In 1998, Colombians were filled with optimism about the possibility of a negotiated settlement to the armed conflict that has drained the country’s lifeblood. The first of two key events underscoring that optimism was a meeting between the newly elected President, Andrés Pastrana, and the commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Manuel Marulanda Vélez. The second was a meeting in Maguncia, Germany between representatives of various organizations from civil society and high-ranking members of the Army of National Liberation (ELN).
A year later, however, dark clouds are gathering over Colombia, and pessimism and despair are spreading. The government seems to have lost the initiative on the peace process, and violence—from multiple sources, including organized and common crime, guerrilla organizations, self-styled defense units and drug-financed paramilitaries—is escalating to new heights.
In this context, the international press has come up with a variety of new labels for the Colombian situation. For some, it is nothing less than a “Latin American Vietnam.” For others, Colombia is another version of the war in Bosnia, while others have called it “the next Kosovo.” These labels, of course, do little to further our understanding of the situation in Colombia, which cannot be likened either to a national war of liberation in which the Cold War superpowers imposed their own agendas, nor to a confrontation based on long-standing ethnic hatreds.
Yet such comparisons have had a profound influence on how important sectors of the military and political establishment in Washington perceive the conflict in Colombia.[1] A number of U.S. officials, such as General Charles Wilhelm, head of the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, have asserted that Colombia now constitutes the principal problem for Western hemispheric security—even replacing Cuba, which has occupied that privileged position since 1962. This, along with concern over the dimensions of Colombia’s humanitarian crisis, make U.S. intervention seem like a real possibility. Despite the profound differences then, Colombia, like Vietnam and Kosovo before it, could come to represent the transformation of a national conflict into one with a much broader geopolitical significance.
In terms of regional insecurity, perhaps the most oft-cited example is the frequent border crossings by Colombian guerrillas, arms smugglers and drug traffickers into the neighborhing states of Panama, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru and Ecuador. As for the humanitarian situation, Colombia has one of the worst human rights records in the world, with over 3,000 politically motivated murders last year, as well as one of the world’s highest crime rates, at 75 homicides per every 100,000 inhabitants. It has also experienced a dramatic process of population displacement, with more than one million people displaced over the past ten years. The changing international discourse regarding national sovereignty and the right of the “international community” to intervene for humanitarian reasons is also a factor in the growing fear of foreign intervention in Colombia.
In addition, Colombia occupies a key geopolitical location in Latin America, with its large Caribbean and Pacific coastline and its proximity to both the Panama Canal and the Venezuelan petroleum industry. It must be remembered that the U.S. concept of “our backyard” is no longer limited to Central America and the Caribbean, but—largely through the drug war—has been extended to the Andes.
Washington’s on-the-ground policies toward Colombia are undergoing a significant transformation. Until now, Washington has maintained that the sole purpose of its military aid is to stop the flow of drugs from Colombia to the United States, not fight the country’s internal war. But now, though the dominant U.S. policy is to support President Pastrana’s peace initiative, there are growing calls for increased U.S. support to Colombia’s beleaguered military forces in the war against the FARC and the ELN. Vying understandings of the Colombian situation in U.S. government circles have resulted in an increasing bifurcation of concrete policies toward that country, a process that can be referred to as a “two-track policy” toward Colombia. Colombia’s failure to resolve its internal conflict has made it increasingly vulnerable to a possible international intervention, which makes the success of the peace process more imperative than ever.
Over the past two years, the U.S. military establishment has organized three high-level meetings to discuss Colombia’s armed conflict. The first was sponsored by the State Department and held on May 18 and 19, 1998 at Fort McNair, Washington, at the National Defense University. The second meeting, held last December at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was organized by the U.S. Army. The third meeting took place in Washington this past May at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
There was a notable shift in the perception of the conflict in Colombia from the first to the second of these conferences. At the first Washington meeting, Colombia was depicted as a “problem country” for the international community. But at the Carlisle meeting, Colombia was being portrayed as a serious destabilizing factor in regional security.[2] The most recent meeting, rather than trying to qualify the impact of the Colombian conflict on global or regional security, sought to forecast probable scenarios for Colombia in the next few years and formulate U.S. responses to them. One scenario was the peace plan. But in general, the meeting was dominated by catastrophic visions of the possible scenarios in Colombia—including “total war,” “protraction of the conflict” and “Balkanization.”
These cataclysmic scenarios reflect the seriousness of the situation in Colombia. Indeed, in many U.S. government circles it is now common to speak openly of the eventuality of a total collapse of the Colombian state. Specialized U.S. journals, especially those related to the military establishment, have attempted to define the common characteristics of countries that have experienced a “total collapse of the state.” In one such study, the four cases examined—Somalia, Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Libya—exhibited nine central characteristics: strong demographic pressures, a mass movement of refugees, economic growth along ethnic divisions, a long tradition of revenge and reprisals, an illegitimate state, a severe economic crisis, the deterioration or elimination of public services, the inability to implement legal norms, and, lastly, a security apparatus operating as a “state within the state.”[3]
Despite the presence of many of these factors in present-day Colombia—such as the brutal displacement of rural populations to the cities, the existence of death squads and a growing economic crisis—there is one significant difference. In each of the cases examined, there were strong collective identities of an ethnic character, be they linguistic, religious or ideological. This is not a factor in Colombia, making a full-scale civil war unlikely. The real risk is that the persistence and deepening of the grave social crisis could, in the medium term, undermine the institutional stability of the country, both politically and economically.[4]
What is worrisome is not that these types of catastrophic visions reflect the reality of Colombia, but rather that they feed perceptions about the country in influential political and military circles in the United States. While decision making on Colombia has shifted from the Drug Czar to the State Department, right-wing Republicans in Congress and “hawks” in the Pentagon and the Defense Department are pushing to widen their influence. Though the State Department’s position of U.S. support for a negotiated end to Colombia’s internal conflict is currently the predominant view within the U.S. government, voices in favor of a military solution are growing day by day.
State Department officials have actively supported the Pastrana Administration’s peace intiatives, as witnessed by the meeting in Costa Rica in early 1999 between Director of Andean Affairs, Philip Chicola, and the head of international affairs for the FARC, Raúl Reyes. The Defense Department, meanwhile, is pursuing the second-track policy of trying to beef up the Colombian military and police in order to facilitate their defeat of the guerrilla movements. By early 1999, Colombia had become the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the world after Israel and Egypt, bordering on $300 million, though informed observers say that the actual amount could reach $400 million via the use of various special funds. And last December, U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen and Colombian Minister of Defense Rodrigo Lloreda signed a cooperation agreement pledging U.S. support for the creation of an army Antinarcotics Battalion, which would train 1,000 men and equip them with helicopter gunships and night-vision for nocturnal combat.
As State Department officials have strenuously asserted that the war against drugs would remain the central theme of relations between Washington and Bogotá, over the past year, Defense Department officials have slowly gone about opening the doors to direct participation in the counterinsurgency war. By defining Colombia’s conflict as an “ambiguous war” due to the pragmatic links between guerrillas and drug traffickers, U.S. officials are creating the analytical basis for tying the antidrug war to the counterinsurgency war.[5]
This conceptual shift in U.S. policy toward Colombia—manifested by the creation of the Antinarcotics Battalion—brings the United States to the verge of direct support of the army in its counterinsurgency war, as suggested by Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey. “This is an emergency,” he said in mid-July during a visit to Colombia. “Colombia is facing an enormous crisis. The FARC, the ELN and the paramilitaries are attacking democracy, in large part financed by money coming from drug-trafficking, and it is our responsibility to give the army and the police the resources they need.” McCaffrey himself recently sent a letter to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright requesting an additional $1 billion in aid for the Andean countries in their antidrug efforts, of which half would be directed to the Colombian army.
The objective of the Antinarcotics Battalion is, at least on paper, to aid the National Police in the eradication of coca crops in the southern province of Putumayo, which borders Ecuador and Peru. This region is strategically important not only for the paramilitary groups known collectively as the Self-Defense Units of Colombia (AUC) but also for the FARC guerrillas, both of which depend on the vast coca trade in this area for their economic sustenance. Putumayo has, in effect, been split in two, with the AUC and FARC operating as the only real authorities in the region. Until recently, the border region with Peru and Ecuador was not controlled by any of the three nations, making it a favored area for both drug and arms trafficking.
The geostrategic importance of southern Colombia for the AUC and the FARC explains the pressure that U.S. Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs Peter Romero has put on the governments of Ecuador and Peru to transfer their troops from their mutual border (after their now-resolved border war) toward their respective frontiers with Colombia. Over the course of this year, both nations have been creating a series of “theaters of military operation” in that extensive region that are similar to those the Venezuelan Army has had in place for several years now.
The troop movements in Ecuador and Peru are primarily a response to internal concerns. Both governments are clearly seeking to reinvent new strategic roles for their militaries in order to keep them out of politics; the conflict-ridden Colombian border keeps oversized and overzealous militaries occupied and far from the centers of power. But regional security concerns are also important. The cross-border trade in arms, drugs and precursor chemicals used in cocaine production has increased significantly in the last few years. Attacks by Colombian guerrillas against military units from both Ecuador and Peru have also increased, as has border trespassing by paramilitaries and guerrillas alike. The FARC’s execution of three U.S. indigenous rights activists in Venezuelan territory this past March deepened regional security concerns.
Militarization is also occurring along Colombia’s borders with Panama and Brazil. In the case of Panama, the issue at hand is the scheduled withdrawal of U.S. troops from their remaining bases in that country at the end of this year. Recently, General Wilhelm explosively and publicly remarked that Panama is not capable of guaranteeing the security of the canal given the presence of the FARC guerrillas on the border—declarations that were interpreted as indicative of Washington’s desire to keep U.S. troops stationed in the isthmus. In response, the Panamanian government sent more than 1,500 members of the National Police to the border to demonstrate Panama’s capacity to efficiently guarantee the security of the zone. The White House is also concerned over the recent closing of Howard Air Base in Panama, a key component in Washington’s antidrug war in the region. Replacement bases in Aruba, Cura?ao and Ecuador permit only half the 15,000 antinarcotic sorties for eradication and interdiction once capable from Howard. Brazil, meanwhile, in response more to drug trafficking than the presence of guerrillas, has militarized its border with Colombia, beefing up the Tabatinga military base on the Amazon River and installing radar along the entire length of the border.
The reported border presence of paramilitary groups originating from Colombia is another source of alarm. First reports of such activity came from Venezuela in October 1996, when reports circulated of Colombians who were presumably training paramilitary groups in the municipality of Libertador in the state of Mérida. Such reports seemed confirmed when Carlos Castaño, the head of the AUC, claimed in 1997 that merchants and ranchers asked him to help organize self-defense patrols in the region for protection against border-crossing guerrillas. A more recent case was the murder of left-wing Senator Jaime Hurtado from Ecuador, who was killed by Colombian assassins, presumably with the support of the AUC.
Are we on the brink of an escalation of U.S. military assistance to Colombia? Were the peace negotiations with the FARC to be broken off and the internal conflict to intensify, could this lead to direct intervention?
It is almost certain that in the coming months we will witness a continued increase in military aid from Washington. Acting Assistant Secretary of State Romero has already announced that the United States will expand its training of 1,000 soldiers from the Antinarcotics Battalion to several thousand more. Likewise, SouthCom’s General Wilhelm has unveiled plans to support the Colombian army’s counterinsurgency war via an exchange of intelligence data.
In the short term, U.S. policy will likely continue to support President Pastrana’s peace policies, despite growing skepticism in many Washington power circles over the prospects of finding a resolution to this decades-old conflict. It is also likely that there will be a significant increase in aid not only for the antidrug effort but also for the counterinsurgency campaign. Finally, Washington will most probably continue to place pressure on the neighboring countries to strengthen the “containment belt” around Colombia.
Will the White House, via an inter-American armed force, push this escalation toward a direct intervention in Colombia? Many U.S. military-establishment documents consider this to be a likely scenario in the case of an imminent “total collapse of the state.”
Colombia finds itself at a grave crossroads. It must either move quickly toward a negotiated solution to the armed conflict—the more desirable and least costly option—or it will almost certainly experience a dramatic escalation of the internal conflict, combined with an ever-increasing participation by external actors.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eduardo Pizarro Leongómez is a political scientist and director of the Institute of Political and International Relations Studies at the National University in Colombia. He is also a columnist for the newspaper El Espectador and director of the magazine Análisis Político. Translated from the Spanish by NACLA.
NOTES
1. James Zackrison and Eileen Bradley, “Colombian Sovereignty Under Siege”, Strategic Forum, National Defense University, No. 12 (May 1997).
2. Gabriel Marcella and Donald Schulz, Colombia’s Three Wars: U.S. Strategy at the Crossroads, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, 1999.
3. Pauline Baker and John Ausink, “State Collapse and Ethnic Violence: Toward a Predictive Model,” Parameters: U.S. Army War College Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 1 (1996), pp.19-31.
4. See Daniel Pécaut, “Colombie, un désastre annoncé,” Le Monde (May 22, 1999); and Jorge Castañeda, “The Colombian Stalemate,” Newsweek (April 19, 1999).
5. See Richard Downes, “Poder militar y guerra ambigua: El reto de Colombia en el siglo XXI,” Análisis Político, No. 36 (January-April 1999).
