Terrorism in Colombia
A Post-September 11 Perspective

Presented By Rudolf Hommes[1]

“You must have been dreaming,” the officers insisted. “Nothing has happened in Macondo, nothing has ever happened, and nothing ever will happen. This is a happy town.”[2]

1.    Introduction. For more than 20 years, the Colombian government has maintained semi continuous negotiations with the guerrilla groups with various degrees of success in its objective of reaching a peace settlement and avoiding an all out military confrontation. In the early nineties a window of opportunity was opened when the government reached a peace agreement with the M-19 and EPL guerrillas and incorporated some of their leaders into the formal political competitive process. This could have aborted due to the assassinations of Luis Carlos Galán, a popular liberal candidate, Carlos Pizarro, the head of the M-19 group and the leading cadres of the Unión Patriótica – a Communist led attempt to create a moderate and somewhat pluralistic leftist party- including their two Presidential candidates. We now know that the drug Mafia ordered these murders or the anonymous right-wing faction that controls the paramilitaries. These assassinations were also part of a wider scene in which judges, prosecutors and even the whole Supreme Court were victims of the combined efforts of the drug organizations, the guerrilla and the paramilitaries to weaken the justice system through outright and systematic extermination of their top people. At the same time, the drug cartels organized a terrorist bombing and kidnapping campaign aimed at coaxing the government and the public to revoke the then existing treaties of extradition Colombian suspected criminals wanted in this country or elsewhere. The country rose to these challenges and convened a Constitutional Assembly through a referendum. The constitutional assembly was elected in free elections. In its composition and functioning, and in the final product –a new Constitution- the M-19 played a key role, with about one third of the elected representatives to that assembly, the conservatives and the independent made up another third and the Liberals, the government party, were a minority. This assembly and its deliberations captured the attention and the interest of the country and the constitution that came about is truly popular in origin and undeniably legitimate. This exercise opened the political arena not only to the M19 but also to ethnic minorities that had never had a chance to express themselves politically or religious minorities that were politically weak in a largely Catholic country. The changes were momentous and the event a political hit. Sadly, although everything changed, and there are important positive trends still in progress, nothing fundamental changed. It has taken ten years for Colombians to realize that constitutions only provide the stage for change and that it by itself may require not only time but also much more than the letter of a Constitution. A sad addendum is that together with profound structural changes such as opening doors for increased political participation; decentralization of government or the creation of an independent central bank, the new Constitution also revoked existing extradition treaties, despite the efforts of government to prevent it. This symbolizes the power of the drug organizations in the Colombian political process.

2.    The government at that time pursued peace negotiations with the two most powerful guerrilla groups, FARC and ELN but failed to reach agreements. The negotiations came to an abrupt end during the Gaviria administration when the guerrillas attempted to assassinate a Congressional leader and kidnapped another one – a former minister and regional political leader that was murdered in captivity. During the Samper administration, the process went nowhere, except for agitation within the civil society and the development of a strong pro-peace sentiment which culminated with a referendum during the presidential election of 1998. At that time, the country voted in favor of peace, with more people showing up at the polls than ever before.

3.    Appeasement approach. Riding on strong public opinion favoring peace, Andrés Pastrana and FARC’s durable chief Manuel Marulanda agreed to a  strategy of negotiating without a cease-fire. It included the concession of a jungle heaven to the FARC guerrilla - a sizeable territory known as a zona de despeje or distensión -  and the negotiation of a peace agenda that largely would give the FARC strategic and tactical advantages that it has not been able to obtain by military means. The quid pro quo never has been clear but it is understood that eventually it would be peace. A policy of appeasement of the guerrilla has ensued that has weakened the negotiating capacity of the government and has eroded the popular backing of the peace process without advancing on the agenda or the willingness of the guerrilla to seriously consider a peaceful solution. A key element of this approach has been the support of the United States government for the peace strategy. Additionally, US support has come from Plan Colombia, a diffuse aid program that sough to strengthen Colombia’s ability to fight and control the drug trade while trying to steer away from involvement in the internal counterinsurgency effort. This ambivalence has been greatly ineffectual since drug trade and insurgency are closely intertwined. Moreover, it was the drug cartels that introduced urban terrorism to the Colombian war scene in the late 1980s. The drug organization supports both the guerrilla and the counterinsurgent paramilitaries, as if the drug trade’s principal objective were to intensify and prolong the internal conflict.

4.    Drugs, Terrorism, Paramilitaries and Insurgency. These questions unbelievably are dealt separately in U.S. foreign policy formulation and implementation due largely to U.S. domestic political reasons. It may be that before September 11 there was considerable nervousness in the U.S. about framing policy so directly on violent actors, but that such concerns are likely to subside somewhat post September 11.[3] This separation of closely related issues seems unreasonable to a foreign observer. Both the production and distribution of illegal drugs thrive in areas where there is scarce government control and where other agents such as the guerrilla or the paramilitaries exercise control. This, in turn provides financing for the irregular armies that have grown at the same pace as the land cultivated with coca or poppies.

5.    The close relationship between the drug business and the financial and, therefore, the firing power of the guerrilla is undeniable. In Colombia, after 1994 the cultivation of coca and poppy took off. There were 45000 hectares cultivated with coca in 1994. The official figure for 2001 is 165000 hectares and the estimation of military and U.S. observers is that it is almost 200000 hectares. During the same period the number of individuals enrolled in the guerrilla went from 12000 to 21000, while in the period between 1960 and 1988 had grown from 60 to 9000 individuals. In the late eighties, the FARC officially decided to use the drug trade as a source of financing, allegedly through levying a tax on the production. This gave them resources to grow from 9000 to 12000 cadres in the period between 1988 and 1994. Their real growth was after that year, when production was exported from Perú and Bolivia to Colombia due to the success of the anti-drug efforts in those countries.[4] The strength of the paramilitary also increased in tune with the coca area of cultivation. They had grown from 50 in 1985 to 2800 in 1994 and since then they have surged to near 8000 at the present time. The growth of the guerrilla and the paramilitaries is correlated with the loss of control of the authorities and the increase in other forms of insecurity. Kidnappings, which had been reduced from a peak of 2626 in 1990 to 1158 in 1994, escalated once more to just over 2900 this year, at almost the same pace as the coca area of cultivation. Despite these evident links, governments go on treating the problems separately. The Colombia government, as if the insurgency has little to do with drugs, and the U.S. government as if drugs have little to do with financing the terrorists and armed forces in both sides of Colombia’s dirty war. Drugs account for the strength and the threat posed by such forces. Solely going after the drugs makes no strategic sense. The illegal armies of guerrillas and paramilitaries are a basic and internal component of the drug business and it is the fuel that keeps them going. Viewing the guerrilla or the paramilitaries as politically motivated groups without taking into account their finances and their drug-related source of strength is a mistake. Even more damaging is rationalizing those links as some Europeans do for the guerrilla, or some rich and middle-class Colombians do in the case of the paramilitaries. They regard this sort of financing as justified means towards a higher purpose. This only plays into the hands of the drug organizations. They lurk in the background of the conflict adding fuel to the fire. The drug organizations are not mere criminals, but very rich agents with a political agenda and a strong vested interest in destabilizing the government and fostering unrest. The drug link has to be resolved and dealt with realistically before a solution can be envisaged. The former Salvadoran guerrilla leader Joaquín Villalobos regards the drug variable as the most formidable obstacle in the way to reach solutions to the Colombian conflict, the same way the Cold War was an obstacle to solve the conflict in Salvador. It had deep political implications that limited the degrees of freedom of the intervening external players, principally the U.S., and impeded pragmatic solutions. Due to these constraints, all governments involved, including the Colombian government pursue diffuse and often conflicting goals. They have failed to focus on assisting the Colombian authorities and armed forces to gain control over all the territory and becoming able to protect all citizens. This possibly is the surest road towards pacification of the country and the eradication of the drug trade from Colombia. Therein lies the problem. Achieving control in Colombia without taming the demand for drugs in the U.S. and Europe, would mean to export the Colombian drug problem to a neighboring country –Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador or Honduras- the same way that Peru and Bolivia were able with U.S help to export it to Colombia. The geopolitics of such a dilemma may become another obstacle to Colombian peace. At any rate, failing to see this wider context in which the drug is intertwined with terrorism and insurgency and the futility of one-country solutions for the drug problem is yet another obstacle to Colombia’s achievement of peace.

6.    The Ambiguous Position of Governments vis-à-vis the Guerrilla. The peace process in Colombia hinges on another ambiguity that has been a permanent feature of the government-guerrilla relationship and also of the interaction between the guerrilla, the Colombian authorities and foreign nations involved in the process. Although the guerrilla groups have been classified as terrorists since 1997 by the US government as well as the paramilitary groups that act as privately sponsored counterinsurgency forces, the Colombian government has acted very frequently as if the guerrilla is not a terrorist organization and has no involvement with narcotics. This has not been an overt policy, but the government has implicitly maintained an official stance of suspended disbelief. The reasons for this may be twofold: On one hand, the government prefers to subscribe to the notion that it maintains dialogues and hopes to negotiate a peace settlement with armed groups fighting for some idea, not merely terrorists who also are drug traffickers. This is also related to the wider problem of impunity, since a peace process implies that some sort of amnesty or blanket pardon will cover all participants of the armed conflict, and their being involved in criminal activities makes it more difficult to grant. Additionally, there is a sentiment of guilt or even sympathy with the social justice aims of the guerrilla, the way they were officially formulated back in the early 60s, that lingers, particularly in the camp of the Conservative party in Colombia. The official attitude with the paramilitaries has been firmer lately as the government now is treating them as terrorists. However, the civil society has a more lenient approach to these groups and there are many Colombians who view them as a necessary evil, in light of the lack of capacity of the Colombian army to provide security.

7.    The Colombian government has not been alone in this confusing treatment of the guerrillas. The U.S. government conducted covert negotiations with FARC in Costa Rica until several young American missionaries were murdered in cold blood by a FARC command led by the brother of the highest-ranking FARC military man. And the European governments have tolerated and even diplomatically supported the FARC for years under the assumption that they represent a legitimate claim in view of Colombian widespread poverty and unfair wealth distribution. Until very recently, it was customary by members of the foreign diplomatic missions in Colombia to make a pilgrimage to the jungle haven controlled by FARC, and some European ambassadors have been much closer to FARC than to the established and popularly elected government.

8.    The Lone Ranger Syndrome. The Colombian establishment has viewed with apprehension the change of priorities of the U.S. foreign policy and the unsustainable position of continuing to negotiate a peace process with terrorists at a snail’s pace. They to fear that if they are left alone they will not be able to deal with the FARC. And that they will not be able to avoid a more serious confrontation if they are forced to take a harder stance vis-à-vis the guerrilla. During the last 25 years it has been obvious that the government, the army, the rich and the middle classes are not inclined to engage the FARC in an all out war, although in term of resources and fire power they have an overwhelming superiority. Nicaraguan or Cuban armed forces also had superiority and were intact armies defeated that were defeated by the sandinistas and by Fidel Castro’s rebels –a strong motivated armed group with popular support, but much smaller and with limited military capacity. The whole idea of the Plan Colombia, had been regarded by the Colombian elite as a means to get the U.S. involved, and, they hoped, to have them fight the fight Colombians are not prepared to undertake. The tougher position of the U.S in face of international terrorism has rekindled these hopes. As recently as last month, in a forum attended by the top business and government cadres in Bogota, pollsters asked them about possible solutions to the domestic conflict. The majority answered that the solution is a U.S. marine invasion and intervention. The Colombian upper classes lack commitment to a definitive solution be it military or negotiation because they are looking for solutions that have a low individual cost. The paramilitaries is one of them. Another one is the dream of a foreign intervention. And the whole peace process as it is conceived at the present time may also be an illusion. It assumes that the guerrilla is going to give up what it has in terms of territory and fire power without a real threat of losing it in a military confrontation and in the absence of clarity on both sides about the outcome or the objectives of a peace settlement.

9.    The lack of realism of Colombian elites about the possibilities of a U.S. armed intervention or a European mediation has been labeled by local commentators as the Lone Ranger syndrome – they are hoping to be saved by the cavalry or the Lone Ranger at the last minute. The attachment of the Colombian upper and middle classes to the type of solutions that are essentially free lunches may no be seen as cowardice. They showed courage beyond limits both as individuals and collectively when the Medellín Cartel mounted its terrorist offensive in the late 80s and early 90s. At that time no one doubted that the country had to hold firmly or else, it would have to submit to the Mafia. The choice was clear and Colombians endured the costs of defeating Pablo Escobar and his organization. With the guerrilla, the problem has been that people are not sure what to do. The guerrilla I very unpopular but it is not really regarded as an enemy – it is more a feature of Colombia to most people. People petition the guerrilla leaders, demonstrate against their actions and behave in many ways as if they were an alternative authority. A recent incident involving a young boy dying of cancer whose father is a policeman retained by the guerrilla makes this point clear. As many as 3000 individuals, including the editor of a prestigious economic daily in Bogotá, have volunteered to become hostages of FARC if they release the policeman so that he can at his son’s bed side. This is not cowardice. It is courage. It was also shown by the population of two small towns last month, one of them indigenous, that were attacked by the guerrilla. The aim of the guerrilla was to destroy the police station and to kill the policemen. The town got togeher and faced the guerrilla with songs of Mercedes Sosa and peaceful demonstrations. They succeeded in saving the lives of policemen and opening a window of opportunity because it is an indication that Colombians may be reaching the limit of their tolerance. The difference between Pablo Escobar and Tirofijo is that Colombians are not prepared to fight the latter until he is dead or defeated. Even now, they want to avoid an all out war. Fed up as they are with conflict and violence, the country is still searching for a peaceful solution. This has emboldened the FARC to the extreme that just a few days after September 11, its leader Marulanda issued an ultimatum to the government. Either the Colombian government would yield to their demands or else. They called for the government to ease its military controls outside the zona de despeje and to stop air surveillance that unbelievably had only been established a few weeks earlier after almost three years of the existence of this jungle heaven. They also asked the government to formally declare that the FARC are not terrorists. Marulanda stated that if the government would not yield to their demands they would stop negotiating and give back the zona de despeje. The government formally expressed concern that the FARC was unreasonable and did not yield to any of the demands. They wisely  encouraged the FARC in public to reconsider their position. The guerrilla must have gotten a stronger response in private or a stern message from the U.S. government and their European sympathizers because they backed down from their demands and are quietly negotiating conditions to resume negotiations.

10.Change in Conditions. Since September 11 of this year, a new set of conditions is in place that will make negotiations even more difficult than in the past. One source of difficulties is that events outside Colombia may create an environment in which there is much less tolerance for ambiguity. The U.S. government may no longer tolerate ambivalence towards confirmed terrorist organizations. The European governments have also toughened their position vis-avis the guerrilla and are not granting them visas and have withdrawn their support until they release kidnapped victims and stop kidnapping and extortion. An international court of law will be established to judge terrorists. There will be less freedom for individual governments and even for the international community to grant or support amnesty to individuals who have been involved in crimes under the jurisdiction of this court. The Colombian government can no longer sustain the illusion that these groups are not terrorists under the doctrines that have emerged after September 11. When the U.S. government refocuses on the issues of Colombia and the solutions of its multiple security problems and threats, it also will have to grapple with the fact that they are dealing in Colombia with terrorist organizations. Other important changes are that Colombia stopped being in the foreground of US foreign policy and has become a lower priority for the United States, and that the U.S. focus on drug control and eradication has become somewhat blurred with the new emphasis against terrorism. These developments pose new challenges for the Colombian government and may force it to drastically alter its own approach for dealing with insurgency and the paramilitaries.

11.The Colombian ambassador to Washington has acknowledged the change in the political environment and has gone to great lengths to assert that the Colombian government will not condone the existence of safe-havens for terrorist activities in Colombia. This has a direct bearing on the territory that is under FARC control- the zona de despeje – where IRA explosive experts captured by the Colombian armed forces were giving training to the guerrilla and where Arab militants presumably linked to terrorist organizations were spotted last year. However, despite these assurances, the government’s approach to FARC guerrillas has not changed yet. Both the FARC and the government appear to have reached a tacit agreement that they will not do anything drastic until the next elections or the change of government in August 2002. The U.S government appears to have  decided not to press the Colombian government to hard on the terrorist issue until Pastrana leaves office.

12.New Challenges and Opportunities. This is clearly an opportunity for the Colombian government to change its strategy and take advantage of the change in priority of U.S. foreign policy to gain control of its own destiny. The general view has been clearly expressed by an outside observer who states that there is an opportunity here for the Colombians to devise a national strategy, absent these past years, to deal with the conflict more sensibly. His view is that this should be an urgent challenge in the current presidential campaign and Colombians should insist that candidates develop concrete and realistic ideas. But he believes that at some point the high-level political engagement and support of US will be critical. There needs to be an outside catalyst, and one is not sure where it will come from, if it is not the U.S.[5]

13.Due to the U.S emphasis on terrorism and their pursuit of Al Qaeda, and in the Colombian case, due to the renewed effort to give peace a last chance during the Pastrana administration, the anti drug drive has almost disappeared from the screen. Combating terrorism has put the drug war in the back seat. This may have for Colombia a number of favorable short term consequences, and a long term unfavorable outcome as Colombia’s main problem is the existence of a drug agro-industry within its borders. In the short term, however, it may give the government an opportunity to expand and consolidate its programs for the voluntary manual eradication of coca and poppy plantations. Should this effort be successful it may convince the U.S. that fumigation of these crops is not only futile but also counterproductive since it creates a constituency for the guerrilla and a popular peasant base that they do not have. Strictly, from a national point of view, it would make much more sense for Colombia to deal with the drug organizations through interdiction of their transportation networks and their financing channels than attacking the planters and steering a strong anti-government sentiment in the regions that are dominated by FARC and the paramilitaries.

14.The freedom from outside interference with which both the Colombian government and the guerrilla have been accustomed to deal with each other may have come to a definite end. They will have to find solutions to their conflict in the confines of a new environment that will be more limited. This may be an advantage because it will provide opportunities for the U.S. and the EU to become more involved in their roles of outside catalysts and facilitators, as interested parties, not merely as do gooders.

15.There are encouraging signs within Colombia that the people are no longer confident that the guerrilla and the government, and much less the paramilitary are able to provide solutions to their problem of insecurity and continuing violence. They may be ready to take peace into their own hands. Looking back at the great events that have changed the shape of politics in several occasions in the near past one can hope that they will take peace in their hands. In 1988, most analysts had forecasted an eventual and gradual reunification of Germany. No one had foreseen that the Berlin Wall would fall that year. When the Philippines started demonstrating against Marcos, I heard a political scientist comment that “never have a bunch of nuns led by a plumb housewife” toppled a military government. A few days later Mr. Marcos had fled Manila. Last year, when Fujimori and his claque decided to stay in power, we all tried to get used to the idea. Not the Peruvians who kept on struggling until they got rid of them. As we say in Spanish: “Soñar no cuesta nada”  

16.Conclusion. If anything, the post September 11 environment will be a more difficult setting for Colombian to pursue its present strategy or approach to peace. The new tough stance of the industrialized world with terrorism may force the hand and impose conditions that may lead to an all out war, which is clearly not the choice of the Colombian people. At the present time, due to the focus of the U.S. elsewhere, for a limited period there is an opportunity to forge a Colombian strategy that would place the national interests above international objectives and pressures. It would and to advance rapidly so that it gains credibility and induces foreign agents to act more as catalysts and facilitators than to rule the process. Otherwise, the constraints imposed from the outside will be so strong that Colombia may not be free to select its path and will have to bear with the consequences of submitting to foreign objectives and criteria.