The "Quiet War" rages on

Just a few years ago, Colombia presented the starkest example in the western hemisphere of a so-called failed state, with most of its territory under control of warlords, insurgents or drug cartels. Today, with a courageous new president vowed to put down guerrilla and paramilitary armies, curb the export of narcotics, and restore the economy, Colombia has made marked progress towards being a real country.

It has been a long time since Colombia has been a fully functioning country, in the way most of us conceive of countries. Since before World War II, political factions there have fought a bloody internecine conflict. Early on, the fight was between the traditional, landed class and their allies against urbanized forces of economic reform and marxist/socialist ideals. In the 1940s and 50s, this increasingly bitter civil war became known as “La Violencia” (the violence), because of the scale of senseless bloodshed that plagued the entire countryside.

While truces and accommodations were temporarily secured, the civil war never really ended, and in the 1980s drug cartels entered the fray, fueled by the demand for cocaine in the U.S. For the last two decades, Colombia has more resembled some throwback to the feudal system, with extra-legal private militias, several large guerrilla armies, and well-armed and well-financed drug cartels vying for control of their territories. The under-manned, outgunned, and ill-trained Colombian military was too weak to exercise real control, and was often corrupted and co-opted by the other forces. Approximately 3,000 to 4,000 people—many of them non-combatants—are killed each year in the ongoing Colombian civil war.

For many years, the primary U.S. foreign policy interest in Colombia was to stem the tide of illegal narcotics flowing from the coca fields and heroin labs to the streets, campuses clubs and boardrooms of America. During the Clinton administration, however, that focus began to change as it became clear that a sovereign state in our hemisphere was on the verge of collapsing due to “narco-terrorism”. In 2000, President Clinton and Colombia’s President Andres Pastrana established the multi-faceted, $1.6 billion “Plan Colombia” with the stated goal of wiping out half of Colombia’s coca fields, and building up the Colombian military as the instrument of that effort—making Colombia one of the largest recipients of U.S. aid, behind Israel and Egypt.

The Bush administration continued and expanded aid to Colombia, with another $2 billion and around 400 U.S. military advisors—mostly Special Forces troops. Still, in late 2001, Colombia still seemed to be sliding further into anarchy, with rampant assassinations, massacres, and an epidemic of kidnappings. With around 1,300 people held hostage, Colombia is known as the kidnapping capital of the world.

Into this situation came Alvaro Uribe, elected in a landslide in May of 2002 as Colombia’s new president. Uribe was the country’s first president to be elected as an Independent, and came to power on a 100-point platform announcing his intention to directly confront the guerrilla armies—mainly the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and its 20,000 armed fighters—that control whole provinces, and to disband the right-wing paramilitary groups that operate outside the law.

Now approaching the midpoint of his 4-year term, Uribe and his administration have made substantial progress. Cocaine production has dropped by 20 percent or more, the FARC and other guerrilla groups have lost leaders and territory to a more capable and more aggressive Colombian military, and a program of disarming the paramilitary groups has begun. He has also survived several assassination attempts, which in Colombia is another measure of both courage and success.

T.T.

©2004, WestRim Digital Arts