Can Colombia win its own War on Terror?
Posted: Wednesday, January 07, 2009
by John C Haywood
We have a long history of interaction, both good and bad, with Colombia . At the turn of the twentieth century, the United States was looking at building, what would later be called, the Panama Canal . This narrow strip of land belonged to Colombia at the time and they did not support it. Panama seceded from Colombia in 1903, with the help and assistance of the United States . Not long thereafter, the United States signed a treaty with the new nation of Panama to build and run the canal. This caused bad feelings that are still felt today.
Colombia has two political parties, Conservatives and Liberals. La Violencia escalated when the leader of the liberal party, Jorge Gaitan was assassinated, ostensibly by conservatives. This led to a massive amount of rioting in the streets of Bogot which spread to the surrounding countryside. The conservative party (currently in power) used government troops to attempt to quell the violence, forcing most to flee their homes to the countryside. Many of these adopted communist philosophy and became the beginnings of the current insurrection.
During the mid 1950s, a significant change to the country's political structure came about. An agreement was made between both parties for power sharing in an attempt to quell violence. The control of the presidency would alternate every four years between the parties and the Colombian National Police (CNP), which had been principally responsible for dealing with the public disorder, was brought under the Ministry of Defense. This gave authority to the military, which had managed to stay out of most of the trouble, to become involved in the pacification. This power sharing agreement caused even more problems as those smaller parties (communist, reformist, etc) felt they had no voice in government leading to a resurgence of violence (Sacquety, 2006).
The US began true assistance to Colombia in the late 1940s when they helped establish the Organization of American States (OAS). With the outbreak of the Korean War, Colombia was the only other nation in the hemisphere to provide troops to the UN after North Koreas invaded the South. Colombia began to request aid from the United States in the form of training. Obviously, few of the root causes of the insurgency, which had grown during the early years of La Violencia, had been addressed by the central government. There have been numerous insurgent movements that sprang from this time period, to include the 19 th of April Movement, or M-19 (now a political party). Those principal ones that remain are the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC, largest group), the Ejercito de Liberacin Nacional (ELN, second largest group) and the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), or paramilitaries which sprang from the central governments inability to control areas outside urban centers (i.e. - most of Colombia ).
I will briefly discuss a few of the plans that I see as defining plans that the US has been involved in, to some degree or another, over the years. There are many others not mentioned. The point is that the US has been extensively involved, to varying degrees, in Colombia 's insurgency. This has caused much tension, both in the political arena as well as giving the principal insurgent groups ammunition to prove there case that Colombia is hampered by the imperialist intentions of their northern neighbor. Colombia is a sovereign nation and, as such, it is a difficult pill for the population to swallow to know that their government cannot secure its own citizens and needs the help of the US .
The first of many plans that involved major US assistance was Plan Lazo which began in 1962 with a visit to Colombia on behalf of the US by Brigadier General Yarborough from the John F Kennedy Special Warfare Center . This plan was focused on creating a civil defense force to assist the central government in controlling the at-risk rural areas. They were to be augmented and assisted by US Special Forces Trainers (Finlayson, 2006). The government focused too much on security and not enough on resolving the root causes of insurgency leading to an abandonment of the program a few years later.
Colombia received varying degrees of support from the late 1960s to the late 1980s. President Reagan was overly focused on the insurgencies in Central America, especially Nicaragua and El Salvador . President Bush (senior) was focused on Panama and the Persian Gulf . It wasn't until President Clinton was elected, that the US began to pay more attention to Colombia , albeit in the form of Counter Narcotics support. President Clintons administration refused to recognize the connection between the insurgent groups and drug trafficking. Though he increased foreign military and training aid significantly, he created many barriers that might have allowed assistance to truly be effective. From this administration came the Narcotics Certification process which remains in effect today.
One of the first large operations that the US provided for Colombia was Operation Support Justice, which was initiated in the early 1990s. Its purpose, initially, was to provide communication, radar, and intelligence support to Colombian military and law enforcement authorities which included intelligence sharing between US and Colombian military and police and cooperative efforts to arrest traffickers and interdict drug shipments (Global Security, 2007). How effective it has proven to be is debatable. This operation evolved into more sophisticated operations branching out through the Andean ridge.
One such operation was Operation Green Clover, a counter narcotics campaign plan focused at disrupting the air bridge that existed between Peru , Colombia and the Caribbean basin from 1994 to 1996. This involved, principally, political pressure focused at nations intercept (shoot down) policies, but also involved the use of Ground Based Radar (GBR) sites to pinpoint narco trafficking aircraft and assist in maneuvering intercept aircraft. It did have a small training component, mostly related to the GBR sites. Though this operation did cause a reduction in narcotics trafficking via air, what it really showed was that the narcotics transshipment was evolving in order to avoid the intercepts. In other words, narco traffickers began using rivers and roads to transport illicit drugs (Global Security, 2007). This operation then evolved into Operation Laser Strike, basically an extension of Green Clover. It became an Andean Ridge plan focused at coordinating air interdiction with riverine and ground interdiction spanning several countries between 1996 and 1998. The results were good. The Colombian National Police and Military stepped up riverine and ground interdiction, assisted by the Drug Enforcement Administration, Customs, Coast Guard and Department of Defense (Global Security, 2007).
During the Clinton Administration a new plan was developed called Plan Colombia. Plan Colombia is a very complex, multi year plan still in effect. It is also beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that while Colombia continued to receive military support, from equipment to trainers, the US insisted on benchmarks to determine the efficacy of their plans. The measure of effectiveness became tons of cocaine seized and hectares of coca eradicated. US training assistance, normally US Special Forces trainers, could only train certain units. Due to these restrictions, the Colombian military organized and formed the 1 st Special Forces Brigade against Narco Trafficking. This unit became known as the Counter Drug or CD Brigade. They and the CNPs Anti Narcotics Police (Junglas) received the most US funding and assistance until 2001. The intent behind Plan Colombia was certainly noble. It was intended to reduce the production of illicit drugs while at the same time revitalizing the Colombian economy and reinforce existing government institutions (Embassy of Colombia, 2003). It is often viewed as a military operation but is far more encompassing than this. The biggest perceived problem with Plan Colombia is eradication. Farmers are pressured to plant alternative crops instead of illicit drugs. This is coupled with the CNP and its aerial and ground eradication effort. It is easy to say "plant bananas or coffee instead of coca" and yet another thing entirely to provide the security mechanism necessary to support this theory. Most of the farmers that grow coca are in at risk areas where the FARC is strong and there is little government presence. Also, there are limited spray assets and significant spray area. Coca takes about six months to cultivate and the spray patterns follow strategic patterns. Usually the hard core growers can simply move, when spray planes arrive, to an area where they are not and be assured of being able to cultivate their crop before planes arrive at the new location. This is not to say that eradication does not work, just that it is inefficient. The FARC has likely programmed these losses into their production plan.
The Bush Administration saw the war in Colombia a little differently. Though they continued to invest heavily in Plan Colombia, they became more heavily involved in Afghanistan , and later Iraq . Due to President Bush's views on terrorism, the US focus switched from only counter narcotics to a blend of counter narcotics and counter terrorism. In the summer of 2003, the Colombian government announced a new campaign plan that focused all the militaries might in a counter insurgency campaign plan called Plan Patriota. This was to be an aggressive plan focused on neutralizing FARC leadership while at the same time denying them the use of their traditional bases in Southern Colombia . They instituted a robust civil military campaign to re-capture the "hearts and minds" of the at risk population while simultaneously providing security in these same areas. Accordingly, the US founded and deployed advisors on a full time basis to assist the Colombian military units associated with this campaign plan in operations and intelligence and the integration of warfighting systems. This program is known as the Planning Assistance Training Team. This plan is still ongoing and they have had good results. Colombian Security Forces have captured a few high profile terrorists that have been extradited to the US . They have also taken back a fair amount of territory and caused, through an aggressive Psychological (PSYOPS) Warfare campaign, a significant number of desertions among the FARC.
The Colombian Ministry of Defense is organized somewhat differently than the US military with two major differences. First, the Colombian National Police is assigned to the Ministry of Defense. Second, the Colombian constitution places public order within the domain of the Colombian Military. The Country is further divided into seven Army Division's areas of responsibilities with each Army Division commander ultimately responsible for the public's safety within his departments.
The Colombian military's main strength in fighting this war, is understanding their adversary. They also have a good grasp of counterinsurgency techniques, albeit at the strategic level. The Colombian soldier is also very resilient and puts the American soldier to shame as far as "doing without". However, they are a veryhierarchical society and extremely centralized. Few decisions are made at the tactical, and often operational, level. This is likely due to Colombian law giving the Army charge of overall security. Further, they have an institutional arrogance as to their counterinsurgency ability. The fact that they have been at war for over four decades is often used as an argument for not accepting US advice. This is unfortunate, as four decades of internal warfare should not be a measure of effectiveness, but ineffectiveness. Finally, they lack a mature intelligence gathering apparatus. They realize that, due to lack of funds, they will likely never have sufficient technical intelligence assets. This should be an argument to enhance their human intelligence (HUMINT) network. Again, their extreme centralization causes them significant problems with managing sources.
For these reasons, the Colombian military, principally, uses Movement to Contact as their principle military tactic. This is a battalion size operation where the battalion patrols an area of suspected or likely enemy presence in the hopes that they will come across them and is typically used in the absence of intelligence. They effectively use population control measures, such as a national ID card, checkpoints, curfews and movement restrictions. At the small unit level (smaller than battalion), they conduct raids, patrols and, when they have actionable intelligence, ambushes. However, they are fairly ineffective due to a lack of institutional training and centralized leadership. They also, rarely, maneuver in less than battalion size due to an ingrained fear of lacking proper support mechanisms, most especially fire support. This is not without reason, as they are a nation without many resources. They lack significant mobility and fear losing air assets as they are almost impossible to replace. To compound the problem, almost fifty percent of the nation is in or near the Amazon River basin and another twenty five percent in rugged mountainous terrain. One of their main strengths is a seemingly inherent ability to find guerrilla base camps. Unfortunately, the FARC and ELN are equally adept at manipulating the Colombian military and police weaknesses to their advantages. This ranges from penetrating Colombian Military and Police bases to coercing the civilian population. They also move constantly and have learned to do this as a matter of course.
The FARC and, to a lesser degree, and ELN, for their part, also have strengths and weaknesses. The Colombian political process is a pendulum and the insurgents know it. They usually elect a conservative president followed by a liberal one, due to the years of La Violencia, when this was policy. If one party is unsuccessful, the other party manipulates this to win the election and then proceeds to do no better. Often, liberal policies only make matters worse. Take President Pastrana and his decision to cede a large swath of terrain to the FARC in the late 1990s until 2002. This was done under the premise of forcing the FARC to the negotiation table, but only emboldened them. During this time, the FARC had become so powerful that they could carry out massed attacks on Colombian Military and Police in battalion strength or greater. Since President Uribe took office, he inspired their congress to amend the constitution to allow for two term presidencies and has since been re-elected. The FARC have gone to ground and limited themselves to sniper attacks, improvised explosive devices and terrorism in order to maintain their power.
American involvement has been limited, by law, to support not involving combat operations. This is manifested by the normal security assistance and exchange programs. This has been augmented by intelligence and communications sharing, logistics and equipment support and advisory assistance. The leap has not been made to conduct US combat operations, though it is discussed often. The Colombian population and their congress are completely against this option, not to mention our own government. It is likely the status quo will continue, at least until the US significantly reduces its signature in both Iraq and Afghanistan .
Can the war be won? Maybe. Certainly, the possibility exists that the current Colombian counterinsurgency initiatives will be enough to, at least, drive the FARC to the bargaining table. This was the purpose behind changing the constitution to allow two term presidencies. President Uribe has a lot riding on it. If he succeeds, he will go down in history for ending their decade's long conflict when no other was able. If he is not, then the Colombian public is likely to become even more apathetic and surely will elect the next president from the liberal party. This will continue the cycle of ineffectiveness and assure that Colombia never succeeds. There are some that argue that if we were not so involved in the Middle East , we could "send a few brigades in and clean up the mess." This is incredibly simplistic, in light of our own failure to secure Iraq and Afghanistan with virtually our entire military. Compound this with the fact that Colombia is a larger nation with a terrain far more demanding than Iraq and Afghanistan , it seems almost ridiculous to entertain this argument. The bottom line is that Colombians have to stand up for themselves while the Colombian government needs to reduce its own level of corruption and protect its population. Any good counterinsurgency plan involves ALL of the mechanisms of government attempting to resolve the root causes of the insurgency while at the same time conducting military operations against the insurgents. There are good signs, such as the rescue of three American Defense contractors held in captivity by the FARC in July 2008 and the death of two high ranking FARC leaders during the same year, but only time well tell.
References
Sacquety, T.J. (2006). Colombia 's troubled past. Veritas Magazine, PB 31-05-2, Vol. 2, No. 4
Finlayson, F. (2006). Colombia : A special relationship. Veritas Magazine, PB 31-05-2,Vol. 2, No. 4
Global Security. (2007). Operation Support Justice. Retrieved on 1 June 2007 from http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/support_justice.htm
Global Security. (2007). Operation Green Clover. Retrieved on 5 June 2007 from
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/green_clover.htm
Global Security. (2007). Operation Laser Strike. Retrieved on 7 June 2007 from
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/laser_strike.htm
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