The International

The results of the first round of Colombia’s presidential elections last Sunday appear to indicate the Colombian people will continue backing the fight against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). According to BBC world service, fifty-eight-year-old Harvard educated Juan Manuel Santos took 47 per cent of the vote, while his main rival and now opponent in the second round, Antanas Mockus of the Green Party, received 21 per cent. Mr. Santos, who was defense minister in the previous administration of Alvaro Uribe, campaigned on his implementation of President Uribe’s crackdown on the insurgents. His message to Colombians was that his administration will clean up politics and continue the military operation against the Marxist guerrillas. If Mr. Santos continues the policies of his predecessor there is likely to be little let up in Latin America’s longest running conflict, which has seen the insurgent FARC and the government of Colombia in a state of near continual civil war since 1958.

The FARC was formed in a dark period of Colombian history known as La Violencia between 1948 and 1958, which saw a series of conservative governments and military dictatorships fighting self-described socialist and Marxist guerrillas in rural Colombia. The FARC calls itself a peasant army that wants an agrarian revolution in the country to overthrow the upper classes in what is traditionally defined as a classic anti-imperialist struggle. After 1964, the FARC began to send its fighters to the USSR and Vietnam to be trained. The Colombian government, meanwhile, received substantial military aid from the United States. More recently, in 1998 Colombian President Andres Pastrana called a ceasefire with the FARC that gave it a safe haven in the La Caguan region of southern Colombia, but this agreement collapsed after less than a year due to a spate of attacks on government controlled towns.

President Uribe’s so-called “democratic security” policy, as the government has unofficially named its strategy, has been the principal theme of Mr. Santos’ campaign. Begun when Mr. Uribe came to power in 2002, it rejected the idea of peace talks with the insurgents and highlighted the protection of civilians as its key objective. Financed partly through U.S. aid under Plan Colombia, Mr. Uribe and Mr. Santos’ policy called for a massive beefing up of the Colombian army, national guard and police, and a tough counter-insurgency operation based on taking and holding territory in order to protect local populations. Since 2002, Colombia has doubled the size of its armed forces while attacks on FARC camps and its leadership has disrupted the organization and reduced its combat size from an estimated 18,000 fighters in 2002 to between 8,000 and 9,000 today. Colombians have clearly endorsed this policy in the presidential elections, but has it made Colombia safer? If not why do the people support an ongoing conflict that has raged for over 50 years? More importantly, can Mr. Santos really resolve the conflict through a policy of force or is the violence likely to continue?

Glamorous cities, dark countryside

Brian Andrews, an English language news reporter in the Colombian capital Bogotá, is pleased with his life and his new apartment. He rents a central Bogotá penthouse unit for around USD $500 a month and gets spectacular sunsets from his balcony. In the street below maids sweep steps and people walk their dogs safely at night. The terraces of bars and restaurants in the popular Calle 93 district are busy well after dark. The situation in Colombia has certainly changed from 2003 when local NGO the Permanent Committee for the Protection of Human Rights calculated that Colombia’s murder rate was one of the highest in the world at 78 per 100,000 and violence was common in its cities. These killings were carried out by both FARC guerrillas and government supported paramilitaries. “Eight or nine years ago Bogotá was a scary place to visit,” Mr. Andrews told The New York Times in January, “Now Bogotá feels like it could be a city in the U.S. but with a particular Latin flair.” Though violence between the government and the FARC continues in the south and south west of the country, Mr. Uribe’s policies have pushed FARC far from Colombia’s capital while he has managed to disband the government paramilitaries in an effort to stop extra-judicial killings. In fact, the security situation is so improved that property prices in Bogotá are exploding. According to Mauricio Jaimes, an agent with Buy Colombia Realty, prices in the city’s north-eastern district have increased by 25 per cent a year between 2003 and 2007. People in the capital, like Brian Andrews, have a reason to be optimistic.

However, outside of Bogotá and other major cities, foreigners are not permitted to travel between towns and villages at night for their own safety. The FARC still operates in the countryside and remains active in over 200 municipalities. Though there were few attacks on election day, as sources in the FARC told the BBC, this could play into Mr. Santos’ hands as only a week before, guerrillas killed nine Colombian marines on patrol in the southern province of Caquetá. The group also claimed responsibility for the December killing of the governor of Caquetá, Luis Francisco Cuellar Carvajal. Despite increased government attacks and its retreat to the southern countryside and mountains, the FARC insisted to the BBC that military offensives in recent years have given it a chance “to learn about the enemy and the way it deploys.” Clearly FARC is of the opinion the war is not yet finished.

Though it might have been successful in curtailing the activities of FARC, the policy of democratic security is also creating unforeseen side effects that undermine its gains. With the emphasis on number counts of dead guerrillas, the pressure on the armed forces to meet their targets is pushing some members to the limit. According to a report by the UN investigator on extra-judicial killings, Phillip Aston, the security forces have committed a “significant number of murders” over the past decade. Estimates range from several hundred to close to 2,000. These killings are often “false positives,” where the military allegedly kills innocents, criminals or the homeless and then disguises them as rebels killed in combat. Mr. Santos has rejected these claims, expressing his full faith in the military as he looks to continue Mr. Uribe’s policies. In May 2009, BBC quoted him as saying, “We have discovered there are many false denunciations, many people that want to portray legitimate killings in combat, terrorists, guerrillas, as extrajudicial killings, in order to stain the good names of our military institutions.”

The electoral endorsement of Mr. Santos and approval of a military solution by Colombians is undoubtedly related to the large amount of people this conflict has touched. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which in 2009 conducted a survey of 501 Colombians over the age of 18, found that over 31 per cent had been touched by the violence in some way. Of these respondents, 23 per cent reported losing contact with a close relative, and 61 per cent said that security and protection were needed more than anything else. Despite the fact that the FARC lives on in the south and that the military purportedly commits abuses to reach its target numbers, a country in which the Red Cross says one third of the population has been touched by violence is no doubt tempted to support a military response.

No changes, no negotiations

Policy think tanks and prominent politicians in Washington laud the work of both the Colombian government and its military in their campaign to defeat the rebels. In the Center for Strategic and Intelligence Studies 2009 report on Countering Threats to Security and Stability, the view is that the military campaign has been a success: “The FARC has been neutralized militarily. It has no hope of defeating the [Colombian] armed forces or realizing its goal of overthrowing or replacing the state.”

Many ordinary citizens agree with their president and Mr. Santos that the FARC can be defeated and appear ready to overlook abuses by the military. Writing in to the BBC website forum, Luis Barranquilla, a resident of Bogotá, said, “It is obvious that Colombia would choose the logical successor. We cannot afford to move backwards. The FARC must be kept in check.” Another Bogotá resident, Luis Ignacio Navas, agreed, stating, “This government has really brought about changes that have been very positive for this country. Criminals, terrorists, paramilitaries and drug traffickers are Uribe’s enemies and the ones behind the latest scandals that have tried to taint this government, no doubt about it.” These views echo prominent Washington politicians such as U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Writing in the New York Times in July 2008, Mr. Gates pointed out that the improved security situation in Colombia is due in large part to the expanding of its military and police. With the assistance of the U.S., Gates says, “Colombia has progressed […] from a nation under siege by narco-terrorists and paramilitary vigilantes to one poised to become a linchpin of security and prosperity in South America.”

The International Crisis Group (ICG), however, disagrees that the military has been so successful. In their briefing on Colombia released on May 29, 2009, they explain that the military cannot overcome its lack of a positive image, something required to replace FARC’s message and presence: “While the guerrillas have changed strategies and tactics in response to developments in the war, a perennial problem for the army has been its inability to win hearts and minds, particularly in the remoter parts of the country where FARC has been the only authority for generations.” Voters on the BBC website also expressed skepticism that the strengthening of the army has made Colombia a safer place. Lina Rincon wrote: “All Colombians recognise that Alvaro Uribe’s policies to fight the guerrillas were effective and have substantially improved security throughout the country. Unfortunately many of us agree in that the means by which he has achieved this, mostly in his second four-year mandate, have doubtful morals and are unconstitutional. Not everyone is in agreement with the continuing of Alvaro Uribe’s policies that seem to state that the end justifies the means, whatever they might be.”

The ICG further points out that the FARC still carries significant numbers and has shown internal cohesion and renewal. This means that certain areas in which it still operates are strong enough to resist government attacks, especially in the Andes mountains region. The largest problem, according to the group, is the lack of any sort of political strategy of negotiation to compliment the military operations that Mr. Uribe and Mr. Santos favor. However, Mr. Uribe has made it clear several times in the past that he believes the FARC would simply use negotiations with the government as time to regroup and strengthen. If Mr. Santos is fully committed to his mentor’s policies, then it looks likely there will be no negotiations or alteration of the military strategy.

An end to six decades of conflict?

One point on which all these views, be they of the ordinary Colombian citizen, American politician or academic, can agree is that the military solution by itself will not be enough to remove the FARC, end the conflict and end abuses by the military.

The ICG continues to argue that negotiations with the FARC — bringing them back into the political process of the country — is the only way to truly end the war. “Colombia is still not close to the end of its armed conflict,” it warned in May 2009. In the short term, the government must make the capture and prosecution of paramilitaries and military abusers at least as important as fighting the FARC in order to demonstrate to the population its change in attitude. In the last year there has been encouraging action of this kind, as 22 middle- and high-ranking Colombian military officers have been arrested in the “false positives” scandal. In the long term, the state needs a new strategy that demonstrates respect for the rule of law and a program of social investment and economic opportunity. This will help establish it has an alternative to FARC’s Marxist rhetoric.

Robert Gates, while continuing to advocate the military offensive and the build-up of Colombia’s security services, agrees with the ICG that military force alone will not be enough. In his New York Times op-ed, he argues that only increased investment and trade between America and Colombia will create the conditions for Colombians to reject the FARC and embrace the government, writing, “Colombia’s hard-won freedom from violence can be sustained only through economic prosperity. Together, as partners, we must see Colombia’s transformation to completion. In winning the war, we must also consolidate the peace.”

However, if, as the polls seem to demonstrate, the Colombian people favor a hard-line policy and Mr. Santos wins the second round of the elections on June 22nd and continues the policies of his predecessor to the letter, it seems probable the conflict will continue. The theory of whether or not the FARC can be defeated by force alone will then likely be tested.