Sensing that he was personally in danger amid rising opposition, Rojas fled to the United States in May 1957, leaving a military junta in place. That summer, the Conservatives and the Liberals finally joined forces, creating a new political compact called the National Front to try to stem the violence.1 The power-sharing arrangement between rival parties was approved by plebiscite in December and the coalition took power from the junta. This would indeed stabilize Colombia’s political system for a time and give the exhausted country an opportunity to launch political and economic reforms.
Though the two parties dominated the political system, there were a number of interesting arrangements meant to prevent abuse of power. For instance, so that the ruling party could not pass laws favorable only to itself, a supermajority was required to pass legislation. A civil service was created to “eliminate the concept that the political winner has the right to the spoils of office,” according to the agreement that established the National Front.2 Economic reforms were far-reaching and partially successful in the industrial sphere. But the effort to improve agricultural efficiency by bundling small plots into larger ones displaced 40 percent of the farmers, ultimately exacerbating tensions between large landholders and rural peoples.3
And so the respite would be short-lived. As conflict between various interests grew, insurgents emerged willing to represent those factions through the barrel of a gun. One of the first of these, the ELN, formed in July 1964. Its leader, Fabio Vásquez Castaño, was inspired by Marxist-Leninist ideology, mobilizing peasants, college students, and priests who espoused liberation theology. They were inspired too by Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution and opposition to business interests labeled as capitalist oppressors. Forming “independent republics” in the territories of their supporters, they organized these forces and armed them. In response, the government launched Operation Sovereignty and regained control of the areas. This pattern of insurgents taking and holding territory would be repeated several times in the next decades.
Despite the government assault, the rebel movement survived, pulling in new adherents with a narrative of armed struggle against the government. But the ELN would find itself outflanked by an even more violent and capable insurgent group. The FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, was born in 1966 with bigger ambitions than control of a few rural enclaves. They wanted to overthrow the Colombian government and replace it with a Marxist state. And they grew powerful quite quickly. By 1970, the president of Colombia was forced to declare that the country was in a state of siege.
The FARC was fueled not just by ideology but increasingly by the drug trade too. Over the years, the guerrilla movement slowly became intimately intertwined with the cocaine trade until it was finally indistinguishable from the drug cartel that it ran. The profits allowed the FARC to be financially self-sustaining. And though other Marxist groups would emerge, the FARC was clearly the vanguard of the revolution. It was admired in Havana and Moscow as well as in leftist corners of the West. The Castro regime offered more than inspiration. It provided material support, and FARC leaders repeatedly sought refuge on the island nation. The group had Soviet connections from the time of its founding and it traded weapons and cocaine with the Russian mafia. Support cells raised money and even recruits from Marxist sympathizers across Europe and the Americas.
In Colombia, FARC was becoming a dominant force in political life. In the 1980s, its bombings, assassinations, and kidnappings became commonplace. Not surprisingly, a right-wing counterpart soon emerged. Landowners who did not trust the government to protect them began to buy security from armed groups. The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) now filled the void from the other side of the political spectrum. Brutal and uncompromising, the death squads terrorized rural areas and murdered people suspected of sympathizing with the insurgents. Moreover, the overmatched police and army were more than willing to look the other way. The right-wing paramilitaries had friends in high places, allowing them to act with impunity.
The government grew desperate, trying everything to stem the violence. Peace talks were launched, leading to the demobilization of some groups but doing nothing about either the FARC or the AUC. Thus the reign of terror continued. In the elections of 1990, three presidential candidates were assassinated. Seeking to strengthen the hand of the government, a constitutional convention was held in 1991, granting the president greater powers but to little effect.
The government continued to waver in its resolve, alternately confronting the insurgents and trying to make peace with them. When in 1998 President Andrés Pastrana decided to withdraw government forces from five municipalities, the FARC celebrated with a stepped-up campaign of terror in major population centers. Pastrana had inherited a mess from his predecessor, whose tenure was marred by corruption scandals, and likely felt that he had no choice. But he underestimated the FARC’s growing strength and the degree to which his decision would boost the power of the insurgency.
By the end of the twentieth century, the Colombian military and police were unable to enter approximately 30 percent of the country. The weakened state could defend neither its people nor its territory. Right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing insurgents controlled the means of violence and had the will to use it. Colombia resembled a failed state.
Making and Remaking “Plan Colombia”
By the late 1990s, the U.S. government realized that it could no longer stand idly by as Colombia continued its descent into chaos. Originating in the Andean region in general and in Colombia in particular, drugs were spilling into America’s cities as the FARC and other cartels found willing buyers across the U.S. border. The “war on drugs” was failing without a strategy to stem the flow from South America. Washington decided to intervene. President Clinton’s team developed “Plan Colombia” and launched it in 1999 with bipartisan support in Congress.
The purpose of the effort was clear in some respects and cloudy in others. Obviously, the United States wanted to stop the flow of drugs and help Colombian authorities stabilize the country. This meant action against the cartels and their crops, using aerial spraying, interdiction, and capture-and-kill operations to break their hold on parts of the country. The program included development assistance to support farmers in the hope that they would turn their backs on the insurgents and grow alternative crops, not coca. In this way, the program tried to address simultaneously the underlying economic and security challenges driving the chaos.
The confusion in Plan Colombia, though, was rooted in queasiness about the degree to which the U.S. should take on the civil conflict itself and support the Colombian military in confronting the insurgents and armed groups. The members of the FARC were seen in some circles as freedom fighters against oppressive landowners. And there was another problem. The police and military forces that were recipients of U.S. aid were uncomfortably intertwined with right-wing paramilitary forces committing atrocities in the name of establishing order. The politics and violence of the insurgency were not easily separable from the drug trade. Plan Colombia was pursued earnestly and aggressively, assistance increasing nearly every fiscal year, without resolving the underlying question of whether to support the government in ending the insurgency by military means.
When George W. Bush took office in 2001, he believed that Plan Colombia was unsustainable without reconciling these tensions. Shortly after assuming office he asked me to lead a review of our Colombia policy through the National Security Council. But after the attacks of 9/11, questions about the state of Plan Colombia (and many other foreign policy issues) received less attention as we grappled with the urgent need to defend the country.
Inconsistency in Bogotá’s approach to the problem also complicated American policy. On June 2, 2001, Pastrana signed a “humanitarian exchange accord” with the FARC, swapping prisoners for soldiers. Then, in October, the government and the FARC signed the accord of San Francisco de la Sombra, committing to negotiate a cease-fire. Pastrana agreed for the ninth tim
e to continue the demilitarized safe zones, this time until January 2002. The zones had become havens for the FARC to train its forces and launch attacks with impunity. The government checkpoints around the zones were wholly ineffective and frequently the site of kidnappings for ransom.
Upon agreeing to extend the safe havens, though, Pastrana tried this time to use muscle as well as negotiation to send a message to the FARC. He increased the number of military checkpoints and surveillance flights around the demilitarized zones. The FARC responded by refusing to continue the peace talks. Pastrana then mobilized twelve thousand troops with air support. Before the government could act, diplomats from ten other countries and the Catholic Church negotiated a last-minute deal. Peace talks commenced.
With Pastrana’s latest attempt at a peaceful solution backed by military might, President Bush decided to revisit the issue of military assistance in the winter of 2002. He wanted to give the Colombian government a stronger hand. The Bush administration had already classified the FARC, ELN, and AUC as terrorist groups. Now it wanted the flexibility to use counternarcotic funding against the insurgents as well. There was also a need to protect vital oil pipelines that had repeatedly been attacked by leftist guerrillas. Still, as the New York Times noted, this was a “sharp departure” from U.S. policy that had focused solely on the drug war.4 From the administration’s point of view, the two tasks—eliminating the drug trade and eliminating the insurgency—were inextricably linked. This gave clarity to U.S. policy. Subsequent events would change the thinking of the Colombian government as well.
A few days after that news report in the New York Times, four Colombian rebels hijacked a domestic flight carrying senior Senator Jorge Eduardo Gechém Turbay. This was the last straw for Pastrana, who announced a suspension of the peace talks. When the rebels ignored an ultimatum to release the senator, Colombian troops launched an offensive, taking control of major towns in the south of the country. Yet the FARC remained entrenched in the jungle and showed its muscle by kidnapping Íngrid Betancourt, a candidate in the presidential election of 2002.
Pastrana appealed to the United States for urgent military assistance. But congressional approval of a $1 billion anti-drug program for the Andean region specifically prohibited support to help the Colombian military put down the rebels. Many in Congress did not want America more deeply involved in what they viewed as an intractable conflict. And they questioned the Colombian military’s record on corruption and human rights. Senator Patrick Leahy in particular criticized the administration’s request as “proposing to cross the line from counter-narcotics to counter-insurgency.” The new plan, he said, “is no longer about stopping drugs but about fighting the guerrillas.”5
The president asked me to once again call together the NSC principals, the vice president, the secretary of state, and the secretary of defense to respond to Pastrana’s request for military assistance. Colin Powell led off the discussion. “I’m skeptical of the prospects for success and not sure of Pastrana’s willingness to stay the course against the FARC,” he said. He added that the State Department believed that the millions of dollars the United States had spent trying to persuade peasants to plant alternative crops had failed in its objective. Everyone generally agreed, so I walked down to the Oval Office after the meeting and told the president that there was no obvious way out of the quagmire in Colombia. That is where our policy stood when Álvaro Uribe was elected on May 26, 2002.
Uribe had campaigned on a promise to bring “democratic security,” as he called it, to the country. He was very clear: The Colombian government to this point had tried to negotiate from a position of weakness. That had failed. He would take a different course: Crack down hard on rebel groups, reestablish government control, initiate political reforms, and accept no less than the surrender of insurgents on both sides of the political divide.
Uribe’s election, and his clarity of purpose, changed the terms and depth of U.S. engagement in Colombia. I got a sense of the man himself when the new president-elect came to my White House office on June 21, two months before he was sworn in. The national security adviser often meets with political leaders who are not heads of state, or in this case not yet inaugurated. Toward the end of these meetings, the president usually stops by. This is partly a matter of protocol, but it also gives the president a little distance from the moment—a chance to size up the visitor without the expectation of commitments.
As Uribe entered my office, I was immediately taken with the Colombian, who was short in stature but walked with unmistakable confidence. He impressed me as steely, determined, and serious, even slightly lacking in humor. I asked him what he meant by “democratic security.” Uribe explained that “security” in Latin America had long been associated with right-wing dictators, and he wanted to differentiate himself. By democratic security he said he meant security for all Colombians, his political allies and adversaries alike.
We talked about the troubles in his country and about Plan Colombia. He emphasized the need for military assistance. “We can’t fight them with economic assistance,” he said. I demurred and started to explain that there were congressional limitations on what we could do. While I was in midsentence, my door flew open, startling the Colombians. The president doesn’t have to knock. Uribe jumped up and remained standing while he talked about his hopes for peace in his country. President Bush listened and then asked him if he was serious about defeating the FARC. “Yes!” the president-elect shouted.
After his inauguration about two months later, Uribe returned to Washington. This time he was received in the Oval Office. Foreign leaders who enter this small but elegant bastion of democratic governance seem to sense the authority that dwells within it. They usually come trying to convince its occupant that the United States should support their cause—no matter how daunting the challenge.
Uribe accomplished that feat in a matter of minutes. He told the president that he would not waver in his fight against the terrorists, the FARC, invoking the language that President Bush had himself used after September 11. Admitting that the paramilitaries were also responsible for the chaos in the country, he pledged to demobilize the AUC and other groups or fight them too. And when the president gently raised the question of collaboration between the right-wing paramilitaries and Colombian authorities, Uribe didn’t flinch. He promised to use the full weight of the judicial system to bring them to justice no matter how high-ranking they might be. This, he said, was the only way to restore confidence in the judiciary, the legislature, and ultimately the presidency.
President Bush had one final question, and, frankly, it made me squirm a bit. “Are you tough enough to kill their leaders? It is the only way to shut them down.” Sitting on the sofa across from the Colombian foreign minister, I wondered if she and the other members of the delegation thought the president’s question presumptuous. You had to be tough to survive Colombia’s violent politics. And Carolina’s own father had been president of the country, surviving multiple assassination attempts, trying to bring reform, and ultimately failing to do so due to violence. She was the embodiment of the Colombian experience. Who were we Americans to question their resolve so baldly?
Uribe didn’t blink. “Yes, Mr. President,” he said. “I give you my word.” As the Colombians walked out, I knew that a real bond had been forged between the two men. The president-elect had convinced George Bush that he was the man to save his country, no matter how long the odds.
It didn’t take long for those of us in government to see how long the odds really were, even if we had a new and determined partner. Underscoring the depth of Uribe’s challenge, the FARC launched mortar attacks during his August inauguration, killing fourteen people in the capital. The Colombian president did not mention the violence in his speech but canceled public celebrations afterward, fearing assassination. In the following days, the right-wing paramilitaries killed more than a hundred people in retaliation.
Uribe did not back down. He declared a st
ate of emergency but not a state of siege in the country. The distinction was important, since the latter would have allowed the suspension of civil liberties. The new president would tell his people and anyone else who would listen that he meant to bring security through democratic institutions: He would not subvert them. This was, for us, confirmation that he was committed to the democratic part of “democratic security.”
Uribe found other ways to signal his determination. A few weeks after he took office, the government issued a declaration taxing the richest 300,000 Colombians and 120,000 companies to raise $800 million. The goal was to train and equip thousands of additional soldiers and police officers, and to create a new part-time security force of up to 100,000 recruits.
He was a serious man and he knew that he had little time to change the direction of his country. But he was determined to do it by rebuilding Colombia’s political institutions and exercising power through them. In a sense, by helping the Colombian state regain its footing at this time of crisis, he was launching a transition to a new democratic future for the country.
Uribe’s “Democratic Security”
As we have seen, Colombia had the institutions that form the basic infrastructure of democracy for decades. The presidency was constrained by Latin American standards, with a strong opposition party that was often just a few seats short of a majority in the legislature. Elections were held regularly and resulted in leadership changes. There was an independent judiciary. There were non-governmental organizations that could check the power of the executive, particularly business and agricultural groups. The army had been out of politics for five decades and the press was relatively free—though journalists were often targeted by violence from both sides.
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