The Civil War and the "Plan Colombia"

     Colombian TV news highlights the argument over "Plan Colombia" by which the U.S. provides military aid, including helicopters, to fight the drug trade. The government disingenuously rejects charges that this really means help in the war against the guerrillas.
     International concern is reflected in the March 4 issue of The Economist. The cover picture, "Muddle in the jungle," carries a picture of armed soldiers in the jungle with the caption "Is this really the way to win the drugs war?", which is also the title of the leader pointing out that the violence forced almost 300,000 to flee their homes in 1999. A feature article is entitled "The Andean coca wars. A crop that refuses to die."
     Tom Marks, who knows the situation well, writes: "Colombia's problems lie in the fact that the country itself no longer engaged in fighting its own internal war. The business has been left to the military, even as the system has regularly sacked key officers in order to establish who was "really" the boss. The result has been a military which has been effectively neutered, if we may use that term. More seriously, there now exist two armies. One the press (ours and theirs) sees, in the capital, the other fights the war and is little covered or understood. It is that army which is holding the line in Colombia.
     I have seen no signs whatsoever, even discussions, of movement beyond the military realm. What could cause this to change is a government move which was seen to endanger the very existence or essence of the Colombian state.
     Ironically our impending aid should exacerbate the situation. Too many strings attached will probably not lead to the rejection of the package -- Colombia wants it -- but it will likely lead to the creation of yet another military within the military -- a special "drug-fighting" component. Colombia will allow us to run a separate war in the extreme south, as long as this does not infringe upon certain internal prerogatives. But our war will not have any particular effect on the internal security situation.
     FARC's ability to mount substantial disinformation campaigns, to include demonstrations involving "abused" farmers (i.e. the coca production work force), should give us pause to consider the possible nationalistic upsurge which will accompany too high a profile in our southern AO. Within legal Colombian society, too, there remain those for whom nationalism is a powerful force, both for genuine and opportunistic reasons (who can forget the 2-9 Aug 99 Cambio cover story, "Intervencion," on imminent US invasion?).
     The only realistic solution to this situation, as the military well knows, is an integrated, coordinated, national plan. The military will of necessity play a lead role, but it is not the military's fight -- it is Colombia's. There is much talk that such a plan is on the drawing boards as a spinoff from the "Plan Colombia" drafting process. I know of no one who has actually seen such a document, though. It must be drawn up. I would suspect this will absorb more military energies than possible intervention in the normal processes of society, political or otherwise."

Ronald Hilton - 3/6/00