On July 24 a news item on the front pages of American newspapers suddenly catapulted Colombia into the center of our national consciousness. It reported that an American army plane on an antidrug reconnaissance mission over that country was missing, presumably downed by small-arms fire. Five American soldiers and two Colombians were either dead, stranded in the jungle, or prisoners of persons unknown. Although such flights have been going on for years, this is the first time that U.S. military personnel have suffered serious casualties.

The incident immediately fueled speculation that the perpetrators were members of one of Colombia’s three guerrilla groups. A spokesman for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest insurgent formation, neither confirmed nor denied the charges but was remarkably frank. The United States, he told reporters, "is carrying out a full-scale counterinsurgency campaign in Colombia," and if, in future confrontations between the rebels and the army, "gringoes are killed, it won’t be our fault."[1]

As a matter of fact, the United States is not carrying out "a full-scale counterinsurgency campaign in Colombia"--at least not yet. It is contributing in a modest way to training and equipping that country’s armed forces, and therefore is an indirect accessory to whatever happens on the battlefield. But the apparent loss of five American soldiers raises disturbing questions about just how far the United States is willing to go to assure a military victory against Colombia’s insurgents. A violent peasant war in a difficult geography, an ally who presides over a dysfunctional political system, complicated socio-economic issues--as many an American might say, we have been down that road before and have no desire to repeat the experience.

The Drug Connection

What makes this conflict different from those in Vietnam or El Salvador is that it is fueled not so much by ideologies or outside actors as by drugs. Colombia produces 80 percent of the world’s cocaine and two-thirds of the heroin consumed in the United States. Drugs amount to between 25 and 35 percent of the country’s total exports. Out of this traffic, which runs into the billions of dollars, the guerrillas have managed to skim off at least $500 million through taxes on coca producers (many of them small farmers) and processors (owners of clandestine processing laboratories). They collect another $400 million from criminal activities--kidnapping, extortion, and blackmail. The smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) extorts money from the oil companies that operate the Caño-Limón-Coveñas pipeline connecting Arauca province to the Caribbean.

These resources have allowed the rebels to exercise control over wide areas of Colombia--a country parceled by high mountain ranges into multiple culs-de-sac, each largely independent of one another. By some estimates the guerrillas control about 50 percent of the nation’s territory, operating along some ten separate "fronts." They are reported to exercise significant influence in more than half the country’s municipalities. While the insurgents have lost considerable political support over the years and cannot hope to take power, at least now, they have gained enormous operational momentum. Last year, for the first time, they defeated a large unit in maneuver warfare, and not just any unit but the Colombian army’s elite mobile counterinsurgency brigade. Many Colombians believe that in the end the guerrillas will win because the government will lose. And perhaps they are right.

The statistics of this war are chilling. Four times the number of people have died in Colombia these years as have expired in the war in the Balkans; 900,000 to one million persons have been displaced. According to UNICEF, no fewer than 300,000 children have been orphaned, and an additional 700,000 have been forced to flee from their homes. The rural-to-urban migration in Colombia has been virtually without equal in the world for the period of the war. The war costs ten Colombian lives a day. Not surprisingly, the number of Colombians applying for visas to travel to the United States or settle here has tripled, and Miami is fast becoming Colombia’s second largest city.

The Colombian drama is particularly acute because the war is not merely a two-sided affair between guerrillas and the army. It includes as well a third leg of the triangle--paramilitary formations that represent an unholy alliance of landlords, political bosses, and drug lords who resent the burden of taxes imposed by the guerrillas. These paramilitary groups have grown exponentially in the last few years, and probably now run at between five and seven thousand combatants. Last year both the State Department and human rights groups laid roughly three-quarters of Colombia’s political killings at their door. That is not surprising, since, like the guerrillas, they consider noncombatants legitimate targets.

Unfortunately, again like the guerrillas, the paramilitary groups enjoy some measure of popular support, which encourages them to develop agendas of their own. Some of these shade imperceptibly into right-wing politics--but far off the spectrum of the Conservatives, one of Colombia’s two major parties. At a minimum, these groups constitute something of a rogue elephant--a threat to the state and the rule of law.

There is considerable controversy over just how close a relationship the paramilitary formations maintain with the Colombian army. It is known that some of them have been trained by retired officers and that some regional army commanders have turned a blind eye to their activities; there is a disturbing overlap in the combat objectives of the army and paramilitary groups. On the other hand, the Colombian high command vociferously denies any relationship, insisting that officers who have been lax in addressing the paramilitary threat have been transferred, demoted, or (in some cases) court-martialed. Although the Colombian army is one of the more professional forces in Latin America, in the short run its own human rights performance is unlikely to satisfy outsiders and therefore will continually expose it to charges of collusion with the more unsavory elements of the civilian population.

What Ails Columbia?

No one can deny that in Colombia, as in many Latin American countries, the performance of the government leaves much to be desired. Many agencies, particularly the justice system, are known to be, at best, inefficient, at worst, corrupt. Essential government services are largely limited to Bogotá and a few provincial capitals. Inequalities between rich and poor have grown drastically in the last two decades, as have increasingly inegalitarian patterns of land ownership. Even Colombia’s former foreign minister Noemí Sanín admits that the country’s political system is undemocratic in that it denies participation to substantial portions of society; the country’s two major parties--the Liberals and the Conservatives--have, in her words, "failed to respond to the actual problems of the country." In short, all the ingredients for a social revolution are already in place, together with a tradition of political violence extending back to the 1940s.

Even so, it is excessively simplistic to argue that because Colombian society is shot-through with inefficiency, corruption, and injustice, a three-sided civil war is the inevitable consequence. For one thing, many countries nearby, not all that different, are far more peaceful. For another, though a serious improvement in Colombia’s political performance would provide the government with a more effective moral fulcrum to pursue its military objectives, in the best of cases and with the best will in the world that is likely to require years of patient effort. A military victory may not be possible, but a peaceful settlement is highly improbable in the context of a full-scale military retreat--unless by a "peaceful settlement" one means giving the guerrillas what they want, namely, political, economic, and military power. In that case many lives could be saved by surrendering right now. No responsible person in Colombia or elsewhere advocates this course of action, though it follows logically from some of the counsels urged upon us by the human-rights community and foreign academics.

The Shape of Peace

For some years now the Colombian government has been pursuing something called the "peace process"--a phenomenon as evanescent as its counterpart in the Middle East. It consists of periodic talks between the government and the guerrillas, the purpose of which is to find some mutually agreeable middle ground. So far the only successful outcome has been the dismantling of a small organization, the M-19. Even that, however, has required elaborate procedures to reintegrate its members into normal political life, including the assignment of bodyguards to its principal figures. Negotiations between the FARC and the government, periodically interrupted by incidents on the battlefield that purportedly undercut the bona fides of one side or the other, have been far less productive

It is difficult to see why the guerrillas would wish to compromise when they already control so large a portion of the nation’s territory and the government itself is hesitant, divided, and constantly beleaguered by foreign critics. To be sure, talks provide the insurgents with some short-range benefits: prisoner exchanges or territorial concessions. (They also allow the guerrillas to score propaganda points by accusing the government of unwillingness to reign in the paramilitary groups--an accusation all the more stinging for being partly true.) Moreover, fighting is a way of life for these rebels, some of whom have been at it since the 1960s. They have learned that the best tactic is to fight and talk simultaneously, all the while edging the goal posts in their own direction. They think time is on their side--an illusion no Colombian government is likely to entertain.

Theoretically, at some point a peace agreement might be hammered out, but, to borrow a page from the Salvadoran precedent, that will happen only when both sides are convinced they cannot prevail on the battlefield. The FARC claims that the Colombian government wants "a peace of the graveyard, a peace of surrender." The same words just as easily describe its own objectives, which presently it is far better positioned to demand than its adversary.

The Regional Dimension

Colombia’s problems cannot be discussed in isolation, for its domestic conflicts have already spilled over its borders into neighboring countries. To the north and east there is Venezuela, with which Colombia shares a long and extremely porous boundary. The FARC operates freely on both sides of the line, actively engaging in drug-running, kidnapping, and extortion. As recently as this March, it executed three American citizens in Colombia and dumped their bodies on the Venezuelan side of the border. Although in the past the Venezuelan army has posted thousands of its own troops along the border and has cooperated closely with its Colombian counterpart, Venezuela’s mercurial new president, retired Lt. Col. Hugo Chávez Frías, has recently declared his neutrality in the conflict, which virtually places both sides on a juridical plane of equality--a significant political advance for the guerrillas.

To the immediate north there is Panama. Its southernmost province, Darien, until recently very poorly policed, has become a base from which guerrillas acquire arms and other provisions, as well as a secure rear area where combatants can rest between engagements. Panama has also been the scene of some extremely ugly terrorist activities, with the paramilitary groups crossing over the border to kill suspected guerrillas or their supporters. Although the Panamanian national police have increased their presence in the province manyfold over the past two years, unrest there confronts the country with an unusual security situation at precisely the time when it has abolished its own armed forces and is bidding goodbye (under the consummation of the Carter-Torrijos treaties at the end of this year) to the American garrison that protected the Canal and its approaches since the turn of the century.

To the south there is Ecuador, already in its own domestic political turmoil. The Putumayo region, like Darien, is virtually a FARC stronghold, and guerrilla attacks on small military and police posts have led to a massive deployment of the Ecuadorian army, formerly spread principally across the frontier with Peru. In Peru itself, President Alberto Fujimori is actively reinforcing his own border garrisons, while loudly criticizing President Andrés Pastrana of Colombia for negotiating with the insurgents rather than following his own vigorous example of giving his service chiefs a free hand against guerrilla organizations. This procedure has imposed a very high cost in terms of human rights and civil liberties, but in Peru, at least, it has also been extremely effective.

The U.S. Stake

Colombia does not share a common boundary with the United States, but it is a major focus of U.S. strategic concern, not only because of the drugs but because it is a significant market for U.S. products, a major venue of U.S. investment, and a crucial source of imported oil, second in importance in South America only to Venezuela. Until recently, the focus of the United States in Colombia has largely been on the drug war and has treated the civil conflict as a kind of sideshow. A prime example was the ill-considered decision to decertify Colombia in 1997 and 1998 because it was discovered that President Ernesto Samper had accepted drug money to finance his presidential campaign.[2] After two years of fruitless haggling, the stalemate in U.S.-Colombian relations was broken by the election of a new president, which gave Washington an excuse to start matters anew.

This year Colombia will receive $300 million in military aid, $40 million of which will finance the creation of an airmobile army battalion. That makes it the third largest recipient of such largesse, after Israel and Egypt. For the first time, the Pentagon is sharing sensitive, real-time intelligence on the guerrillas with the Colombian military, and there are calls for additional assistance, including training and equipment for night operations, the creation of an airborne strike force, improvement in logistics and spare parts inventorying, and the enhancement of airlift capacity.

The paradox of U.S. policy in Colombia, at least as far as the army is concerned, is that for the military to play the role its critics demand--namely, to go after the guerillas and paramilitary formations with equal and impartial zeal, all the while respecting human rights--it must be strengthened as an institution. A weak, indecisive, poorly equipped Colombian army cannot accomplish anything. On the other hand, no outside power can provide the organization with the leadership, political sophistication, and professionalism needed to accomplish that mission. The Colombians must be given the tools, but in the end it is their war, and they must win it, or at least conclude it, on their own.

There are at least four possible outcomes to the current Colombian situation. The best-case scenario would be additional U.S. aid that allows the Colombian army to acquit itself well enough on the battlefield either to disperse the guerrillas or to allow the government to negotiate with them on an advantageous basis. Unfortunately, at present this is not at all likely. Another possibility is more of the same same--continued negotiations, but also continued fighting and bloodletting, more or less indefinitely. Yet another is the definitive collapse of peace talks, with the country slipping into full-scale civil war in which there would be no victor, and which would yield merely different patches of territory permanently controlled by the government, the paramilitary groups, or the rebels. Finally, there is the remote possibility of a decisive rebel victory, with the governing and business class of the country (and as much of its middle class as possible) fleeing to safe haven in the United States, Europe, or other Latin American countries. In that case, Colombia would inaugurate a new kind of leftist flavor in world politics—a narco-revolutionary regime. The one outcome we can be fairly certain will never occur is direct U.S. military intervention.

While hoping for the best, we would be well counseled to prepare for the worst--the possibility that Colombia will leave the civilized world and become a new kind of rogue actor in international politics. In the meantime, we might more seriously address a subject far closer at hand--the problem of drug addiction and treatment in the United States, something that kills about 14,000 Americans and costs our society $110 billion every year. Ending American consumption of toxic substances will not resolve Colombia’s social and political ills, but it would remove the largest single factor driving its civil wars. And that would be a substantial contribution indeed.[3]

Notes

1. El Nuevo Herald (Miami), July 23, 1999.

2. For a critical examination of the decertification process, see "Time to End the Certification Circus," Latin American Outlook, April 1997.

3. In preparing this paper I have benefited immensely from the work of Michael Shifter, "Colombia on the Brink," Foreign Affairs, July–August 1999; Gabriel Marcella and Donald E. Schulz, "War and Peace in Colombia," The Washington Quarterly, Summer 1999; and Richard Downes, Landpower and Ambiguous Warfare: The Challenge of Colombia in the 21st Century (Carlisle, Pa.: U.S. Army War College/U.S. Southern Command, 1999).

Mark Falcoff is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.