COLOMBIAN ARMY ADAPTATION

TO FARC INSURGENCY

Thomas Marks

January 2002
*****

The views expressed in this report are those of the author and do not

necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the

Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. This report

is cleared for public release; distribution is unlimited.

*****

Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should be

forwarded to: Director, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War

College, 122 Forbes Ave., Carlisle, PA 17013-5244. Copies of this report

may be obtained from the Publications Office by calling commercial

(717) 245-4133, FAX (717) 245-3820, or via the Internet at

Rita.Rummel@carlisle.army.mil

*****

Most 1993, 1994, and all later Strategic Studies Institute (SSI)

monographs are available on the SSI Homepage for electronic

dissemination. SSI’s Homepage address is: http://carlisle-www.army.

mil/usassi/welcome.htm

*****

The Strategic Studies Institute publishes a monthly e-mail

newsletter to update the national security community on the research of

our analysts, recent and forthcoming publications, and upcoming

conferences sponsored by the Institute. Each newsletter also provides a

strategic commentary by one of our research analysts. If you are

interested in receiving this newsletter, please let us know by e-mail at

outreach@carlisle.army.mil or by calling (717) 245-3133.

ISBN 1-58487-078-8

ii
FOREWORD

This monograph supplements a special series stemming from

the conference entitled “Implementing Plan Colombia: Strategic

and Operational Imperatives.” The conference was cosponsored

by the Dante B. Fascell North-South Center of the University of

Miami and the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War

College.

This report comes at a time when the United States is

seriously considering broadening its policy toward Colombia and

addressing that country’s ambiguous war in a global and regional

context. The author, Dr. Thomas Marks, points out that

Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) insurgents

actively are pursuing a strategy to mobilize the disaffected and

disposed people of Colombia, and to control the entire national

territory. At the same time, he argues that no one in the national

political establishment has taken the initiative to conduct an

appropriate effort to deny FARC its objective. As a result, the

Colombian Army has been left alone to direct the fight, without a

coordinated and integrated national campaign plan or other

resources that would allow for success. Dr. Marks concludes that

the Army has bought time, and there is still an opportunity for the

United States to help Colombia deal with its insurgent threat in

new ways. This monograph provides a point of departure from

which policymakers in the United States and Colombia can

review where we are and where we need to go.

The Strategic Studies Institute and the North-South Center

are pleased to offer this report as part of the continuing

clarification of the uncertainty and confusion that permeate the

national security debate involving the implementation of Plan

Colombia.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute

iii
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR

THOMAS A. MARKS teaches social sciences at the

Academy of the Pacific in Honolulu. He is a former army

officer who has become recognized as the world’s foremost

authority on Maoist insurgency and revolution. He has also

become a unique combination of soldier, freelance journalist

and photographer, teacher, and security consultant. Dr.

Marks’ scholarly and journalistic work has been published

in periodicals as diverse as Small Wars & Insurgencies, the

Asian Wall Street Journal, and Soldier of Fortune. His

books include Moaist Insurgency Since Vietnam and

Making Revolution: The Insurgency of the Communist Party

of Thailand in Structural Perspective.

iv
SUMMARY

This monograph addresses the Colombian Army’s

adaptation to the insurgency in that country. It outlines the

FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) threat to

the control of the national territory and how the insurgents

intend to achieve that objective. Then, the author analyzes

the measures the Colombian Army has taken to counter the

threat. He concludes that no one in the Colombian political

establishment is directing the counterinsurgency war, and

that the Army has been left to conduct the fight by itself.

Recommendations range from the strategic to the

operational levels. They argue the need for (1) a coordinated

and integrated national campaign plan; (2) cogent and

enforceable emergency laws and regulations; (3) enhanced

information warfare; and, (4) an enhanced operational

flexibility.

v
COLOMBIAN ARMY ADAPTATION

TO FARC INSURGENCY

INTRODUCTION

Insurgency is a political campaign to mobilize the

disaffected and the dispossessed into an alternative society.

Until it can actually liberate areas openly, this takes the

form of covert infrastructure. Always, unless the insurgents

are incompetent—which does happen with startling

regularity—their ultimate goal in deploying power is to

create and safeguard the alternative to the society that they

are creating.1

Governments, faced with violence directed at the

system, initially go after that which they can see, insurgents

with weapons, leaving the infrastructure virtually alone to

grow and become ever more deadly. The forces of the state

thus normally seek to “close with and destroy the enemy,”

while the insurgents continue the process of successively

dominating areas.

What makes it so difficult for systems to see their way

clear to an accurate appreciation of the situation is that the

people in positions of authority are those who often have

benefited from the status quo. They are comfortable with

the way matters are, understand them, can’t figure out why

anyone would expect them to be otherwise. And even if they

allow for the possibility of disaffection, they are expecting

Robin Hood and his Merry Men to break from the forest and

storm the castle. They are certainly not expecting a war in

the shadows.

The bottom line is that society sends its security forces

out to do what they get paid to do, arrest folks; if necessary,

to crack some skulls. The rhythms of life go on—until the

brutal reality of war intrudes. In those societies which have

successfully dealt with this intrusion, response has involved

considerable adaptation in existing institutions. This has

especially been the case as concerns the armed forces, with

1
the army, as the major ground domination arm, facing

perhaps the greatest task.

Roots of the Insurgency.

The Colombian army (COLAR) has taken the lead in the

national response to the decades-old insurgency of the

Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC.

Just as Manila had its Huk Rebellion followed by its

insurgency of the Communist Party of the Philippines

(CCP), the second conflict rising from the ashes of the first,

so Bogota has seen the survivors of an earlier 1959-65

conflict resurface as communist insurgents—who have

become the most immediate political problem facing the

country.

The present insurgent situation, in other words, has

been a long time coming. What makes it such a difficult and

now intractable problem is that it has become a creature of

more fundamental structural contradictions long present in

the Colombian polity, in particular a lack of state

integration and cohesion. The historic symptom of this has

been a profound legacy of violence. Twice as many people

are murdered each year in this country of less than 40

million as in the entire United States with its roughly 280

million population!2

Precisely why Colombia has this profile is a subject of

much debate. The answer seems to be an early history that

boils down to a squabbling group of settlers in a vast land

with politics a zero-sum game. The practical effect was that

formal democracy, established in the mid-19th century,

remained a truly winner-take-all proposition. Thus those in

office had every incentive to do all they could, fair or foul, to

hang onto power—and to plot to get back into power once

they were out. This led to multiple civil wars over the years,

including the Thousand Day War, 1899-1902, in which over

100,000 were killed.3

2
The culmination, in a sense, was the national

bloodletting called simply “The Violence,” or La Violencia

(dated as roughly 1948-58). An estimated 200,000 died, and

hardly a region was not turned upside down.4 As a simple

matter of protection, local populations banded together in

self-defense. FARC, now the major Colombian insurgent

movement, had its origins in one such area, a cluster of

“independent republics” in the central Magdalena River

valley.5 The republics were led by communists and taken

over again by the government in 1964-65 after order had

been restored through a power-sharing arrangement, the

National Front (Frente Nacional, 1958-74), between the two

major political parties, Conservatives and Liberals.6 The

rebel remnants moved into the southeastern savannah and

jungle, where they engaged in “armed colonization.”

There, they festered as a marginal nuisance for nearly 2

decades.7 Other groups came and went, with only Ejercito de

Liberacion Nacional (ELN), based principally in the

northeast, joining FARC in showing staying power.8 To cut

through to the end of the process, the growing involvement

of the insurgents, especially FARC, in narcotics9 provided a

resource windfall which made hitherto marginal political

actors into major players.10 FARC, in other words, did not

become a serious factor due to mobilization of an alienated

mass base. Rather it became a serious factor due to the

power which came from drugs grown by a marginalized

population. In terms of national percentage, these

marginalized actors would not be major players. They

became so only because of their role as the base upon which

drug cultivation—and thus insurgent finances—was built.

This dynamic is crucial. U.S. policy under the previous

administration focused primarily on “drugs” but went to

extraordinary lengths to avoid “counterinsurgency.”11

Certainly this stemmed as well from the multiple

constraints imposed by Congress, particularly in 1986

legislation, but policy obfuscation eventually took on a life of

its own. It even extended to the apparent slanting of

intelligence so as to reflect a criminal direction of the drug

3
cycle (a posture which served the needs of actors such as the

Embassy and the Drug Enforcement Agency [DEA]) even as

the insurgent groups increasingly moved to a central role in

that cycle (as was correctly, if imperfectly, reflected in

Colombian reporting itself). It extended, during certain

periods of the Clinton administration, to placing a nebulous

conception for “human rights” before all else, even as

Colombian military units grappled with a communist

insurgent threat which in many ways began to amass

superior operational resources to those deployed by the

security forces.

A communist insurgency in 2001? Though active

Maoist-oriented insurgent groups remain in the likes of

Colombia, the Philippines, Nepal, and even Turkey, few

take them seriously. This is to confuse strategic Cold War

victory with local operational circumstances, where such

rebel movements remain a threat. Such has been the case in

Colombia. There, the lack of concern by the ruling elite

played a key role. For decades following La Violencia, the

insurgents remained largely “out there,” out of sight, out of

mind, patiently building an alternative society. No one

much cared.

For there were and are two Colombias. One, roughly 33

percent of the country (see Figure 1), is west of the

Cordillera Oriental. Much of this area is high country. It is

there that the country’s productive forces are concentrated.

The other, east of the mountains, the llanos, is savannah,

vast plains, and amazon, the jungle. More than 95 percent of

the populace lives in the first area. The other 5

percent-minus and key insurgent formations are in the

second zone. As long as the guerrillas were revolutionary

homesteaders in areas no one else wanted,12 the

government bothered with them only when their actions

forced a response. It was the job of the police and the

military, went the logic, to keep an eye on them.

Yet FARC had big plans. In a key meeting, its seventh

party conference held at Cubarral, Meta, May 4-14, 1982, it

4
5

Figure 1. Map of Colombia.
was decided that the priority task was to create a

revolutionary army capable of taking on the security forces.

To fund this endeavor and to gain manpower, FARC opted to

exploit narcotics. By taxing all facets of the drug trade, it

would obtain money. By protecting and controlling

production areas, it would not only secure its income but

recruit from the marginalized.13

“The goal was the creation of a 28,000-man army divided

into 48 guerrilla fronts,” notes Dave Spencer, a veteran of

both the El Salvadoran and Colombian conflicts, now one of

the top U.S. specialists on the insurgency. “The purpose of

this army was to take advantage of what FARC saw as the

existing political contradictions and the inevitable political

collision that had to take place within the system.”14

In other words, FARC believed that Colombia’s

democracy was flawed, that the concentration of the

population in the arable portions of the west, in an economy

dominated by agricultural production and primary

extraction industries, had created distortions. Further, it

tended to be a very dangerous place for those who advanced

left-wing solutions to society’s problems. An earlier effort at

forming an open party that could mobilize masses for

eventual incorporation into the struggle—a step outlined in

the Strategic Plan—had left an estimated 600-1,200

militants of the FARC front organization, Union Patriotica

(Patriotic Union or UP), victims of assassinations (there is

no agreement on the numbers; some sources place the figure

as high as 2,000). Precise blame was rarely fixed. Having

suffered through previous bloodshed in which leftists had

played a prominent role, Colombian society abounded in

those more than willing to go after those who still dreamed

of Marxist liberation. Still, the perception grew that

advancing left-wing positions in open forum was extremely

dangerous. And that which could not stay within the

system, worked from outside it to bring it down.15

Nevertheless, FARC prior to 1982 had faced a

conundrum. The system seemed patently, transparently

6
unjust. Hence, the situation demanded a movement to

liberate the masses. Yet FARC, the mass-based movement

determined to reshape society, found it could not attract the

masses! No matter the inequities of economic, social, and

political power, the population largely opted for

participation within the established system of “elite

democracy.” No amount of ideological work changed the

situation. The 1982 decision was the way out.

Though FARC considered the negative aspects of its

approach, especially its links with the drug trade—then,

mainly coca, now also heroin and marijuana—it was

hooked. The payoff was simply too great. The money and the

manpower allowed FARC to mushroom. Concludes

Spencer:

In 1982 FARC was just a small organization of 15 fronts with

maybe 2,000 guerrilla fighters. By 1990 it had expanded its

forces to 43 fronts with about 5,000 fighters. Now it has

between 15-20,000 combatants in 60 fronts and mobile

companies (these formations range from 60 to 400

individuals). This has allowed them to move to mobile or

maneuver warfare, the use of large units capable of directly

confronting military units of equal size, of overrunning

military installations and smaller units.16

Considerable irony is involved here. For decades the

dynamic outlined earlier went on. The marginalized

allowed the insurgent movement, FARC, to exist. The

government, faced with any number of insurgent

movements, none of which were particularly powerful but

which together constituted a significant problem, told its

security forces to deal with the rebels. Though the

government would at times move towards some sort of

resolution—generally when enlightened or ambitious

personalities appeared—grievances embodied in

marginalization were never structurally addressed.

Development was controlled by an elite, as was politics, and

bringing the margins into the mainstream simply was

beyond the mindset, and perhaps the capacity, of the

system.17

7
This would have remained more a moral issue than one

of practical politics were it not for the shot in the arm

provided to FARC by drugs.18 Led throughout by a single

individual, Manuel Marulanda Velez, alias Tiro Fijo or “Sure

Shot,”19 FARC put its money into its military bite and caught

the government in 1996-98 still in counterguerrilla mode. In

a series of actions throughout those years, FARC

demonstrated that it had entered the mobile warfare stage.

Though coordination was effected in 1995 with ELN, the

new war was principally a FARC show.

Modern communications equipment allowed a high

degree of both tactical and operational coordination.

Simultaneously, Colombia itself was weakened by the

United States, which decertified the country in both 1996

and 1997, thus denying it aid and advice even as the

insurgents moved to exploit weaknesses in security force

organization, doctrine, and deployment. A harbinger of

what was to come was the overrunning, on August 30, 1996,

at Las Delicias in Putumayo, of a draftee company base of

120 men, killing or wounding half and capturing the

remainder. Other actions followed, often coordinated with

demonstrations by coca growers in municipal areas.20

Concurrently, a stepped-up campaign sought to clear

entire areas of government presence. Mayors and policemen

were particular targets, for once they were killed or driven

away, a region became ripe for control. Special attention

was paid to areas which would serve to isolate the national

capital, Bogota. Urban militias were formed to multiply the

combat power of FARC fronts themselves. Just how far

FARC had progressed was brought home in late February

1998 when the understrength 52nd Counterguerrilla

Battalion (52 BCG) of the newly formed 3rd Mobile Brigade

(3 BRIM), deploying only 154 men in three of its companies,

was lured into a prepared ambush and decimated at El

Billar, Caqueta.21

As the Colombian presidential election campaign went

on in August 1998, FARC launched a nationwide series of

8
attacks. The most significant saw an estimated 1,200

insurgents attack a draftee company of the Joaquin Paris

Battalion and the co-located counternarcotics police base at

Miraflores, Guaviare. Overrun, government forces again

took heavy casualties: 30 killed, 50 wounded, and 100 taken

prisoner. Anxious to act upon popular sentiment for

“peace,”22 the president-elect, Andres Pastrana Arango,

personally met with FARC leaders, then ceded to them on a

“temporary” basis, a demilitarized zone, as the price for

entering into negotiations. Centrally located in the heart of

the country, within easy striking distance of both the capital

and other major targets, it was ostensibly an area where

military activity was prohibited. FARC not only violated

such prohibition immediately, but subsequently used the

Zona, as it came to be called, as a coca production base and

recruiting zone and as an unsinkable aircraft carrier from

which to launch repeated strikes against government

targets.23

This activity reached a new high in July 1999, when a

massive offensive from the Zona sought to strike in all

directions, to include at Bogota itself. It was followed by

another in November-December, but both were stopped cold

in fierce fighting which involved security forces knocking

out FARC homemade but nonetheless formidable armor.

Security Force Response.

Blunting the offensives stemmed from significant

changes which had occurred in the security forces, primarily

the army, even as the insurgents were making headway.

A Colombian general analyzes:

We were caught by surprise, because we had American

doctrine. The American approach taught us there were two

types of war, conventional and unconventional, what you call

“war” and “other than war” (OTW). This is a mistake. This is

your view, but it is not correct for us. Actually there is only one

conflict, going from guerrilla war through mobile war to

conventional war. It’s all integrated. And we must be able to

fight at all levels. By labeling this as a “nonconventional”’ war,

9
you Americans see it as a guerrilla war. You see the main

weapon as the patrol against guerrillas. You call for us

decentralize. Yet that’s what we were doing, and we got caught

in the counterguerrilla mode when the enemy shifted to the

mobile mode. You call upon us to decentralize when increased

command and control is more important than ever. It is what

the guerrillas are doing, integrating all of their forms into a

unified plan of action, with guerrilla attacks coordinated to

support mobile action, with terror supporting guerrilla action.24

The Colombian security forces were quite unprepared

for this sequence of events after more than 3 decades of

small scale, counterguerrilla operations. The police, a

national organization (Policia Nacional), though roughly

100,000 men, were spread throughout the country in small

posts from which they engaged in the routine associated

with law enforcement as opposed to warfare. The armed

forces, too, in their disposition, resembled the dispersal of

the U.S. Army during the Indian Wars rather than an

organization geared up for mobile warfare. The army

(Ejercito) had a plethora of battalion cantonments and

rarely conducted operations of even that size. The air force

(Fuerza Aerea) and the navy (Armada) were both small.25

Naturally, the army was expected to blunt the

insurgents. Of its total 145,000-man strength, however, less

than a quarter, some 30,000 men, were professionals. Of

these, some 20,000 were being used in actual

counterinsurgency operations. They were deployed in 3

Brigadas Moviles (Mobile Brigades or BRIM) and 47 Batallones

Contraguerrillas (Counterguerrilla Battalions or BCG), a

total of approximately 60 BCG (numbers varied; there were

4 x BCG per BRIM). These were professionals, all

volunteers. The bulk of the army was draftees, only

one-quarter of whom had even a high school degree. They

were considered so valuable for national development that

they were dedicated to point defense by the government.

The result was that the force in the field was not only grossly

inadequate but was deployed in such fashion as to ensure

defeat.26 This was precisely what happened during the

1996-98 period.

10
Change did not come immediately. Indeed, Pastrana’s

first defense minister, Rodrigo Lloreda, who has since died

of cancer, resigned rather than go along with what he saw as

the administration’s drift in its counterinsurgency policy. In

fact, at the same time, every army general officer, except one

who could not be reached since he was in the field on

operations, tendered his resignation.

Such a rough start, though, was overcome. The

resignations were refused. Then, with a combination of

rotation due to seniority, some out-of-sequence

appointments, and plain good luck, Colombia put together a

command team which began to turn things around. Though

police and military were co-equals in the Public Forces

(Fuerzas Publicas) under Defense Minister Luis Fernando

Ramirez Acuna, the army was key. Army Lieutenant

General (called simply General in the Colombian system)

Fernando Tapias Stahelin became head of the armed forces

(Fuerzas Militares); General Jorge E. Mora Rangel became

head of the army itself. Both were former commanders of the

elite mobile brigades (BRIM). Under them, the army was

reorganized for combat.

The considerable difference between “combat” and

“counterinsurgency” was appreciated. “Now that we

understand what is happening, we have been able to

respond,” continues the general cited earlier.

Yet the crucial question is how to control the ground. In our

system, everything is prohibited. If you even attempt to

uncover the infrastructure, much less dominate areas, you are

violating something. We are in the position of fighting for a

system unwilling to defend itself.

Colombia’s essential counterinsurgency problem thus

lies in the fact that the country is not engaged in fighting its

own internal war. The business has been left to the

military—all too predictable a stance given the mindset of a

system so long at “peace,” with so many problems (such as

the narcotics trade and the high murder rate).27 Just how

such a situation came to pass after the reasonably effective

11
defense activities of the 1960s—carried out with our

aid—would take a study all to itself.28 Suffice to say,

systemic inertia, mixed with the regular sacking of key

officers in order to establish who was “really” the boss,

resulted in a security framework which was effectively

neutered.

That it was able to rally was because of the existence of

the “two armies” mentioned above. One was seen by the

press (theirs and ours), in the capital mainly. This was the

“army of socialization,” the draftee army intended to create

a sense of national unity. The other, little publicized or

understood, was the professional force in the BRIM and

BCG, the units that had spent decades fighting guerrillas.

This force assumed control of the fight in Colombia.

First task was to shake the five divisions which

comprised COLAR out of garrison mode. Looking at a map of

the country and moving clockwise, from the northwest

corner, these divisions were I, II, IV, III, with V in the

center, Bogota and its vicinity. The area where FARC

combat power was centered, as well as its financial base

(narcotics growing and production) was IV Division Area of

Operations (AO). This was the AO where the significant

defeats mainly had been suffered. This key appointment

went to a soldier’s soldier, another former BRIM

commander, Brigadier General (BG), now Major General

(MG), Carlos A. Ospina Ovalle. Other such appointments

followed, and the effect was electric.

By the end of 1998/early 1999, many of components in

the Tapias-Mora approach had begun to settle in. In

addition to Ospina as IV Division CG, eventually, the team

assembled was I Div, BG Eduardo Contreras; II Div, BG

Eduardo Sanchez; III Div, MG Carlos Mendez; and V Div,

MG Euclides Sanchez. Beneath them, it was no longer

business as usual. At a meeting called by General Mora

shortly after he assumed command, all general officers were

required to take a pledge that in 3 months their units would

be ready to fight. Officers who could not adjust to the greater

12
operational tempo were sacked. In one division area, a

brigade commander and two battalion commanders were

removed within 6 months. In all division areas, things were

turned upside down. Bases were reworked, especially those

likely to see combat. Positions were moved and

strengthened. Crew-served weapons were redistributed—

and, in some cases, pulled out of mothballs. Greater

emphasis was put on the skills of warfighting.

In particular, funding was made available to begin

conversion of many formations from conscript to

professional status. The standard term for most draftees

was 1.5 years (only 1 year if a high school graduate), not

enough time to teach much. Since the standard composition

of a division was three draftee brigades, each with three

draftee battalions and a counterguerrilla battalion (BCG),

virtually all manpower was locked up in essentially

nondeployable assets. Only the 47 x BCG and the 3 x BRIM

were real warfighting outfits. This had to change. By

mid-1999, at the time of the FARC offensive, the changeover

was well underway in key formations. By spring 2000, in an

important unit such as IV Division, the switch was all but

complete.

Infantry weapons and ammunition were in ample

supply, but shortages of crew-served pieces and

communications gear remained severe. Transportation of

all sorts, whether trucks or helicopters, was all but absent.

The army itself had but 17 helicopters, the air force had 50

(the police had nearly 100, but half had U.S.-dictated

restrictions attached to them involving “counternarcotics

only”).

Though the army was able to effect changes quite

rapidly, true jointness was not achieved easily. National

headquarters was integrated, but this did not extend

beyond the building. In the field, the services remained

separate commands, a posture which initially hampered

operations, especially where employment of air assets was

involved. Yet gradually fragmentation was overcome, to the

13
point that by May 2001 a major operation such as

“Tsunami,” run on the southern Pacific Coast and having

simultaneously deployed as many as five battalions,

involved all services, to include air and sea/riverine assets of

the navy.

To streamline the army itself, by January-February

2000, the traditional command division—1 (personnel), 2

(intelligence), 3 (operations), and 4 (supply)—had been

reorganized into four directorates, each headed by a Chief:

Operations, Personnel, Logistics, and Training.

Significantly, under the Director of Operations (a planned

MG billet) were actual operations (headed by a colonel),

intelligence (a brigadier general), and psychological

operations (a colonel). The latter received particular

bolstering in an effort to dramatically alter the balance in

information warfare. The consequence of this alteration in

the way operations were conceived was that the army was

turned into a combat command.

The Directorate of Training was similarly revamped to

reflect the needs of warfighting. Normal service and

military occupational specialty (MOS) schools remained

under their own organization, the National Education

Training Center (NETC), but a new National Training

Center (NTC) provided the mechanism for manpower

conversion. Whereas, previously, professionals came only

through reenlistments of draftees, the enhanced manpower

needs necessitated allowing direct induction of civilians

seeking to enlist, as well as prior service personnel. Each

had unique training needs. These were met through new,

separate induction courses.

One of the planned outgrowths of rationalizing training

and other administrative demands was the release from

such duties of V Div. This returned what had become largely

an administrative formation to the combat ranks. To

generate still more combat power, especially such as could

be rapidly deployed, General Mora grouped his elite

formations, the three BRIM and the single Special Forces

14
Brigade (of four battalions—essentially Rangers, rather

than true SF) in a Rapid Reaction Force (Fuerza de

Despliegue Rapido, or FUDRA) under his direct control.

One division, IV, went a step further in its quest to cut

response time and returned one of its BCG and two of its line

battalions to airborne status through in-house training! For

assessment of the vast IV Division, AO quickly revealed

that helicopters simply did not have the range or payload to

get ground combat power to flashpoints in as timely and

efficient manner as the methods of a seemingly bygone era.

Another IV Div unit confronted with a vast savannah to

patrol took a page from a Vietnam War manual and

produced an armored truck company, complete with

mounted 50-cal machineguns and an accompanying 106mm

“gun wagon.” When this proved effective, numbers of such

vehicles were increased to an army-wide brigade.

Refinement of Military Response.

Through such innovation, the military was able, in but a

few years, to field a revitalized force able to be employed in a

manner more appropriate to the new phase the conflict had

entered, that of mobile warfare.29 With primary effort

directed against what was perceived as the main insurgent

threat, FARC, a multi-pronged plan was put into execution

by COLAR to counter the insurgent approach. First, a

critical areas assessment was drawn up, and forces

allocated to secure resources imperative to national

survival and operations. Second, the military moved to

blunt the insurgents’ own strategy for seizing power. This

involved cutting their mobility corridors (corredores de

movilidad), going after intermediate base areas, and,

finally, attacking primary base areas. It was a strategy

which attacked the insurgent strategy and reflected the

relatively sophisticated level of operational art practiced by

the commanders who came out of the BRIM/BCG tradition.

It took as its starting point the reality that FARC has

well-developed concepts for accomplishing its professed goal

15
of seizing state-power. To implement its multiyear

strategic plan, the product of the 1982 congress and

subsequent plenums, FARC utilizes the tripartite

approach embodied in Maoist insurgency—mass line

(development of clandestine infrastructure), united front

(use of fellow travelers, both internally and abroad,

witting and un-witting, especially human rights

organizations), and military action. The move to mobile

warfare in mid-1996 took military action to a new level,

one whereby guerrilla and terror actions are used in

conjunction with conventional action. Task-organized

columns (columnas) are used to hit primary targets

(though light infantry, these have featured massive

indirect fires, armor, and sappers), even as numerous

guerrilla attacks seek to conceal the objective, and terror

sows confusion.30

Typically, a major attack will have a tactical and

operational component, but both are intended to fit into

FARC’s strategic plan. That plan assigns to each FARC

Bloque (see note 16) a primary objective—essentially, the

major city (or cities) in that Bloque area. Local attacks are

designed to facilitate the ultimate taking of this

objective(s).31 Thus—to use an illustration written about

extensively in U.S. media—Dabeiba, a small town

attacked in October 2000, is located along an important

strategic corridor. FARC’s Bloque Noroccidental

(Northwest Bloc) for years has been working to open this

corridor to allow access to strategically and economically

important Medellin and its vicinity (COLAR 4th Brigade,

I Division, has its headquarters in Medellin).

In FARC doctrine, the designated city-as-objective,

whether Medellin or any other, is to be isolated by having

its lines of communication cut and its sources of

sustenance blocked, to include power and water. This

requires systematic domination of mobility corridors so

that seemingly exterior lines (imagine a spider’s web with

the target at its center) actually become interior lines

when considered within a countrywide context.

16
Domination of towns and human geography within or along

“corridors” allows FARC free movement of men and

supplies.

Hence the tactical attack on Dabeiba was designed to

drive out government presence, in particular the police.

Such actions occur regularly. The operational intent,

however, was to open up the mobility corridor using the

same tactical kill zone technique (called a “defensive

curtain”—a defensive cortina) which has been used time

and again (particularly in the COLAR IV Division area, as

indicated previously) to hold the corridor by luring the

military relief force into an area ambush. The town, in other

words, was but the bait—and the 4th Brigade relief force,

which was hastily dispatched, went for it. Hence the

publicity with five-score dead.

COLAR is well aware of this technique. Units of the IV

Division successfully smashed identical ambushes in the

July and November 1999 fighting, east and northeast of the

DMZ (with kill zones as large as approximately 8 kms x 6

kms), inflicting hundreds of casualties. They succeeded

again in even more difficult circumstances in July 2000 in

the combined Colombia (the town)/Vegalarga operation

near Neiva, Huila (where the kill zone was circular, with a

radius of approximately 10 kms). In the October 2000

operation, however, the 4th Brigade did not utilize the

proven techniques and so paid the price. In particular, the

troops were not landed in total darkness, as has become

normal practice, but went in at early evening. Hence, they

ended up losing a Blackhawk and the 22 men aboard before

forcing entry.32

The point is that there is method behind the actions

which occur, and the COLAR counter seeks to counter that

method of attack. The scope of mobile warfare is illustrated

by the Colombia/Vegalarga operation, which ultimately

involved two groups of four COLAR counterguerrilla

battalions (BCG) each. They operated across a 40 km front,

backed by heli-lifted 120mm and 105mm support

17
weapons,33 and engaged half-a-dozen coordinated guerrilla

columns that numbered some 3,000 men total—with

additional guerrilla actions designed to conceal the main

objectives, and targeted assassinations in the rear to

increase dislocation. The Colombia landing went smoothly,

but an initial government effort to land under cover of

darkness at Vegalarga was repulsed; a second was

successful. Evidence exists that the FARC forces involved

had intended to use SAMs for the first time in the conflict

but, for reasons not clear, were unable to do so.34

Once their very large kill zones were compromised in

both areas, FARC units withdrew as quickly as possible for

the Zona. Both COLAR four-battalion response groups (4 x

BCG from FUDRA; 4 x BCG from IV Division assets)

performed well, using two battalions each to push and two

battalions to hook left, in an effort to get behind the fleeing

insurgents. The FARC columnas suffered casualties but

were able to remove most bodies as reported by area

inhabitants.

Two underinformed media interpretations have

relevance here. One seeks to present setbacks such as

Dabeiba as common (a single Blackhawk was lost; the town

ultimately was relieved—even if battered—but the 2

decade-old Blackhawk itself is presented as a wonder

weapon, so its loss is equated with the downing of a Stealth

bomber). The second claims that the United States is

seeking to bring the Colombian military, particularly

COLAR, “up to speed,” and that somehow such U.S. training

is designed to “reverse” a tide of defeat.

These are flawed interpretations. Obviously, Colombia

itself suffers from state crisis. Yet, amid such, the military

remains one of the most cohesive, competent groups in the

country. Further, as I have indicated throughout this

discussion, it is fairly good at counterinsurgency. Like all

militaries that have just seen a curve ball, it is

adjusting—and has done so in solid fashion since the days

when it suffered several local reverses occasioned by the

18
FARC switch to mobile warfare. It is implementing a viable

counter, even as the insurgents have continued to use the

opportunity provided by the government’s “Peace Policy” to

recruit vigorously, drawing mainly upon rural youth

exposed to both proselytizing and coercion, and to improve

weaponry.35

FARC internal documents reveal that Bloque Oriental

(Eastern Bloque) has been designated the locus of FARC

effort, since it dominates what the movement calls the

“center of strategic deployment” (centro de despliegue

estrategico), the Cordillera Oriental area of which the Zona

is a key part. All other Bloques are to support its actions. To

that end, the Zona has been used in an effort to greatly

expand Bloque Oriental’s combat power. The dramatic

decrease of the average FARC combatant age, as

impressments have been stepped up, is particularly

noteworthy in captured FARC video footage, augmented by

COLAR combat tapes.36 Such “kidnapping” is intended to

flesh out and multiply the combat units which operate

within each front (the so-called “650 Companies”

campaign).

Bloque Oriental, as it has increased its combatant

numbers, has been the linchpin of the mobile war approach,

launching three major maneuver (light infantry) actions

using the Zona as its base from which to strike: the

offensives of July 1999, November 1999, and July 2000. Yet

each of these, as with the actions of 1996, 1997, and 1998,

has been accompanied by the normal guerrilla actions and

assassinations, both within the Bloque Oriental area and

throughout the remainder of the country. Indeed, what sets

this central theater of operations apart is not the tactics but

the operational art involved. The July 2000 attack, for

instance, involved coordinated units from two different

Bloques, Oriental and Central, and was intended to lead to

future actions.

As noted earlier, such attacks feature very heavy (in

terms of guerrilla warfare), coordinated columnas,

19
task-organized manpower drawn from different fronts.37

Such columnas are approximately battalion strength. When

wedded to the other elements of FARC’s mobile warfare

doctrine (use of indirect fires, armor, sappers, and air

defense), these become elements theoretically capable of

engaging their COLAR counterparts. Their inability to do so

stems from a basic error, assessed thus by a COLAR general

officer: “FARC continues to seriously underestimate the

capabilities of a modern army which is performing in proper

fashion.”38

Dramatic as such action is, however, the ultimate

danger lies in FARC’s recognition of its relative political

underdevelopment and its vigorous steps to rectify this

situation. Its explicit assumption of the communist mantle

is most interesting, not just in-country via the Clandestine

Colombian Communist Party (PCCC), but also

internationally, where it now presents itself in much the

same fashion as did Sendero Luminoso in Peru, as the

torchbearer for the wounded international MarxistLeninist forces.39

Thus it has established party schools and worked to

expand not only cadre but the political educational level of

military commanders.40 It has publicly advanced its

national front, the Bolivarian Movement for a New

Colombia. Hand-in-hand with this has gone expansion of

the militia to protect “liberated” territory, to the point that

many of these local forces in the llanos are now armed with

high-powered firearms (HPF), to include AKMs from the

East German stock.41

Given its history, it is evident that FARC is in many

respects a large foco in search of a mass base. This it has

achieved, together with funding, as a result of the 1982

decision (at the national conference) to join with the drug

production populations and to tax that drug production

process. What is significant, since the creation of the Zona,

is not the increase in the number of FARC

combatants—almost 100 percent in some cases; present

20
order of battle figures list approximately 16,500

combatants, with a militia figure of another 50-70 percent

above that—but the growth of the infrastructure behind

this increase. This infrastructure has hitherto been

rudimentary but now shows, for the first time, signs of

vitality—in the strategic space provided by inept

government approach. If such gets off the ground, FARC

will be a much more dangerous foe than before.

To prevent this, COLAR has proceeded on the basis of

identifying, prioritizing, and attacking the mobility

corridors in each FARC area so as to prevent access to

populated zones, by either guerrilla units or the much larger

mobile warfare columns. The battle over these unseen

“highways” has driven much of the action of the last several

years. Beginning in 2001, the army moved on to attacking

the base areas used to “generate” FARC combat power.

What is unique in the present experience is that the

Colombian military has the singular disadvantage of being

forced to engage in counterinsurgency operations at a time

when strategic Cold War victory has caused all potential

sources of support, both ideological and material, to turn

their backs on the operational remnants of the failed

communist crusade. Hence, Bogota finds itself quite on its

own—at the very time when policymakers, both Colombian

and American, have little knowledge as to the realities of

insurgency-counterinsurgency, particularly the philosophy

and mechanics of internal war. This has thrust the burden

of conducting counterinsurgency almost completely upon

the shoulders of the Colombian military, principally

COLAR. It has taken up this burden, at considerable cost,42

driving FARC to return to a guerrilla-driven approach

rather than one where mobile warfare leads.

Dilemmas in Systemic Response.

Nevertheless, the contradiction in the government

position is well-understood by the military.43 The security

forces have been fully occupied with their first priority,

21
getting their house in order so that they can address the full

range of the FARC threat, from terror to guerrilla warfare to

mobile war. They have demonstrated that they are quite

capable of responding to difficult circumstances. The

victories have followed. There is satisfaction in this, but

that is the trap General Westmoreland fell into in Vietnam,

where the means became the strategic end. The Colombian

military recognizes the dilemma. There is no shortage of

officers who have read the basic texts on the Vietnam War.

Indeed, FARC has responded as did the communists in

Vietnam, by returning to the domination of the human

terrain. In this, it has proved every bit as ruthless as the

Viet Cong. Torture and assassination, not to mention

kidnapping and extortion, are so common as to go almost

without comment except in the most extreme cases.

Echoes of Vietnam in the FARC approach should not be

surprising. FARC (and also ELN) was trained directly by

the FMLN of El Salvador. The FMLN, in turn, was trained,

both at home and through personnel sent abroad, by

Vietnam. FARC manuals are very similar to FMLN

manuals. And anyone reading either would swear he was

having a flashback to the American involvement in

Indochina. Strategically, operationally, tactically, it is the

Vietnamese approach.44

What is that approach?45 The constant interplay

between the political and the military is key—with the

Maoist template, if anything, being regarded by the

Vietnamese as too militaristic and parochial in its

emphases (not enough emphasis upon fostering

“international solidarity,” for instance). On the ground, the

Vietnamese emphasize that the “three stages” occur

simultaneously as dictated by local circumstances, the

so-called “war of interlocking.” The greater level of

command and control made possible by modern,

off-the-shelf communications gear coordinates lower levels

of activity so that they support or are part of higher levels.

Widely dispersed guerrilla attacks, for example, have both

22
local objectives and prepare the way for mobile warfare

operations.

This brings us back to the problems with Bogota’s

approach until now, pursued at U.S. urging: a country the

size of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana (or, if one

looks to Europe: France, Spain, and Portugal) has basically

30-45,000 personnel performing as firemen. The initiative

may be wrested from the enemy, but victories can not be

solidified in the absence of government popular

mobilization to hold ground.

FARC understands this and has been energetically

pursuing successive domination of areas. Recognizing that

for the moment it cannot go head-to-head with the armed

forces, it is again concentrating upon hitting isolated, static

police positions and uncooperative mayors. An army report

made in 1997 found that the mayors of 13.1 percent of

Colombia’s 1,059 municipalities, or counties (I have another

government list which claims a smaller figure of 1,025

municipalities nationwide), had direct links to the

insurgents. Another 44 percent had to collaborate in one

degree or another. The U.S. press somehow transformed

this into “40 percent of Colombia controlled by the

guerrillas.” This is obviously incorrect, but the point can

still be made that it is control of human terrain which is the

key. And in that contest, while there is nowhere the military

cannot presently go, there are many areas where going

there would be quite a fight and costly.

The need, then, is for local forces which can secure the

ground. No counterinsurgency can be won without them, for

they are the only way in which domination of areas can be

carried out. Yet in Colombia, as part of the 1990-91

settlement with another insurgent group, M-19, a

prohibition was written into the constitution against armed

bodies operating outside of the armed forces and police.46

Rather than dealing with this in straightforward

fashion, as has every other system fighting internal war, by

mobilizing anti-insurgent “people’s war” as military

23
auxiliaries, the Colombian political and judicial systems

have fumbled and done little. They have then blamed the

security forces when the vacuum created in the vast country

has been filled by the autonomous self-defense groups

(autodefensas) which have sprung up everywhere—and

continue to do so. By refusing to work with Bogota to find an

approach to popular mobilization which will work,

Washington has made the situation much, much worse.

Indeed, it has demanded that the military spread itself still

more thinly by “going after” yet another foe, the

autodefensas—and that the police be increased in numbers.

Indeed, the baffling quality of the U.S. approach was at

no time better illustrated than in early 1999, when,

responding to direct U.S. pressure, the Pastrana

government sacked three of its top generals, all veteran

commanders—BG Fernando Millan (War College director),

BG Rito Alejo del Rio (COLAR director of operations), and

BG Jaime Humberto Uscategui Ramirez (then II Division

Commanding General, or CG)—for alleged past links to the

banned autodefensas, or “paramilitaries,” as they are

frequently called in the English-language press.

The United States hence became directly involved in the

actions which led to the three generals’ sacking—this in an

army of but some 40 generals—for reasons which remain

controversial and had as much to do with internal U.S. and

Colombian politics as reality.47 In so doing, the United

States unwittingly crossed a line. For the Colombians, its

presence became more conditional and tenuous than

perhaps Washington realized. Put another way, to the

Colombian Army, at least, the United States went from the

cavalry riding to the rescue to just another element in the

ongoing crisis, a generally positive force but one which

would have to be assessed critically and watched.

This was not altogether an unhealthy development.

Recent American involvements in internal war,

particularly Southeast Asia and Latin America,48 have had

as a hallmark a tendency of the host nations to step aside in

24
something approaching awe of U.S. power. In this,

certainly, we assisted—one thinks particularly of hapless

Cambodia and Laos—nevertheless, those countries which

fared best were those which took off the rose-tinted glasses

and saw us clearly for what we were, political actors

pursuing ends which were not always host nation

ends49—Thailand and the Philippines might be cited in this

respect.

Thus, early on, another line was drawn by the

Colombian security forces, this one concerning the

American $1.3 billion aid package:50 it would not be allowed

to become a source of strategic distortion. Even as

politicians on both sides engaged in the campaign necessary

to obtain the assistance, the security forces kept a close eye

on what was demanded as the quid pro quo. At one point,

COLAR—which was to stand up, with training from U.S.

Special Forces personnel of 7th Special Forces Group

(Airborne), a new counterdrug brigade as the cutting edge of

a “push into the south”—favored outright rejection of the

package. But Colombia’s politicians wanted it, with the

result of the creation of a military within the military, a

special “drugfighting” component.

To compartmentalize the “U.S. component” of the

struggle— to seal off as much as possible Colombia’s overall

campaign from the possible meddling of American

politicians responding to their perceived domestic

concerns—Bogota detached the extreme south of the

country—the departments of Putumayo, and

Caqueta—and made it a special counternarcotics zone,

Joint Task Force South (JTFS), to use the designation

normally found in U.S. sources. There, the U.S.-aided

counterdrug campaign could focus upon eradication. In the

rest of the country, the security forces could engage in

counterinsurgency.

25
Contradictions Guarantee Pathos.

Yet Colombia’s forces are numerically quite inadequate

for a campaign in the geographical and human areas

involved—neither do they have adequate operational

funding. Ergo, we find ourselves back at the autodefensas,

who—authorized or no, legal or not—have filled the gap and

engaged in some of the most vicious fighting against FARC

(and ELN). And they make no bones about their favored

methodology: to go after the insurgent infrastructure. In

internal war, there is no way around the reality that a

vacuum will be filled. By refusing to mobilize the

population, Bogota ensures that people’s war is waged out of

control in every nook and cranny. By encouraging Colombia

to adhere to this misguided approach, the United States

pours oil on the flames. The result in many areas is pathos.51

Worse than this, the United State gives voice to human

rights activists whose prime target appears to be the

government. This has made it doubly dangerous to be an

army officer, for it means a multifront war. Despite their

protestations, human rights groups have little substantive

to say about the daily FARC atrocities, which range from

kidnapping (an important part of the Vietnamese approach,

the better to bring about societal dislocation) to the most

hideous torture-murders of prisoners. Instead, what many

Colombian sources have taken to calling the “human rights

cartel” too often functions as a weapons system for the

insurgents, trying ceaselessly to go after the security force’s

top commanders, those of the army in particular.

At no time was this more evident than in February 2000,

just as debate was beginning in the U.S. Congress on the

proposed aid package, when Human Rights Watch (HRW), a

New York-based advocacy group, released a poorly

researched document entitled Colombia: The Ties That

Bind: Colombia and Military-Paramilitary Links.

52 It

focused on three key commands, those of Bogota, Cali, and

Medellin, and attempted to implicate those commanders,

past and present, in alleged crimes.

26
One of the most peculiar aspects of the report, in fact,

was the effort to have it both ways as concerned the

“Yamashita Principle” of command responsibility. In a

portion on the 4th Brigade, for instance, the report (p. 13),

while fingering some subordinates for abuses, stated that

the brigade investigated adverse reports—but these actions

were “easily deflected” by subordinates who were adept at

covering up. Hence the commander must have been

culpable. As if to cover all its bases, HRW dutifully noted

which officers—to include the commander in question in

this illustration—had attended, in any capacity, the School

of the Americas—the connection ostensibly clinching the

tenuous argument.53

Though the argument advanced by HRW was not viable

as presented, its command responsibility claims did

unwittingly serve to highlight a reality previously

mentioned—the vacuum which emerges from calculations

of numbers, time, and space. In the 4th Brigade illustration

above, for instance, taken from 1997-98, the unit was tasked

with safeguarding one of the more critical areas in the

country, Medellin and the bulk of the Antioquia

Department, Colombia’s heartland in terms of the

production of national wealth. The 4th Bde AO hence

included more than 7 million people in an area the size of

North Carolina (half a million more people than North

Carolina). To cover this assignment, the unit had just three

battalions of draftees, two BCG, and a cavalry squadron

(i.e., battalion)—at most, 3,500 men—with no organic

aircraft of any sort.54 In the absence of any local forces, the

impossibility of actually dominating the ground, of

safeguarding the population, becomes immediately clear.

In reality, the situation was even more decentralized.

One subordinate unit, Task Force Choco (TF Choco), had

but 10 platoons (some 400 men) to cover the AO’s 410,000

people in 9,719 square miles, a little bigger than New

Hampshire. Those platoons were deployed so the TF

Commander could never be quite sure what they were

doing, much less the brigade commander.

27
That the unit was quite effective stemmed from its

superb use of information warfare and its mobilization of

convivir, citizens with radios to report insurgent

movements. Yet even these, though declared legal by the

Colombian Supreme Court, fell apart when it became clear

the authorities could not protect their members from

spurious human rights suits.

Another 4th Bde unit, the cavalry squadron, was

headquartered in the vicinity of Rio Negro, southeast of

Medellin, but one of its troops (i.e., companies) was deployed

to La Union in response to insurgent activity. La Union, the

town, had 4,000 people; the surrounding farming area had

17,000 people. The total police force for the area was ten

men. In the absence of official power, prior to the

deployment of the 100 or so soldiers, 11 families took the

lead in organizing resistance to insurgent infiltration.

Subsequently, in a single evening, their houses were

simultaneously bombed. They fled. The conclusion seems

self-evident: even with perfect knowledge, how could the

normal security forces, the ten policemen, have prevented

it? The four cavalry platoons were spread out amid 21,000

people—with no local forces to assist them.

A final point emerges, too, from these illustrations and

their highlighting of the impossibility of the task in the

absence of popular mobilization: the inadequate legal

environment under which the security forces operate. To

date, civilian law governs the conflict, rather than a

combination of emergency provisions and normal statutes.

This creates a situation which, operationally speaking, is

impossible, where a misdirected strike becomes a cause for a

charge of manslaughter, and so on.

What has been absent from the current debate on human

rights has been positing of any realistic options for a state

faced with an insurgent campaign built first and foremost

upon retaining the initiative through terror and guerrilla

action—retaining the initiative due to its ability to operate

in areas where the government is absent. The point would

28
seem elementary as concerns human rights groups, which

have been among the fiercest opponents of popular

mobilization: you cannot demand the creation of a vacuum,

then seek to blame individuals for not being in control of

what happens in that vacuum.55

Imperfect Democracy Struggles On.

It is this strange environment in which the Colombian

security forces seek to protect a system which does not do

much to protect them. American official involvement with

such attacks has cost Washington dearly, far more than is

appreciated. Further, the American position has been a

factor in opening the door to abuse of genuine concern for

human rights.

And there is always the danger of pushing the security

forces too far. At present, no credible observers have

reported signs, even discussions, of movement beyond the

military realm. What could cause this to change is a

combination of forces: continued abuse of the human rights

system added to government ineptness which was perceived

as endangering the very existence or essence of the

Colombian state. Patriotism runs deep within the “public

forces.” They will remain loyal to civilian control as long as

certain essentials are respected. First and foremost among

these is to protect the democratic society from those who

would overthrow it from within.

There is a school of thought which looks to the past, to

the errors which have indisputably been made—and

continue to be made—by Colombia in the handling of the

insurgency. It argues that the key is conversion of the

guerrillas into legitimate political forces—by all means

short of force. Therein lies the dilemma of the present

situation: such advocacy is understandable but will not

work.

Once an insurgent movement becomes a going concern,

the dynamic which obtains is quite different from that

29
which may have given it life initially. It becomes an

alternative social structure, able to recruit, assign, promote,

and control. It is a mistake to equate existence with

legitimacy. The insurgents in Colombia have no significant

support base. To the contrary, they “control” territory in

areas where there is little—save, in many cases,

coca/poppy/marijuana and a transplanted work force. The

“insurgents control 40 percent” figure, so often used by the

U.S. media, first surfaced, apparently, as a result of

misinterpretation of background briefings concerning the

army report mentioned above. The figure then took on a life

of its own, at times rising to 50 percent.

Reality is more complex—and more typical of an

insurgent environment.56 Increasing rural and urban areas,

the latter 75 percent of the populace, are indeed becoming

“contested.” Everywhere, though, since FARC has minimal

popular support, terror is the dominant FARC tactic. As was

the case with Sendero Luminoso in Peru,57 this distorts the

actual insurgent position to make it appear as one of

strength and widespread dominance.

Perhaps most importantly, while the state certainly had

a role in creating the original insurgency and then made it

worse, FARC combatant numbers do not stem from this

earlier era. The present insurgents did not become a serious

concern until their historically recent linkup with the drug

trade, then supplemented by “revolutionary taxation” in the

form of kidnapping and extortion. Thus they—and

insurgency/counterinsurgency—cannot be separated from

narcotics/counternarcotics.

There are times, then, when negotiations and

“humanitarian assistance” alone are inadequate. The

insurgents, as disciplined groups—this term to make clear

that leadership and manpower invariably have varying

agendas, which are not necessarily overlapping—are not

agrarian or national reformers any more than were the Viet

Cong or Filipino CCP. They are political actors. They

produce the bulk of the death and destruction being visited

30
upon the country. Indeed, one of the signal successes of the

human rights agenda has been to deflect attention to the

symptom (the popular reaction against insurgency) rather

than to the cause (insurgency).58

Certainly Colombia’s democracy is imperfect, but much

of the recent commentary seems overwrought, ethnocentric,

and more than a little under-researched. Yes, the system

itself has been a significant factor in producing alienation,

particularly through repression of leftist actors who have

endeavored to work within that system. Still, alienation and

insurgency are not the same phenomenon, and the one does

not necessarily lead to the other. For that, ideology,

motivation, and group dynamics must also be examined.

The original insurgency dynamic, detailed initially in this

monograph, has been superseded in the FARC case by

another, much deadlier conflict, one which has taken on a

life of its own.

In this fight, Colombian government policy may not be

“right,” but certainly there is much that is being advanced

as analysis of the Colombian situation that is wrong. Drugs,

to repeat, are not the central element of Colombia’s problem.

That is state fragmentation. We can talk of nothing until the

government actually exercises its writ within its national

territory. This will come about only through a combination

of military and socio-economic-political means. Security

force adaptation is a necessary but not sufficient component

in this campaign. That must be a national effort which

mobilizes the Colombian people in a determined,

counterrevolutionary socio-economic-political restoration

which not only ends the FARC insurgency but leaves

Colombia a stronger democracy.

Colombia, then, urgently needs:

• A National Campaign Plan. “Plan Colombia” was a

statement of strategic vision rather than a plan. The

closest thing to an actual counterinsurgency approach

is COLAR’s ongoing effort against the mobility

31
corridors and base areas, called “Plan 2001.” This, by

default, is the guiding concept of the struggle but is

not systemic mobilization directed against the

insurgents. A key element of that mobilization must

be the constitution of local forces, adequately

controlled by integration with the regular security

force structure.

• Political Leadership. There is no one running the

war—there are many small wars being run

simultaneously. Principal blame for this rests with

the befuddlement and corruption of elements of the

national political class, exacerbated by the lack of

leadership displayed by President Pastrana. By

default, COLAR is thus directing the fight; yet it is but

one branch of the armed forces.

• Coordinated, Integrated Effort. Colombia as a

system is not involved in its own struggle. Though

commendable initiative has been shown by some

government organizations, others, in particular the

offices of the Fiscalia (Attorney General) and

Procuraduria (Solicitor General), have proceeded as

though an internal war was not raging. Within the

military itself, though great strides have been made

in fostering a joint approach, even the forces falling

under the Ministry of Defense are not integrated into

a coordinated effort. The police, who have done an

excellent job at neutralizing insurgent efforts to build

urban infrastructure, have alienated the other

services through their previous, overly close relations

with the United States and thus are not integrated

into COLAR’s “Plan 2001” or any other national

scheme. Yet they are the first line of defense.

• An Appropriate Legal Framework. Emergency

laws and regulations have not been passed. In their

absence, it is difficult to expect sustained progress to

be made in restoring the national writ over alienated

32
territory and populace. Not only have the security

forces been left unprotected and operationally

hamstrung, the door has been opened to abuse of

human rights concerns by activist groups. Thus the

first responsibility of the state, to secure the lives of its

citizens, has been abrogated. Instead, a military with

a relatively good human rights record has been

systematically, consciously hampered in its efforts to

conduct stability operations.

• Enhanced Information Warfare. COLAR

presently conducts some of the most effective

information operations being waged by any armed

force in the world. Yet these are not integrated into a

national concept, directed at both internal and

international audiences. Neither have they been

deployed as an integral element of military strategic

planning.

• Enhanced Operational and Acquisitions

Funding. That the situation has moved from a case

where the security forces were on both the tactical and

strategic defensive, to one where they have seized the

initiative, has been due to developments detailed

above. These have been accomplished with a paucity

of resources and vitally needed equipment, especially

aircraft of all sorts. So short has been funding that at

times operations have ground to a halt at all but the

local level. Critical shortages of spare parts and

mobility assets have hampered operations of all

services, COLAR in particular.

• Enhanced Operational Flexibility. With

adequate operational funding, present COLAR “Plan

2001” is solid and likely will be successful.

Possibilities exist, though, for further force

multiplication. This can come through integration of

more systematic civic action in reclaimed areas,

augmented by an increased tempo of special

33
operations. These should be treated as strategic

assets, rather than run at local initiative in response

to tactical opportunities.

ENDNOTES

1. More lengthy treatment of this subject may be found in my Maoist

Insurgency Since Vietnam, London: Frank Cass, 1996.

2. Latest figures for Colombia, for the year 2000, are 38,820 muertas

violentas; the U.S. figure for the same year is less than 16,000.

3. See Charles W. Berquist, Coffee and Conflict in Colombia,

1886-1910, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1986. This source is

useful not only for its look at Colombian history but also for its insights

into the political dimensions of insurgency in general. Also valuable is

Sanchez G. Gonzalo and Aguilera P. Mario, eds., Memoria de un Pais en

Guerra—Los Mil Dias: 1899-1902, Bogota: Planeta, 2001.

4. Numerous sources on this period are available. For a particularly

useful contribution, see John C. Pollock, “Violence, Politics and Elite

Performance: The Political Sociology of La Violencia in Colombia,”

Studies in Comparative International Development, Vol. 10, No. 2,

Summer 1975, pp. 22-50. For an excellent regional perspective, see

James D. Henderson, When Colombia Bled: A History of the Violencia in

Tolima, Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1985.

5. The so-called independent republics were located in southern

Cundinamarca and eastern Tolima; they were: Agriari, Viota,

Tequendama, Sumapaz, El Pato, Guayabero, Suroeste del Tolima, Rio

Chiquito, 26 de Septiembre, and Marquetalia. See Alfredo Molano

Bravo, Trochas y Fusiles, Bogota: Instituto de Estudios Politicos y

Relaciones Internacionales, 1994. For the underlying agrarian dynamic

which saw peasant cultivators moving into and defending previously

marginal areas, see the excellent Jose Jairo Gonzales Arias and Elsy

Marulanda Alvarez, Historias de Frontera: Colonización y guerras en la

Sumapaz, Bogota: Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular,

CINEP, 1990. A particularly useful foldout map may be found interface,

pp. 50-51.

6. The best source presently available on the American role in this

process is a series of articles by Dennis Rempe, all in Small Wars and

Insurgencies, London; “Guerrillas, Bandits, and Independent

Republics: U.S. Counter-insurgency Efforts in Colombia 1959-1965,”

Vol. 6, No. 3, Winter 1995, pp. 304-327; “An American Trojan Horse?

34
Eisenhower, Latin America, and the Development of U.S. Internal

Security Policy 1954-1960,” Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring 1999, pp. 34-64; and

“The Origin of Internal Security in Colombia: Part I—a CIA Special

Team Surveys La Violencia, 1959-60,” Vol. 10, No. 3, Winter 1999, pp.

24-61. His M.A. thesis is United States National Security and

Low-Intensity Conflict in Colombia 1947-1965, Calgary, Alberta,

Canada: Department of History, The University of Calgary, March

1994. His Ph.D. dissertation, Counterinsurgency in Colombia: A U.S.

National Security Perspective, an expansion upon the M.A. thesis topic,

is being completed for the University of Miami.

7. For this early period, see Eduardo Pizarro Leongomez, Las FARC,

1949-1966: De la Autodefensa a la Combinacion de Todas las Formas de

Lucha, Bogota: Instituto de Estudios Politicos y Relaciones

Internacionales, 1994.

8. For recent consideration of the this group, see Corporacion

Observatorio Para la Paz, Las Verdaderas Intenciones del ELN, Bogota:

Intermedio, 2001. A useful chronology is at pp. 255-270. A companion

volume (1999) is Las Verdaderas Intenciones de las FARC.

9. For a discussion of the Colombian narcotics regime, see Francisco

E. Thoumi, “Why the Illegal Psychoactive Drugs Industry Grew in

Colombia,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 34,

No. 3, Fall 1992, pp. 37-63.

10. A useful overview of this period may be found in Robert S.

Gordon, From Cuadrilla to FARC, Inc.: The Transformation of the

Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, unpublished

graduation requirements paper at Air University, Montgomery, AL:

Maxwell AFB, April 1999.

11. For an overview of U.S. policy and its development, see Nina M.

Serafino, CRS Report for Congress—Colombia: The Problem of Illegal

Narcotics and U.S.-Colombian Relations, Washington, DC:

Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress, March 1,

1999; and Drug Control: Narcotics Threat From Colombia Continues to

Grow, Washington, DC: U.S. General Accounting Office, June 1999.

12. The llanos are such a sparsely inhabited region because the

topsoil is only approximately 7 cm deep and very acidic; as one moves

away from the eastern mountain range, there is less land use, thus more

sparse population. Interview with government development specialist,

August 12, 1999, Villavicencio.

35
13. Captured shortly after the Seventh Conference, normally

rendered in Colombia with the Roman numeral, thus VII Conference,

the official FARC text of this proceeding, mimeo, 41 pages on legal-sized

paper, and titled simply Informa Central a la Septima Conference, has

long been available in Colombia in photocopy. Also useful is a FARC

publication, Historia de Las FARC-EP, no publications data, original in

cloth wraps, which contains discussion of conferences and plenums from

the II Conference to the December 25-27, 1987, Plenum. Myriad such

FARC documents have come into the hands of the authorities over the

decades of the conflict. Summaries and assessments are in circulation.

All major Colombian security force units have access to a “Point Paper”

titled Conferencias-Plenos, which presents the main conclusions and

directives of important FARC congresses and plenums, both regular

and enlarged. Long since reduced to virtual boilerplate for widespread,

continuous dissemination, the “paper” has lost all original identification

and publications data. The VII Conference itself has been closely

analyzed, because, in addition to the subjects already mentioned, it

produced the FARC “Strategic Plan” (Plan Estrategico) in general

outline. Though amplified and revised slightly—principally, as

concerns anticipated time frame (the original called for an 8-year,

1982-90, drive to state power)—the plan remains the basic strategic

document towards which all FARC activities are directed.

14. Interview with author, July 26, 2000, Hurlburt Field, Florida.

15. An excellent discussion of this period is Leon Zamosc, “Peasant

Struggles in the 1970s in Colombia,” in Susan Eckstein, ed., Power and

Popular Protest: Latin American Social Movements, Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1989, pp. 102-131. See also Jonathan

Hartlyn, “Civil Violence and Conflict Resolution: The Case of Colombia,”

in Roy Licklider, ed., Stopping the Killing: How Civil Wars End, New

York: New York University Press, 1993, pp. 37-61.

16. Spencer interview. Latest figures give FARC 66 fronts grouped

under 7 larger bloques. Its supreme organ is a seven-man Secretariat

which nominally reports to a central command, or Estado Mayor

Central, of 25 members (strength has varied).

17. For an effort, not completely successful, to conceptualize Latin

American insurgency, to include the position of Colombian movements

therein, see Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley, “Winners, Losers, and

Also-Rans: Toward a Comparative Sociology of Latin American

Guerrilla Movements,” in Susan Eckstein, ed., Power and Popular

Protest, pp. 132-181.

36
18. Readily available on this subject is the English version of a

Spanish language document, Balance Financing by Drug Trafficking

FARC, Bogota: Comite Interinstitucional de Lucha Contra las Finanzas

de la Subversion, March 1999. A companion volume, not available in

English, deals with Balance Narcofinanciacion ELN, Bogota: Comite

Interinstitucional de Lucha Contra las Finanzas de la Subversion, April

1999. More recent figures may be found in Jesus Enrique la Rotta

Mendoza, Finanzas de la Subversion Colombiana: Una Forma de

Explotar una Nacion, Bogota: Editorial Los Ultimos Patriotas, 1996;

and El Narcotrafico, una Amenaza Para la Seguridad Nacional, Bogota:

Ministry of National Defense, November 2000. Detailed work on the

specific nature of FARC links with the narcotics trade may be found in

the various articles of Steve Salisbury, esp. “Bandit Broadcasts,” Jane’s

Intelligence Review, November 1988, pp. 41-43; and “Raids Find Proof of

Colombian Rebel Drug-Running,” The Washington Times, March 20,

2001, p. 1.

19. Arturo Alape, Tirofijo: Los Suños Y Los Montañas, 1964-1984,

Bogota: Planeta, 1998, is particularly good for this period.

20. For a discussion of this period, to include the attack on Las

Delicias, see David Spencer, “A Lesson for Colombia,” Jane’s

Intelligence Review, October 1997, pp. 474-477.

21. For this period, as well as the attacks described in the following

paragraph, see David Spencer, “Bogota Continues to Bleed as FARC

Find Their Military Feet,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, November 1998,

pp. 35-40.

22. For background information on Colombia’s previous efforts to

negotiate peace with its various insurgent bodies, see Marc Chernick,

“Negotiating Peace Amid Multiple Forms of Violence: The Protracted

Search for a Settlement to the Armed Conflicts in Colombia,” in Cynthia

J. Arnson, ed., Comparative Peace Processes in Latin America, Stanford:

Stanford University Press, 1999, pp. 159-195. See also Lawrence

Boudon, “Guerrillas and the State: The Role of the State in the

Colombian Peace Process,” Journal of Latin American Studies, No. 28,

Pt. 2, May 1996, pp. 279-297.

23. Colombian media report regularly on the abuse of the Zona.

Articles in a daily such as El Tiempo appear regularly. Two illustrations

of the wealth of data which may be obtained from such sources may be

found in the “Actualidad” section of the El Tiempo papers of September

13, 1998, p. 12A (“Diografia de un Despeje”) and November 1, 1998, p.

14A (“El ABC del Despeje”). Both are accompanied by excellent maps.

Background to activities already going on in the five municipalities

37
which became the Zona may be found by examining appropriate

selections in Manuel Vicente Peña, La Paz de Las FARC, Bogota:

Fundacion Para los Deberes Humanos, 1997.

24. Interview, March 28, 2000, at a divisional headquarters;

comments which follow are from this same interview.

25. For details on composition and budget of the armed forces,

reference may be found in an article as notable for its misunderstanding

of the rudiments of internal war as for its excellent data: “Fuerzas

Publicas: Una Empresa de Billones de Pesos Que No Marcha,” Poder &

Dinero, No. 47, June 1997, pp. 26-35.

26. For a useful discussion of the Colombian security forces at this

time, prior to the reforms to be discussed in this article, see David

Passage, The United States and Colombia: Untying the Gordian Knot,

Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, March

2000; as well as a condensed version of this same paper more focused

upon the military itself, “Colombia in Turmoil: How the U.S. Could

Help,” Special Warfare, Winter 2000, pp. 8-15.

27. For a discussion of this issue, see Gabriel Marcella and Donald

Schultz, “Colombia’s Three Wars: U.S. Strategy at the Crossroads,”

Strategic Review, Winter 2000, pp. 3-22.

28. A much-cited article claims such developed because the dynamic

of internal war, in effect, rewarded those involved. See Nazih Richani,

“The Political Economy of Violence: The War-System in Colombia,”

Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 39, No. 2,

Summer 1992, pp. 37-81. Though I find its data and argument

interesting, my disagreement with this article’s theme is simple: it

reifies events without ever considering, in any systematic fashion, the

key notion of agency. Put simply, it imputes motives to those whom it

does not interview.

29. A fine summary of much that is described above, complete with

accurate figures, is “El Revolcon,” Semana, June 4-11, 2001, pp. 36-41.

30. For example, the August 1996 attack on the company-size base

at Las Delicias mentioned earlier was but one of 22 simultaneous

assaults, most guerrilla action, carried out throughout the country. As a

COLAR working paper (draft, no publications data) states:

These were carried out in different directions, each with great

initial intensity that caused disorientation among the unit

commanders, who, seeing their troops in imminent danger,

38
caused even greater confusion in army headquarters as it tried

to respond across the length and breadth of the country,

especially with the use of air assets, to the simultaneous calls

for help from the attacked troops.

31. Transcript of Mono JoJoy’s briefing to his Front commanders in

mid-1999; the tape-recorded meeting was broadcast to other FARC

units and intercepted by COLAR. The transcript is highly revealing,

dealing with a wide variety of FARC organizational and operational

matters. A good discussion of the contents may be found in “La Doctrina

‘JoJoy’,” Cambio, January 22, 2001, pp. 19-27. That JoJoy’s briefing,

which lasted hours, accurately reflects the thinking of FARC as an

organization may be judged by comparing the intercept with the

captured minutes of the March 21-25, 2000, Plenum of the Estado

Mayor Central, FARC’s Central Committee in a communist hierarchy.

Hitherto available only in copies of the original document, it has

recently been printed as one of the selections in an unclassified COLAR

anthology (Spanish language) of FARC documents, Estratagemas: “El

Arte de Engañar al Enemigo” (no publication data, but Bogota: COLAR,

2001).

32. The Dabieba shootdown involved but one of the potential

landing zones (LZ) in the area. This area preparation is the key to the

technique. At Dabeiba, sources indicate, a new wrinkle was that the

prepared positions, built to create a true zone ambush, were not manned

in advance, as had been the norm. Rather, “watchers” were in position

and called for the “fill” only once the actual LZ had been determined by

the delivery of government close air support (CAS). In an interview in

February 2001 with a COLAR Special Forces lieutenant, badly

wounded in a different incident, revealed, as per his experience, the use

of pressure mines placed on potential LZs. This technique, which was

common in Vietnam and El Salvador, has not, to my knowledge, been

encountered frequently in Colombia. Yet instances of explosives placed

on LZs in Colombia by forces under Marulanda have been recorded since

at least 1964. It is known, as per interviews conducted February 2001

with COLAR intelligence personnel, that FARC has been involved in

intense workshops designed to implement and standardize

counter-helicopter techniques. Among these apparently are efforts to

rig charges in the trees if the LZ lends itself to such.

33. Supporting arms were flown in using standard helicopter

sling-rigs. Such techniques have become standard for COLAR.

34. This would have been the first use of SAMs but was apparently

not the first time FARC tried to use the weapon. An earlier report from a

planned attack upon San Jose del Guaviare mentioned equipment

39
which matched in particulars that described for this operation. What

has changed, to my mind, in the SAM debate is that earlier reports I

examined involved individuals who were assigned to guard boxes or

containers they were told contained SAMs. None claimed to have

actually seen a missile. More recent reports do claim to have actually

seen the weapon. These reports have included mention of Caucasians

(possibly ex-Yugoslav) responsible for making the equipment

operational.

35. For example, East German-manufactured AKMs provided by

corrupt Peruvian officials (after legal shipment from Jordan) are now

common. The impact of this influx of high quality weapons immediately

became apparent on the battlefield. Previously, stocks of captured

weapons held at COLAR brigades evinced a decidedly mixed nature,

with healthy percentages from Venezuelan official stocks and Norinco

batches imported originally by California firms, as evidenced by dealer

stamps, in addition to the expected captured Galil rifles. This

multiplicity of pieces, though, seems to have been replaced, particularly

in Bloque Oriental, by the AKMs.

36. Tapes examined December 2000, Colombian division holdings.

37. This has been standard since the COLAR counter in July 1999

all but wiped out the manpower of two fronts, creating a serious morale

problem.

38. Interview, March 29, 2000, at a divisional headquarters.

39. Such goes to the heart of the argument concerning FARC goals.

In all it says and does internally, it is noteworthy that FARC continues

to see itself as not only socialist but Marxist-Leninist in a world which

has strayed from the correct doctrine. This was the approach of Sendero

Luminoso, with FARC now seeing itself as the beacon for those who

continue to believe in “the way.”

40. The schooling system is intended to solidify the FARC

Marxist-Leninist ideological position, with all commanders being

required to pass through ideological indoctrination curricula. These are

established, with programs of instruction (POI) and texts. COLAR

sources interviewed in February 2001 indicated that they had not yet

obtained these materials, which might well have actually been seized

but remained at lower levels, given the low priority attached to such as

compared to more traditional order of battle (OB) data.

41. Most complete discussion to date of this episode is “Las Farc

Cayeron en la Trampa,” Semana, June 4-11, 2001, pp. 64-72.

40
42. Virtually all sources place the number of dead due to “the war” at

3,600-5,000 per year (from all sectors, not just the military), a relatively

low figure when one considers that California’s 1990 murder figure was

approximately 3,600 for a population of some 30 million. Yet the bulk of

the burden may be considered hidden. The various estimates of more

than a million displaced persons since 1995 are well-known. At any one

time, there are 300-350 military personnel, most COLAR, assigned to

the Rehabilitation Battalion after release from the larger Military

Hospital in Bogota: 71 percent gunshot, 5 percent mines; significantly,

15 percent are listed as psychiatric casualties. This is not publicized.

(Military figures from interviews with author, February 6, 2001,

Bogota.)

43. Extensive interviews conducted in recent years with COLAR

command personnel; most recently, May 2001.

44. With respect to the Vietnamese connection, this is the

assessment of analysts such as myself and Dave Spencer, a conclusion

we have reached based upon evidence contained in the likes of

interrogation of prisoners of war (IPW) reports, interviews with

insurgent prisoners and personalities, captured documents, and

associated documentation (such as course lists, in Vietnamese, obtained

in Vietnam, which show attendance by members of Colombian

insurgent groups). The relationship of the Vietnamese with Latin

American groups, such as Cuban armed forces and El Salvador’s FMLN,

and their transfer of Vietnamese doctrine and techniques, is better

documented. See David E. Spencer and Jose Angel Moroni Bracamonte,

Strategy and Tactics of the Salvadoran FMLN Guerrillas, Westport, CT:

Praeger, 1995; and Spencer, From Vietnam to El Salvador: The Saga of

the FMLN Sappers and Other Guerrilla Special Forces in Latin

America, Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996.

45. The most outstanding works on the subject remain those of

Douglas Pike, Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the

National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press, 1966; and PAVN: People’s Army of Vietnam, Novato, CA: Presidio

Press, 1986, esp. Chaps. 9 and 10 of Sect. IV, “Strategy.” Useful for

strategic view is Vo Nguyen Giap, People’s War, People’s Army, New

York: Bantam Books, 1968; better, for operational implementation, is

Truong Chinh, Primer for Revolt, reprint, New York: Praeger, 1963. The

most useful discussion for those interested in how the original sources

and Vietnamese thinking played themselves out on the battlefield is

Wray R. Johnson, Vietnam and American Doctrine for Small Wars,

Bangkok: White Lotus, 2000.

41
46. More research is required on this point. In a conversation with

Rafael Pardo, former Colombian Minister of Defense, on April 19, 2001,

at the University of San Diego conference, “Drug Trafficking and

Security in Colombia and Mexico,” he indicated that the prohibition

came not from insurgent demands but from requests of the security

forces themselves, thus to maintain their monopoly of legitimate force.

47. I reach this conclusion based upon interviews, in particular

those I had with Generals Millan, del Rio, and Usategui, August 4, 1999,

in Bogota.

48. Our involvement in Southeast Asia has been well-covered from a

security perspective. Far less known or understood is our Latin

American campaign. A superb recent contribution, with considerable

lessons for the present situation, is Alfred A. Barr and Caesar D.

Sereseres, “U.S. Unconventional Warfare Operations and Lessons

From Central America, 1980-90: A Successful Economy of Force

Engagement Strategy,” Low Intensity Conflict and Law Enforcement,

Vol. 8, No. 2, Summer 1999, pp. 1-32.

49. That such is the case in Colombia becomes clear when reading

even generally supportive publications such as Toward Greater Peace

and Security in Colombia, New York: Independent Task Force, Council

on Foreign Relations, 2000; and U.S. Interests and Objectives in

Colombia, The Working Group on Colombia, Council on Foreign

Relations, 2000. For a trenchant but accurate overview, see Michael

Radu, “The Perilous Appeasement of Guerrillas,” Orbis, Vol. 44, No. 3,

Summer 2000, pp. 363-379.

50. Colombia is now the third largest recipient of U.S. aid, trailing

only Israel and Egypt. Particulars of Plan Colombia and the U.S.

contribution may be found in David Spencer and Heather Noss,

Colombia: Strategic End State, Goals, and Means...A Workshop

Report, Alexandria, VA: Center for Strategic Studies, The CNA

Corporation, November 2000. This is one of the best “overview”

publications available on the current situation.

51. Little serious research has been conducted on autodefensas

phenomenon, though in its essential dynamic, it does not differ from

similar systemic reactions in conflicts as dissimilar as those in the

Philippines and Ulster. On Colombia, the work of David Spencer was an

early contribution, following hard on the heels of the superb series by

German Castro Caycedo in the “Actualidad” section of Cromos, issues of

January 22 and 29, and February 12 and 26, 1996, published as

“Historia Desconocida de los Paramilitares,” Parts I, II, III, and IV.

Colombia’s Ministry of National Defense has issued the English

42
language document, Illegal Self-Defense Groups in Colombia, Bogota:

December 2000. It is noteworthy that early, inadequate press coverage

has given way to more sober assessments which have considerable value

for scholars. Examples are Juan Forero, “Rightist Squads in Colombia

Beating the Rebels,” The New York Times, December 5, 2000, p. 1; Scott

Wilson, “Colombians Petition for Force Against Kidnappers,” The

Washington Post, November 25, 2000, p. A13; and “Colombia’s Other

Army,” The Washington Post, March 12, 2001, p. A1; to include

accompanying transcript of lengthy interview with Carlos Castaño;

Juan O. Tamayo, “Bloody Paramilitary’s Support Grows,” Miami

Herald, March 29, 2001, p. 1; and Karl Penhaul, “Outlaw Role Seen in

Colombia Effort,” Boston Globe, March 28, 2001, p. 8.

52. Dated February 2000, available at http://www.hrw.org/

reports/2000/colombia/. It might be more appropriate to call this

document “slanderous.” The materials presented, a mix of double

hearsay and tenuous connections, should never have survived even the

most cursory vetting process. Indeed, the lot would no doubt have ended

up on the cutting room floor had U.S. citizens been at issue. I would

surmise it was because those accused were foreigners that the normal

standards of evidence could be discarded.

53. In fact, the School of the Americas, which has now been renamed

and reorganized, whatever the HRW claims, focused largely on

technical training. That this-or-that officer might have gone there

would seem statistically quite irrelevant, as the U.S. Army itself has

pointed out in defending the institution. The nature of the critique may

readily be found; for a typical example, see David Pace, “Critics Link

Army Schools to Crime,” AP-NY-March 23, 1998, 1759 EDT, internet

download. There one finds, e.g., Representative Esteban Torres, D-CA,

saying, “The training that takes place in this country of military troops

from another country, on how to seduce, torture, intimidate... [sic] is

tantamount to what Nazis did.”

54. These figures, as well as those which follow in the next several

paragraphs, are taken from my notes during field work conducted in the

region, July-August 1997.

55. Of course, this argument will not stand up if FARC violence is

seen as self-defense and therefore justifiable. Regrettably, this seems to

be the position of a strong thread of the human rights campaign in

Colombia, activism disguised as altruism.

56. I have dealt with this analytical puzzle directly in “Evaluating

Insurgent/Counterinsurgent Performance,” Small Wars and

Insurgencies, Vol. 11, No. 3, Winter 2000, pp. 21-46.

43
57. Single best source on the approach of Sendero Luminoso, as well

as its astonishing level of violence, is David Scott Palmer, “The

Revolutionary Terrorism of Peru’s Shining Path,” in Martha Crenshaw,

ed., Terrorism in Context, University Park: The Pennsylvania State

University Press, 1995, pp. 249-308.

58. The area of human rights is a statistical minefield but one the

security forces have found they must enter. They have thus gone to great

lengths to demonstrate and publicize the nature of deaths and other

crimes related to the insurgency (as opposed to those attributed to

Colombia’s extraordinary crime rate)—to the point of publishing on the

COLAR web site (http://www.ejercito.mil.co) the particulars of every

individual who appears as but a bit of data on a table. These

demonstrate clearly the validity of the long-standing security force

contention that it is the insurgents who are overwhelmingly responsible

for not just deaths but all forms of human rights abuses. Recently

published sources include two excellent works from the Colombian

Ministry of Defense: La Fuerza Publica y los Derechos Humanos en

Colombia, Bogota: Ministerio de Defensa Nacional, March 2000, with

complete statistics through 1999; and Informe Anual Derechos

Humanos y DIH 2000, Bogota: Ministerio de Defensa Nacional, January

2001, with complete statistics through October 2000, available in

English as Annual Human Rights and International Humanitarian

Law Report 2000. Statistical updates are published monthly by the

Ministry of Defense in all major Colombian media. See, e.g., the full

page of data in El Tiempo, May 20, 2001, pp. 2-7, covering the

January-April 2001 period. One word of caution is in order in using the

tables provided in sources such as those above. Though they

demonstrate the dominance of the insurgents in all categories except

“massacres” (an artificial designation for four or more political victims

in a single killing), “guerrilla” casualties are further broken down by

group (e.g., FARC, ELN). This same division is not carried out for the

autodefensas, of which there are at least 11 identified bodies. Instead,

they are lumped under the designation of their unofficial coordinating

body, AUC. In reality, this body has no command authority over its

“members.”

44
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General Robert R. Ivany

Commandant

*****

STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

Director

Professor Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr.

Director of Research

Dr. Steven Metz

Author

Dr. Thomas Marks

Director of Publications

Ms. Marianne P. Cowling

Publications Assistant

Ms. Rita A. Rummel

*****

Composition

Ms. Kimberly A. Rockwell