of security and democracy could only be achieved by removing the illegal armed groups from the battlefield. Whether U.S. antinarcotics support as a component of the multiyear Plan Colombia would be sufficient to help to achieve the plan's overall goals has always been in question. But at least U.S. statesmen could point to the fact that the United States was helping Colombia and establishing a foundation for the future, however incomplete the support may have been.
The audacious goals of Plan Colombia were to strengthen the state by reenergizing an economy that, by the end of 2002, had 15 percent unemployment, reducing narcotics production and trafficking, and restoring civil society. Plan Colombia was an economic and social strategy to restore the country's economic health along with a more functional democracy. Though one part of the plan did include the military, Plan Colombia was not, contrary to many nongovernmental organizations' and media reports, a military strategy. [96] Critics of the plan should note that the military assistance portion was only 7 percent of the $7.5 billion. There is an important strategic reality about this: no nation other than the United States has the political will and the capability in resources to apply the full package of assistance with serious performance conditions - at the time of Plan Colombia's inception to be used for counternarcotics purposes only, with appropriate respect for human rights - to a beleaguered ally deeply in need of outside support. The military component was only one of the plan's 10 elements designed to remake the nation into a secure democracy, free from violence and corruption.
Plan Colombia has not been fully funded, the biggest gap resulting from the Europeans' small contribution. Apart from the initial U.S. contribution of $1.3 billion (which grew to $1.8 billion by 2002), international support for Colombia has amounted to a total of between $550 to $600 million from the European Union, the United Nations, Spain, Japan, Canada, United Kingdom, Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland.
What are the returns? It would be unfair to attribute all progress to Plan Colombia, which has been in effect for barely 3 years. Much of what has been accomplished antedates the implementation of the plan, particularly in the area of security. By early 2002, Colombia still needed a national strategy to link the instruments of power (political, economic, social, informational, and military) in a cohesive and mutually reinforcing pattern. Indeed, the Colombian ministries are shallow in personnel and resources. This is particularly relevant to the implementation of Plan Colombia's "Annex I: Interagency Action Plan," the multiministry program for coca eradication, alternative development, and security in Putumayo Department. Colombia's fragmented nation and weak state institutional apparatus present serious intellectual and political problems in confronting the multiple challenges of insurgency, drug-related international organized crime, and paramilitarism.
The intellectual impetus for Plan Colombia eventually produced the much-awaited Colombian national security strategy, Democratic Security and Defense Policy, which was published in the fall of 2002, bearing the Uribe team's strategic concepts. It is a sophisticated and comprehensive document that will be an excellent foundation for linking the national military strategy and the supporting social and economic programs necessary to bring governance and security to the people. The United States pushed for the development of such a document, in order to have a coherent Colombian planning framework for the application of all the instruments of national power.
Creating a Strategic State. Strategy, in Clausewitzian terms, is the calculated relationship between political ends and military-economic-diplomatic means. Clausewitz also speaks of the concept of the "center of gravity" of a state, the source of all strength. If a state is weak and corrupt (recall the anatomy of a weak state, while some two-thirds of Colombia's Congress took bribes or were intimidated in the late 1990s, according to former U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Curtis Kamman [97]), the central question that arises is: Can such a state develop and implement national security strategy and military strategy effectively? Corruption weakens the state's own center of gravity - its legitimacy - and the capacity of society to respond to the crisis of national survival.
The concept of the "strategic state" is central to the effort, because only a well-organized state with effective and ethical leadership and personnel can mobilize resources, justify the sacrifices demanded of its citizens, and forge the civil-military coalition to win a war. To paraphrase the sentiments of General Tapias with respect to what is required in Colombia, the state must recover the legitimate authority to act. Such a state must have the following attributes: a national command authority that combines the presidency with sufficient diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military capabilities within a legal system that safeguards citizens' rights but is adaptable for national crisis, such as war. Ideally, "the strategic state" would encompass the three branches of government, executive, legislative, and judicial, thus maximizing popular support for the national enterprise and collective sacrifice.
If the answer to the above query remains a "no," then it follows that the state can only fight a war in a desultory operational fashion, neither winning nor losing, but bleeding slowly into the indefinite future. Over time, such a pattern will mean that the armed fist of the state may be effective in its own way, as is evident already in Colombia, but it will not be complemented by the social and economic measures that the state must implement to serve the people with effective governance. The challenge for Colombian leaders is to bring greater coherence to the national effort, to mobilize societal resources to the task of making war and rebuilding the nation. Israeli scholar Gil Merom states,
- It is quite clear that resorting to large-scale ground action requires a significant ability to convert societal into military resources. Yet, it would be wrong to assume that warring states are restricted only by the sum total of their societal resources or by their ability to convert these into military means. States are also
bound by their political capacity to use or lose human resources - i.e., to get their soldiers and citizens to agree to use violence and be its victims; to harm others or be killed or maimed. [98]