A CONFOUNDING, COMPLEX TRAGEDY

In supporting Plan Colombia, the United States has taken on a major
commitment. It has done so with remarkably little information about
the dynamics of the struggle we have joined, and with considerable
uncertainty, not to say gloom, as to whether we will succeed, or even
what that means.

Colombia is a decent democracy, less flawed than almost any we have
assisted militarily in the last 50 years. Its collapse would torpedo
efforts to control the flow of narcotics, threaten a potentially
important source of energy for the United States, and create serious
problems for the region. Without external assistance, Colombia cannot
defeat the guerrilla-gangster Minotaur that consumes it. It is in our
national interest to help. At the same time, it is necessary that we
fully comprehend the harsh realities we and our Colombian allies face.

The situation is confoundingly complex. Colombia confronts a host of
Marxist guerrillas, private armies, criminal gangs and hired guns.
The current guerrilla wars have killed an estimated 35,000 people,
but the bulk of the violence is not related to the insurgency or the
drug war.

Sicarios, young hoodlums who can be hired for a few pesos, along with
ordinary people steeped in Colombia's violent culture, do most of the
killing. They have made Colombia one of the most violent countries in
the world. In addition to those killed in the guerrilla wars,
approximately 30,000 people are murdered each year. To get an idea of
its national impact, applying Colombia's murder rate to the U.S.
population would make a quarter million murders a year! End the
guerrilla wars and Colombia remains a very violent place.

To the killings, add the kidnappings, which in Colombia have reached
industrial scale. In 1982, 19 kidnappings were reported in the
country. Last year, the reported total exceeded 3,000. Few families
of means have not had at least one member who has been held hostage,
including the president of Colombia himself.

Amazingly, until recently this degree of violence has not prevented
political and economic progress. Colombia's democratic institutions
remain intact. Its literacy rate is one of the highest in Latin
America. Its 40 universities are full.

Colombia has the fourth largest economy in Latin America and is the
only country in the region never to default on its debt.

There almost seemed to be two Colombias: a sophisticated South
American Milan and a brutal South American Sierra Leone co-existing
in the same national territory. This paradox lasted until the late
1990s when Colombia slid into its worst recession since the 1930s.
The consequences of the Asian economic crisis was part of the reason,
coupled with poor fiscal policy. But the deteriorating security
situation and economic warfare waged by the guerrillas doubtless
contributed to the decline.

The conflict has displaced 2 million people. More than a million have
fled the country. The emigres have the best educations; they are the
entrepreneurs and managers of Colombia's future economic growth. This
departure represents a significant loss of a precious resource.

Arrayed against the Colombian armed forces in the struggle in which
the United States is about to involve itself are the 17,000 Marxist
guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed forces of Colombia (FARC) and
the 5,000 fighters of the National Liberation Army (ELN). The FARC
has been fighting for nearly 40 years, but its origins reach back to
the internecine political warfare of the 1940s. The guerrillas
traditionally have operated in the remote areas of the country where
the government has never been able to establish effective authority,
but in recent years, they have expanded their presence throughout the
country.

On the opposite side of the political spectrum are the 5,000 to 8,000
members of the paramilitaries. These are private militias, initially
financed by land owners and drug lords to protect their interests.
The paramilitaries, however, evolved into more autonomous actors,
financing themselves through drug trafficking, attacking guerrilla
strongholds (and coca-growing territory) in pursuit of their own
economic and political goals.

Clandestine cooperation between some Colombian army units and the
paramilitaries provoked growing criticism. Although ferocious
fighters, the paramilitaries were also notorious for mass
kidnappings, massacres of civilians, and other atrocities. The
government worked to sever links between military commanders and the
paramilitaries, and for the first time this spring, the army began
attacking paramilitary bases while police went after their financial
backers. Up to now, paramilitary units, some led by ex-army officers,
have not attacked the security forces, but that could change, moving
8,000 men from the category of undesirable allies to active foes.

Plan Colombia offers a framework for ordering national priorities and
mobilizing international support -- it is not a strategy. Neither
Colombia nor the United States has formulated a national strategy.

Goals are easily agreed upon. Detailing strategy might reveal subtle
but significant differences between Colombians and Americans.

We see things differently. Americans focus on Colombia's continued
production of cocaine, or to a lesser extent, on the conflict's
threat to regional stability. That means going after the traffickers
whether guerrillas or gangsters, defeating the insurgents.

Most Colombians, 70 percent of whom live in cities, see the war as a
distant phenomenon, except when it touches them directly in the form
of a terrorist bombing or guerrilla kidnapping. All fervently desire
peace, but they have lived with war for 40 years. They don't believe
in military victory.

They want protection against soaring crime, less violence, a better
system of justice, less corruption, more economic opportunities. That
means improving and extending the institutions of government,
starting in the cities and gradually working outward.

There has been no national mobilization in Colombia. Legislation
prohibits sons with high school diplomas from being sent into combat.
Ending conscription and creating on all-volunteer professional army
may improve military effectiveness, but in a country supposedly
engaged in a struggle for survival, it also says something about
national will.

Colombians don't want to escalate the war. They want to cut a deal,
as they have in the past, that will get them through the immediate
danger, insulate the populated enclaves from the conflict.

As for the drug traffic, most Colombians agree with President Bush --
it's a demand problem. Americans have to curb their appetite for
cocaine.

Armed conflict in Colombia has become an economic enterprise. The
guerrillas have a parasitical relationship with the oil companies
that operate in Colombia. They kidnap ex-patriate employees; collect
extortion from local contractors, set up front companies to gain
intelligence and revenue. The FARC taxes coca cultivation and is
increasingly directly involved in the production and export of
cocaine. Robberies, extortion, ransoms, and drug trafficking bring
the guerrillas an estimated $300 million to $900 million annually. It
is a greater sum than Plan Colombia will provide to Colombia's armed
forces.

The paramilitaries battle with FARC to control the drug-producing
areas. Soldiers are paid, arms are purchased; even then, the
estimated cash flows suggest that these non-government armies operate
at a profit.

The money has facilitated the expansion of the guerrilla forces and
enabled the FARC to field larger units and launch-coordinated
attacks. The fighting has moved beyond the hit-and-run attacks of
traditional guerrilla warfare into mobile warfare involving larger
scale battles, although recent successes by government forces have to
some extent forced the guerrillas to revert to traditional tactics.

One cannot be overly optimistic about peace negotiations with a
guerrilla army that has been in the field for 40 years, is well
funded, and led by a man who started fighting when Franklin Roosevelt
was president of the United States. The Colombian government's
current peace initiative is the latest in a series of unsuccessful
attempts to end the fighting that go back to 1953.

Colombia's guerrillas have not fought for 40 years for the mere
privilege of quitting. Recognizing that it cannot impose a military
solution, the government sees negotiations as an alternate way to end
the fighting.

Not so for men who have devoted their entire lives to fighting, who
believe in the efficacy of violence, have built an alternate society
and economy based upon continued struggle, and who profit by its
continuation.

Demobilizing or disarming would deprive their leadership of authority
and expose them to retaliation. They recall that many of those who
accepted previous amnesties and entered the political process as
candidates were gunned down. In addition to ideological reasons,
there are the tens of thousands who have suffered at their hands,
lost relatives, paid ransoms would have personal scores to settle.
And peace would end a profitable enterprise.

Peace is not at hand. Neither is a military victory by government
forces in the foreseeable future. Nor is a guerrilla victory. What
then?

Continued stalemate is the most likely scenario for the next several years.

The guerrillas are not about to quit, but nowhere near being able to
take over. Colombia's armed forces cannot destroy them but can defeat
them in large-scale fighting. The conflict may escalate. Under such
circumstances, will the economy fully recover or decline?

A more optimistic scenario would envisage a creeping victory.
Colombia's armed forces already have made significant improvements,
restructuring themselves to free more troops for combat, but they
still suffer from a number of serious problems. With more than
140,000 soldiers, the army outnumbers the guerrillas by eight to one,
but fewer than a quarter of them are deployable. A significant
portion are tied down in small outposts, guarding oil fields, power
stations, and other infrastructure.

Better tactical intelligence, which the United States can help
provide, better trained units, improved mobility that comes with the
helicopters now being delivered will allow the Colombian armed forces
to increasingly wrest the initiative from the guerrillas. Will it be
enough?

If it is not, Colombia may move toward political accommodation and de
facto partition. Elements of this exist now. The government has
granted FARC huge demilitarized zone, in which to negotiate peace, in
fact, it is a sanctuary from which the FARC continues the war. The
ELN seeks a smaller tract. During the 1950s, the Communists sought to
create virtually independent republics in the more remote portions of
the country. Political accommodation would formalize this process.

Many Colombians might even find some kind of territorial
accommodation and attractive option if it reduced the overall level
of fighting. However, the paramilitaries might not abide unless they
had revenue-producing territory of their own to control, and even
then, would battle the guerrillas for the most lucrative zones.

The trouble with accommodation and partition is that it would
seriously impair the campaign against cocaine production. It also can
deteriorate into a "warlord Colombia" perpetually at war with itself,
its economy crippled, foreign investment deferred except perhaps for
oil and coal, its national government marginalized.

Another constellation of scenarios lies at the far edge of
plausibility: all-out civil war -- a reprise of the vicious violence
that killed 200,000 Colombians in the late 1940s and early 1950s,
collapse of the central government, a military coup to prevent chaos.
Alarming and unlikely, such events are all within the living memory
of older Colombians, lessons hard-learned -- exactly why they would
prefer to cut a deal if possible.

The outlook is bleak. The guerrillas remain strong, the
paramilitaries hostile. The peace talks seem unlikely to succeed. The
conflicts will persist. Escalation is more likely as coca eradication
efforts intensify, as guerrillas and paramilitaries seek to
demonstrate their power before next year's presidential election in
Colombia, as American assistance gives the Colombian army more
capacity to carry the fight to the guerrillas. Violence will remain
high, the economy precarious. U.S. resolve will be severely tested.

Above all, we will be compelled to carefully define our own interests
and the price we are willing to pay to protect them.

Jenkins, a former captain in the Army Special Forces, is an authority
on conflict and international crime. He is senior adviser to the
president of the RAND Corporation.