THE UNITED STATES AND COLOMBIA:

THE JOURNEY FROM AMBIGUITY 

TO STRATEGIC CLARITY

Gabriel Marcella

May 2003
*****

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.

*****

This monograph is part of a larger project that is supported by a faculty 

research grant from the U.S. Army War College. It was first published by the 

Dante B. Fascell North-South Center, University of Miami, as Working Paper 

No. 13, March 2003, on its website: http://www.miami.edu/nsc/publications/NSC

PublicationsIndex.html#WP. The author thanks Maria Claudia Gomez, Frank 

Jones, Max Manwaring, Anthony J. Joes, Jeffrey Stark, and Joseph Nuñez for 

stimulating discussions and insights that have enriched the evolution of the 

paper. Special appreciation goes to Stuart Lippe for numerous conversations 

and insights on the development of U.S. policy.

*****

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ISBN 1-58487-125-3

ii
iii

FOREWORD

This monograph is an important contribution to the special series, 

“Shaping the Regional Security Environment in Latin America,” 

published jointly by the North-South Center of the University of 

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

College.

The report comes at a critical juncture, a time of promise for 

greater economic integration between the United States and Latin 

America, but also a time of profound concern about the deteriorating 

security situation in a number of countries in the region. Moreover, 

the events of September 11, 2001, have radically changed the 

strategic imperative for the United States. Within this larger context, 

American strategy towards Colombia shifted from a counternarcotics 

focus to more comprehensive support for that nation’s security. The 

shift recognizes that Colombia’s problems are deeply rooted and go 

beyond illegal narcotics. In the last year the Bush administration 

committed the United States to help Colombia defend democracy 

and to defeat the illegal armed groups of the left and right, doing so 

by promising to help that nation extend effective sovereignty over 

national territory and provide basic security to the people.

The author, Dr. Gabriel Marcella, identifies the strategic 

challenge of Colombia within the framework of the weak state 

and ungoverned space, made more complicated by the violence 

and corruption generated by the international organized criminals 

sustained by illegal drugs. He argues that the lessons learned in 

dealing with the security challenges that Colombia faces will have 

powerful consequences for the adaptation of American strategy to 

the conflict paradigm of the 21st century.

The Strategic Studies Institute and the North-South Center are 

pleased to offer this report as part of the continuing effort to inform 

the debate in the United States and abroad on the best way to support 

the government and people of Colombia.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute
PREFACE

Like Dr. Gabriel Marcella’s previous monograph on Plan 

Colombia, this monograph is eloquent and powerful. It is also urgent 

testimony to the immense stake that the nations of the Western 

Hemisphere — including the United States — have in the outcome 

of Colombia’s continuing crisis. That crisis goes well beyond the 

question of illegal drug trafficking and terrorism. The related social 

violence, criminality, corruption, human suffering, and instability 

lead to more violence and strife, as well as compromised democratic 

processes. In turn, the resultant political, economic, and social 

instability challenges the de jure and de facto sovereignty of the 

Colombian state, and it undermines the vital institutional pillars of 

regime governance and legitimacy. Ample experience demonstrates 

that this kind of political deterioration leads to some form of “narcosocialism” or state failure.

At the same time, the Colombian crisis extends past the 

political boundaries of that country. The spillover effects permeate 

hemispheric neighbors, the United States, and the entire global 

community. In these terms, Colombia is a revealing paradigm for 

21st century conflict. The implications of these harbingers of crises 

to come to other weak states are grave. The powerful combination 

of ungoverned national territory, insurgent terrorism of the left and 

right, transnational organized crime based on illegal drug trafficking, 

a deeply rooted elite culture characterized by a lack of accountability, 

violence, and impunity breed the viruses that threaten stability and 

prosperity. (And, again, the consequences include violence, crime, 

corruption, conflict, human agony, the erosion of democracy, and 

possible state failure).

The consequences of the crisis and its overlap effects preclude 

a vibrant community of democracies working toward the common 

goal of economic integration, peace, and prosperity in the 

hemisphere. On the other hand, if the countries of the hemisphere 

want to achieve that positive vision, they — as well as the United 

States — must go beyond past and present U.S.-mandated, myopic, 

ad hoc, piecemeal, tactical and operational military solutions—based 

on the current “politically correct” issue for the control of narcoterrorism. Rather, we must all embrace Gabriel Marcella’s “Journey 

from Ambiguity to Strategic Clarity.” Such a coordinated long-term 

U.S.-Latin American exercise may be difficult, but it is absolutely 

v
necessary given the obvious alternatives. Continued neglect and 

indifference to hemispheric instability problems will profoundly 

affect the health of the U.S. economy — and the concomitant power 

to act in the international security arena. Indeed, strategic access or 

denial of Latin America to the United States is at stake. 

The Dante B. Fascell North-South Center is pleased to collaborate 

with the U.S. Army War College. We offer, through a recent 

conference and now through a series of studies such as this, an 

ongoing analysis of the policy issues that are of critical importance 

to this country and to the Western Hemisphere.

Ambler H. Moss, Jr.

Director 

Dante B. Fascell 

North-South Center

University of Miami 

vi
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR

GABRIEL MARCELLA teaches strategy in the Department of 

National Security and Strategy at the United States Army War 

College. He previously served as International Affairs Adviser 

to the Commander-in-Chief, United States Southern Command. 

Dr. Marcella has written extensively on Latin American security 

issues and U.S. policy. Recent publications include “Plan Colombia: 

The Strategic and Operational Imperatives,” Security Cooperation in 

the Western Hemisphere: Resolving the Ecuador-Peru Conflict (coauthor); 

“The Interagency Process and National Security: Forward Into the 

21st Century,” and “The U.S. Engagement with Colombia: Legitimate 

State Authority and Human Rights.” Dr. Marcella’s current research 

focuses on the Colombian crisis and U.S. strategy, national security 

decisionmaking, and the strategic dimensions of civil-military 

relations. He is a frequent commentator on Latin American security 

and U.S. policy in the printed and electonic media.

vii
SUMMARY

There has been a remarkable turnaround in the policy of the 

United States towards Colombia. It has gone from an exclusive focus 

on counternarcotics to a comprehensive recognition of that nation’s 

deeply-rooted problems. The factors that drove this change are the 

tragic events of September 11, 2001, as well as the increased terrorism 

of the insurgents that threaten the state and society in Colombia. The 

evolution of American policy takes into account a recurring global 

geopolitical reality, of which Colombia is a paradigm: the problem of 

weak states and ungoverned space.

Colombia’s weak state is beset with a complex interaction of 

violence and corruption from the terrorist left and right, as well as 

the workings of international organized crime that prospers on the 

movement of illicit narcotics. At stake for the United States and the 

hemispheric community is the security of the immediate Andean 

and adjacent areas. Given the region’s worsening economic situation 

and the fragility of democratic institutions, the strategic denial of 

Latin America is taking shape. 

In this context the successive administrations of Andrés Pastrana 

and Alvaro Uribe have taken decisive measures to strengthen 

the institutional capacity of Colombia to deal with the multiple 

challenges it faces. These include expanding the size of the police and 

armed forces to provide security; conducting aggressive eradication 

of illicit narcotics; mobilizing people, money, and programs to 

reestablish the effective presence and services of the state across 

the national territory; building international support to isolate the 

terrorists and control international borders; and developing a more 

comprehensive relationship with the United States. The George 

W. Bush administration and the Congress have jointly developed 

expanded legal authorities to support Colombia’s needs, but the 

resources allocated are still relatively modest. The United States, as 

well as the international community, needs to provide more robust 

assistance to Colombia. It will require a generational effort. Unless 

such support is forthcoming, Colombia and much of Latin America 

may well become ungovernable. 

ix
THE UNITED STATES AND COLOMBIA:

THE JOURNEY FROM AMBIGUITY TO STRATEGIC CLARITY

 

 

In Colombia, we recognize the link between terrorist and 

extremist groups that challenges the security of the state and 

drug trafficking activities that help finance the operations of such 

groups. We are working to help Colombia defend its democratic 

institutions and defeat illegal armed groups of both the left and 

right by extending effective sovereignty over the entire national 

territory and to provide basic security to the Colombian people. 

 

President George W. Bush 

The National Security Strategy 

of the United States,

September 2002

Introduction.

President Bush’s sweeping support for Colombia underlines 

a remarkable turnaround in U.S. policy. Driven for years by the 

ambiguity of a counternarcotics-only approach, the United States 

has now adopted a more comprehensive recognition of Colombia’s 

deeply rooted and complex security problem. Indeed, Colombia is 

a revealing paradigm for 21st century conflict. It is a surprisingly 

weak state under assault by a powerful combination of ungoverned 

national territory, insurgent terrorism of the left and right, 

international crime organized around drug trafficking, a deeply 

rooted counterculture of violence and impunity, ecological damage, 

and institutional corruption. Unlike the Cold War military and 

ideological confrontation between two superpowers, a country’s 

debilities, rather than its strengths, breed the viruses that threaten 

the international community and the United States.

State weakness is one of a number of forces battering away at the 

Westphalian state system that has prevailed since 1648. That system 

raised respect for sovereignty as the basic organizing principle of 

international order. Accordingly, all states, whatever their internal 

differences and religious makeup, are beneficiaries of international 

order and are obligated to reciprocate by upholding the same 

principles.

Sovereignty is being violated with impunity by criminal 

1
2

nonstate actors, who take advantage of ungoverned space, weak 

to nonexistent border controls, the facility offered by globalization, 

and the corresponding corruption of government officials and 

institutions. David C. Jordan, a prominent scholar of Latin America, 

comments on this pattern:

Finance, trade, and organized crime are globalized 

phenomena and operate in a de facto integrated system. 

This integrated economic system has a tendency to create 

a transnational criminal oligarchy undergirded by state 

rivalries. Political rivalry facilitates the growth of an 

unchecked transnational elite—an important part of which 

is criminal. At the same time, the processes within the 

states assist the rise, transformation, and persistence of 

unaccountable rulers despite formal democratic procedures.1

The corruption of emerging democracies follows, a process that 

Jordan terms “narcostatization.”2 In January 2003, for example, 

Mexico shut down for the second time in 6 years its equivalent of the 

U.S. Department of Justice Drug Enforcement Agency, the Federal 

Special Prosecutor’s Office for Drug Crimes. The reason: its 200 

employees were being questioned for corruption by drug traffickers.3

Since the year 2000, more than 800 employees of Mexico’s attorney 

general’s office have been suspended, fired, or charged with crimes, 

and another 1,300 were or are being investigated. 

Similarly, in late January 2003, Guatemala became the 23rd nation 

cited by President George W. Bush for having “failed demonstrably” 

to meet its obligations under international counternarcotics 

agreements because of a “heightened level of corruption.”4 The list 

includes Afghanistan, the Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, Burma, China, 

Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, India, Jamaica, 

Laos, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Thailand, 

Venezuela, and Vietnam. The same 22 nations were listed in 2002. 

 Narcostatization works the vulnerable seams of sovereignty and 

renders states poor Westphalian partners. An excellent illustration 

came in May 1999, when the Venezuelan government denied 

overflight rights to American reconnaissance craft monitoring 

airspace for drug flights moving north and east from Colombia, 

Peru, and Bolivia. Moisés Naim, editor of Foreign Policy and one 

time minister of finance in Venezuela, commented on the irony of 

the decision: “Venezuelan authorities placed more importance on 

the symbolic value of asserting sovereignty over air space than on 
3

the fact that drug traffickers’ planes regularly violate Venezuelan 

territory.”5 Sovereignty can thus become a refuge for states unwilling 

to uphold their international obligations.

The export of illegal drugs from weak states in the Andean 

region, especially Colombia, and their accompanying violence 

and corruption have a powerful effect on regional security and 

U.S. society. Indeed, despite the seeming hyperbole, Colombia’s 

President Álvaro Uribe called narco-trafficking “a greater threat 

than Iraq” and urged that after the war in Iraq is over the United 

States lead a coalition with a massive deployment of naval and air 

power to attack it and terrorism.6

The strategic and operational lessons learned as the United States 

responds to the Colombian crisis will have significant implications 

for Latin America as well as for the U.S. role around the globe in 

succeeding years. U.S. grand strategy envisions a hemispheric 

community of economically integrated democracies cooperating 

on the world scene for common purposes. Narcostatization, if it 

continues, threatens to deny Latin America strategically to the 

United States, something that neither the Nazis in World War II 

nor the Soviets during the Cold War could do. Colombia is then 

both a paradigm of 21st century conflict and a critical test case for 

U.S. strategy. This monograph analyzes the nature of Colombia’s 

complex problems, looks at the evolution of U.S. strategy, and makes 

recommendations for new directions.

Why Colombia Matters. 

Colombia’s importance to U.S. national interests cannot be 

overstated. Its 43 million people and location astride two oceans 

make it geopolitically significant. It is the fifth largest trading partner 

in Latin America for the United States, with two-way trade exceeding 

US $11 billion annually. Direct U.S. investment in Colombia exceeds 

$4 billion. Colombia is the tenth largest supplier of oil to the United 

States and could rise in that ranking if petroleum extraction could be 

conducted in a more secure environment. An estimated 2.5 million 

Colombians live in the United States, and more come every day, 

including some of the country’s most talented people.7 Colombia 

has an immensely diverse and valuable ecosystem and is a partner 

with Amazon Basin nations in efforts to protect it. As the anchor 

of Andean security, Colombia’s internal troubles export violence, 

corruption, drugs, and ecological damage to the immediate region. 
4

Colombia provides some 90 percent of the cocaine entering the 

United States and produces 70 percent of the world’s total. Illegal 

drug use kills some 50,000 persons each year in the United States. The 

costs of health care, accidents, policing, and lost productivity related 

to addiction and crime reached $160 billion in 2000. Illegal drugs 

are one of the main causes for the swelling prison population in the 

United States and the serious crime problem among communities. 

A permanently addicted population is an enormous social and 

economic burden. 

From the context of the post-September 11, 2001, heightened 

security consciousness, Colombia’s internal problems represent a 

formidable international threat. Unlike the threat paradigm that 

defined the East-West conflict during the Cold War, Colombia 

belongs to a class of countries that threaten the international 

community, not with their individual or collective strength but 

with their weaknesses. A “broken windows theory” of international 

relations would argue that the decline of the regional neighborhood 

threatens the international community in untraditional ways: 

international organized crime, the violation of sovereign borders, 

contraband, the illegal shipment of arms, chemicals, laundering of 

dirty money, suborning of public officials (members of the police, 

military, legislative bodies, judiciaries, and so on), the corruption 

and intimidation of the media, displaced persons, and the formation 

of an international demimonde within which terrorism breeds and 

intersects with organized crime. A January 2003 article in Bogotá’s 

El Tiempo made this point in reporting that more than 50 Colombian 

criminal gangs, with perhaps a total of 2,000 members, were 

responsible for robberies and narco-trafficking in Madrid, Spain.8

That country is home to more than 400,000 Colombian immigrants 

of the Colombian diaspora. 

This melancholy brew puts at risk not only the ideals of democracy 

and human dignity, but also threatens to derail the ambitious 

hemispheric integration agenda of a Free Trade Area of the Americas 

(FTAA) and the accompanying package of social, economic, political, 

and ecological advances to which the presidents at the Summits of 

the Americas have committed themselves since the Miami Summit 

of 1994. For the United States, it is even more pertinent because 

homeland defense is taking on renewed prominence in strategic 

planning. Illegal drugs, violence, contraband, illegal migration, and 

corruption directly affect homeland defense because of the easy 

penetrability of air, land, and maritime borders. 
5

The Colombian crisis occurs within the context of a broader Latin 

American crisis of authority, governance, and legitimacy. Economies 

are declining, with unemployment at politically unsustainable levels. 

The institutions of democracy are fragile, while social delinquency 

and citizen insecurity are reaching intolerable proportions. Moreover, 

environmental degradation continues, reducing the quality of life 

and breeding the frustration that engenders more violence. As a 

result, the legitimacy of democracy as the preferred political form is 

under assault by a new wave of populism that promises much but 

so far has delivered little to the people. In this troubled environment, 

achieving the FTAA, with a potential market of 800 million by 2005, 

becomes a stretch.

Latin America’s deterioration has five critical implications for 

the U.S. strategic position. First, U.S. investments and exports to 

the region will decline in the face of shrinking markets. Second, 

Latin America (notably Venezuela and Mexico) once provided a 

large amount of U.S. energy imports, but the political polarization 

in Venezuela between the supporters of President Hugo Chávez 

(who preaches a combination of anti-American nationalism, 

populism, and class warfare) and the political opposition led to the 

interruption of the flow of petroleum in the winter of 2002-03 from 

what was once the United States’ most secure source. Third, the 

support of Latin American countries is fundamental to the United 

States over a spectrum of transnational issues that affect the health 

and security of U.S. society: illegal drugs, terrorism, international 

crime, contraband, global warming, environmental degradation, 

and dealing with contagious diseases. Fourth, the deterioration of 

socioeconomic conditions and citizen insecurity accelerates illegal 

migration to the United States. 

 Fifth, the delegitimation of democracy in Latin America could 

become a strategic defeat for the influence of U.S. principles around 

the globe, from human rights to democracy to free trade.9 Already 

evident is another leftward drift in the politics of certain Latin 

American countries, as leaders try to meet the unfulfilled promise 

of democracy for a better life for the masses. This is visible in the 

form of an informal “axis of populism, or axis of popular rhetoric,”10

alleged to be taking shape among Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio 

Lula da Silva, Ecuador’s President Lucio Gutiérrez, Venezuela’s 

President Hugo Chávez, and Cuba’s President Fidel Castro. 

Though this is an unlikely lot (Lula and Gutiérrez, neither reckless 

populists nor communists, are, in fact, pragmatists) and the rhetoric 
6

may be overblown, support for U.S. global policy is declining in 

Latin America. Echoing this view, Peru’s Foreign Minister, Allen 

Wagner, stated in 2002 that because of inattention to Latin America’s 

economic problems, the United States was losing its strategic partner 

— namely, Latin America. In 2002 the aggregate economy of Latin 

America contracted by 0.5 percent, taking it back to 1997 levels.11

In the meantime, the United Nations Children’s Fund reported that 

half of the 120 million children in Latin America are poor, with 20 

million working in the streets.

Colombia’s Uniqueness.

Colombia is sometimes referred to as the Tibet of Latin America 

because it is geographically enclosed and relatively unknown by 

the academic community. One of the leading authorities on the 

country, David Bushnell, states, “Colombia is the least studied 

of the major Latin American countries, and probably the least 

understood.”12 Colombia’s history and politics do not conform 

to some of the classical patterns of Latin America. A two-party 

system, Liberals versus Conservatives, has dominated political 

life since independence, with few legitimate leftist alternatives, 

including having a weak Communist Party. These are reasons for 

the emergence of a militarized left, composed of the Revolutionary 

Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de 

Colombia — FARC), the National Liberation Army (Ejército de 

Liberación Nacional — ELN), and smaller offshoots. They are the 

oldest guerrilla groups in the world and are self-sustaining by virtue 

of internal sanctuaries and income from drug trafficking, extortion, 

and kidnapping. Unlike the rest of Latin America, Colombia, 

until recently, always stood out for its consistently solid economic 

performance. Moreover, the military has been subordinated to 

civilian authority, though, as will be discussed later, at a significant 

cost for civil-military relations and national defense. 

Though the Vice-royalty of New Granada was an important 

component of Spain’s system of imperial defense, the area of modern 

Colombia was a relatively backward part of the Spanish empire and 

remained a poor country until the coffee boom of the late 19th and 

early 20th centuries. No country in Latin America has the difficult 

geography, divided by three massive chains of the Andes, and the 

pattern of dispersed settlements, poor national integration, and poor 

communications. The airplane literally transformed internal travel.13
7

Regional autonomy has been a strong factor in national politics. 

Independent states within the larger Colombia, for example, had 

their own armies in the 19th century.

Colombia also experienced the national trauma of La Violencia, 

an undeclared civil war that began in 1948 and killed an estimated 

200,000 people in the next 10 years. This searing experience led to the 

National Front Agreement of 1957, by which the two parties agreed 

to alternate the presidency and apportion political power. The 

arrangement actually weakened the political parties and democracy 

by foreclosing competition. It also marginalized the military even 

more. Moreover, the National Front generated corruption. An 

Athenian democracy controlled by a few families characterized 

the country until the Constitution of 1991 was passed. Colombian 

political life is represented by two clashing cultures: one of legality 

designed to limit the abuse of power and one of impunity. An astute 

Colombian states, “Our judicial system is full of restrictions for 

tyranny, but is very lax with respect to crime.”14 As will be seen later 

in this monograph, Colombians continue to pay a high price for this 

dualism. 

Anatomy of a Weak State.

Though few states have it in complete form, sovereignty has four 

components: a sovereign state should exercise complete political 

authority over its national territory, monopolize the instruments of 

legitimate use of force, control its borders, and conduct foreign policy 

freely with other governments who recognize it as independent. At 

the same time, a sovereign state has responsibilities to uphold these 

principles in the international system, so that the other members 

benefit from the association. 

Sovereignty is not absolute; scholars debate whether a state can 

lose its sovereignty. They conclude in the affirmative for states that 

commit genocide, thereby legitimating foreign intervention for 

humanitarian purposes. The concept of sovereignty evolves, and its 

application in a globalized world is becoming less and less absolute. 

A controversial example of this is extending the authority of the 

International Criminal Court to any citizen of any country thought 

to be guilty of human rights violations; for example, Chile’s Augusto 

Pinochet was wanted by Spanish justice and detained accordingly 

by British law.15

The evolving concept of conditional sovereignty is central to the 
8

National Security Strategy promulgated by President George W. Bush 

in September 2002. Arguing on its behalf, Richard Haass, director of 

the Policy Planning Staff of the Department of State, asserts, “When 

states violate minimum standards by committing, permitting, 

or threatening intolerable acts against their own people or other 

nations, then some of the privileges of sovereignty are forfeited.”16

Making sovereignty conditional and contingent has enormous 

policy implications. It allows, argues Haass, the use of force against 

states that support international terrorism and preemptive force 

against states that threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. 

The legitimation of a strategy of preemption against such rogues is 

the most innovative and controversial aspect of the Bush National 

Security Strategy of 2002. Historian Philip Bobbitt, former director of 

Strategic Planning at the National Security Council, admonishes:

We are at a moment in world affairs when the essential ideas 

that govern statecraft must change. For five centuries it has 

taken the resources of a state to destroy another state. . . . 

This is no longer true, owing to advances in international 

communications, rapid computation, and weapons of mass 

destruction. The change that will accompany these developments 

will be as profound as any that the State has thus far undergone.17

Colombia has the last two attributes of sovereignty but not 

the first two. It is indeed a vigorous member of the international 

community and enjoys diplomatic relations with the majority of the 

states of the world.18 Colombia is an active member of the United 

Nations (a rotating member, holding the presidency of the Security 

Council in 2002, and participating in multinational peacekeeping 

operations under UN auspices), the Organization of American States, 

and countless other multilateral organizations. It does not, however, 

exercise complete political authority within its national boundaries, 

nor does it monopolize the instruments of coercion. An estimated 40 

percent of the national territory is not controlled by the government, 

both in rural and urban areas. The problem becomes more severe 

because neighboring states — Panama, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, 

and Peru — do not exercise sovereign control over their own borders 

with Colombia (though Ecuador does much better than the others). 

These defects are at the heart of Colombia’s impact on international 

order and the policy dilemmas they pose for the United States, Latin 

American countries, and European states. 

In Colombia, five competitors vie for political authority 
9

and for the monopoly of force, and they make war against the 

state, themselves, and society. They are: criminal gangs with no 

apparent agenda other than materialism; internationally organized 

drug trafficking criminal gangs (estimated to number 162 drug 

cartels within Colombia) of extraordinary international reach; 

the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas 

Revolucionarias de Colombia — FARC), with 17,000 to 18,000 

members; the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación 

Nacional — ELN), with perhaps 5000 members; and the Colombian 

Self Defense Forces (Fuerzas de Autodefensa de Colombia — AUC), 

estimated at 12,000. These three insurgent/terrorist groups enjoy 

little standing in the international community, though for decades 

the FARC and ELN laid claim to a revolutionary agenda of social 

justice and enjoyed some international legitimacy. Since the mid1980s they have become financially dependent on criminal activities, 

such as drug trafficking, extortion, and kidnapping, and thereby 

lost any semblance of revolutionary legitimacy. In 2002, through 

the effective personal diplomacy of President Andrés Pastrana, even 

the reluctant European Union recognized the FARC and ELN as 

terrorist groups. 

The five groups deploy enough armed power to maintain a 

level of violence that makes “colombianization” a metaphor for 

interminable violence and the corrupting influence of illegal drugs. 

The Colombian state infrastructure of judicial system, police, 

military, schools, and communications is nearly absent in major 

portions of the national territory, precisely where the five contenders 

occupy space, apply their de facto legal systems, and conduct foreign 

operations with traffickers, assorted criminals, gun runners, soldiers 

of fortune, international terrorists, and corrupt government officials 

of various countries.

It is important to underscore that Colombia is not a failing state.19

(See Table 1.) It is, instead, a geographically large state that has 

historically been enfeebled by strong regionalist tendencies and an 

elite preference for weak central authority. However, the narcoticsrelated violence of the past 2 decades has generated immense 

insecurity that has national and international resonance, as well as a 

serious negative impact on economic growth. Some basic facts will 

illuminate the challenges to internal sovereignty and international 

order.
10

Population 43,000,000

GDP US $90 billion

GDP growth rates 1.4% (2001), 1.6% (2002)

Unemployment (urban) 18.2% (2001), 17.6% (2002)

Underemployment (urban) 30% (2000), 33% (2002)

Poverty* 54.9% of population (1999),

54.8% (2000), 54.9% (2001)

Indigence* 26.8% (1999), 27.1% (2000),

27.6% (2001)

*Poverty means a person earns the equivalent of US $2 per day,

indigence $1 per day.

Source: Abstracted from the United Nations Economic Commission 

for Latin America, 2003, Social Panorama of Latin America, 2001-2002

(Santiago, Chile: United Nations).

Table 1. Basic Statistics on Colombia.

Weak Military.

Colombia measures three times the size of Montana and is 

endowed with a very difficult geography. (See Figure 1.) In mid2002, Colombia’s military had only 60,000-80,000 soldiers available 

for combat against the FARC, ELN, and AUC; to protect the 

electrical infrastructure, roads and communications, and oil and

gas pipelines (5,000 critical points) from sabotage by these insurgent 

groups; and to patrol 18,000 kilometers of roads and rivers. The 

rest of the troops were in support roles or in training. Additionally, 

6,242 corregimientos (districts) needed military presence, but 

only 980 had it, while the AUC, FARC, and ELN were present 

in some 5,300 districts. Military resources were concentrated in 

zones of higher population density and greater economic activity. 

This is nothing new; a weak military has been the historical 

pattern. Colombian elites historically have preferred a weak central 

government and a weak military. A vicious cycle developed: civilians 

preferred a weak military for fear that it would take political power, 

but then gave it missions it could not possibly fulfill because of lack 

of resources. Not until 1997 did the Colombian Army, for example, 

acquire an aviation wing. This occurred very late, even by Latin 
11

Figure 1.

American standards, and was especially telling, given Colombia’s 

extraordinary size, difficult topography, communications, and 

the pervasiveness of the violence. The military was often forced 

to improvise to get resources. For example, to protect itself from 

extortion by the FARC and ELN, a Colombian coal mining company 

in the department of César had to pay the army to provide security 

because the army did not have the resources to deploy soldiers for 

that purpose.20 Many examples of such ad hoc arrangements, wherein 

the Army did not have the resources for the mission assigned to it, 

exist. Over time, a military commander’s promotion potential also 

depended upon his ability to improvise resources.

Through most of the 19th century, the army seldom counted 

more than 2,000 soldiers. During the U.S.-Colombian crisis over 

Panama of 1903, which led to Panama’s independence, the digging 

of the Canal, and the long-term U.S. military presence, Bogotá had 

a mere 500 troops and an insignificant navy. The reasons for a small 

and weak military are deeply embedded in Colombian history. 

Independence from Spain was received in 1819 from an army largely 

led by the foreign Venezuelan officers of Simón Bolívar. A strong 

sense of anti-militarism emerged early on among Colombian elites. 

Additionally, elites in Colombia’s autonomous regions did not want 
12

to empower Bogotá with too much authority in the form of the 

military or in taxing power. Civilian leaders have also preferred to 

maintain the armed forces at arm’s length from society, thus creating 

a communication breach between civilians and military institutions. 

The institutional bias against the military impedes the nurturing of 

mutually supportive civil-military relations and development of the 

strategic instrument of legitimate coercive authority.

As recently as the mid-1990s (during the Ernesto Samper 

administration), Colombia experienced a time of intensified 

internal violence. The government reduced the military budget 

instead of increasing it. The modern Colombian Army originated 

with the participation of a battalion in the Korean War alongside 

the U.S. Army, which was under the command of the father of 

General Barry McCaffrey, former Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. 

Southern Command and later Director of the Office of National 

Drug Control Policy in the Clinton administration. The Colombian 

army’s evolution was deeply influenced by operations against La 

Violencia, which began in 1948, and by the wave of insurgency 

initiated by the FARC in 1964, later joined by the ELN and smaller 

groups.21 Unquestionably, the Colombian Army is one of the most 

experienced counterinsurgency armies in the world. It has been 

conducting counterinsurgency and counterterrorist operations for 5 

decades, but civilian governments have rarely provided it with the 

necessary resources, a reality that began to change after President 

Pastrana came to power in 1998.

Lack of Civilian Ability to Oversee the Military. Another debility 

is that Colombia civilian authorities lack the experience of working 

with the military in integrating strategy, intelligence, and operations 

— a costly deficiency for a society at war for so long. This is not 

to argue that the Colombian military is autonomous from civilian 

control. Far from it; it is one of the most obedient. For a long time 

civilian leaders have held the attitude that the military can be left to 

itself to take care of national defense, doing so without the civilians 

establishing clear expectations, providing the strategic guidance, 

and holding military commanders accountable.

The problem of civilian involvement is deeply rooted; civilians 

appear to lack the intellectual know-how and political will to direct 

the legitimate armed instrument of the state in a strategic manner. 

Even though Colombia has one of the best civilian-headed ministries 

of defense in Latin America, not enough professional civilians are 

qualified in strategic and military affairs. Among civilian intellectuals, 
13

there is a general indifference regarding military affairs. Civilians 

and the members of the military rarely socialize and have few 

professional interactions.22 This suggests that civilians do not bear 

their full responsibility in national defense.23 As part of its assistance, 

the United States has mounted an ambitious civil-military relations 

program to help Colombian officials develop the skills for strategic 

planning.24 However, it will take a significant investment of time in 

civilian professionalization to create the depth of expertise required 

to inspire confidence and trust between civilians and the military. A 

civilian career service in defense would be a welcome innovation.

Minimal Defense Budget. The defense budget, which includes the 

police (the police are part of the Ministry of Defense), increased 

from $2.965 billion to $3.256 billion in 2001, still a small 3.5 percent 

of the gross domestic product (GDP) for a nation at war. Colombia’s 

defense budget also covers such costs as traffic control in the capital. 

The actual percentage of GDP spent on the military in 2000 was a 

meager 1.89 percent. Colombia’s average annual defense spending 

in the 1990s of 1.35 percent of GDP ranked low, compared with other 

countries in Latin America, none of whom had the internal security 

threat of the magnitude of Colombia’s. Chile and Argentina had few 

internal security threats. The comparison with countries experiencing 

internal conflicts was even less favorable. (See Table 2.)

Countries with Few Internal 

Security Threats

Chile 2.06

Argentina 1.48

Countries with Internal 

Conflicts

Algeria 3.9

Colombia 1.35

Lebanon 3.2

Turkey 4.4

Venezuela 1.38

Table 2. Percentage of GDP for Defense Spending.
14

According to the highly respected National Association of 

Financial Institutions, located in Bogotá, adding 10,000 troops 

per year to the Colombian army would cost a mere 0.15 percent 

of the GDP, which could be financed by eliminating unnecessary 

expenditures and internal corruption.25 Despite this record of 

insufficient resources, the Colombian military was performing better 

in 2002-03 because of the restructuring and expansion that began 

with the Pastrana administration. It was still too small and lacked 

the tactical mobility to “take and hold” territory.

The Colombian military is transforming itself to fight more 

effectively and take the offensive against the three terrorist groups. 

As part of this transformation, it is critical that the military strengthen 

its societal linkage. For example, according to a law passed in 1962, 

high school graduates — bachilleres — were exempt from combat risk 

while serving in the military. This measure was akin to the college 

student deferments for Americans during the Vietnam conflict; 

while well-intentioned, it weakened what the Prussian military 

thinker, Carl von Clausewitz, called the trinitarian relationship 

among the people, the armed forces, and society that is so crucial 

to winning in war. Consequently, until recently, the army had some 

35,000 soldiers who were deskbound and not available for combat 

operations in the field.

A U.S. State Department official calculated that a Colombian 

high school graduate has a 1 in 50 chance of being drafted, while the 

humble nonhigh school graduate of the lower class has a much better 

chance. Moreover, to poor people, being a member of the military is 

a paying job. So, of course, they are the ones who will do the dirty 

work of fighting and dying. Thus, Colombia exemplifies the “rich 

man’s war and the poor man’s fight.”26 Even though some high 

school graduates do indeed serve in combat, current practice still 

reflects an elite view that military service is suitable only for those 

of the lower class. Such an attitude is not conducive to the collective 

sacrifice that is crucial to winning wars. President Uribe, in January 

2003, called for legislative approval of mandatory military service.

Weak, Dysfunctional Judicial System.

Colombia’s judicial system is weak and dysfunctional, with 95 

to 98 percent of crimes committed going unpunished. This amazing 

statistic is true, despite the fact that Colombia’s allocation is the 

second highest percentage of a national budget to its judicial system 
15

in Latin America: 4.5 percent in the late 1990s. On a per capita basis, 

it employs one of the highest numbers of judges of any democracy, 

17.1 per 100,000 people. In comparison, the United States employs 

two and Spain three judges for the same number of citizens.27 The 

ineffectiveness is compounded by the lack of police presence in 157 

of over 1,000 municipalities; thus the absence of the capacity for 

law enforcement and an invitation to the FARC, ELN, and AUC 

to do what they want. Much of the impunity originates from the 

intimidation and bribing of judges and witnesses, and some from 

the complexity of the system itself. Also, a general disregard for law 

in Colombian political culture has deep roots in Spanish imperial 

administration and the Laws of the Indies promulgated by the 

distant metropole: “Hecha la ley, hecha la trampa” (Once a law is 

made, corruption begins). Members of the Colombian legislature 

who do not resist the temptation of bribes and intimidation often 

will water down or defeat legislation aimed at strengthening the 

government’s ability to deal with drug trafficking.

Corruption. Corruption is a pervasive problem. Speaking of 

the societal impact of corruption and criminality, distinguished 

Colombian scholar Francisco E. Thoumi warns against the dishonesty 

trap: 

. . . when criminal behavior is tolerated and accepted, the 

socialization process ends, producing a generation of individuals 

with weak internalized constraints. In these cases, it may be 

argued that a society falls into a “dishonesty trap” from which it 

is very difficult to escape. The problem is simply that where most 

people are dishonest, it is very costly for anyone to be honest.28

The data support Thoumi. For example, Bogotá’s El Tiempo

reported in a January 2003 poll that Colombians expect 10 percent of 

public officials to be corrupt, while 57 senators and representatives, 

83 former legislators, and a former comptroller general had been 

accused of “influence peddling.”29

The same newspaper reported that 4,000 legal proceedings 

were underway against people accused of bribing. “In Colombia,” 

it said, “almost everything can be bought or sold.”30 It is reported 

that half of the Colombians who solicit visas to the United States, 

approximately 150,000 per year, present one false document.31 For 

this crime, 591,000 legal proceedings are underway. A World Banksponsored study concluded: “The capture of the state, meaning the 

capacity of interest groups to influence through corrupt practices the 
16

higher levels of state decisions, appears as one of the most dominant 

forms of corruption in Colombia.”32

Lack of State Presence and Control.

The state does not exercise control over an estimated 40 percent 

of the national territory, precisely the areas where illegal drugs are 

cultivated and where the FARC, ELN, the AUC, and the narcotraffickers are active, in a sense filling the void with de facto 

administrative systems in place of the state. This is especially true of 

the northwestern areas of Urabá and Chocó as well as those of eastern 

and southeastern Colombia, the lightly populated departments of 

Arauca, Guaviare, Meta, Guainía, Caquetá, Vaupés, Vichada, and 

Putumayo, parts of which make up the llanos (plains) of the Amazon 

Basin, where permanent habitation is difficult and the presence of 

the state is minimal.

Colombia at the dawn of the 21st century still has numerous 

expanding internal frontiers, zones of initial colonization by 

peasants and entrepreneurs seeking quick wealth in the form of 

valuable wood or other commodities. The agencies of government 

are scarcely, if at all, present in these areas. This is notably the case 

in the remote southern department of Putumayo, the locus of much 

of the coca cultivation and the citadel of the FARC for many years. 

With good reason, one senior Ecuadorian officer said of Putumayo, 

“We don’t have a border with Colombia but with the FARC.” Of 

all the neighboring countries, Ecuador is the most deeply affected 

by spillover violence and corruption. It has also made the greatest 

efforts to place military forces as a security cordon along the 

Colombian border, as well as to coordinate border security with 

Colombian counterparts.33

As noted before, Colombia, much like its neighbors, does 

not control its borders. The unpopulated border with Panama is 

frequently traversed by both the FARC and AUC, who enter the 

remote jungle of eastern Darién to get supplies and to fight each 

other, with little challenge from Panama’s police.34 Panama is hard 

put to control the area with its police force, having disbanded its 

despised military after the 1989 U.S. operation JUST CAUSE. Even 

before JUST CAUSE, the area was essentially beyond the sovereign 

control of Panama. Illegal armed groups (either the FARC or AUC) 

entered the Darién in January 2003 and killed four Panamanian 

citizens, prompting another bilateral meeting between Bogotá and 
17

Panama City to try to beef up security.

The long Venezuelan frontier is easily penetrated by the FARC 

and ELN for rest and recreation and for logistical support, with 

apparent compliance by the Chávez government (which has been 

accused of playing a double game of sympathy, if not support, 

for the FARC and ELN along with support for the Colombian 

government), according to public statements made by military 

opponents of the Venezuelan government. The Colombian defense 

minister in February 2003 asserted concern about Venezuela’s 

attitude, “With the government of Venezuela [cooperation] has been 

very difficult. We shall see how things evolve in Venezuela but we 

really have difficulties there, above all because Colombian guerrillas 

have moved with certain liberty in that boundary area.” She went 

on to contrast Venezuela with increasing cooperation from Brazil, 

Peru, and Ecuador to control borders.35 Ecuador keeps reinforcing its 

troops and police on the border with Colombia.36

The long, unpopulated, and jungle-covered Brazilian and 

Peruvian borders are practically open, though both countries in 

recent years have made greater efforts at border control.37 Brazil is 

constructing the extensive Amazon System of Surveillance to protect 

the security of the vast region more effectively, while the Brazilian 

Army’s Amazon Military Command, located in Manaus, attempts 

to provide security to the distant borders by establishing a presence 

(presencia) in garrison communities in the upper Amazon. All of the 

borders afford the freedom to move guns, ammunition, precursor 

chemicals (for drug production), drugs, money, and people and to 

conduct hot pursuit against any enemy.38 Violence often spills over 

into the territories of Panama, Ecuador, and Venezuela.

Another telling deficiency is the absence of the Colombian 

National Police in many areas in sufficient numbers to deter 

crime. Though there has been significant growth in police and 

supplementary military forces since 1993, the gap between Colombia 

and peaceful law-abiding societies is impressive. Table 3 indicates 

comparative statistics of the distribution of police per population for 

1993 and shows that Colombia is at the very lowest of international 

rankings.
18

Colombia 1,670

Switzerland 2,000

U.S., Australia 2,500

Canada, Sweden 2,500

France 3,500

Austria, Peru 3,500

Malaysia 4,700

Uruguay 7,600

Table 3. Comparative Police Forces per Million People. 39

The Uribe administration promised to place a minimum of 46 

police in each municipal capital by September 2003. When Uribe took 

office in August 2002, there were 79,000 professional police. Plans 

are to increase the total to 100,000 by the end of 2003.40 At that rate, 

Colombia will have approximately 4,300 police per million people. 

The return of policemen was already having a notable impact. In 

the town of Chalán, the Sucre department had been without public 

security since 1996, when the FARC detonated a “burro bomb” that 

killed 11 policemen. On December 29, 2002, 55 policemen returned 

to duty, and the life of the small town resumed a more normal 

rhythm.41

Weak Tax Collection System.

Two critical measures of the effectiveness of a modern state 

are its ability to legitimately coerce compliance to the rule of law 

(monopoly of force) and the ability to collect taxes (what political 

scientists call extracting resources) to provide governance.42 The 

two are intimately related. Tax revenues provide the resources for 

extending the benefits of the social contract between the state and 

the people. On both counts Colombia is deficient. The tax system is 

complex, repressive, inequitable, and suffers from extensive evasion. 

The following statistics are eloquent. 

The government collects half of its budget in taxes and finances 

the rest. Eight tax reforms in the 1990s increased collections by a 

mere 3 percent. In a country of 43 million, 4,500 large tax contributors 

account for 90 percent of the income tax. Only 10 percent of the 

population pays taxes of any kind. In some regions, such as La 
19

Guajira, contraband accounts for 60 percent of the economy. 

Penalizing tax evasion is made difficult by the fact that less than 8,000 

employees are available for the task, and 20,000 are needed. Finally, 

on a comparative basis, tax collection corresponds to 4 percent of 

gross domestic product, versus in 11 percent in developed countries. 

According to Carlos Ossa, Comptroller General under President 

Andrés Pastrana: “Colombia has not made a serious effort. We have 

agreed on how much to spend but not on the size of our state, nor on 

how much to collect from taxes.”43

Upon taking office, President Uribe declared a state of emergency 

in the nation and imposed a new tax on wealthier citizens and 

businesses. The new tax of 1.2 percent affected those with $65,000 

of liquid assets. An estimated 400,000 people would qualify for the 

tax, raising approximately $800 million for the defense budget.44 It 

seemed certain that this would not be a one-time tax.

The Nature of the Conflict.

Colombia today would be a completely different country if it had 

not suffered for the last twenty years all the perverse effects of 

narco-trafficking. . . . It would be more secure, more governable 

and more democratic (Ministry of Defense of Colombia).45

The Colombian conflict is generated by a complex mix of 

historical contention over land ownership, common criminality, 

narcotics related crime, and insurgency (FARC and ELN) that once 

had an ideological foundation but now has been corrupted by money 

from narcotics, kidnapping, and extortion, as well as the AUC 

paramilitary response.46 The AUC’s response to insecurity also relies 

on money derived from narcotics to sustain operations. Colombia’s 

violence can be divided into negotiable and nonnegotiable forms.47

Negotiable violence has a political quality, while nonnegotiable 

violence has a criminal one. The lines between the two, however, are 

becoming less distinct. In the environment of early 2003, for example, 

the AUC offered a cease-fire and the possibility of negotiations with 

the government. The purpose was clear: to gain political legitimacy 

in view of the charge by U.S. foreign policy that they, like the FARC 

and ELN, were terrorists. Yet, the prospect of removing the AUC’s 

12,000 combatants from the field to reduce violence was difficult to 

refuse. The Uribe government would offer lenient terms, therefore, a 

form of legitimation to those paramilitaries not guilty of crimes.

Since the mid-1980s, narcotics have totally transformed the 
20

conflict by providing larger amounts of funding to support military 

operations against the state and society. Colombia thus joins a number 

of states where a peculiar combination of “greed and grievance” is 

the factor that drives violence.48 Cocaine and to a lesser extent heroin 

are the equivalent of diamonds in Sierra Leone and Angola: the 

fuel that feeds violence. There is a symbiosis, a pragmatic strategic 

alliance between narco-traffickers, the insurgents/terrorists, and the 

paramilitaries. Eduardo Pizarro Leongómez, Colombia’s leading 

scholar on the insurgent groups, states, “Given this complex 

symbiosis, between drug trafficking and the armed actors, we see in 

Colombia — much like other areas of the world — a war economy, 

in which merge the drugs market and the market of light arms.”49

The conflict is not a civil war, where the major competitor 

to state authority represents a coherent political program and a 

substantial base of popular support.50 In fact, the FARC, the largest 

force making war against the state and society, forcibly recruits and 

enjoys, at best, only 2 to 4 percent of popular support, the ELN about 

the same, and the AUC slightly more at 6 percent. The FARC does 

not have a large base, unlike the AUC which has a higher level of 

support in some areas. Given the atrocities they perform and the 

corruption engendered by wealth, the FARC’s political agenda of 

reform and social justice no longer is credible. The FARC also reject 

the laws of humanitarian conduct in war, because they regard these 

as a foreign imposition designed to undermine them. The war can 

best be described as one driven by greed, the residues (perhaps 

the camouflage) of revolutionary ideology, the will to power, and 

pervasive insecurity in a country where the rule of law does not 

apply throughout major portions of the rural and urban national 

territory. 

The insurgents’ tactics run the gamut: terrorism, intimidation, 

bribery, kidnapping, and assassination. Colombia annually leads 

the world in kidnapping, with those motivated by ransom money 

doubling to 1,174 (out of a total of 2,986 for all kidnappings) in 2002 

from the year before.51 The FARC and ELN took 75 percent of the 

victims. The Colombian army depicts the target of actions by the 

three groups as shown in Table 4.
21

Group Against 

Civilian 

Population

Against 

Armed 

Forces

FARC 45% 55%

ELN 90% 10%

AUC 90% 10%

Table 4. Target of Actions. 52

The amount of violent crime is extraordinary. Colombia’s 

homicide rate is three times higher than in Brazil and Mexico and 10 

times the rate of the United States and Argentina. Moreover, some 60 

percent of all the kidnappings in the world take place in Colombia.53

Violence annually costs some 25 percent of the growth in GDP. The 

average cost of violence for Latin America is 14.2 percent of the 

region’s GDP, estimated at US $168 million annually and up to half 

of the private capital invested. Colombia ranks with El Salvador for 

the economic toll of violence in Latin America in recent years, as

indicated in Table 5.

El Salvador Colombia Venezuela Brazil Peru Mexico

Direct Costs 9.2 11.4 6.9 3.3 2.9 4.9

Loss of 

Wealth

4.3 5.0 0.3 1.9 1.5 1.3

Material 

Losses

4.9 6.4 6.6 1.4 1.4 3.8

Indirect 

Costs

11.7 8.9 4.8 5.6 1.6 4.6

Productivity,

Investments

0.2 2.0 2.4 2.2 0.6 1.3

Work, 

Consumption

11.5 6.9 2.2 0.4 1.0 3.3

Transfers54 4.0 4.4 0.3 1.6 0.6 2.8

TOTAL 24.9 24.7 11.8 10.5 5.1 12.3

Table 5. Comparative Economic Costs of Violence 

as Percent of GDP.55

Violence is the principal cause of death and the greatest public 

health problem in Colombia. Among men between 15 and 44 years, 
22

homicides represent 60 percent of the causes of death. At birth, 

Colombian men can expect to lose an average of 4 years of life 

expectancy to the risk of homicide.

With respect to confidence in the judicial system, some 52 percent 

of the lower class victims of armed robberies did nothing, and only 

5 percent went to the police. In the higher social classes, the figures 

were 34 and 22 percent, respectively. The lack of confidence in public 

security spawns the privatization and decentralization of security. 

The impact on the social fabric is devastating, literally destroying 

the bases of civil society. A recent report, sponsored by the InterAmerican Development Bank and written by Mauricio Rubio, a 

leading student of crime and violence in Colombia, states, 

The incentives for the privatization and decentralization 

of security are much stronger when there are channels of 

communication between [illegal] armed groups and delinquency: 

if the group that protects a certain territory sustains itself with 

criminal activities in other areas, it will diminish the financial 

pressure on the community which receives protection that 

is subsidized by victims of crime outside that territory.56

Commenting on the national problem, General Enrique Mora 

asserted, “We Colombians have historically accepted living with 

violence.”57

The Massacre at Bojayá.

Colombia is beset by a vicious, multidimensional, irregular 

conflict with no well-defined lines of territorial demarcation 

between the contenders. The following case studies will illuminate 

some of these dimensions. The massacre of 119 innocent civilians at 

Bojayá in May 2002, the worst massacre of this nature in Colombia’s 

long-running violence, amply demonstrates this. The difficult to 

access town of some 1,000 people lies 235 miles northwest of the 

capital. The tragic events are an excellent case study of the strategic 

and operational consequences of an ineffective state that does not 

provide sufficient governance and security to its people. The AfroColombian Chocó department, endowed with the highest rainfall 

in the world after Bangladesh, is the poorest in Colombia, with 80 

percent unemployment. It has virtually been abandoned by the 

central government in terms of infrastructure and services. After 

the massacre, El Tiempo published these editorial comments: “Since 
23

the beginning it has been condemned to die living, separated from 

the economic and social projects of the state. . . . [I]t will always be 

the back yard of a centralized Colombia, remembered only when 

tragedy touches its inhabitants.” 58

The area around this town, which lies adjacent to the long 

Caribbean-bound Atrato River, has been contested between the 

FARC and the AUC for years because the Atrato has strategic value 

as a conduit for shipping cocaine to the Caribbean and Pacific and 

for importing guns and ammunition from Central America and 

Panama. The Chocó itself is strategically convenient for illegal 

activities because it is the only department of Colombia with coasts 

on the Pacific and Caribbean. It is important to note that the Drug 

Enforcement Agency of the U.S. Department of Justice estimates 

that some 65 percent of the cocaine entering the United States comes 

through the eastern Pacific, Central America, and Mexico.59

In 1996, the AUC took control of the town. The FARC, in turn, 

evicted them in 2000 in order to exercise control over the Middle 

and Upper Atrato area. They attacked the only police station in the 

area, in Vigía del Fuerte across the river, killing 21 policemen. Some 

of the bodies were found mutilated. Moreover, the FARC executed 

six people they accused of collaborating with the paramilitaries, 

including the local mayor. The meager response of distant authorities 

was to order restrictions on the sale of food and fuel.60

 In an effort to retake control, between April 21 and April 30, 2002, 

approximately 250 paramilitaries established themselves in the area 

to the displeasure of the local citizens, who wanted to avoid being 

caught in the crossfire once again between what El Tiempo called the 

narco-rightists and the narco-leftists. The people requested of the 

paramilitary commander, alias Camilo, in writing that the illegal 

armed groups locate themselves outside the urban area so that 

the civilian population could avoid the fighting. Camilo, who later 

would be killed in combat, answered that the paramilitaries were 

going to “cleanse the Atrato area,” and that, therefore, they would 

stay in place.61 On April 26, the Public Defender’s office, which 

is responsible for citizen security with representatives across the 

nation, issued an early warning about the risks of an impending 

battle between the two illegal groups. It was the most recent of 

about 50 warnings that local and national authorities had received 

but failed to act upon, either because some were thought to be 

unsubstantiated or because there simply were not enough people 

and resources to investigate.
24

On May 1, at about 6 o’clock in the morning, combat began. 

Paramilitary forces took up positions near the church, and the FARC 

did so on the periphery of the town. Assisted by three priests, some 

300 people took sanctuary in the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, the 

only concrete structure in town, and ostensibly a place of genuine 

security. Churches historically are off limits to combatants, according 

to the universally accepted humanitarian principles contained in 

the laws of armed warfare, the millennial notion of the “Peace of 

God.” To force out the paramilitaries, on May 2, at about 10:45 in the 

morning, the FARC launched a third crude gas cylinder bomb from 

about 400 meters from the church.62 The depleted propane cylinder, 

known in Spanish as a pipeta, was filled with 40 pounds of dynamite. 

The FARC developed this notoriously inaccurate and devastating 

primitive artillery. It is a noisy, lethal terror weapon. The bomb 

exploded on the church altar, killing 119 (including 40 children) and 

injuring 98. 

The survivors, led by priests, crossed the firing lines waving 

white flags and shouting repeatedly: “What do we want? That 

you respect our lives. Who are we? The civilian population.”63 On 

May 3, the FARC announced that they had retaken the town and 

permitted a commission of locals to reenter, evacuate the wounded, 

and identify and bury the bodies. Burials were completed by May 

5, however without the presence of government officials to oversee 

and legally record the procedure. Almost all of the town’s survivors 

fled across the river to Vigía del Fuerte. 

On May 7, the 50th Navy Infantry Battalion, located in distant 

Turbo on the Caribbean coast, reached Bojayá, doing so by four 

launches capable of carrying 90 soldiers at a time up the Atrato, a 

very dangerous operation without adequate ground and air support. 

Moreover, only one boat was available to refuel the launches moving 

up the Atrato. The military was spread very thinly and lacked the 

mobility for quick response. For example, the Manosalva Army 

Battalion in Quibdó, the departmental capital, has the responsibility 

to cover 27,000 square kilometers of difficult if not impassable 

territory. The Quibdó unit, located much closer than Turbo, could 

not reach Bojayá quickly enough because of the lack of roads and 

aircraft.

The FARC publicly admitted they had committed an “error,” 

though there was no indication that either commanders or troops 

responsible for the massacre were in any way disciplined for war 

crimes. The United Nations Mission admonished, “This ‘error’ 
25

constitutes an infraction of humanitarian norms, because it openly 

violates international laws to that effect.”64 The conduct of the 

FARC constituted an attack against a civilian population, a violation 

of Articles 3 and 13 of the Geneva Convention, which sets forth 

the principles of humanitarian distinction, discrimination and 

proportionality, as well as the immunity of the civilian population. 

There is an absolute obligation to refrain from attacking civilian 

populations and to limit the effects of military operations that can 

potentially affect protected persons, in this case, noncombatant 

civilians. The imprecision and the indiscrimination of the pipetas

added to the ethical burden of the attackers.

By attacking the church, the FARC also violated the obligation to 

protect the security of places of worship. Finally, the FARC violated 

Article 17 of the Geneva Convention by forcing the displacement of 

people. The UN Human Rights Mission added that these infractions 

constitute war crimes. Though the paramilitaries received less 

attention in the mission report, they were also adjudged guilty of 

violating humanitarian norms and committing war crimes. They 

had exposed civilians to the dangers of military action and thus 

violated the principles of discrimination and immunity. Moreover, 

they were guilty of not respecting places of worship and of forcing 

the displacement of people.

Finally, the government was criticized. “It is clear,” stated the 

report, “that the absence or insufficient presence of the agents of the 

State [sic] in the area of conflict increased the vulnerability and risk 

of the civilian population in the Middle Atrato, leaving it exposed to 

the action of two illegally armed groups.”65 The UN Human Rights 

Mission report also implied that some collusion between government 

officials and the paramilitaries in the area existed, though it could 

not prove it with evidence.

The lessons from Bojayá are many and profound. First, although 

the loss of life was enormous, it is not unique in Colombia’s 

complicated conflict. Countless events of this nature have taken 

place and continue throughout the national territory.66 Semana

magazine reported, for example, that illegally armed groups were 

responsible for 46 such massacres, in addition to 300,000 people 

being displaced in the first 9 months of 2002.67 Massacres of civilians 

clearly manifest the inability of the state to provide minimal security 

to its citizens. Powerless to block the two illegal groups from moving 

into place and engaging, the legitimate coercive authority of the 

state, in the form of the armed forces, arrived in Bojayá to retake 
26

control four days after the civilians were slain and injured. Impunity 

reigns for both the FARC and the paramilitaries. There is no rule of 

law because the police and judicial system, essential elements for 

controlling and adjudicating conflict, are not present in sufficient 

numbers, and if present, are not backed by the ultimate dissuasive 

power of the armed forces. Colombia’s military troops are too few, 

too distant, and lacking in the tactical mobility to react quickly and 

cover the vast national territory effectively.

Fernandinho and Perverse Globalization.

The interplay of ungoverned space, weak state authority and 

presence, as well as the international reach of drug trafficking are 

manifest in the story of the capture of Fernandinho.68 On April 21, 

2001, as part of operation Gato Negro, the Colombian armed forces 

captured Brazil’s top drug dealer, who reputedly controlled 70 

percent of Brazil’s cocaine distribution. Luis Fernando da Costa, 33 

years old and nicknamed Fernandinho Beira Mar (Freddy Seashore) 

was caught in the vicinity of Barrancominas, in the lightly populated 

Vichada department of eastern Colombia, next to Venezuela and 

not far from the Brazilian border. The FARC’s 16th front used that 

department, along with Guainía and Guaviare, as a staging base 

for operations; a mobility corridor; and an area for coca cultivation, 

refining, and shipment into Venezuela and Brazil. The Colombian 

military reported that these three departments accounted for more 

than 80 percent of the cocaine that the FARC itself produced. 

Fernandinho was the largest foreign trading partner of the FARC, 

swapping $10 million per month in guns and ammunition for 

cocaine. Within days, he was deported back to Brazil, reportedly 

because of fears that he could escape from a Colombian prison.

Barrancominas had become a center of cocaine activity totally 

under the control of the FARC. The taking of the town by the military 

culminated a 3-month operation spearheaded by the Rapid Reaction 

Force, the Fuerza de Despliegue Rápido (commonly known as the 

FUDRA), involving some 3,000 troops and netting the following: 

more than 60 cocaine laboratories, 22 airstrips, and 16 rebel camps 

“scattered across the jungle like craters on the moon,” plus 50,000 

acres of previously unknown coca plantations.69 Fernandinho stated 

that Barrancominas had become the principal gathering point for 

the transshipment of cocaine to Europe via Suriname, Guyana, and 

Holland. After his arrest, he revealed the following details about 
27

the intersection of the motivation of the FARC, ungoverned space, 

drugs, guns, and the international market:

The FARC are the richest and strongest guerrillas in the world. 

Their leaders live like millionaire capitalists: beautiful women, 

good food and liquor. . . In Colombia not a kilo of cocaine moves 

without the permission of the FARC. . . . I was but a peon in 

the drug traffic in Brazil and Paraguay. . . . For each kilo I sent 

they paid me $3,000. . . . The drug business is pretty good for the 

FARC; for each kilo that is ready to be shipped they charge $500, 

for each flight . . . $15,000. . . . I paid the FARC $10 to $12 million a 

month. Each flight carried between 700 kilos and a ton of coca. . . . 

Each pilot was paid $25,000 and the co-pilot $5,000 . . . and a 

little bit was paid to the air controllers so that they would not 

cause problems with the flights. . . . Part of the payment for the 

coca was made to the FARC in 3,000 guns and three and a half 

million rounds of ammunition, which came from Paraguay. . . .70

The cocaine business had completely distorted the local 

economy. The town of 600 had some 20 bars, billiard halls, houses of 

prostitution, and even a carpeted cockfighting ring. Barrancominas 

had once been a delightful destination for eco-tourism.

The tale of Barrancominas demonstrates the unholy linkage 

between vast ungoverned space, narco-terrorism, ecological 

destruction, and a perverse form of globalization that regularly 

violates international borders. These boundaries are a minor 

impediment to traffickers, particularly in the expansive Amazon 

Basin. For example, in August 2000, Peruvian officials announced 

that they had broken up a ring that had air-dropped 100,000 AK-47 

rifles to the FARC in eastern Colombia. The weapons were bought 

in Amman, Jordan, and dropped over Colombia by a Peruvian 

Air Force plane. The deal was apparently coordinated with the 

approval of President Alberto Fujimori’s security advisor and 

keeper of intelligence secrets, the notorious Vladimiro Montesinos 

(who would later be jailed for various criminal activities; Fujimori 

himself fled to Japan to escape Peruvian justice). Similarly, the 

Russian mafiya was involved in attempting to assemble a submarine 

in Colombia to ship cocaine out. Opined Alfredo Rangel Suárez, one 

of Colombia’s leading security experts, “It’s globalization. Weapons 

come into Colombia in exchange for cocaine that goes to New York 

and Europe. It’s pure capitalism, a primitive and effective form of 

barter.”71
28

White Horse and Parallel Power.

Perverse globalization has a powerful reach. On January 18, 

2001, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno announced that U.S. and 

Colombian law enforcement authorities had concluded a 10-month 

investigation, called “White Horse,” that had led to the arrest of 

more than 50 individuals in both countries who were part of a 

heroin smuggling operation between Colombia and the United 

States, specifically between the cities of Pereira and Philadelphia.72

More than 110 individuals would be arrested, and 22 kilos of heroin, 

10 of cocaine, 15 weapons, and $1.3 million in U.S. currency would 

be seized. An entire drug smuggling operation was dismantled, at 

least for the time being.

Pereira and Philadelphia are separated by 2,400 miles. Between 

1998 and 2001, the Pereira-based network sent “mules” north 

to carry an average of 20 kilos of pure heroin, some in the form 

of pellets secreted in the stomachs of the carriers. Each mule 

swallowed between 50 and 100 pellets. It is reported that the Pereira 

organization sent 15 mules per month, 12 of which completed the 

journey undetected by customs officials or not killed by the leaking 

of heroin into their stomachs. Some of the heroin-derived profits 

made in North Philadelphia’s crime-ridden “Badlands” ghetto 

would be sent to Pereira, at times also via the mules’ stomachs. One 

man reportedly swallowed $171,000 in tightly folded rolls.73

Pereira and North Philadelphia are linked by poverty, 

hopelessness, and crime; in sum, lawlessness and ineffective 

governance, in addition to Colombian diaspora ties. Countless 

variations to this theme are ongoing in the Western Hemisphere. 

Brazil was once a transit point for illicit drugs. Now it is the world’s 

second largest consumer after the United States as well as an 

important transit country. Prospering from this business are the 

urban drug gang “commands” that have grown so much in wealth 

and armed power as to threaten the state with their own “parallel 

power.” Well-equipped with automatic rifles, grenades, and rocket 

launchers, they have established “parallel power” in the major cities. 

On September 30, 2002, the Red Command (Comando Vermelho) of 

Rio de Janeiro deployed its members from the favelas (shanty towns) 

to the fashionable business-tourist districts of Ipanema and Leblon, 

ordering businesses to close, taxis and street vendors to leave. One 

report states that it was a protest against the jailing of Fernandinho, 

who apparently uses his cell phone to run Red Command from 
29

jail.74

Warned a local businessman: “What is clear to me is that the 

government is losing the war against the traffickers--they are the 

ones who are in control.”75 Similarly, the First Capital Command, 

São Paulo’s strongest gang, threatened to blow up Bovespa, Latin 

America’s largest stock exchange. One of the consequences of 

such high levels of delinquency is the growing requirement for the 

police, military, and intelligence services to work together in border 

control and public security. Still lacking, however, is multinational 

cooperation because of sensitivities about sovereignty; poor 

intelligence collection and sharing; and the lack of political will 

and resources to conduct the adequate intelligence, police, and 

military operations to control borders.76 Secretary of Defense Donald 

Rumsfeld addressed this problem at the Defense Ministerial of the 

Americas meeting in Santiago, Chile, November 19, 2002: “In this 

hemisphere, narco-terrorists, hostage takers and armed smugglers 

operate in ungoverned areas, using them as bases from which to 

destabilize democratic governments. . . . Elected governments have 

the responsibility to exercise sovereign authority . . . throughout 

their national territories.”77 He proposed that military forces in the 

Americas work together to meet the challenge.

The Collar Bomb.

Another dimension of Colombia’s conflict is the irrational 

dehumanization, the growth of a veritable counterculture of 

violence, what distinguished Colombian scholar Gonzalo Sánchez 

calls “the desacrilization of death and the banalization of life.”78

On May 15, 2001, the barbaric incident of the collar bomb occurred, 

which reverberated around the globe and put pressure on President 

Pastrana to end the peace process. Elvia Cortez, a rural property 

owner and community activist, was killed by a bomb placed around 

her neck, literally a collar bomb. The criminals demanded $7,500, 

or the bomb would be allowed to explode. They left the note: “To 

unlock the collar there are numerous ways, mechanical, hydraulic, 

electrical, and digital. It’s important to note that it can only be 

unlocked at a specific hour either during the day or night.” The 

sophisticated device, which was sensitive to body temperature for 

detonation, decapitated her and killed the technician sent to disarm 

it. The main perpetrator, thought to be one of nine common criminals 

not associated with any of the three terrorist groups, was convicted 
30

1 year later and sent to prison for 32 years, while an investigation 

against eight others began.

The judge conducting the proceedings commented that the 

bomb had not been manufactured nor installed by members of the 

FARC, that the delinquents had received advice from the Basque 

group Fatherland and Liberty (Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna — ETA) and 

Middle East terrorist groups. This assessment, he stated, came from 

U.S. anti-explosive experts. These experts added that the bomb was 

so sophisticated that the equipment to disarm it was not available in 

Colombia.79

One-and-a-half months later, the FARC kidnapped and held 

for ransom a mother, Luz Amilbia, and her five-year-old daughter, 

Luisa Fernanda. They were forced off a bus traveling in Antioquia 

and taken into the mountains. Colombian intelligence released 

recordings of phone negotiations conducted between the FARC 

and Jorge Cano, husband of Luz Amilbia and father of Luisa, and a 

common worker of limited means. After Cano paid 23 million pesos, 

the FARC negotiator requested another payment of 150 million 

pesos to liberate not just the mother, but also the daughter, who was 

now sick from respiratory complications. Finally, after much delay, 

the FARC negotiator, known as Paisano in the conversation, agreed 

to release both for the 23 million.80

Operation ORION: Retaking Comuna Trece in Medellín.

Medellín’s Comuna Trece slum neighborhoods are home to 

129,000 people. For 10 years, until October 2002, it was a stronghold 

of the FARC and ELN, which terrorized, extorted, kidnapped, and 

murdered with impunity. Evidence of the lack of government control 

was the fact that the AUC itself had penetrated about 70 percent of 

the other slum areas of the city, doing so with the support of some 400 

armed gangs numbering 10,000. The amount of crime in Comuna 13 

was extraordinary: homicides were six times the national rate. The 

terrorists took over homes and schools and forcibly recruited males 

to fight in their ranks. In the past, the military and police would 

mount occasional forays, but nothing of a magnitude that would 

regain control and free the people from the repression. 

President Uribe put security first, demanding that the armed 

forces, long accustomed to a defensive attitude, take the offensive. 

Defense Minister Martha Lucía Ramírez affirmed, “Our public 

forces [in the past] had retreated, were more defensive. Today they 
31

are taking the offensive.”81 On October 16, 2002, Uribe ordered 3,000 

troops backed by helicopters to retake the area. Instead of pulling 

out quickly, the military stayed for days, establishing a sense of 

permanent security, followed by the reinsertion of the police and 

the construction of two military posts. The commander of the Fourth 

Army Brigade, General Mario Montoya, commented, “Last time, we 

went in to Comuna 13 for 24 hours. . . . This operation is going to take 

8, 10, 15, 21 days, whatever it takes.” 82

Operation ORION resulted in 18 dead, 34 wounded, 250 arrests, 

and the freeing of 20 kidnap victims. In addition, quantities of arms 

were captured. With the eviction of the terrorists, a sense of normalcy 

was restored. The minister of defense promised that the government 

would follow up with economic and social recovery programs. 

Similar operations would be mounted in Cali, Cartagena, Bogotá, 

and other cities, which were also ringed with densely populated 

slums that were the breeding grounds of violence and had come 

under various levels of penetration by the FARC and the ELN.

The Emergence of the Strategic Relationship: United States and 

Colombia.

Understanding the nature of the conflict is key to understanding 

the evolving response of the United States. Colombia has been 

receiving U.S. assistance for decades, beginning with the Cold Waroriented military assistance pacts of 1952. Colombia was an important 

theater for U.S. military and economic support in the 1960s, which in 

1964-65 temporarily set back the FARC. A modest but steady level of 

military and economic assistance and legal training continued into 

the 1990s. Both the strategic imperative and the kind of assistance 

changed radically with the inception of the “drug war” in 1989 and 

the mandate given to the U.S. military to take on a counternarcotics 

mission, followed soon by the intensification of the security problem 

in Colombia.

By 1997-98, the United States had spent nearly a decade of effort 

in Peru and Bolivia to reduce coca production and shipment. The 

strategic breakthrough came in the mid-1990s through the combined 

application of interdiction, eradication (voluntary and forced by 

means of aerial spraying of glyphosate, commercially known as 

Roundup), and the implementation of alternative crop production 

(called alternative development) for peasants who lost out by no 

longer being able to produce coca. The United States funded much of 
32

this, including the costs of providing alternative development. The 

lesson learned here was that the three elements must go together for 

success. But Colombia would severely test this thesis, because the 

conditions there were far different from those in Bolivia and Peru.

Success in these two countries forced the enterprise north (the 

balloon effect) into eastern and southern Colombia. In these remote 

areas beyond government control, soil, moisture, and temperature 

conditions can produce four crops of coca in 12 months. An estimated 

300,000 acres of coca were under cultivation by the end of 1999. 

This allowed Colombia to produce an estimated 520 metric tons, 

compared with 245 produced by Peru and Bolivia combined. Until 

1997, most of the coca was grown in Peru and Bolivia, while coca 

base was shipped to Colombia for processing and distribution into 

the markets of the United States, Canada, Europe, and elsewhere. 

Table 6 shows the dramatic shift in production patterns.

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999

Peru 460 435 325 240 175

Bolivia 240 215 200 150 70

Colombia 230 300 350 435 520

Totals 930 950 875 825 765

Table 6. The Shift in Andean Cocaine Production (Metric Tons.)

The successes in Bolivia and Peru increased coca production in 

Colombia and intensified an already bad security problem there. This 

frustrated officials in Washington who had invested so heavily in the 

programs for Peru and Bolivia. Further disappointment came from 

another quarter. By 1997-98, the Colombian army was being beaten 

in battalion size formations by the FARC. Such poor performance by 

a professional and very experienced counterinsurgency army was 

unheard of in the history of modern Latin America. At the same time, 

citizen support for the paramilitaries was increasing, ostensibly the 

result of the government’s inability to provide security in the face of 

the FARC’s offensives and atrocities against the civilian population. 

The fall of Colombia to the FARC with the emergence of a veritable 

Farclandia as a drug state was not a far-fetched prospect among 

policymakers in Washington, Caracas, Quito, Lima, and Brasilia.

For some time, senior officials in Washington had been 

thinking that Colombia needed a major boost of U.S. support and 
33

a more comprehensive strategy that could be sustained beyond an 

administration. In November 1999, the U.S. Congress voted a $165 

million supplemental aid package for Colombia, which, added to the 

$124 million appropriated earlier, made Colombia the third largest 

recipient (though far behind Israel and Egypt) of U.S. aid in the 

world. At that time, Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering, an 

experienced hand in Latin American affairs, argued for a long-term 

national plan rather than the fitful short-term steps that each year 

had to be acted upon through the U.S. political process. It was also 

felt to be imperative that the Colombian government become more 

proficient in linking a long-term plan with operations in the field, 

thus mobilizing resources and personnel across the ministries to do 

a more effective job. This would demonstrate to the U.S. Congress 

and the American people that the creative talents and resources 

of Colombians would be committed to the cause of rebuilding the 

nation. 

Common wisdom prevails that little of magnitude happens 

in the Western Hemisphere without leadership from the United 

States, especially on such a controversial, sovereignty-laden issue 

as fighting the scourge of narcotics at the international level. 

Accordingly, U.S. economic and military assistance would be critical 

in encouraging Colombians to sacrifice for their own survival and 

in prodding the international community, namely the Europeans, 

to assist. The original 5-year plan that was developed envisioned 

a total contribution of $7.5 billion, with $4 billion to be provided 

by Colombia, $1.3 billion by the United States, and the balance 

by Europe. Such an allocation responded to the notion of “coresponsibility” for drug production (Bolivia, Peru, Colombia) and 

drug consumption (United States, Europe), which was accepted as a 

principle for equitably sharing the burden of solving the problem.

The main elements of the original U.S. aid package are critical 

to understand because Plan Colombia has not been an easy sell, due 

to misinformation and plain lack of information. Moreover, the 

allocations demonstrate that this was not merely a narrow military 

assistance program, contrary to criticism both in the United States 

and abroad:

1. Support for human rights and judicial reform — $122 

million.

2. Expansion of counternarcotics operations in Southern 

Colombia — $390.5 million (for helicopters, humanitarian 
34

assistance, and development assistance).

3. Alternative economic development — $81 million for 

Colombia, $85 million for Bolivia, and $8 million for 

Ecuador.

4. Increased interdiction efforts — $129.4 million.

5. Assistance for the Colombian police — $115.6 million.

(These dollars were an emergency supplement to the $330 million 

earlier provided and $256 million committed for 2001.)

Despite increased dollars for the various programs, the U.S. 

commitment to Colombia was defined only as counternarcotics 

support. Eventually, 18 Black Hawk and 30 Huey II helicopters 

were sent to Colombia, to be used for counternarcotics operations, 

force protection, and eradication of coca fields, lab destruction, and, 

if necessary, humanitarian assistance. Then Secretary of Defense 

William Cohen prohibited all Department of Defense “personnel 

from engaging in actual field operations or deploying to areas where 

hostile confrontation is imminent.”83 While the counternarcotics 

restrictions were strictly observed, it remained to be seen whether 

they made good strategic and operational sense in the complex 

security environment of Colombia.

The Price of Strategic Clarity and the End of the Peace Process.

While Plan Colombia was in its second year of implementation, 

the international system was shaken to its foundations by the events 

of September 11, 2001. Those events had important ramifications for 

U.S. policy around the globe, created new alliances, and radically 

changed the definition of threats. The events also had a profound 

impact on the strategic equation in Colombia. The challenge of what 

U.S. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld called “draining the swamp” 

of terrorism with global links resonated deeply in Bogotá and 

among the FARC, the ELN, and the AUC. Though these groups 

already appeared on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist 

organizations, after September 11, they were viewed as part of a 

broader international threat assessment, even though Colombia was 

never formally made part of the global war on terrorism.

Senior U.S. diplomats who dealt with Colombia explained that all 

three insurgent groups needed to be placed on the same list for policy 

reasons, to achieve consistency in U.S. policy toward Colombia. If the 
35

AUC were on the list, the diplomats argued, then so must the FARC 

and ELN. This made it easier to justify counterterrorism support to 

Colombia, especially after September 11. Although the three groups 

lacked the classical characteristics of international terrorist groups, 

they were, nonetheless, present in at least 18 countries, including 

diplomatic missions, and to this day regularly cross borders to 

conduct illegal activities in Panama, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru, and 

Brazil.84

Much like his predecessors, President Pastrana began a 

“peace process” with the FARC in 1999, one fraught with great 

contradictions and the high risk of failure from the very beginning. 

As part of the bargain and as a confidence builder, he gave the FARC 

a demilitarized area (despeje) the size of Switzerland, inhabited by a 

small population of 96,000. This is an old tradition with precedents 

in Colombian history: the central government’s weak authority 

results in surrendering sovereignty in the form of virtual sanctuaries 

to insurgents in outlying areas. Given the government’s inability 

to control vast areas of the national territory, de facto despejes have 

come to exist, areas of practical autonomy for irregular forces, since 

independence in 1819. The despeje (literally, an area “cleared” of 

government presence) was located in the Caguán region south of 

Bogotá. Herein the FARC established complete control, without 

interference from Bogotá and much to the dismay of Washington, 

which could hardly disagree in public with the modalities of a 

“peace process” undertaken by Colombia. The “peace process” 

went nowhere and was resuscitated at regular intervals because 

of Pastrana’s commitment and the international expectations it 

had raised. The peace talks were resumed one final time before an 

impending military offensive by the government against the FARC 

was started to retake the despeje.

85 President Pastrana, “risking all for 

peace,” had extended himself, his negotiators, and his government’s 

credibility as far as he could for 3 years — with nothing to show 

for such extensive efforts other than his administration’s and the 

Colombian citizens’ frustration and virtual surrender to the FARC 

of national sovereignty over national territory. 

The FARC had used the despeje as a logistical support base for 

military operations beyond it, to kidnap and assassinate, and to 

grow coca. In spite of the government’s renewal of negotiations 

in good faith, the FARC conducted some 170 armed attacks in the 

next 30 days, culminating on February 20, 2002, in the hijacking of a 

civilian aircraft and the kidnapping of one passenger, Senator Jorge 
36

Eduardo Gechem Turbay, head of the Senate Commission on Peace 

and member of a large and politically prominent family. President 

Pastrana thereupon announced the end of the process and ordered 

Colombian armed forces to retake the despeje that had been given 

over to the FARC as a goodwill gesture to start the peace process. 

Days later, former senator and then presidential candidate Ingrid 

Betancourt was kidnapped by a FARC column, making a total of 

six parliamentarians being held hostage by the FARC.86 Betancourt 

had not been released as of May 2003. Analysts believe that such a 

high-level captive will be useful to the FARC in a future exchange of 

prisoners with the government.

One month earlier, on January 20, 2002, under the auspices of 

UN representative James Lemoyne and the support of the Catholic 

Church and 10 “friendly countries” (Canada, Cuba, Spain, France, 

Italy, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Venezuela), an 

agreement had been made between the Colombian government 

and the FARC to try to reach a cease-fire by April 7, 2002.87 It was 

clear to many observers that a cease-fire was not likely to occur by 

this deadline for a number of reasons. Peace, especially in internal 

conflict, can be defined as a “pattern of stability acceptable to those 

with capacity to disturb it by violence.”88

Achieving such a peace did not stand a chance in the political 

climate of January 2002. First and most important, the FARC had 

shown by their actions for the previous 3 years that they were 

not interested in peace, which would require surrendering their 

strategic objective of taking power by force of arms, the only way 

they could achieve it.89 Second, students and practitioners of peace 

processes, such as former Farabundo Martí National Liberation 

Front Comandante Joaquín Villalobos of El Salvador, pointed out 

that Colombia’s peace process was ill-conceived because it had the 

following serious procedural and substantive defects: 1) a poorly 

defined agenda; 2) unclear goals on the part of the government; 3) 

the FARC’s unrealistic reform agenda, which addressed some of 

the nation’s economic and social problems (while these reforms are 

unquestionably needed, few could be implemented in wartime by a 

weak government under assault from the left, right, and international 

organized crime); 4) the very difficult task of verifying and enforcing 

compliance with a cease-fire with some 100 widely dispersed and 

mobile insurgent fronts throughout Colombia (because of their wide 

dispersal, Commanding General of the Armed Forces Fernando 

Tapias earlier recommended putting all the FARC inside the despeje); 
37

5) the absence of an effective third-party negotiator (until James 

Lemoyne of the United Nations became involved); and 6) too much 

personal involvement by President Pastrana.90

The leader of the nation should have delegated the responsibility 

of negotiating with the FARC to lower level officials and avoided 

putting at risk the prestige of the presidency, which raised 

expectations too high. The peace process and the cease-fire were 

doomed for even more fundamental reasons. The FARC had little 

incentive to negotiate seriously because the military balance in the 

battlefield was at that time not sufficiently unfavorable to them to 

want to seek the best deal before it was too late. The Colombian 

military could not hold the ground it won back from the FARC 

because it did not (and still does not) have sufficient forces to 

exercise permanent local control across the nation. A cease-fire by 

April 7, 2002, was simply not an achievable goal, given the military 

strength of the FARC, its immediate resumption of attacks on the 

infrastructure and innocent bystanders after January 20, and the 

probability that the FARC’s central command could not control 

some of its autonomous front commanders. Moreover, given the 

insurgents’ low popularity, their economic dependence on the drug 

business and other illegal activities, and the past inability of the state 

to guarantee the survival of insurgents who put down their guns 

in an attempt to reintegrate themselves into society, the FARC had 

more to lose than to gain by agreeing to peace. 

Finally, the incentives to negotiate a peace in a civil war, which 

Colombia’s conflict is not, are far different from the incentives 

that drug-trafficking terrorists have for negotiating. Most of the 

experience of the United Nations and other third parties to broker 

peace negotiations deals with civil wars, where the two opposing 

forces have competing political objectives. Yet, those forces are 

united by the common objective of building a sustainable peace. 

Terrorists are criminals who, by definition, do not have a legitimate 

political objective. Indeed, peace would be the ruination of the 

FARC’s agenda to make money unimpeded. It would also entail their 

practical extinction as a political and military movement. Moreover, 

there are the difficult ethical, political, and security problems of how 

to reintegrate them into society once the shooting stops. This issue 

would surface in a dramatic way in January 2003, when the Uribe 

government offered an amnesty to members of the AUC who put 

down their arms. At that time, two of the main paramilitary groups 

refused the deal. Those charged with crimes against humanity, such 
38

as assassination, torture, and political persecution, were excluded 

from the offer.

The frustrations with the peace process and the post 9/11 

international environment underscored an important reality: the 

FARC and the ELN were almost completely delegitimated at home 

and abroad by the time of the January 2002 negotiations. Their 

claims to a political agenda of reform and social justice stood in 

naked contrast with their campaigns of assassinations, kidnappings, 

extortions, and indiscriminate attacks against civilian populations; 

forced recruitment of child soldiers (over 6,000 children, according 

to the United Nations);91 direct involvement in promoting and 

deeply benefiting from the drug trade; inflicting ecological damage 

by blowing up oil pipelines;92 and even developing a training link 

between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the FARC (three IRA 

explosives experts were caught after they had left the despeje).93

The events of September 11 and the emergence of an international 

coalition against terrorism raised sharper questions about the 

legitimacy of insurgent movements around the globe. In the 

January 2002 negotiations, the FARC put forth among its demands 

the requirement that Pastrana recognize them as “valid political 

interlocutors in the peace process.” This assessment highlighted a 

dilemma. How could a legitimate democratic government, aspiring to 

apply the rule of law, justify the contradiction of granting legitimacy 

to terrorists, who repeatedly rejected the rules of humanitarian 

warfare enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, especially in the 

post-September 11 global environment of anxiety and extraordinary 

security precautions? The FARC’s behavior suggested two possible 

reasons: that they were out of touch with reality and could only talk 

behind the security of the gun or that they regarded themselves to be 

so criminal as to be beyond any concept of legitimacy.

The Colombian government virtually had surrendered its 

authority in 1999 by setting aside the despeje for the FARC, a huge risk 

that backfired, and then early in 2002, government representatives 

engaged the FARC in internationally and domestically sanctioned 

negotiations. The Papal Nuncio to Colombia, Monsignor Beniamino 

Stella, identified the ethical quagmire as “the great deception of 

the international community because of the guerrilla terrorism.”94

It was surreal to watch the political theater of representatives of 

well-meaning organizations, such as the United Nations and other 

members of the international community, earnestly trying to broker 

the cease-fire agreement with the terrorists and, thus, bestow a form 
39

of legitimacy upon them.

Though President Pastrana and the international organizations 

apparently viewed the negotiations as worth one last-ditch push for 

peace, the FARC’s actions following the January negotiations proved 

that they had not come to the table in good faith. Unfortunately, 

the outcomes were ethical obfuscation and loss of thousands of 

human lives since the inception of the “peace process.” But it 

achieved an important strategic breakthrough for Pastrana that 

laid the foundation for his successor: the international isolation and 

delegitimation of the FARC, the major antagonist that Colombian 

society faced. It also opened up new strategic options for the United 

States and for the international community to assist Colombia more 

fully.

Evaluating Plan Colombia.

These policy developments serve as a backdrop for an assessment 

of the impact of the multiyear Plan Colombia: Plan for Peace, Prosperity, 

and the Strengthening of the State (usually referred to by its shortened 

form, Plan Colombia). The Clinton administration had for some time 

urged Pastrana to develop a national strategy so that the United 

States could support Colombia in a comprehensive manner. Plan 

Colombia was the brainchild of Dr. Jaime Ruiz, senior advisor to 

President Pastrana. Ruiz, who holds a doctorate in engineering from 

the University of Kansas, argued that strengthening the capacity of 

the state, especially the military capability, was key to the success of 

any national plan.95

The strategic theory behind this plan was very simple: economic 

development, security, and peace are directly linked. Taking the 

money generated by drugs out of the market reduces the warmaking 

capacity of all three terrorist groups, thereby reducing the level of 

violence and enhancing the prospects for peace. There was, thus, 

a convergence of the U.S. strategic interest — reducing the flow of 

narcotics — and the more comprehensive interest of Colombia for 

getting U.S. military support. But the convergence, as will be seen 

later, was only partial and led to strategic and operational distortions 

from which the United States is attempting to emerge.

The central premise of the U.S. component of Plan Colombia

was that money from the trade in illegal drugs feeds the coffers 

of the guerrillas, whose attacks give rise to citizens’ self-defense 

organizations — the paramilitaries. If the narcotics funds could be 
40

stopped or drastically diminished, the guerrillas could not mount 

their ambitious military campaigns against the state and society and 

would become much less threatening. Moreover, Carlos Castaño’s 

paramilitaries would have less reason for being. With their main 

source of funds cut off, a less powerful FARC and ELN would be 

more likely to negotiate seriously, and the paramilitaries would also 

have a greater incentive to join them and government representatives 

for serious peace talks to end the fighting and rebuild Colombia. 

Indeed, part of this calculation may be proving correct. In late 2002, 

the paramilitaries offered to cease fighting, and negotiations for that 

purpose appeared forthcoming.

Additionally, it was anticipated that as these armed threats to the 

state and society were eliminated, the forces of public order (police 

and military) would be able to regain effective control of the entire 

national territory, making it easier to eradicate illegal narcotics. 

Restoring security throughout Colombia would allow the rule of law 

to be established because the state would have the monopoly of force 

and regain its citizens’ trust. From the U.S. perspective, the strategic 

dilemma was and continues to be that even if drug production 

were significantly reduced, the FARC, the main force in the field 

fighting against the government, would adapt its strategy and retain 

significant war-making capacity. Thus, the complementary objectives 

of security and democracy could only be achieved by removing the 

illegal armed groups from the battlefield. Whether U.S. antinarcotics 

support as a component of the multiyear Plan Colombia would be 

sufficient to help to achieve the plan’s overall goals has always been 

in question. But at least U.S. statesmen could point to the fact that the 

United States was helping Colombia and establishing a foundation 

for the future, however incomplete the support may have been.

The audacious goals of Plan Colombia were to strengthen the state 

by reenergizing an economy that, by the end of 2002, had 15 percent 

unemployment, reducing narcotics production and trafficking, and 

restoring civil society. Plan Colombia was an economic and social 

strategy to restore the country’s economic health along with a more 

functional democracy. Though one part of the plan did include the 

military, Plan Colombia was not, contrary to many nongovernmental 

organizations’ and media reports, a military strategy.96 Critics of 

the plan should note that the military assistance portion was only 

7 percent of the $7.5 billion. There is an important strategic reality 

about this: no nation other than the United States has the political 

will and the capability in resources to apply the full package of 
41

assistance with serious performance conditions — at the time of Plan 

Colombia’s inception to be used for counternarcotics purposes only, 

with appropriate respect for human rights — to a beleaguered ally 

deeply in need of outside support. The military component was only 

one of the plan’s 10 elements designed to remake the nation into a 

secure democracy, free from violence and corruption.

Plan Colombia has not been fully funded, the biggest gap resulting 

from the Europeans’ small contribution. Apart from the initial U.S. 

contribution of $1.3 billion (which grew to $1.8 billion by 2002), 

international support for Colombia has amounted to a total of 

between $550 to $600 million from the European Union, the United 

Nations, Spain, Japan, Canada, United Kingdom, Austria, Belgium, 

Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, 

Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland.

What are the returns? It would be unfair to attribute all progress 

to Plan Colombia, which has been in effect for barely 3 years. Much 

of what has been accomplished antedates the implementation of the 

plan, particularly in the area of security. By early 2002, Colombia still 

needed a national strategy to link the instruments of power (political, 

economic, social, informational, and military) in a cohesive and 

mutually reinforcing pattern. Indeed, the Colombian ministries are 

shallow in personnel and resources. This is particularly relevant to 

the implementation of Plan Colombia’s “Annex I: Interagency Action 

Plan,” the multiministry program for coca eradication, alternative 

development, and security in Putumayo Department. Colombia’s 

fragmented nation and weak state institutional apparatus present 

serious intellectual and political problems in confronting the 

multiple challenges of insurgency, drug-related international 

organized crime, and paramilitarism.

The intellectual impetus for Plan Colombia eventually produced 

the much-awaited Colombian national security strategy, Democratic 

Security and Defense Policy, which was published in the fall of 2002, 

bearing the Uribe team’s strategic concepts. It is a sophisticated and 

comprehensive document that will be an excellent foundation for 

linking the national military strategy and the supporting social and 

economic programs necessary to bring governance and security 

to the people. The United States pushed for the development of 

such a document, in order to have a coherent Colombian planning 

framework for the application of all the instruments of national 

power.

Creating a Strategic State. Strategy, in Clausewitzian terms, is 
42

the calculated relationship between political ends and militaryeconomic-diplomatic means. Clausewitz also speaks of the concept 

of the “center of gravity” of a state, the source of all strength. If a state 

is weak and corrupt (recall the anatomy of a weak state, while some 

two-thirds of Colombia’s Congress took bribes or were intimidated 

in the late 1990s, according to former U.S. Ambassador to Colombia 

Curtis Kamman97), the central question that arises is: Can such a 

state develop and implement national security strategy and military 

strategy effectively? Corruption weakens the state’s own center of 

gravity — its legitimacy — and the capacity of society to respond to 

the crisis of national survival.

The concept of the “strategic state” is central to the effort, because 

only a well-organized state with effective and ethical leadership and 

personnel can mobilize resources, justify the sacrifices demanded of 

its citizens, and forge the civil-military coalition to win a war. To 

paraphrase the sentiments of General Tapias with respect to what is 

required in Colombia, the state must recover the legitimate authority 

to act. Such a state must have the following attributes: a national 

command authority that combines the presidency with sufficient 

diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military capabilities within 

a legal system that safeguards citizens’ rights but is adaptable for 

national crisis, such as war. Ideally, “the strategic state” would 

encompass the three branches of government, executive, legislative, 

and judicial, thus maximizing popular support for the national 

enterprise and collective sacrifice.

If the answer to the above query remains a “no,” then it follows 

that the state can only fight a war in a desultory operational fashion, 

neither winning nor losing, but bleeding slowly into the indefinite 

future. Over time, such a pattern will mean that the armed fist of 

the state may be effective in its own way, as is evident already 

in Colombia, but it will not be complemented by the social and 

economic measures that the state must implement to serve the people 

with effective governance. The challenge for Colombian leaders is to 

bring greater coherence to the national effort, to mobilize societal 

resources to the task of making war and rebuilding the nation. Israeli 

scholar Gil Merom states, 

It is quite clear that resorting to large-scale ground action requires 

a significant ability to convert societal into military resources. 

Yet, it would be wrong to assume that warring states are 

restricted only by the sum total of their societal resources or by 

their ability to convert these into military means. States are also 
43

bound by their political capacity to use or lose human resources 

— i.e., to get their soldiers and citizens to agree to use violence 

and be its victims; to harm others or be killed or maimed.98

Given the Colombian state’s manifest weaknesses in coercive 

authority, governance, collection of taxes, administration of justice, 

and the lack of territorial control, the task is even more compelling. 

It is not beyond hope because of the talents and resources of the 

Colombian people. Societies, moreover, decide to mobilize for 

collective sacrifice when their backs are to the wall, a national 

longing that President Uribe began to tap into immediately upon 

taking office in August 2002. President Uribe is demonstrating a 

new decisiveness to, for example, reform the tax system in order to 

increase revenues to pay for a bigger defense budget and thus put 

more forces in the field. As mentioned earlier, Colombia ranks among 

the lowest in Latin America in central government tax revenues 

collected from its citizens, in addition to the high level of corruption 

and the dysfunctional judicial system.99 Following a classical 

pattern witnessed in other internal wars since 1945, Colombia’s 

greatest strides have been made in the strength and performance 

of its armed forces under tremendous pressure simultaneously to 

restructure, expand, and change to an offensive mentality, all over 

a period of 4 years. As recently as 1998, the army was being beaten 

by the FARC in battalion-size engagements. By the end of Pastrana’s 

term in August 2002, the Colombian army was larger (there are now 

55,000 professional soldiers and more than 105,000 regulars, with 

increasing numbers available for combat); it is more aggressive and 

better led, organized, trained, motivated, and equipped. Members of 

the armed forces now have pension and labor benefits, which they 

did not have before. 

A very necessary step was keeping effective military commanders 

in the ranks, thus breaking with the practice of having senior 

commanders serving in their respective positions for only one year 

before retirement. For example, Commanding General of the Armed 

Forces, General Fernando Tapias and his Army counterpart, General 

Jorge Mora Rangel, traditionally would have served one year and 

then retired. They completed three years of service in 2002. The 

force expansion continues, with a growth of 20 percent expected in 

2003. General Tapias and General Mora (who succeeded Tapias as 

Commanding General of the Armed Forces upon the latter’s mid2002 retirement), with the support of the defense minister, starting 
44

under Pastrana with Rodrigo Lloreda, have transformed the army 

into a more formidable fighting force.100 Its Rapid Deployment Force 

(Fuerza de Despliegue Rápida) conducted important operations 

in 2001, including “Gato Negro.” Perhaps the most impressive 

operation in 2001 was “7 de Agosto,” which deterred a force of 1,300 

FARC guerrillas from attacks in the South and East; captured an 

impressive quantity of arms, supplies, and vehicles; killed a leading 

guerrilla commander (Urias Cuéllar); and dismantled 17 FARC 

camps.101

In terms of operations, the year 2002 was very successful for 

the armed forces. They conducted 8,304 operations, killing 1,718 

members of the FARC, ELN, and AUC. The FARC lost 3,433 members 

(1,898 captured, 1,197 killed and wounded, and 338 deserted). The 

paramilitaries lost 944 (168 killed and wounded, 756 captured, and 

20 “surrendered to justice.”) In the production and marketing of 

drugs: 1,022 people were captured, 857 labs were destroyed, and 

large quantities of chemical precursors and money were seized.102

An indication of how much the Colombian army has improved is the 

fact that the FARC has not scored a major victory over the army in 

the last 2 years. In the area of joint planning and operations, there are 

slow improvements. However, these are inadequate to overcome the 

simple reality of insufficient troops and not enough tactical mobility 

to insert troops quickly, deter attacks, defend the infrastructure and 

population, and to “take and hold” territory. 

Though the Colombian military has improved its performance and 

grown significantly, it has a long way to go before it achieves the size 

and proficiency required for sustained success. The top quantitative 

and qualitative requirements for any military organization are 

leadership, tactical mobility, intelligence, and quality of the troops. 

These must be complemented by logistical support, quick reaction, 

aggressive small unit operations, and cooperative relations with 

the civilian population. The Colombian army’s new aggressiveness 

takes advantage of improved mobility (going from 18 helicopters 

in 1998 to 172 by 2002) and battle-experienced field commanders, 

but it still does not have the manpower to transition to a “persisting 

strategy,” in which the police and military work together to establish 

permanent presence in key areas of the country. The FARC’s 

massacre of 119 civilians at Bojayá in May of 2002 demonstrates 

the severity of this problem. The town had no police, while early 

warning intelligence about a prospective FARC-AUC battle in the 

area went unheeded, and then it took four days to move military 
45

forces to retake the town. 

As for its human rights record, the Colombian army has 

dramatically reduced the number of violators from within its ranks, 

though collaboration by elements of the armed forces with the 

paramilitaries remains a serious issue. General Tapias has established 

a policy of “zero tolerance” of police and military collusion with 

paramilitary forces (“paras”). In 2001, the armed forces conducted 

major operations against the paras, killing 116 and capturing 992, as 

well as confiscating a significant number of weapons, ammunition, 

vehicles, communications equipment, and financial records. Since 

September 2000, more than 600 members of the armed forces and the 

police have been dismissed because they colluded with the paras. 

President Pastrana ended the careers of at least four generals and 

numerous mid-level officers and noncommissioned officers believed 

to have been collaborating with the paras. Moreover, the Ministry of 

National Defense has an extensive human rights training program 

for military and police.103

Greatly expanded, better equipped professional military and 

police forces, committed to applying the principles of just conduct 

(jus in bello) in military and police operations and to working together 

for the same goals, provide the best insurance against human rights 

violations by insurgents and paramilitaries. Under such improved 

conditions, uniformed personnel would have no reason to collude 

with illegal forces. Human rights violations and the displacement of 

people as the result of the violence (estimated to be over 2 million, 

with 49 percent of the families being female headed) will continue 

to be problems until the government establishes effective and 

pervasive legitimate authority across the nation. This will have a 

high economic cost; however, Colombia can afford it. 

Counterinsurgency doctrine recommends that Colombia have 

a 10 to 1 advantage for the armed forces to prevail over the 20,000 

to 25,000 guerrillas, plus the estimated 12,000 paramilitaries.104 This 

would require tripling the size of the current armed forces, which 

would allow the army simultaneously to conduct operations against 

the insurgents, support the police to go after the drug entrepreneurs, 

defend infrastructure and communications, and establish a better 

presencia nationwide. Currently, the Army cannot, because of 

insufficient forces, hold territory it wins back because it must 

constantly redeploy to meet FARC, ELN, and paramilitary attacks 

elsewhere. Major General Gary Speer, then acting chief of the U.S. 

Southern Command, stated in congressional testimony on March 
46

5, 2002, “The real issue is the government of Colombia, through its 

security forces, the police and the military, does not control portions 

of the country.”105

Counterinsurgency is expensive business; it cannot be done on 

the cheap and requires the full mobilization of a nation’s resources 

over a relatively long period of time. It requires fighting and 

building and extending the reach of the state, in order to bring 

the benefits of governance and security to areas that have not had 

it. To expand its armed forces to the proper size, the Colombian 

Congress and leadership elites must do something totally novel in 

their nation’s history: give enough resources to the military to do 

its job as part of a coherent national political-economic-military 

strategy. This will require a veritable revolution in civil-military 

relations and implementation of obligatory universal military 

service. The announcement in January 2003 that obligatory military 

service would soon be established was a welcome development, but 

it remains to be seen how the new draft will be implemented and 

whether it will incorporate all classes of society equitably. President 

Uribe made a dramatic increase in the defense budget to a goal of 5.8 

percent of gross domestic product for 2003.

Colombians can take heart from the fact that one of the reasons 

that the FARC returned to the “peace process” on January 14 and 20, 

2002, was the improved operational capability of the armed forces, 

which allowed President Pastrana to negotiate from a position of 

relative strength rather than weakness. He mobilized over 10,000 

troops and an assortment of ground and air equipment to retake 

the despeje.

106 Similarly, with the government appearing to be on 

a permanent offensive, the paramilitaries offered the cease-fire 

of late 2002. The principal lesson learned in successful modern 

counterinsurgencies, such as in the Philippines, Malaya, El Salvador, 

and Oman, is that the battlefield must be linked to the peace 

process. A real peace process ending in conflict termination is only 

possible when the armed forces of the government establish enough 

asymmetry on the battlefield to convince the insurgents that further 

war is counterproductive to their physical and political survival. The 

FARC’s feverish propaganda against Plan Colombia, while Uribe’s 

ambitious strategy, the Democratic Security and Defense Policy, 

was being implemented, is evidence of the guerrillas’ fear that the 

Colombian state may some day succeed in strengthening itself. 

Another reality is that the Pastrana and Uribe administrations 

have made a serious dent on the FARC’s coca-derived budget for 
47

military operations. After the break up of the “peace process” and 

their forced eviction from the despeje, the FARC focused intensified 

attacks against government officials and infrastructure, with the 

tactical objective of eliminating government presence in rural areas. 

For the balance of 2002, the FARC appeared to focus operations on 

bringing the cost of war to the urban dwellers of the major cities. On 

February 7, 2003, the FARC conducted a murderous car bomb attack 

on the exclusive social club El Nogal in northern Bogotá, killing at 

least 30 and wounding 150. While these attacks were costly in lives 

and property, they did not change the strategic balance nor did they 

win for the FARC the hearts and minds of the Colombian people. 

Indeed, these atrocities have earned them heightened international 

repudiation.

The Southern Campaign: Temporary or Permanent Success?

The second area to measure the effectiveness of strategy is the 

core of the U.S. investment: the counternarcotics drive in southern 

Colombia, notably Putumayo Department (a lightly populated, 

underdeveloped region with a long history of illegal activity and 

boom-and-bust economy), which was the locus of intense coca 

cultivation.107 Putumayo, adjacent to the Ecuadorian border, is also 

the citadel of the FARC, which contests it with the AUC. The United 

States has helped equip and train Colombian army units (so far, a 

brigade, which comprises three battalions, totalling approximately 

3,000 soldiers) to support the police to eliminate coca plants and 

destroy the infrastructure of support for drug trafficking, such as 

laboratories and airstrips. The counternarcotics units support the 

police by securing an area and then providing perimeter defense 

so that the police can enter, conduct arrests, gather evidence, and 

destroy labs and coca plantings.

These efforts achieved important quantitative successes. By 

December 3, 2001, the Colombian Antinarcotics Police (Dirección 

Antinarcóticos — DIRAN) had destroyed 61 cocaine hydrochloride 

(HCL) labs, 330 cocaine base labs, 5 heroin and 9 other drug or 

precursor chemical processing facilities; had put 54 clandestine 

airstrips out of service; and had seized or destroyed almost 30 

metric tons of cocaine HCL, base cocaine and basuco (low-grade 

cocaine byproduct). The government signed pacts for alternative 

development/voluntary eradication with 37,000 small farmers.108

An aggressive aerial eradication program sprayed nearly 120,000 
48

hectares in 2002, well ahead of the 94,000 for 2001. Plans for 2003 are 

to continue aggressive spraying and increase it by one-third from 

2002.

Whether these counternarcotics achievements are permanent 

depends upon a number of interrelated variables: the completeness 

of the eradication program, the ability of the government to 

enforce the new regime, and the level of support for alternative 

development (growing other crops, providing access roads, markets, 

seeds, capital, schools, medical service, and police protection) to 

wean away the “mom and pop” campesino growers. Eliminating 

the large, plantation-size coca fields became easier in 2002 when 

Colombia received the full complement of spray planes dedicated 

to the effort.109

The scheme will work if the “balloon effect” can be contained 

and if the government provides security and meaningful alternative 

development. The “balloon effect” is the result of successful 

government eradication efforts, whereby eliminating coca plantings 

in one area makes the coca production migrate to the refuge of other 

areas of Colombia or back to Peru and Bolivia where production 

flourished until the mid-1990s. The “balloon effect” process was well 

underway in 2002, with coca plantings estimated to be present in 22 

of Colombia’s 32 departments, according to the United Nations. In a 

broader sense, the balloon effect is more than cultivation. It includes 

the displacement of trafficking routes, violence, and consumption 

into new areas and countries.

These are a lot of “ifs” for a government that historically has had 

a scant presence and had provided little in services to people in its 

outlying areas. Reports in early 2002 from the field to Washington 

indicated that the scheme was in serious jeopardy. The Achilles’ 

heel of the Southern Campaign was reported to be in three areas: the 

lack of security, insufficient support in the government’s alternative 

development program, and the bad quality of Putumayo’s 

soils. Nathan Christie, an expert on coca eradication at the U.S. 

Department of State, put it diplomatically: “Well-financed alternative 

development programs will be required to transform eradication’s 

ability to reduce cultivation into more permanent gains.”110

While alternative cropping is not easy in the weak soils of 

Putumayo and Caquetá, neither is it economically competitive, given 

the distance to markets, poor roads, and lack of security. Moreover, a 

senior official at the U.S. Department of State noted the motivation: 

“People don’t go to Putumayo to be yeoman farmers.”111 Concerning 
49

alternative development to growing coca, a February 2002 report 

from the General Accounting Office stated: 

. . . alternative development will not succeed unless the obstacles 

are overcome. Among them, the Colombian government does not 

control many coca growing areas, it has limited capacity to carry 

out sustained interdiction operations, and its ability to effectively 

coordinate eradication and alternative development activities 

remains uncertain.112

The report added that farmers were replanting coca, even 

though they signed agreements not to, because they do not believe 

the government will return to enforce the agreement. Another 

alternative for eliminating coca is aerial spraying of the coca fields, 

but for this to be effective it must be ubiquitous within its target 

areas, sustained, repetitive, and predictable, so that growers are 

permanently deterred. The Uribe government is committed to such 

deterrence, arguing that farmers know that it is illegal to grow coca 

and heroin. It is possible that a permanent regime of sanctions for 

growing coca can be enforced if the government persists and some 

form of alternative cropping is available. Moreover, true peasants do 

not like to be criminals; the more hardened cocalero risk-takers are 

another matter.

After pessimistic assessments of early 2002, reports from the field 

in late 2002 indicated that the temporary coca-based economy in 

Putumayo was being abandoned. Because of the various disincentives 

encountered in the face of sustained eradication,113 farmers were 

either leaving or planting legal crops, though grumbling that 

government support was inadequate. Unfortunately, it appeared 

that some were moving to adjoining Nariño Department, where coca 

plantings migrated. Nonetheless, Uribe’s Minister of Justice and 

Interior, Fernando Londoño, boldly promised in January 2002 that 

the government would destroy the financial support of the FARC by 

eliminating the coca and heroin: “It will be liquidated and nothing 

will be left. In order to maintain a guerrilla army of 15,000 they need 

a lot of coca and this will disappear.”114 Whether this was bravado 

or realism only time will tell, but it indicated a level of political will 

that is central for success.

The success of the antinarcotics and alternative development 

efforts depends upon the ability of Bogotá to establish a permanent 

presence of the state in areas traditionally lacking governmental 

control. Security through state authority is the sine qua non for 
50

strategic success. While the FARC, ELN, and the paramilitaries 

contest territory, it is imprudent to launch ambitious alternative 

development schemes designed to wean away the peasants, who are 

caught in the dangerous crossfire from the coca economy, between 

the AUC and the FARC seeking to control it and the government 

seeking to eliminate it.115

Moreover, among officials in Washington involved in programs 

of institution building and alternative development, there has 

always been a concern about the narrowness of the U.S. approach 

to Colombia and its impact on democracy. Having invested heavily 

in drug eradication and alternative development, they worry that 

it is far easier to measure objectives achieved, such as hectares 

sprayed, number of plants manually eradicated, or contracts signed 

with peasants, than building the vascular system for democracy. 

Such indicators, they note, are unreliable for measuring effective 

governance and the relationship of mutual respect and support that 

should exist between the state and its citizens.

Relying on such statistics alone overlooks the weaknesses of 

Colombian democracy.116 A narrow focus on indicators like these 

makes the Colombian government and the United States appear 

arbitrary, heavy-handed, and not really concerned with effective 

governance. Much of the criticism leveled at Plan Colombia focused on 

these points and the additional concern about the dignity of hapless 

peasants deprived of a livelihood. However, peasants always knew 

that coca cultivation was illegal and potentially damaging to their 

future prospects. They also knew that the Colombian government 

rarely sustained programs, either to reward or punish them.

U.S. Strategy: From the Ambiguity of Counternarcotics 

to Legitimate State Authority and Human Rights.

Long before September 11, 2001, the policy of the United States 

carefully delineated the boundary between counternarcotics and 

counterinsurgency. Mindful of the perceived absence of U.S. 

support for counterinsurgency, because of failure to differentiate 

intellectually among cases in applying the Vietnam metaphor 

to U.S. military strategy, the Clinton administration (1993-2001) 

scrupulously hewed to a policy of supporting with military and 

economic assistance only Colombia’s effort to eradicate narcotics. 

This culminated in the promulgation of Presidential Directive 73, 

the Clinton policy for Colombia, which set forth the limits of U.S. 
51

assistance to counternarcotics. While this policy recognized political 

realities at home, it seriously stretched intellectual and operational 

credibility, in view of the inescapable ground truth that the 

insurgents and the paramilitaries profited from and promoted the 

narcotics economy. In fact, it was essential that U.S. strategy address 

the intersection of drugs, insurgency, and terrorism.

Whatever their misgivings may have been, U.S. policymakers 

implemented a range of counternarcotics initiatives after the 

declaration of the “drug war” by the first Bush administration in 

September 1989. These included the upgrading of the Office of 

National Drug Control Policy to a cabinet department under General 

(ret.) Barry McCaffrey; the establishment of a Defense Department 

Office of Counter-Narcotics Support; enhanced assistance to producer 

and transit countries; and the establishment of a comprehensive 

interdiction effort in the form of AWACS reconnaissance flights, 

intelligence sharing, radar sites, and Joint Task Forces on the Pacific 

and Atlantic coasts, with one in Texas to coordinate the air, sea, and 

land interdiction of the movement of narcotics into the United States. 

The United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), in Panama 

and later in Miami, became the unified command par excellence for 

counternarcotics. At one time, nearly 90 percent of its operations 

involved counternarcotics support. 

At the same time, Congress enacted statutes that still demarcate 

U.S. assistance to Colombia; for example, no equipment and training 

could go to Colombian forces for counterinsurgency missions, and 

no assistance could go to military units that harbored violators of 

human rights (the Leahy Amendment). The latter created a lengthy 

and complex vetting process for all Colombian soldiers who receive 

U.S. assistance.117 Once the policy was made, the safeguards were 

established to ensure end-use compliance for U.S. equipment and 

training. Therefore, the operational ends were consistent with U.S. 

policy and law but not with good strategic sense. Many critics in the 

United States within and outside of government doubted that a clear 

distinction could be made between “assistance” and on-the-ground 

use of U.S. military resources or that there could be a distinction 

made between counternarcotics and counterinsurgency.

Nevertheless, Plan Colombia’s requested role for the United States 

was scrutinized vigorously by U.S. legislators, auditors, academics, 

and the media. No indication of violating the legal constraints 

placed on counternarcotics support was ever alleged. Adding to 

the strategic assessment was the dominant school of thought within 
52

the U.S. Government with respect to how a government can win an 

internal war. Remembering the lessons applied successfully in El 

Salvador in the 1980s (which were driven by the mistakes made in 

Vietnam), statesmen, academics, and a number of U.S. legislators and 

military strategists argued that Colombians needed to mobilize their 

national resources and make the sacrifices required for successful 

counterinsurgency — to ensure that the effort would sink strong 

roots in society.

Moreover, the gestation of U.S. policy vis-à-vis Colombia 

contained two divergent impulses that begged to be brought back 

into one. At the level of “politics of the possible,” it was support for 

a counternarcotics approach, fraught with grave misgivings about 

its adequacy on the ground in Colombia. The second and far more 

intellectually sound impulse, which was not politically possible due 

to congressional opposition and the lack of understanding among 

the intelligentsia and policy activists, favored establishing security 

nationwide, through a combination of counterinsurgency support 

and support for achieving control over the national territory. 

Colombia’s problems were still seen as those of law enforcement. It 

is important to note that U.S. congressional thinking on Colombia 

was heavily swayed in the 1990s by the Colombian National Police, 

particularly the Commander, Rosso José Serrrano, who developed a 

very effective way of dealing personally with the U.S. Congress. This 

further distorted the analysis of policy alternatives.

Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Southern Command, General 

Charles Wilhelm, early in his tenure (1997-2000), recognized the 

need for a strategy of “territorial control,” but it was not possible to 

advocate this strongly in public. Policymakers and strategists started 

moving in the direction of the second impulse immediately after 

September 11, though cautiously. After February 20, 2002, when 

President Pastrana ended peace talks with the FARC and ordered 

the military to retake the despeje, the U.S. polity (including Congress, 

the Defense and State Departments, the media, the academic 

community, and the general public) for the first time considered the 

heretofore unthinkable and politically difficult alternative: much 

expanded U.S. military assistance to Colombia. Even support for 

counterinsurgency, thought to have died an unlamented death with 

the end of the Cold War, returned to serious discussion as a strategic 

option.

Accordingly, under this new set of circumstances, the first order 

of business would be to establish an environment that builds a 
53

sense of order throughout Colombia. The “security first” approach 

called for a strategy, with related tactics, that places emphasis on 

controlling the national territory and its infrastructure and providing 

the panoply of governance to the people, especially security. This, in 

turn, requires a set of civil-military activities that buttress the strategic 

objective. While Plan Colombia recognized the need for these civilmilitary activities, the U.S. military component of support was mired 

in the quicksand of law enforcement (eliminating drug production 

capacity was regarded to be essentially a policing effort, supported 

by the military), instead of dealing with counterinsurgency and 

territorial control. The reasons for this were myriad, ranging from 

the poor human rights record of the Colombian military (which 

until recent crackdowns allowed a level of apparent coordination 

with, if not support of, paramilitary activities); the “slippery slope” 

argument of getting involved in an interminable internal war, with 

“no light at the end of the tunnel”; and competing strategic global 

priorities in a Washington that is always reluctant to take on more 

responsibilities. 118

Thus, the weakness of U.S. support for Plan Colombia lay in the 

relationship between the premise and the strategy. While some of 

the premises underlying U.S. support were correct, the strategy 

to achieve the objectives was inadequate. The strategy was based 

on wishful thinking. Finally, until quite recently, constructing a 

more comprehensive strategy for Colombia was unachievable 

because it could not be sold to the U.S. Congress or the American 

people, especially with a “peace process” underway in Colombia.

After September 11, 2001, the media recognized the contradiction 

in U.S. policy, for example, in this editorial in the Washington Post: 

“The administration . . . should abandon its attempt to distinguish 

counternarcotics from counterinsurgency aid to Colombia. If the 

United States can support governments and armies battling extremists 

in Central and Southeast Asia, . . . it ought to be able to give similar aid 

to an embattled democratic government in Latin America.” 119

Many human rights-oriented nongovernmental organizations 

and academics have opposed military assistance to Colombia. 

Unfortunately, the strategic error that all of these groups make is that 

they underestimate how ineffective Colombia is as a state, attributing 

to it a level of authority, effectiveness, and security capability 

it simply does not have and indeed must develop. Samuel P. 

Huntington stated the problem of governance succinctly: “Authority 

has to exist before it can be limited.” 120 Some of the opposition to the 
54

assistance is ideologically based. Some may be due to inadequate 

information about the complex geopolitical realities of Colombia, a 

serious deficiency among many U.S. academics and members of the 

media, as well as some nongovernmental organizations. 

This information deficiency also applied to important sectors 

of the U.S. Government that tried to understand the unique nature 

of Colombia’s conflict. The wrong metaphors were applied to 

Colombia: “another Vietnam,” “another El Salvador,” “no light at 

the end of the tunnel,” and so on. The other strategic error made 

by critics was arguing that military assistance was inappropriate. 

They overlooked the reality that without a security shield, little in 

the areas of socioeconomic institution building and reform could 

be sustained. This is one of the forgotten lessons of El Salvador and 

Vietnam — and a lesson that deeply informs the U.S. effort to assist 

Afghanistan after the eviction of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Beyond these inherent tensions, U.S. support for Colombia 

contained the familiar strategic defect of a mismatch between very 

ambitious goals — democracy, protection of human rights, support 

of the “peace process,” coca eradication, judicial reform, and 

alternative development — and very limited means. The original U.S. 

contribution to Plan Colombia and supplemental funding proposed 

for the future, though real budget money, were minor amounts in 

terms of the comprehensive needs of Colombia. U.S. policymakers 

had always recognized this discrepancy but justified it in terms of 

establishing a foundation for the United States, Colombia, and the 

international community to build on. The Europeans have been 

notably reticent in making their full contribution because of concerns 

that the United States has been militarizing its policy on Colombia.121

Moreover, until the FARC depredations of 2002, especially the 

massacre of civilians at Bojayá, Europeans still tended to see what 

was going on in Colombia as a civil war rather than terrorism. 

At the same time, military and civilian strategists in the Pentagon 

argued quite persuasively that the best way to strengthen democracy 

and more rapidly eliminate the drug scourge was to assist the 

Colombian military and police to establish territorial control, so that 

they could be more effective in counter-terrorist, counterinsurgency, 

and counternarcotics operations. Much of Colombia’s small army 

is tied down in static defense of infrastructure. General Tapias, for 

example, stated to El Tiempo on January 27, 2002, that the armed 

forces were defending 2,000 strategic points around the country prior 

to the January 20, 2002, agreement to continue the “peace process,” 
55

in addition to the heavy deployment of over 10,000 troops around 

the despeje that they would eventually retake from the FARC.

A new U.S. approach would require a more comprehensive 

package of military assistance than one narrowly focused on 

narcotics suppression and interdiction. Such a policy would also 

render the United States a more effective defender of human rights 

and would eliminate the artificiality of requiring, for example, that 

certain equipment, such as Blackhawk and Huey helicopters, be 

used only for counternarcotics purposes. More absurdly, to a nation 

fighting for its survival, there was an incongruity in U.S. senior 

military officials being prohibited by congressional legislation 

from engaging Colombian counterparts in planning how to win 

its complex wars — the strategic and operational requirement for 

Colombia’s survival. This was hardly a way to establish confident 

bilateral cooperation. 

A key area for enhanced U.S. military assistance is protection 

of the 480-mile oil pipeline from the Department of Arauca to the 

Caribbean. The pipeline is periodically destroyed by the FARC 

and ELN; in 2001, this cost Colombia $450 million in lost revenues, 

equal to 0.5 percent of economic growth, plus significant ecological 

damage. The Bush administration asked Congress for and received 

$93 million in the 2003 budget for the security of the pipeline. This 

money will go to train units of the army’s 18th Brigade in forming 

a quick reaction force.122 It will also train and support a helicopter 

element to provide quick reaction capability to a platoon. In other 

words, the money will go to enhancing the capabilities of an existing 

brigade by training units within the brigade and providing air 

mobility to do quick reaction operations. The funds would also be 

used to improve the security of the long pipeline via improvements in 

communications, roads, and defense sites. U.S. Army Special Forces 

were deployed to Arauca in late 2002 to begin training the brigade. 

The administration has requested $110 million for 2004 to train and 

equip Colombian army elite units, to buy C-130 Hercules transport 

aircraft, and to sustain the infrastructure security program.123

The lack of a comprehensive strategic relationship between 

Washington and Bogotá matters in other ways. Colombia’s 

fundamental challenge is to establish the authority of the state 

throughout the national territory, extending full benefits of its 

institutions and governance to all citizens. Where the state is not 

present, the illegally armed groups compete to fill the vacuum, 

setting up de facto administrative and legal systems, often destroying 
56

the local economy and forcing people out. This geopolitical reality 

was marginally addressed by U.S. help in training and equipping 

counternarcotics battalions. Even though such training easily 

transferred to the other units, it would hardly make an impact on 

the larger army. The creation of separate air forces and separate 

logistical systems, for counternarcotics and for everything else, 

weakens coordination among the Colombian armed forces, the 

Colombian antinarcotics battalions, and U.S. military advisors. 

Colombians have observed that the United States seems to care only 

about the drug issue; thus, they view the counternarcotics forces as 

the “gringo army” versus the “real” army, the Colombian armed 

forces.

If U.S. military assistance can provide the means to help Colombia 

to recover control of its national territory and thereby provide 

dependable public security, this would remove the raison d’être 

of the paramilitaries: the absence of security provided by the state. 

U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Anne W. Patterson began nudging 

U.S. policy in this direction by stating after September 11 that Plan 

Colombia is the basis of U.S. counter-terrorist strategy. More robust 

commitment to Colombia would have the additional advantage of 

greater clarity and strategic relevance of U.S. policy, as seen by our 

Latin American regional partners, especially those directly affected 

by spillover violence and corruption.

A different and more comprehensive U.S. strategy would greatly 

enhance the chances of achieving the most noble element of U.S. 

foreign policy: the protection of human rights. The first step toward 

this goal would be to help the Colombians establish effective and 

legitimate public security at the many local areas now extremely 

deficient. The next step would be for the Colombian government to 

coordinate state institutions and services, including education, justice, 

health and sanitation, communications, and economic development, 

to provide services to all citizens equably, thereby addressing the 

social and economic needs of the people. Institutions that provide 

essential services to all citizens are reasonable expectations of the 

social contract between democratically elected governments and the 

people they serve.

By following through with these two essential, though 

complicated and difficult steps, the government would seriously 

address the root causes of insecurity and insurrection and begin 

reestablishing its connections with civil society — all of which work 

together to protect human rights. These monumental tasks require 
57

the establishment of legitimate state authority in those areas that 

have never had it and its re-establishment in those urban and rural 

areas where such authority was either weak or abandoned.

A comparative study of the history of internal wars since 1945 tells 

us that government counterinsurgency efforts have been successful 

when government-supported militias helped maintain local security. 

Establishing legally constituted supplementary military forces for 

local security is a serious need in Colombia. Popular resistance to 

FARC depredations exists, providing a receptive environment for 

local militias supported by the state.124 This would end reliance for 

security on the illegal paramilitaries, which originated as legitimate 

popular responses to the lack of state authority in areas of conflict 

dominated by the FARC and ELN. In an effort to improve public 

security, the Uribe administration moved quickly to increase the 

size of the national police, establish a national carabineros system, as 

well as locally based, lightly armed militias and an early warning 

network that relies on the people. The carabineros are akin to the 

French brigades mobiles, which would constitute highly mobile light 

infantry units that would be inserted to take over a conflicted zone 

and then turn it over to the police.

To promote human rights, the United States employs the limited 

leverage of conditionality, contained in the Leahy amendment, 

named after its originator, Senator Patrick Leahy, to security 

assistance, which requires that the military personnel be vetted for 

human rights rectitude. This applies to all men and women in the 

Colombian armed forces who receive training and equipment.125 The 

problem with this limited approach is that it is insufficient by itself 

to get to the heart of the human rights problem. It fails to recognize 

the interconnected nature of the threats to weak state authority: 

the insurgents, those involved in drug processing and trafficking, 

and the illegal paramilitaries. To attribute the state’s weakness to 

illegal drugs alone misses the mark. As discussed earlier, the FARC 

and ELN thrive on funds from narco-trafficking. The paramilitaries 

completed the vicious circle by taking the law into their own hands 

to fight the insurgents and protect their property, but they became 

parodies of their enemies by perpetrating horrendous atrocities 

and by subverting members of the Colombian armed forces in the 

process. By 2000, the paramilitaries were committing close to 70 

percent of the human rights violations in the country.

The U.S. new, more holistic approach to Colombia, advocated by 

President Bush in the National Security Strategy, is philosophically 
58

different: assisting the Colombian state to acquire complete power 

over the means of legitimate coercion, by defeating the FARC, 

ELN, the AUC, and other paramilitary groups, as well as the narcotraffickers. This strategy is open-ended, and its limits are still being 

defined because of the continuing impact of legislative limits on 

U.S. assistance. In other words, though the intellectual argument 

for expanded assistance has been made, the political decision to 

carry through depends on either changing the legislative limits or 

working within them as well as possible. The latter approach will 

continue to cause distortions in the way the United States deals with 

Colombia.

The conundrum in Washington in early 2003 was how to convert 

a counternarcotics-based strategy to counterterrorism and territorial 

defense. They are qualitatively and quantitatively different, 

requiring different strategies and force packages. Nonetheless, 

clearly the United States will increase its assistance and training 

support under the rubric of counterterrorism, because in many ways 

counterterrorism is the strategic equivalent of counterinsurgency.126

It is also certain that there will be no U.S. “combat boots” on the 

ground. Colombians are perfectly capable of doing their own 

fighting. How far the expanded assistance will go remains to be 

seen.

In Colombia, the main reason for political killings (some 3,500 

per year for the last 10 years), kidnappings, displacement of over 2 

million people, and economic destruction is the interrelated nature 

of the combined threats and the inability of the state to act, because 

of a combination of lack of resources, lack of political will, and the 

debilitating impact of continuing corruption. The ineffectiveness 

of the state is at the heart of Colombia’s ills. Using different words 

to express the same thesis, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for 

International Narcotics Matters and Law Enforcement Affairs, Rand 

Beers, said, “The Government of Colombia’s inability to prevent 

violence by the three illegal armed groups (the FARC, ELN, and 

the paramilitary AUC) is at the root of Colombia’s human rights 

woes.”127

Synchronizing Strategy: The United States and Colombia 

and the Uribe Difference.

While improvements in military capabilities and narcotics 

eradication can be quantified, other essential elements, namely, 
59

rebuilding institutions such as the judicial system, are not as easily 

described. Revitalizing the economy also depends upon reestablishing 

a climate of security and predictability for investments. Despite the 

failure of a badly conceived and managed “peace process,” President 

Pastrana, via Plan Colombia, bequeathed an excellent foundation to 

President Uribe. By ending the despeje and breaking off the fruitless 

“peace process,” President Pastrana opened strategic options for 

the United States and Colombia, options that did not exist before. 

Plan Colombia and the national security strategy, the Democratic 

Security and Defense Policy, are conceptual frameworks and serve 

as calls for collective action by Colombians and by the international 

community. 

The objectives of Uribe’s Democratic Security and Defense 

Policy converge with the sentiments stated by President Bush in his 

National Security Strategy. They are the following:

• Guarantee the security, freedom, and human rights of the 

population.

• Consolidate state control over national territory.

• Eradicate drug trafficking.

• Defend democratic order and the rule of law.

• Promote economic prosperity and social equity.

• Reconstruct the social fabric.

President Uribe explains, “The general purpose of the Defense 

and Democratic Security Policy is, therefore, to ensure that there 

will be no legal or security vacuums in any part of the national 

territory. To reach this objective, all means available to the State 

will be used.”128 To underline the importance of these commitments, 

President Uribe wrote a letter to President Bush on September 19, 

2002, in which he detailed his strategy:129

• Establish comprehensive policies to eliminate the cultivation 

and manufacturing of trafficking in illicit drugs and to 

strengthen the state and establish the rule of law throughout 

the national territory, especially in areas under the influence 

or control of the three illegally armed groups.

• Adopt major reforms with respect to the budget and 

personnel of the Colombian armed forces.

• Provide more financial resources to implement these 

programs.
60

• Support sustainable rural development programs.

His letter was soon followed in late September by a state visit to 

Washington. President Uribe spoke directly with President Bush to 

seek U.S. support to carry out these commitments.

The U.S. policy of counternarcotics support only, which defined 

Colombia’s problem as solely a drug-related, rule of law issue 

rather than a security issue, also made an important contribution in 

establishing the bases for long-term sustainable assistance. By 2002, 

U.S. policymakers from both the executive and legislative branches 

had learned much about Colombia through trial and error. Finally 

they were coming to the conclusion that U.S. policy in Colombia 

was merely addressing the country’s symptoms, not the causes of its 

debility. This was strategic wisdom that the aftermath of September 

11 and the behavior of the FARC helped to bring about. 

The exclusive focus on counternarcotics support, moreover, 

brought into play the equally complex and controversial issue of 

demand reduction in the United States and Europe. Addressing 

this issue is the responsibility of all governments whose citizens 

buy the illegal drugs and whose law enforcement authorities have 

not yet figured out how to stop their entry. The mixed success of 

the Southern Campaign in Putumayo should be warning that coca 

eradication alone will not provide Colombia essential security. 

Recommendations. 

Specifically, the United States should provide a package of 

military equipment, advice, and intelligence support to allow 

the Colombian government to assert authority over its national 

territory. The package should include advice on how to develop 

counterinsurgency strategy and conduct joint operations and how to 

organize and maintain logistics. Colombia’s armed forces badly need 

tactical mobility and intelligence support. They need approximately 

400 helicopters and more fixed-wing aircraft to provide faster 

insertion of troops and logistics into the battlefield. By mid-2002, 

they had some 172 helicopters. It takes time to build an army and 

train air force and navy personnel. The best military intelligence is 

of little value if the armed forces are too small or unfit to use it to 

support operations. 

A comprehensive package of U.S. military assistance entails more 

than the willingness of the executive and Congress to be forthcoming. 
61

It also involves the ability of the Colombian armed forces to absorb 

the assistance. Clearly, this will be a long process, but improvements 

in leadership, tactical mobility, and intelligence can be made rapidly, 

as the Colombian military has shown since 1998. Restructuring and 

expanding military institutions is a complex business. U.S. and 

Colombian military officials need to sit down across a table and 

figure out how to integrate such training and equipment for a much 

expanded force. At home, Washington needs to institutionalize a 

senior-level policy coordinating and integration mechanism for 

Colombian policy and appoint a director with enough clout to get 

the job done across the entire interagency system.

In early 2002, the interagency policy system appeared to be 

moving in the direction of greater support, despite the announcement 

by President Bush on February 27 that the United States had 

been “providing advice to the Colombian government as to drug 

eradication, and we need to keep it that way.”130 For the time being, 

the decision was made not to include Colombia in the global war on 

terrorism, partly out of respect for Colombia’s elections that were 

forthcoming in summer 2002 and partly because the U.S. Congress 

was not yet prepared for a dramatic change in policy.

Yet by the fall of 2002, President Bush signed National Security 

Presidential Directive 18, a new Colombia policy that replaced 

President Clinton’s PDD 73. Although continuity exists in the 

policies with respect to U.S. assistance to combat illegal drugs and 

terrorism, defend human rights, and promote the social and economic 

programs, as well as strengthen the ineffective judicial system, there 

are important differences. A report from the Department of State to 

Congress sets forth the expanded policy commitments:

1. Continue assistance to combat illicit drugs and 

terrorism, defend human rights, promote economic, 

social and alternative development initiatives, reform 

and strengthen the administration of justice, and 

assist the internally displaced.

2. Enhance counterterrorism capability by providing 

advice, assistance, training and equipment, and 

intelligence support to the Colombian Armed Forces 

and the Colombian National Police. 

3. Promote economic growth and development through 
62

support of market based policies and implementation 

of the Free Trade Act of the Americas and the Andean 

Trade Preferences Act. . . .

4. Substantially reduce the production and trafficking 

of cocaine and heroin . . . by strengthening 

counternarcotics programs. . . .

5. Increase the institutional development, 

professionalization, and enlargement of Colombian 

security forces to permit the exercise of governmental 

authority throughout the national territory while 

ensuring respect for human rights.131

The State Department report clarified the change in U.S. policy: 

In implementing these programs, the Administration and 

Congress increasingly came to understand that the terrorist and 

narcotics problems in Colombia are intertwined and must be dealt 

with as a whole. Working with Congress, the Administration 

sought and Congress enacted new authorities in the 2002 

Supplemental Appropriations Act that would help to more readily 

address the combined threat. . . . In practical terms, the training, 

equipment, intelligence support and other U.S. programs . . . will 

be available to support Colombia’s unified campaign against 

narcotics trafficking and designated terrorist organizations.132

Besides the impressive coca eradication rates mentioned earlier, 

the report listed the broader achievements of U.S. policy: nearly half 

of the 5,000 hectares of heroin sprayed; support for alternative licit 

crops; opening of 20 Justice Centers (Casas de Justicia) to provide 

cost-effective legal service to people who had no previous access to 

the judicial system; the protection of 3,043 human rights activists, 

journalists, and union leaders; economic assistance to over 500,000 

displaced persons; steps to reintegrate child soldiers (some 300); 

and support to justice sector reform programs and law enforcement. 

Since 1999, 64 Colombians have been extradited to the United States 

on criminal charges, and 140,000 new jobs were created from 1992 to 

1999.133

The change in U.S. policy, both on the executive and legislative 

sides, is a far cry from the counternarcotics-only mandate of Clinton’s 

PDD 73. Robust military assistance, designed to establish greater 
63

control of the national territory, is imperative. Such a commitment 

would make the United States a more credible and effective ally, 

increase chances for success in the overall drug war, shorten 

Colombia’s agony, greatly advance the cause of human rights, 

strengthen regional security in the conflicted Andean area, and make 

a dramatic improvement in international law and order. However, 

the United States should do this only in partnership, as Colombians 

commit themselves to mobilizing their nation, to allotting sufficient 

resources (military and nonmilitary) to the national effort, and to 

democratizing the burden of fighting and dying. President Uribe, 

who calls himself “Colombia’s first soldier,” appears to have the 

attributes of strategic genius that Colombia desperately needs and 

is working very dynamically to mobilize his nation and its abundant 

but largely untapped human resources. 

President Uribe is expanding the size of the armed forces and the 

police; establishing a nation-wide, community based, early warning 

intelligence system; forming a national militia system; downsizing 

the governmental bureaucracy (ostensibly to channel funds to the 

defense budget); implementing zones of rehabilitation to bring 

back governance and security to communities; and, demanding 

aggressive military operations from his commanders. It remains to 

be seen whether Colombian citizens at all socioeconomic levels will 

summon the political will and accept the need for collective sacrifice. 

Uribe has also asked his regional neighbors to assist Colombia by 

controlling their borders.

The strength of democratic civil-military relations during war, 

that is, the relationship of mutual support and respect among the 

people, the government, and the armed forces, is notably weak in 

Colombia.134 Collective sacrifice for the common good has not been 

a shared value in Colombian culture, and the best efforts of the U.S. 

Government and military are not likely to inculcate it. However, the 

U.S. policy implementation community, civilian and military alike, 

should make every effort to convince Colombians that this principle 

of mutual support is central to the task of winning the battle against 

the scourges of narco-terrorism and corruption. Finally, the United 

States still ought to apply in the relationship with Colombia the hard 

lesson learned in Vietnam and applied so well in El Salvador: Do not 

take away the burden of sacrifice and the benefits of learning-bydoing from the ally in the field. 

Counterinsurgency should still be the responsibility of 

Colombians. Only the citizens of Colombia can build effective 
64

state authority through collective sacrifice, so that it is considered 

legitimate by the people.135 Can such a plan work, given Colombia’s 

enormous defects described throughout this monograph? The 

analysis is studded with caveats, such as remedying institutional 

weaknesses and eliminating pervasive corruption in a weak state. 

However, there is really no other alternative than a deeper U.S. 

commitment. The alternative of a country permanently at war with 

itself and potentially with its neighbors is a nightmare scenario that 

would seriously affect Latin America as well as the U.S. ability to 

maneuver its power and influence to deal with challenges elsewhere 

across the globe. The other danger is that the United States, because 

of political inhibitions and competing priorities at home, will 

become comfortable with a level of assistance that is barely sufficient 

to improve the situation but not decisive enough to help end the 

conflict.

Unless the United States acts effectively, there is the risk of 

continued narcostatization, of governments coming under the 

corrosive influence and control of narcotics-related money and 

political interests. Such a prospect would seriously weaken the 

willingness of states to fulfill their international obligations. If left 

unchecked, such a process could lead to the strategic denial, rather 

than the strategic vision, of Latin America as a vibrant community 

of democracies working toward the common goal of economic 

integration in the hemisphere. 

U.S. policymakers must develop a strategy for the long term 

because Colombia’s multiple interrelated problems are not amenable 

to a quick fix. Indeed, this is likely to be a generational effort, requiring 

endurance and the ability to sustain long-term assistance on the 

part of Washington. Moreover, the U.S. strategic and operational 

engagement with El Salvador in the 1980s clearly showed that 

there will be inevitable difficulties and misunderstandings along 

the path of cooperation between asymmetric allies. We will find 

ourselves working with a center of gravity of the ally in the field that 

includes the presidency, ministry of defense, the armed forces and 

police, and the ministries of justice and interior. The challenge is to 

strengthen the center of gravity so that it gradually gains confidence 

and learns to perform more effectively on its own. What the United 

States cannot do is impart political will to the Colombian people. 

The Uribe government is the ideal partner to work with to combine 

will, strategic and operational creativity, and resources to the tasks 

ahead.
65

ENDNOTES

1. David C. Jordan, Drug Policy: Dirty Money and Democracies, Norman: 

University of Oklahoma Press, 1999, p. 217. This is a splendid analysis of the 

theory of democracy and at the same time a critique of globalization and the 

deleterious effects of illegal narcotics money on the institutions of democracies in 

transition, such as Latin America’s.

2. Jordan ranks states along the spectrum of democracy and levels of 

penetration by narcostatization. He argues that there are pseudodemocratic 

states (anocratic) and procedural democracies; in both, accountability is not 

widespread, facilitating narcostatization. At the time of Jordan’s writing, he 

listed Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia at varying levels of narcostatization.

3. Kevin Sullivan, “Citing Corruption, Mexico Shuts Drug Unit,” Washington 

Post, January 21, 2003 (www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19054-

2003Jan.html).

4. U.S. Department of State, International Information Programs, “U.S. Releases 

Annual Narcotics Certification Report,” January 31, 2003 (http://usinfo.state.gov/cgibin/washfile/display.pl.p=/products/washfile/georg/ar&f).

5. Naím, “The Five Wars of Globalization,” Foreign Policy, January-February 

2003, p. 36.

6. “Uribe pide que EE.UU. intervenga en la region,” El Comercio (Quito), 

January 17, 2003.(www.elcomercio.com/noticias.asp?noid).

7. Estimates are that up to four million Colombians live outside the country, 10 

percent of the national population. Colombia’s constitution of 1991 provides one 

senate seat to represent Colombian immigrants.

8. “Más de medio centenar de bandas de criminales colombianas hay en 

Madrid,” El Tiempo, January 28, 2003 (http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/judi/2003-01-29).

9. An eloquent statement of this view is Abraham F. Lowenthal, “U.S. Can’t 

Afford to Turn a Blind Eye to Latin America,” Chicago Tribune, December 15, 

2002.

10. Larry Birns, Director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, cited in Juan 

Forero, “Latin America’s Political Compass Veers Toward the Left,” New York 

Times (www.nytimes.com/2003/01/19/international/americas/19LATI.html).

11. United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the 

Caribbean, Balance Preliminar de las Economías, Santiago, Chile: United Nations, 

2002, p. 1.

12. David Bushnell and Marco Palacios, Colombia: Fragmented Land, Divided 
66

Society, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. viii. Bushnell notes that 

within American scholarship: “Colombia is . . . featured far less frequently than 

Brazil or Argentina or even . . . Chile or Peru.”

13. Colombia has the second oldest airline in the world.

14. In Spanish: “Nuestro sistema penal está poblado de restricciones a la 

tiranía, pero es laxo con el crimen.” Cited in Michael Reid, “Un País Aparte,” El 

Espectador, April 21, 2002 (www.elespectador.com/the_economist/nota2.htm).

15. The United States, under the George W. Bush Administration, does not 

recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court over American 

citizens.

16. “Sovereignty: Existing Rights, Evolving Responsibilities,” remarks by 

Ambassador Richard Haass to the School of Foreign Service and the Mortara 

Center for International Studies at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 

January 14, 2003.

17. Philip Bobbitt, The Shield Of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History, 

New York: Knopf, 2002. p. xxi.

18. To save money for defense and national reconstruction, President Álvaro 

Uribe closed down a number of Colombian embassies, consulates, and trade 

missions by the end of 2002.

19. Colombia should not be lumped into the category of post-colonial failed 

and failing states of the kind found in Africa, for example. For greater clarity on 

this issue, see Robert H. Dorff, “Democratization and Failed States: The Challenge 

of Ungovernability,” Parameters, Vol. 53, Summer 1996, pp. 17-31.

20. Interview with Colombian diplomat, New York City, February 8, 2002.

21. For information on the U.S. support role in this period, see Dennis M. 

Rempe, The Past As Prologue? A History of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy in Colombia, 

1958-66, Carlisle, PA: North-South Center and Strategic Studies Institute (Special 

Series on Implementing Plan Colombia), March 2002. On the history of the FARC, 

see Eduardo Pizarro Leongómez, Las FARC, 1949-1966: De la autodefensa a la 

combinación de todas las formas de lucha, Bogotá: Tercer Mundo Editores, 1991.

22. It is reported that perhaps six civilians in Colombia are qualified in military 

affairs and strategy.

23. Explanations for the weakness of the state and the military can be found 

in Eduardo Pizarro Leongómez, “Colombia: situación actual y perspectivas 

futuras de un conflicto,” draft manuscript, Princeton University, 2002. Colombian 

intellectuals also appear to have inoculated themselves against supporting a 

sufficient counterinsurgency for the military. For example, during 1997-98, a period 
67

in which the Colombian Army was suffering battalion-size battlefield defeats from 

the FARC, some were irresponsibly proposing cutting the already small army by 

half, regarding it as organized only for traditional defense against an external 

enemy. On this, see Francisco Leal Buitrago, Patricia Bulla Rodríguez, María 

Victoria Llorente, and Alfredo Rangel Suárez, “Seguridad Nacional y Seguridad 

Ciudadana. Una Aproximación Hacia La Paz,” in Armar la Paz Es Desarmar La 

Guerra, edited by Álvaro Camacho Guizado and Francisco Leal Buitrago, Bogotá, 

Instituto de Estudios Políticos y Relaciones Internacionales, Universidad Nacional 

de Colombia, 1999, p. 98.

24. See, for example, the summary of proceedings: Unclassified Telegram 

9087, “Civil-Military Relations During Conflict Conference, September 20-22,” 

American Embassy, Bogotá, October 4, 2002.

25. Preceding statistics were taken from Asociación Nacional de Instituciones 

Financieras, Informe Semanal, No. 619, February 18, 2002, p. 1. 

26. We are not talking about, as some Colombians would point out, the sacrifices 

made by those paying the high price from criminal activity, such as kidnapping. 

Such nonpolitical violence prospers in a climate of societal dishonesty, insecurity, 

and impunity before the law. Some Colombian army officers also regard soldiers 

from the lower class as better fighters in the field than upper and middle class 

soldiers.

27. Edmundo Jarquín and Fernando Carrillo, Justice Delayed: Judicial Reform in 

the Americas, Washington: Inter-American Development Bank, 1998, p. 11.

28. See Thoumi, “Why a Country Produces Drugs and How That Determines 

Policy Effectiveness: A General Model and Some Applications to Colombia,” 

Miami: Florida International University, Latin American and Caribbean Center, 

January 2002, p. 21.

29. “Qué tan corruptos se ven a sí mismos los colombianos!,” El Tiempo, 

January 26, 2003 (http://eltiempo.terra.com./judi/2003-01-26).

30. El Tiempo, January 26, 2003,“En Colombia hay más de 4.000 procesos 

penales por soborno,” (http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/judi/2003-01-27).

31. “La mitad de los colombianos que solicitan visa a E.U. presenta al menos 

un documento falso,” El Tiempo, January 27, 2003 (http://eltiempo.com/judi/2003-01-

28/ARTICULO-WEB-NOTA-INTERIOR-261617.html). 

32. World Bank, Corrupción, Desempeño Institucional y Gobernabilidad: 

Desarrollando Una Estrategia Anti-Corrupción Para Colombia, Bogotá: March 6, 2002, 

p. 6.

33. The source of this information is various discussions by author with 

Ecuadoran and Colombian military commanders.
68

34. There have been countless efforts in the past between Panama and 

Colombia to control the border and prevent routine incursions into Panama by the 

FARC and AUC. See: Greg Flakus, “Panama, Colombia Officials Set to Meet on 

Border Control,” VOANEWS.com (http://www.voanews.com/artoicle.cfm?objectID=A

2ECD9E6-AAD2-4D3C-9D4409A2E54).

35. Agence France Press, “Bogotá denuncia amparo de Chávez a la guerrilla,” 

Miami Herald, February 6, 2003 (www.miami.com/mld/elnuevo/news/world/americas/

5114889.htm).

36. “Frontera norte: la seguridad fue reforzada,” El Comercio (Quito) 

(www.elcomercio.com/noticias.asp?noid=49105).

37. Richard Millett, Colombia’s Conflicts: The Spillover Effects of a Wider War, 

Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, October 2002.

38. See, for examples, Iain Bruce, “Running Drugs Down the Amazon,” BBC 

News, June 9, 2000 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/784422-5); Lia Osório 

Machado, “Financial Flows and Drug Trafficking in the Amazon Basin,” MOST 

network on The Economic and Social Transformations Connected with DrugTrafficking (http://www.unesco.org/most/ds22eng.htm).

39. Mauricio Rubio, “El desbordamiento de la violencia en Colombia,” in Juan 

Luis Londoño, Alejandro Gaviria, Rodrigo Guerrero, eds., Asalto al Desarrollo: 

Violencia en América Latina, Washington, DC: Inter American Development Bank, 

2002, p. 133.

40. “En septiembre, todo el país tendrá Policía: asegura el general Teodoro 

Campo,” El Tiempo, January 23, 2003 (http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/coar/noticias).

41. Luz Neira Sáenz Fuentes, “Siete años estuvo Chalán sin Policía,” El Tiempo, 

January 23, 2003 (http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/coar/noticias).

42. In an article on China’s problems of state weakness, Shaoguang Wang 

lists six essentials of the effective state: monopolize legitimate use of force, extract 

resources, shape national identity and mobilize consent, regulate society and the 

economy, maintain the coherence of state institutions, and redistribute resources. 

See Wang, “The Problem of State Weakness,” Journal of Democracy, January 2003, 

Volume 14, No. 1, pp. 37-38.

43. “How Much in Taxes Do Colombians Really Pay?” Unclassified Telegram, 

American Embassy Bogotá, September 12, 2002 (Bogotá 8332). The previous 

statistics on tax collection are based on this telegram.

44. Scott Wilson, “Colombia Declares Emergency: New President Raises 

Taxes on Rich to Step Up War on Rebels,” Washington Post, August 12, 2002 

(www.washington post.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8426-2002Aug12).
69

45. Ministerio de Defensa Nacional, El Narcotráfico, una Amenaza para la 

Seguridad Nacional, Bogotá, November 2000, p.1.

46. It should be noted that the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia 

combine numerous regional groups, some of which exercise significant autonomy 

from the national umbrella AUC.

47. Gonzalo Sánchez, “Problems of Violence, Prospects for Peace,” in Charles 

Bergquist, Ricardo Peñaranda, Gonzalo Sánchez, Violence in Colombia, 1990-2000: 

Waging War and Negotiating Peace, Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, 

2001, p. 11.

48. Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, Greed and Grievance in Civil War, 

Washington, DC: World Bank, 2001; Paul Collier and Nicholas Sambanis, 

“Understanding Civil War: A New Agenda,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 46, 

2002, No. 1. The sources of income for the FARC, ELN, and AUC are brilliantly 

analyzed by Alfredo Rangel Suárez, “Parasites and Predators: Guerrillas and the 

Insurrection Economy of Colombia,” Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 53, No. 2, 

Spring 2000.

49. Pizarro, “Colombia: una guerra civil, guerra contra la sociedad, guerra 

terrorista o guerra ambigua?,” manuscript provided by the author, Princeton 

University, 2002. Nazih Richani, in a highly controversial article, refers to 

an unbreakable “war system,” where all the actors have a vested interest in 

maintaining the war system. Richani, “The Political Economy of Violence: The 

War System in Colombia,” Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 

39, 1997, No. 2.

50. The kind of conflict it is is the subject of much discussion. See, for example, 

Eduardo Posada Carbó, Civil War? The Language of Conflict in Colombia, Bogotá: 

Fundación Ideas Para La Paz, 2002. An excellent chronology using the “civil 

war” approach is Bert Ruiz, The Colombian Civil War, Jefferson, North Carolina: 

McFarland & Company, 2001.

51. A brilliant literary rendition of the dreadful industry of kidnapping is 

the work of Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez, News of a Kidnapping, 

New York: Penguin Books, 1997. Originally published in Spanish as Noticia de un 

Secuestro.

52. “Ejército de Colombia,” Briefing by Colombian Army General Carlos 

Ospina, National Defense University, Washington, DC, January 27, 2003.

53. For the differential impact of violence, see Alejandro Gaviria and Carlos 

Eduardo Velez, Who Bears the Burden of Crime in Colombia? Washington, DC: The 

World Bank, January 2001. Their conclusion: in the cities the rich bear the brunt of 

property crimes and the poor in the rural areas, although the rich are better able to 

protect themselves, including the option of leaving the country.
70

54. Transfers of wealth or income between persons, not considered a cost to 

society, but to individuals.

55. Rubio, “El desbordamiento de la violencia,” p. 27.

56. Ibid., p. 133.

57. General Enrique Mora, comments made at the meeting of the Commanders 

in Chief of the United States, Colombian, Venezuelan, Ecuadorean, Peruvian, 

Bolivian, and Brazilian armies, Washington, DC, July 18, 2002.

58. El Tiempo, May 15, 2002.

59. Drug Enforcement Agency, “Drug Trafficking in the United States” 

(http:///.usdoj.gov/dea/concern/drug_trafficking.html)

60. The reconstruction of these events relies upon various sources, especially 

the report of the Colombian Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for 

Human Rights, Informe de la Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para 

los Derechos Humanos Sobre la Misión de Observación en el Medio Atrato, Bogotá, May 

20, 2002 (hereafter cited as UN Human Rights Mission). Excellent detail of the 

human dimensions of the events are in Scott Wilson, “No Sanctuary from War,” 

Washington Post, May 8, 2002 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn-articles/

A56591-2002May8.html).

61. Ibid, p. 8.

62. Of the two other pipetas, one did not explode and the other did so within 50 

meters of the church. Therefore, the FARC already was already well aware of the 

potential risk to innocent lives before firing the third.

63. UN Human Rights Mission, p. 10.

64. Ibid., pp. 14-21.

65. Ibid., p. 21.

66. For a chronology and description of terrorist attacks against 88 towns by 

the FARC, ELN, and the AUC in the years 1999, 2000, and 2001, see the special 

edition of Revista Ejército, “Bajo los Escombros del Terrorismo,” Bogotá, circa 

2002. According to this report, the FARC committed 69.3 percent of the attacks; 

the ELN, 15.9; and the paramilitaries, 5 percent. These percentages do not tell the 

whole story. In recent years, for example, the AUC has been charged with some 70 

percent of the human rights violations in Colombia.

67. “La crisis humanitaria,” Semana, January 11, 2003 (http://semana.terra.com.co/

opencms/Semana/articulopresion.html).
71

68. For information on Gato Negro, see Comando General, Fuerzas Militares de 

Colombia, “Operación Gato Negro” (www.fuerzasmilitares.mil.co/noticijs7.htm5).

69. T. Christian Miller, “Rebels Blur the Lines in Drug War,” Los Angeles Times, 

May 3, 2001, p. 5 (http://colhrnet.igc.org/new items/latimes.503.htm).

70. “Fernandiño comienza a hablar,” Semana, April 30, 2001; republished in 

Comando General, Fuerzas Armadas de Colombia, Noticias y Actualidad (http:

//www.fuerzasmilitares.mil.co/noticijs10.htm).

71. Mike Williams, “Trafficking Fuels Rebel Expansion,” Atlanta Journal and 

Constitution, July 9, 2001 (www.iansa.org/news/2002/jul_01/rebel.htm), p. 2.

72. Drug Enforcement Agency, “Attorney General Janet Reno Announces 

Over 50 Arrests in International Heroin Ring,” News Release, January 18, 2001 

(www.usdoj/dea/pubs/pressre/pr011801.htm).

73. This information is found in the compelling report by Thomas Ginsberg, 

“Smashing the Connection: Breaking the ‘White Horse,’” Philadelphia Inquirer, 

December 7, 2002 (www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/special_packages/inquirer_

magazine/4662550.html).

74. Anthony Faiola, “Brazilian Gangs Take Turf Wars Out of the Slums: Even 

Upper-Class Areas Are Invaded by Traffickers,” Washington Post, December 15, 

2002, p. A37 (www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56053-2002Dec14). See also 

Julio A. Cirino, “Hacia Una Nueva ‘Narcolandia’?” in Libertaddigital.com, July 17, 

2002; and Larry Rohter, “Ipanema Under Siege: Rio’s Gangs Flex Harder,” New 

York Times (www.nytimes.com2002/weekinreview/20ROHT.html). Gangs have been a 

threat for some time in Rio, requiring the Brazilian Army to help the police restore 

order. See James Brooke: “Brazil’s Army Joins the Battle in Lawless Rio,” New York 

Times, November 5, 1994, p.A14. The Brazilian Army operation of 1994 is analyzed 

by William Mendel, “Combat In Cities: The LA Riots and Operation Rio,” Foreign 

Military Studies Office, Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, July 1996.

75. Faiola, “Brazilian Gangs,” p. 2.

76. Brazilian concerns about the security of the Amazon are superbly analyzed 

by Luis Bitencourt, “The Importance of the Amazon Basin in Brazil’s Evolving 

Security Agenda,” in Joseph S. Tulchin and Heather A. Golding, eds., Environment 

and Security in the Amazon Basin, Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 2002, 

pp. 53-74. See also Astrid Aranás and Eduardo A. Gamarra, “Drug Trafficking, 

National Security, and the Environment in the Amazon Basin,” in Joseph S. 

Tulchin and Heather A. Golding, eds., Environment and Security in the Amazon 

Basin, Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 2002, pp. 75-98.

77. “Rumsfeld Urges Elimination of Havens of Global Crime,” Miami Herald, 

November 20, 2002 (www.miami.com/mld/miami/herald/news/world/americas/4559791 

.htm).
72

78. Gonzalo Sánchez, “Problems of Violence, Prospects for Peace,” p. 9.

79. “Collar Bomba,” Columna Quincenal (http://usuarios.ecuanex.net.ec/

periodismo/page75.html), accessed January 3, 2003. See also “Condena de 32 años 

por collar bomba,” El País (Cali), September 24, 2002 (http://elpais-cali.terra.com.co/

historico.sep24002/nal/A224N2.html).

80. The content of the recording can be read in Gustavo Pérez Ramírez, 

“Historia de una infamia: El caso del secuestro y liberación de una pequeña pone 

en tela de juicio la credibilidad de las Farc,” in Revista Cambio, June 23, 2000 (http:

//usuarios.ecuanex.net.ec/periodismo/page 75.html).

81. Cited in Frances Robles, “Colombian Troops Stalk Leftist Rebels in Cities,” 

Miami Herald, October 28, 2002), p. 1 (www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/2002/10/28/

news/world/americas/4384962).

82. Cited in Robles, p. 2. See also the report by Scott Wilson: “Urban AntiRebel Raid a New Turn in Colombian War,” Washington Post, October 24, 2002, p. 

A28 (www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8476-2002Oct24).

83. Information provided by LTC George Rhynedance, Public Affairs, Office 

of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, August 31, 2000.

84. See “Los nexos internacionales de las FARC,” El Tiempo, August 19, 2001 

(http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/19-08-2001/judi_pf_o.htm). There is significant spillover 

of FARC-generated violence in these countries. The FARC is fairly autonomous in 

resources and does not appear to want to conduct terrorism at the international 

level.

85. See Scott Wilson, “Colombian President Rejects Rebel Offer: Pastrana 

To Send Army Into Guerrilla Zone,” Washington Post, January 14, 2002 (http:

//www.washington post.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37547-2002). See also the perceptive 

commentary of Fernando Cepeda Ulloa, “Facilitación Internacional,” El Tiempo, 

January 15, 2002 (http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/15-2002/reda_pf_2).

86. These events are described in “La historia secreta,” Semana, February 24, 

2002 (http://semana.terra.com.co/1034/actualidad/ZZZFJ18121YC.asp).

87. Scott Wilson, “Colombia, Guerrilla Group Set a Timetable for Talks: 

Agreement Envisions Formal Cease-Fire Accord by April 7,” Washington Post, 

January 21, 2002, A12 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12030-

2002Jan20).

88. Chas. W. Freeman, Jr., The Arts of Power: Statecraft and Diplomacy, 

Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997, p. 67.

89. See, for example, Alfredo Rangel Suárez, “No hacerse falsas ilusiones: No 
73

habrá tregua,” El Tiempo, February 1, 2002 (http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/01-02-2002/

reda_pf_4.html). Rangel, one of a few distinguished Colombian defense strategists, 

stated that a cease-fire would not be convenient for the FARC because “it would 

mean abandoning their strategic objective of taking power by the force of arms.”

90. The critical views of Villalobos, then a fellow at Oxford University, 

can be found in “Colombia vs. El Salvador,” Semana, January 6, 2002 (http://

semana.terra.com.co/1026/actualidad/ZZZ4Q5Y32WC.asp). He argued that Colombia 

has a “negotiation of lies,” because the FARC made war but did not negotiate, 

while the government only sought negotiation. An equally bleak perspective 

came from Senator Ingrid Betancourt, “For the time being, the negotiations have 

no chance of success. They’ve been warped from the outset. Their goal isn’t to 

arrive at conclusion, but to win for the parties involved. . . . Everyone lies. And 

pretends to believe the lies of the other.” From her book, Until Death Do Us Part: 

My Struggle to Reclaim Colombia, New York: Harper Collins, 2002, pp. 221-222. A 

serious impediment is the FARC’s definition of “peace.” Raúl Reyes, one of the 

FARC commanders, stated to El Tiempo, November 7,1999: “Peace is not simply 

the silencing of guns, nor the end of military engagements.” To Spain’s El País, he 

added that peace was “. . . not the demobilization and surrender of arms, but the 

solution of deep social, economic, and political problems of the country.”(Cited 

in Eduardo Posada Carbó, “Paz de Verdad?” newsletter of the Fundación Ideas 

Para La Paz, February 2001.) This is a definition and defense of class warfare. 

Moreover, the definition was so sweeping that it could not constitute the bases for 

either a cease-fire or peace negotiations, a point also raised by Villalobos above. 

An excellent study of how to settle civil wars is Barbara F. Walter, Committing 

to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars, Princeton: Princeton University 

Press, 2002, especially the theoretical discussion in Chapter 2. Walter postulates 

three critical phases in successful negotiations: “. . . a negotiation phase during 

which combatants choose whether to initiate peace talks, a bargaining phase 

during which they choose whether to reach and sign a peace settlement, and 

an implementation phase during which they choose to execute the agreed upon 

terms,” p. 20. The Colombian process did not get to the first phase.

91. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, the FARC has over 

6,000 children soldiers under the age of 18 fighting within its ranks. See Las Farc 

siguen reclutando menores, denuncia Unicef,” El Tiempo, February 13, 2002 (http:

//eltiempo.terra.com.co/13-02-2002/judi_pf_0.html). Carel De Rooy, United Nations 

representative in Colombia, stated, “. . . they’re throwing kids to the front as 

cannon fodder.” Cited in Juan Forero, “A Child’s Vision of War: Boy Guerrillas 

in Colombia,” New York Times, December 20, 2000 (http://ebird.dtic.mil/Dec2000/

e2001220childs.htm). For more detailed information on the brutal treatment 

of children, including executions for flagging morale, see Centro de Análisis 

Sociopolíticos, Juguetes de la Guerra: Niños reclutados por la guerrilla en Colombia, 

Bogotá, 1999. See also Mauricio Sojo Vásquez, “Este país que mata niños,” El 

Espectador, February 17, 2002 (http://www.elespectador.com/paz/nota5.htm). The 

abuse of women and prisoners is also notorious among the FARC. See Escuela de 

Comunicación Social y Periodismo, Universidad Sergio Arboleda, El Regreso del 

Infierno: Historias de los que volvieron, Bogotá, 2001.
74

92. The FARC and ELN regularly blow up the Coveñas-Caño Limón pipeline 

that goes from Arauca to the Caribbean, at times extracting payment from 

Occidental Petroleum, and frequently causing catastrophic ecological damage. 

93. “Dime con quién andas...El IRA habría enseñado a las FARC a utilizar 

personas como choferes inocentes de carro bombas,” Semana.com, February 8, 

2003 (http://semana.terrs.com.co/opencms/Semana/articuloImpresion.html?id=68059).

94. “Gran decepción en comunidad internacional por terrorismo de guerrilla: 

Nuncio Apostólico,” El Tiempo, February 9, 2002 (http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/09-02-

2002/poli_pf_0.html).

95. Interview with Dr. Jaime Ruiz, World Bank, Washington, DC, May 28, 

2002.

96. Serious misinformation about the United States militarizing its support 

package accompanies the public discussion on the U.S. contribution to the $7.5 

billion total budget for Plan Colombia, a document produced by Colombia’s 

Department of National Planning. Of the original US $1.3 billion contribution, 

61 percent was designated as military. For an early assessment of the origins and 

elements of Plan Colombia, see Gabriel Marcella, Plan Colombia: The Strategic and 

Operational Imperatives, Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, Strategic Studies 

Institute, April 2001. The Institute’s extensive series of papers on Colombia can be 

accessed at http://carlisle-www.army.mil/ssi/index.html.

97. Interview with Ambassador Curtis Kamman, U.S. Army War College, 

Carlisle, PA, December 20, 2000.

98. Gil Merom, “Liberal Democracies, The Balance of Tolerance and the Legacy 

of Small Wars,” manuscript, Department of Political Science, Tel-Aviv University, 

September 1996, p. 7.

99. For an analysis of the weakness of Colombia’s judicial system, see Luz 

Estella Nagle, The Search for Accountability and Transparency in Plan Colombia: 

Reforming Judicial Systems Again, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. 

Army War College, May 2001. 

100. For the improvements in the Colombian Army, see Thomas Marks, 

Colombian Army Adaptation to FARC Insurgency, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies 

Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2002. 

101. “Así se inició cerco a las FARC,” El Tiempo, August 19, 2001 (http://

eltiempo.terra.com.co/19-08-2001/judi_pf_1.htm).

102. El Tiempo, December 29, 2002 (http://eltiempo.terra.com.coar/noticias).

103. Statistical information was abstracted from “Paramilitaries (Part III): GOC 
75

Improves Record Against AUC, But Needs To Do More,” Unclassified Telegram, 

Department of State, Bogotá 1494, February 15, 2002. For more information on the 

relationship between the military and paramilitaries, see Human Rights Watch, 

The “Sixth Division;” Military-Paramilitary Ties and U.S. Policy in Colombia, New 

York: Human Rights Watch, 2001. The term “Sixth Division” refers not to an Army 

division, but implies a supportive relationship between the Colombian Army and 

the AUC.

104. Students of counterinsurgency, such as Sir Robert Thompson, Thomas 

Marks, and Anthony James Joes, point out that the 10-to-1 ratio is seldom 

achieved in the real world. The key variables for success must also include 

effective leadership, ethical rectitude, tactical mobility, intelligence, logistics, and 

a substantial investment in bringing governance and participation to the people 

most directly affected by the conflict.

105. Tim Johnson, “U.S. General: Colombia Needs More Troops,” Miami 

Herald, March 6, 2002 (http://ebird.dtic.mil/Mar2002/e20020307usgeneral.htm).

106. The Colombian armed forces could always have retaken the despeje, it was 

simply a matter of the political cost to be paid. Surprisingly, the FARC put up little 

resistance to the military, melting into the forest without engaging the forces. It 

must also be recognized that Pastrana played a form of coercive politics never seen 

in 3 years of the “peace process.”

107. Putumayo’s violent history earned it a rare honor, the publication of 

a papal encyclical. On June 7, 1912, Pope Pius X promulgated Lacrimabili Statu 

(“On the Indians of South America”) to lament the deplorable condition of the 

Indians that were being brutally exploited as slave labor in the Upper Amazon by 

speculators in tropical products like rubber.

108. Statistics derived from “Antinarcotics Police Interdiction: Results and 

Projections,” Unclassified Telegram, American Embassy, Bogotá, December 12, 

2001.

109. For this perspective, see the excellent field research of Nathan Baker 

Christie, Bursting the ‘Balloon’: Aerial Eradication of Illicit Coca Cultivation in Colombia, 

M.A. Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, May 2001. Christie, who works in the 

U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Narcotics and Legal Matters, conducted onsite research in Putumayo.

110. Ibid., p. 107.

111. Interview with Stuart Lippe, Office of Colombian Affairs, U.S. Department 

of State, Washington, DC, February 12, 2002.

112. General Accounting Office, Drug Control: Efforts to Develop Alternatives 

to Cultivating Illicit Crops in Colombia Have Made Little Progress and Face Serious 

Obstacles, Washington, DC: GAO-02-291, February 2002, p. 3.
76

113. There was also considerable debate about the amount of coca fields 

actually eradicated. See: Frances Robles, “100 Guerrillas Killed in Colombia Since 

Talks Failed,” Miami Herald, March 8, 2002, p. 18A. See in same page information 

on Colombian coca production in 2001, based on satellite imagery. Due to one 

area of the country not having been surveyed in 2000 because of cloud cover, 

it was now believed that coca production actually increased by 33,600 hectares 

(82,992 acres) in 2001 compared with production figures in 2000. The White House 

Office of National Drug Control Policy issued an official statement: “The figures 

underscore the pervasiveness of cultivation and trafficking in Colombia; the 

magnitude and complexity of Colombia’s interlocking security, drug control and 

economic challenges; and the need for sustained U.S. engagement.” For the impact 

on coca farmers in Putumayo, see Scott Wilson, “Colombia’s Air Assault on Coca 

Leaves Crop, Farmers in Its Dust,” Washington Post, November 23, 2002, p. A1 

(www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45987-2002Nov12).

114. “El Ministro de Justicia e Interior, Fernando Londoño, dice que este 

año el Gobierno acabará con el narcotráfico,” El Tiempo, January 13, 2003 (http:

//eltiempo.terra.com.co/poli/2003-01-12).

115. Adding fuel to the debate was commentary that coca growing has 

expanded rather than contracted, despite Colombian claims of 16.8 percent drop 

in acreage. See Associated Press, “Colombia Claims Coca Crop Decline,” New 

York Times, February 27, 2002 (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/APColombia-Coca-Crop.html). The issue of measuring acreage eradicated remained a 

controversial and highly technical one.

116. Interview with Olivier Carduner, Director of South American Affairs, 

U.S. Agency for International Development, Washington, DC, February 27, 2002.

117. The Department of State invoked the Leahy amendment to deprive the 

Colombian Air Force’s 1st Air Combat Command of U.S. military assistance 

because it had been implicated in the killing of 18 noncombatant civilians by 

cluster bombs during a strafing of the village of Santo Domingo in December 1998. 

The long and fruitless investigation prompted Department of State spokesman 

Richard Boucher to state: “The prolonged investigation has raised questions 

about the Colombian air force’s commitment to determine the facts, and we think, 

damages the reputation of Colombia’s air force. We expect due process and we 

expect a just ruling based on objective facts.” Cited in Reuters, “U.S. Bans Aid to 

Colombian Air Force Unit,” MSNBCNews (http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/

reuters01-14-075613.asp?reg=Americas).

118. Interview with Frank. L. Jones, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, 

PA, February 25, 2002. Jones worked in the Department of Defense office for 

counternarcotics support.

119. Washington Post, January 14, 2002 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wpdyn/A40957-2002) The Post resumed its strong support in an editorial on February 
77

24, 2002, entitled “Help for Colombia;” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac@wp-dyn/

A57958-2002Feb24). The Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, and Dallas Morning News

also endorsed more robust military assistance. Conspicuous by the absence of its 

support until later was the New York Times, which for years resisted expanded 

military assistance to Colombia.

120. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, New Haven: 

Yale University Press, 1968, p. 8.

121. The vagaries, contradictions, differing perspectives, and actual 

contributions of European countries about and to Plan Colombia are exhaustively 

analyzed in Joaquín Roy, “Europe, Neither Plan Colombia Nor Peace Process: From 

Good Intentions to High Frustrations,” Working Paper Number 11, North-South 

Center, University of Miami, January 2003.

122. Karen De Young, “Wider U.S. Role in Colombia Sought: $98 Million 

Requested for Military Training, Equipment,” Washington Post, February 6, 2002, 

p. A15 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29333-2002Feb5). Also U.S. 

Government source, American Embassy, Bogota, March 22, 2003.

123. The Colombian media noted that this represented a shift in U.S. support 

from defense to offense. See “Estados Unidos aprueba aviones contra las FARC,” 

El Tiempo, February 6, 2003 (http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/coar/noticias).

124. Militias, an old theme in national history, remain a contentious issue 

among Colombians, but clearly there is a need. See Scott Wilson, “Colombian 

Rebels Met by a New Unarmed Foe: Villagers’ Resistance Could Alter War,” 

Washington Post, February 9, 2002, p. A1 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wpdyn/A48175-2002Feb8).

125. The Leahy Amendment would, therefore, require that all personnel be 

vetted if the United States were to send military assistance to reorganize, train, 

and reequip the armed forces of Colombia. This would be an extraordinary work 

load, probably beyond the capabilities of the American Embassy.

126. A senior Bush administration official opined in fall 2002 that the difference 

between counterterrorism and counterinsurgency is semantics.

127. Rand Beers, “Andean Regional Initiative,” Testimony Before the Senate 

Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, July 11, 

2001 (http://www.state.gov/g/inl/rls/rm/2-1/jun_aug/4054.htm).

128. Defense and Democratic Security Policy, p. 4.

129. Secretary of State, “A Report to the Congress on United States Policy 

Towards Colombia and Other Related Issues,” U.S. Department of State, 

November 2002, p. 6.
78

130. Karen De Young, “Colombia Aid Proposals Shelved: Pentagon Officials 

Urged Expanded U.S. Role Against Rebels,” Washington Post, February 28,2002, p. 

A14 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14117-2002Feb27).

131. Secretary of State, “A Report to the Congress. . .,” pp. 7-8.

132. Ibid., p. 9.

133. Ibid., pp.10-13.

134. For a modern interpretation of the “remarkable trinity” and its strategic 

application, see Michael I. Handel, Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought,

London: Frank Cass, 2001, 3rd ed., pp. 91-134. On the contemporary debate in 

American society about the “gap” between civilians and military and the impact 

on military effectiveness, see Peter D. Feaver and Richard H. Kohn, eds., Soldiers 

and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security, Cambridge, 

MA: The MIT Press, 2001, pp. 325-474. It is noteworthy that Colombian Army 

Commander, General Carlos Ospina, uses the trinitarian concept in strategy and 

operations briefings, evidence that the military is aware of the importance of the 

concept in the conduct of their operations.

135. There is a rich literature on “state building” and war. In addition to 

Philip Bobbitt’s work cited in footnote 16, two of the best are Charles Tilly, “War 

Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” in Bringing the State Back, in Peter 

B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschmeyer, and Theda Skopcol, eds., New York: Cambridge 

University Press, 1985, pp. 170-226; and Bruce D. Porter, War and the Rise of the 

State, New York: The Free Press, 1994. For a brilliant application of the theory 

of state building through war, the bellicist theory, to Latin America, see Miguel 

Angel Centeno, Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin America, State 

College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002. Centeno argues persuasively 

and eloquently that the bellicist theory of state formation was less relevant to 

Latin America. Central authority and its armed forces evolved as weak entities, 

compared to their counterparts in the history of Western Europe. 
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. Gabriel Marcella

Director of Publications

Ms. Marianne P. Cowling

Publications Assistant

Ms. Rita A. Rummel

*****

Composition

Ms. Gretchen Smith