Pubdate: Mon, 18 Jun 2001
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Copyright: 2001 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.uniontrib.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/386
Author: Brian Michael Jenkins

A CONFOUNDING, COMPLEX TRAGEDY

In supporting Plan Colombia, the United States has taken on a major 
commitment. It has done so with remarkably little information about 
the dynamics of the struggle we have joined, and with considerable 
uncertainty, not to say gloom, as to whether we will succeed, or even 
what that means.

Colombia is a decent democracy, less flawed than almost any we have 
assisted militarily in the last 50 years. Its collapse would torpedo 
efforts to control the flow of narcotics, threaten a potentially 
important source of energy for the United States, and create serious 
problems for the region. Without external assistance, Colombia cannot 
defeat the guerrilla-gangster Minotaur that consumes it. It is in our 
national interest to help. At the same time, it is necessary that we 
fully comprehend the harsh realities we and our Colombian allies face.

The situation is confoundingly complex. Colombia confronts a host of 
Marxist guerrillas, private armies, criminal gangs and hired guns. 
The current guerrilla wars have killed an estimated 35,000 people, 
but the bulk of the violence is not related to the insurgency or the 
drug war.

Sicarios, young hoodlums who can be hired for a few pesos, along with 
ordinary people steeped in Colombia's violent culture, do most of the 
killing. They have made Colombia one of the most violent countries in 
the world. In addition to those killed in the guerrilla wars, 
approximately 30,000 people are murdered each year. To get an idea of 
its national impact, applying Colombia's murder rate to the U.S. 
population would make a quarter million murders a year! End the 
guerrilla wars and Colombia remains a very violent place.

To the killings, add the kidnappings, which in Colombia have reached 
industrial scale. In 1982, 19 kidnappings were reported in the 
country. Last year, the reported total exceeded 3,000. Few families 
of means have not had at least one member who has been held hostage, 
including the president of Colombia himself.

Amazingly, until recently this degree of violence has not prevented 
political and economic progress. Colombia's democratic institutions 
remain intact. Its literacy rate is one of the highest in Latin 
America. Its 40 universities are full.

Colombia has the fourth largest economy in Latin America and is the 
only country in the region never to default on its debt.

There almost seemed to be two Colombias: a sophisticated South 
American Milan and a brutal South American Sierra Leone co-existing 
in the same national territory. This paradox lasted until the late 
1990s when Colombia slid into its worst recession since the 1930s. 
The consequences of the Asian economic crisis was part of the reason, 
coupled with poor fiscal policy. But the deteriorating security 
situation and economic warfare waged by the guerrillas doubtless 
contributed to the decline.

The conflict has displaced 2 million people. More than a million have 
fled the country. The emigres have the best educations; they are the 
entrepreneurs and managers of Colombia's future economic growth. This 
departure represents a significant loss of a precious resource.

Arrayed against the Colombian armed forces in the struggle in which 
the United States is about to involve itself are the 17,000 Marxist 
guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed forces of Colombia (FARC) and 
the 5,000 fighters of the National Liberation Army (ELN). The FARC 
has been fighting for nearly 40 years, but its origins reach back to 
the internecine political warfare of the 1940s. The guerrillas 
traditionally have operated in the remote areas of the country where 
the government has never been able to establish effective authority, 
but in recent years, they have expanded their presence throughout the 
country.

On the opposite side of the political spectrum are the 5,000 to 8,000 
members of the paramilitaries. These are private militias, initially 
financed by land owners and drug lords to protect their interests. 
The paramilitaries, however, evolved into more autonomous actors, 
financing themselves through drug trafficking, attacking guerrilla 
strongholds (and coca-growing territory) in pursuit of their own 
economic and political goals.

Clandestine cooperation between some Colombian army units and the 
paramilitaries provoked growing criticism. Although ferocious 
fighters, the paramilitaries were also notorious for mass 
kidnappings, massacres of civilians, and other atrocities. The 
government worked to sever links between military commanders and the 
paramilitaries, and for the first time this spring, the army began 
attacking paramilitary bases while police went after their financial 
backers. Up to now, paramilitary units, some led by ex-army officers, 
have not attacked the security forces, but that could change, moving 
8,000 men from the category of undesirable allies to active foes.

Plan Colombia offers a framework for ordering national priorities and 
mobilizing international support -- it is not a strategy. Neither 
Colombia nor the United States has formulated a national strategy.

Goals are easily agreed upon. Detailing strategy might reveal subtle 
but significant differences between Colombians and Americans.

We see things differently. Americans focus on Colombia's continued 
production of cocaine, or to a lesser extent, on the conflict's 
threat to regional stability. That means going after the traffickers 
whether guerrillas or gangsters, defeating the insurgents.

Most Colombians, 70 percent of whom live in cities, see the war as a 
distant phenomenon, except when it touches them directly in the form 
of a terrorist bombing or guerrilla kidnapping. All fervently desire 
peace, but they have lived with war for 40 years. They don't believe 
in military victory.

They want protection against soaring crime, less violence, a better 
system of justice, less corruption, more economic opportunities. That 
means improving and extending the institutions of government, 
starting in the cities and gradually working outward.

There has been no national mobilization in Colombia. Legislation 
prohibits sons with high school diplomas from being sent into combat. 
Ending conscription and creating on all-volunteer professional army 
may improve military effectiveness, but in a country supposedly 
engaged in a struggle for survival, it also says something about 
national will.

Colombians don't want to escalate the war. They want to cut a deal, 
as they have in the past, that will get them through the immediate 
danger, insulate the populated enclaves from the conflict.

As for the drug traffic, most Colombians agree with President Bush -- 
it's a demand problem. Americans have to curb their appetite for 
cocaine.

Armed conflict in Colombia has become an economic enterprise. The 
guerrillas have a parasitical relationship with the oil companies 
that operate in Colombia. They kidnap ex-patriate employees; collect 
extortion from local contractors, set up front companies to gain 
intelligence and revenue. The FARC taxes coca cultivation and is 
increasingly directly involved in the production and export of 
cocaine. Robberies, extortion, ransoms, and drug trafficking bring 
the guerrillas an estimated $300 million to $900 million annually. It 
is a greater sum than Plan Colombia will provide to Colombia's armed 
forces.

The paramilitaries battle with FARC to control the drug-producing 
areas. Soldiers are paid, arms are purchased; even then, the 
estimated cash flows suggest that these non-government armies operate 
at a profit.

The money has facilitated the expansion of the guerrilla forces and 
enabled the FARC to field larger units and launch-coordinated 
attacks. The fighting has moved beyond the hit-and-run attacks of 
traditional guerrilla warfare into mobile warfare involving larger 
scale battles, although recent successes by government forces have to 
some extent forced the guerrillas to revert to traditional tactics.

One cannot be overly optimistic about peace negotiations with a 
guerrilla army that has been in the field for 40 years, is well 
funded, and led by a man who started fighting when Franklin Roosevelt 
was president of the United States. The Colombian government's 
current peace initiative is the latest in a series of unsuccessful 
attempts to end the fighting that go back to 1953.

Colombia's guerrillas have not fought for 40 years for the mere 
privilege of quitting. Recognizing that it cannot impose a military 
solution, the government sees negotiations as an alternate way to end 
the fighting.

Not so for men who have devoted their entire lives to fighting, who 
believe in the efficacy of violence, have built an alternate society 
and economy based upon continued struggle, and who profit by its 
continuation.

Demobilizing or disarming would deprive their leadership of authority 
and expose them to retaliation. They recall that many of those who 
accepted previous amnesties and entered the political process as 
candidates were gunned down. In addition to ideological reasons, 
there are the tens of thousands who have suffered at their hands, 
lost relatives, paid ransoms would have personal scores to settle. 
And peace would end a profitable enterprise.

Peace is not at hand. Neither is a military victory by government 
forces in the foreseeable future. Nor is a guerrilla victory. What 
then?

Continued stalemate is the most likely scenario for the next several years.

The guerrillas are not about to quit, but nowhere near being able to 
take over. Colombia's armed forces cannot destroy them but can defeat 
them in large-scale fighting. The conflict may escalate. Under such 
circumstances, will the economy fully recover or decline?

A more optimistic scenario would envisage a creeping victory. 
Colombia's armed forces already have made significant improvements, 
restructuring themselves to free more troops for combat, but they 
still suffer from a number of serious problems. With more than 
140,000 soldiers, the army outnumbers the guerrillas by eight to one, 
but fewer than a quarter of them are deployable. A significant 
portion are tied down in small outposts, guarding oil fields, power 
stations, and other infrastructure.

Better tactical intelligence, which the United States can help 
provide, better trained units, improved mobility that comes with the 
helicopters now being delivered will allow the Colombian armed forces 
to increasingly wrest the initiative from the guerrillas. Will it be 
enough?

If it is not, Colombia may move toward political accommodation and de 
facto partition. Elements of this exist now. The government has 
granted FARC huge demilitarized zone, in which to negotiate peace, in 
fact, it is a sanctuary from which the FARC continues the war. The 
ELN seeks a smaller tract. During the 1950s, the Communists sought to 
create virtually independent republics in the more remote portions of 
the country. Political accommodation would formalize this process.

Many Colombians might even find some kind of territorial 
accommodation and attractive option if it reduced the overall level 
of fighting. However, the paramilitaries might not abide unless they 
had revenue-producing territory of their own to control, and even 
then, would battle the guerrillas for the most lucrative zones.

The trouble with accommodation and partition is that it would 
seriously impair the campaign against cocaine production. It also can 
deteriorate into a "warlord Colombia" perpetually at war with itself, 
its economy crippled, foreign investment deferred except perhaps for 
oil and coal, its national government marginalized.

Another constellation of scenarios lies at the far edge of 
plausibility: all-out civil war -- a reprise of the vicious violence 
that killed 200,000 Colombians in the late 1940s and early 1950s, 
collapse of the central government, a military coup to prevent chaos. 
Alarming and unlikely, such events are all within the living memory 
of older Colombians, lessons hard-learned -- exactly why they would 
prefer to cut a deal if possible.

The outlook is bleak. The guerrillas remain strong, the 
paramilitaries hostile. The peace talks seem unlikely to succeed. The 
conflicts will persist. Escalation is more likely as coca eradication 
efforts intensify, as guerrillas and paramilitaries seek to 
demonstrate their power before next year's presidential election in 
Colombia, as American assistance gives the Colombian army more 
capacity to carry the fight to the guerrillas. Violence will remain 
high, the economy precarious. U.S. resolve will be severely tested.

Above all, we will be compelled to carefully define our own interests 
and the price we are willing to pay to protect them.

Jenkins, a former captain in the Army Special Forces, is an authority 
on conflict and international crime. He is senior adviser to the 
president of the RAND Corporation.
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MAP posted-by: Josh Sutcliffe