Colombia
Moderator's Note: On 18th April 2011 seven threads merged to this re-named thread Colombia, FARC & insurgency (merged thread). Seeven SWJ Blog threads merged in today. Six threads merged in 8th October 2016 (ends).
I posted this AAR on SOCNET after several of the guys there gave me help prior to my trip, and Jedburgh suggested I post it here as well.
Last semester I took a polisci seminar entitled "Insurgencies and Counterinsurgencies," and had the good fortune of traveling to Colombia with my classmates and our professor for a weeklong research trip. Most of our time we spent going to meetings all over Bogota, but we also spent two days and two nights in the Eje Cafetero, going canopying, whitewater rafting, and horseback riding. In the interests of time and space, I'll limit this AAR to the more relevant aspects of the research trip.
We flew into Bogota on the 12th of December and had our first meetings on the 13th. Spread out over the course of the week were meetings with several NGOs and other organizations, including:
- CODHES
- Fundacion Seguridad y Democracia (FSD)
- National Democratic Institute (NDI)
- Transparencia por Colombia
- Corporacion Nuevo Arco Iris
- OAS mission in Colombia
- Professors at Universidad de los Andes and Universidad del Rosario
- Former mayor of Bogota Enrique Penalosa
Our discussions with those largely revolved around internally displaced persons (IDPs) and demobilization of paras and guerrillas. The most interesting of those, in my opinion, was the Corporacion Nuevo Arco Iris, as it was headed up by two former guerrillas who demobilized and were involved in promoting peaceful DDR (Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration) for guerrillas and paras. I'll go into more detail on the bigger meetings, however.
We started off meeting with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the 13th, discussing not just HR, but also the dimensions of narcotrafficking and historical ties b/w guerrillas and peasants in rural departments. The afternoon of the 14th we met with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, discussing many of the same issues. We had a meeting with Juan Forero, who is the Washington Post's correspondent in Colombia. He had interviewed our professor before for an article, and he turned out to be one of the most interesting people on our trip; urbane, witty, articulate. He even met us for dinner the next night at a nice restaurant, where we talked about Colombia's security situation over mojitos and Club Colombia beers.
The 15th was our biggest day. We began with a meeting with ARD, the Agency for Rural Development, which was contracted by USAID. Our next meeting was with some of the editorial board of El Tiempo, Colombia's most circulated newspaper and, arguably, its most controversial, seeing as the director of the investigative unit, Martha Soto, with whom we talked for a while, was working on uncovering ties between members of the Colombian Congress and the paras/guerrillas. Their office (or compound, rather) had incredibly tight security because their previous office was hit by a car bomb a few years back. Rafael Santos, the adjunct director of the paper, was among the people talking with us. For those not familiar with Colombia's domestic politics, he belongs to THE Santos family, one of the most prominent families in the country.
Next we were off to the US Embassy, where first we met with representatives from USAID (US Agency for International Development). One lady wasn't too pleased when I posed a question to her about the perceived failings of Plan Colombia and the effects the aerial spraying of supposed coca fields has had on rural peasants. She seemed to be pretty much spitting out the "party line" the whole time we were there. We also met with a Foreign Service pol-mil officer, but before that we met with two Army SF officers with the PATT (Planning-Assistance Training Team) and two of their NCOs; the LTC was the PATT chief, the MAJ his deputy. I won't mention names in the interest of PERSEC. The two NCOs (I didn't see their rank insignia clearly from where I sat) had apparently just returned that day from training CAF troops. We got them to address issues like the current troop cap in Colombia, ROEs, force protection, et cetera. That was, of course, the most fun for me.
Findings
There are many differing opinions (of course) on the current nature of the guerrilla war. Because of FARC's extensive ties to the drug trade, most people believe they've shed their Marxist/Maoist roots and become opportunistic businessmen in some way, and that the only reason the FARC still exists is its revenues from the drug trade which it uses to buy weapons and support itself. Some of our speakers suggested, however, that the ideological roots were still there because the FARC still maintained power primarily through wielding weapons, not through narcotrafficking.
According to FSD, there have been remarkable gains in security: kidnappings, homicides, and attacks on national infrastructure have significantly fallen in the past four years. But, to some people, a peaceful solution still feels over a decade away, if not further. The paras are easier to negotiate with because they are not as ideologically driven, but it's hard for the government to make its case because the paras originated as local militias to protect peasants from the guerrillas when the government forces could not adequately do the job. To this day, government presence in some of the rural departments is scarce, or even non-existent.
Security problems are exacerbated by the plight of IDPs, some of which results from the paras and guerrillas, some of which results from the aerial spraying program associated with Plan Colombia, which targets coca fields, but also often ends up destroying the livelihood of many peasants and galvanizing further support for the guerrillas.
Other stuff
We were saddled with so many meetings that we had very little downtime. Most nights I didn't get to bed until 1:00 or 2:00, and then we'd be back up at 5:00 or 6:00 to eat breakfast and get back on the road. I was sick for a few days as a result, and didn't get any decent sleep until we flew to the rural areas, then I felt fine. I'll say this: the coffee was amazing, and so was the food. The best meal I had was in the Eje Cafetero, the rural coffee-growing region of Colombia, at the finca where we stayed.
Our second night in Bogota we went to a bar known as the Bogota Beer Company (which was hit by a grenade a couple years ago) and proceeded to drink, including my professor. We suddenly started arm-wrestling after several drinks, and after I beat a friend of mine, my professor challenged me and, after a minute-long battle, finished me off to howls of laughter and cheering. It was a great night. And, yeah, the women are gorgeous. We played a drinking game with a group of girls from the Universidad de los Andes.
In the Eje Cafetero we went whitewater rafting the first morning, then canopying in the afternoon. As we were doing the last quarter-mile stretch of water, our Colombian guide slapped his paddle on the water with a loud BANG and our professor ducked and went, "Oh, ####!" When he looked up and saw us laughing, he admitted for a moment he thought we were taking small arms fire. He gave one piece of standing advice: if we ran into trouble, we were not to surrender to, but to run without stopping. Methods the guerrillas used on captives including tying them to trees and letting fire ants eat them, so it's supposedly better to take a 7.62mm slug to the back of the head while running away than to risk capture.
Armed soldiers were everywhere. Nothing makes you feel secure like a CAF soldier in full combat kit standing on a street corner with a Galil slung across his chest.
Last week we gave a presentation at the college on the trip, and I discussed the security situation. Afterwords, a Colombian student at our school came up and thanked us, saying we seemed to have a better grasp of her country than she did.
That's my summary. Feel free to comment. I'd be more than happy to elaborate on certain parts of the trip if anything was too vague, or if people might like to know more specifics. If anyone has questions about individuals, particularly embassy personnel with whom we met whose names I didn't want to put in this public forum, please PM me.
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