GUERRILLA AND COUNTER-GUERRILLA WARFARE IN COLOMBIA

David Kilcullen

This chapter examines guerrilla and counter-guerrilla warfare in Colombia.

It builds on the historical account and discussion of capability
development offered in the last two chapters, providing a milicary-
technical analysis of FARC's operacional system-the guerrillas'
organisation, operations and tac tics-and of che Colombian government's
counter-guerrilla approach. 1
le is argued that objective conditions in Colombia creare an underlying
'territorial logic of stalemace: This dynamic makes it vircually impossible
for a rural guerrilla movement to overthrow che Colombian state, but also
renders it almost equally difficult for governments to destroy guerrilla
movements, as long as the guerrillas confine their operations to the
country's vast, remote and
sparsely populated periphery.
In this reading of che conflict, che fundamental strategic error of FAC
leaders after 1993 was to transition to a 'war of movement: cake the conflict
to the cities, and attempt to defeat che goverrunent on its own turf in e
urbanised, heavi.ly
J
in this wider sense is a whole-of-government endeavour to
defeat all armed and non-armed aspects of an insurgency. lt indudes political,
economic, social, diplomatic, and informational action programmes, as well
as security operations. Counter-guerrilla warfare, on the other hand, is 'geared to
3
the active military element of the insurgent movement only' and is con
ducted primarily by the military and certain types of police or intclligence units
(collectively known as 'security forces'). Counter-guerrilla warfare is thus a subset
of COIN, albeit a critica! one since its goal is to create security-the
4
prerequisite for every other counterinsurgent activity.
1:
As in all warfare, material conditions and subjective perceptions (which
together form the geographical, demographic, economic, psychological and
political context for any given instance of conAict) are hugely inff uential in
dctermining the organisational and operacional methodology each adversary
adopts in a guerrilla war. Thus, before examining FARC's operacional systern and
evaluating current issues within the rival counter-guerrilla system, it is worth
brieffy reviewing Colombia's overall conff ict setting and the resulting territorial
logic of stalemate.

In id-July 1964, as survivors of the Marquetalía Republic stwnhled out of thc

Junglc-covered mountains of the Cordillera Central towards Rio

4. Jntm:ational Boders. The length othe borders, particularly if the neigh bounng
countnes are sympathet1c to the insurgents ... favours che insurgent.
5. Terrain. lt helps the insurgent insofar as it is rugged and difficult, either because
of mountains and swamps or because of che vegetation ...
6. Climate. Contrary to the general belief, harsh climates favour the counter
insurgent forces, which have, as a rule, better logistical and operacional facilities.
7. Population ... The more inhabitants, the more difficult to control chem ... The
mor scattered the population, che better for che insurgent ... A high ratio of rural
to urban population gives an advantage to che insurgent.
8. Economy ... A highly developed country is very vulnerable to a short and
intense wave of terrorism ... An underdeveloped country is less vulnerable to
terrorism but much more open to guerrilla warfare, if only because the
counterinsurgent cannot count on a good network of transpon and com
munication facilities and because the population is more autarchic.
To sum up, the ideal situation for the insurgent would be a large land-locked country
shaped like a blunt-tipped star, with jungle-covered mountains along the borders and
scattered swamps in the plains, in a temperare zone with a large and dispersed rural
6
population and a primitive economy.
IfGalula's experience had induded Latín America, he might well have writ ten that
the ideal country for the insurgent would be Colombia, since condi ions there in
1964 (and for many decades thereafter) were favourable t the tnsurgents in seven
of the eight factors he liscs. In che five decades since
Galul a's book appeared (a period that happens to co1·nc1·de exacdy with the
evolution of FARC), the guerrilla movement rose from fewer than fifty fight ers in
1964 to more chan 20,000 in 2002 (before falling to roughly
today), becoming Latin America's oldest and largest ins.urgency along 1!1e way.
lhe conditions Galula identified in 1964 continue to inBuence guerrilla
coun
ter-guerrilla warfare in the is thus wortan

Pacific Ocean to the west, is acrually no a bamer,ut rache a mantime high. wa for
coastal and trans-oceanic shipp1ng traffic, tntra-regional and interna tioal trade, and a
host of licit and illicit economic activities that connect Colombia with its neighbours.
Likewise, Colombia's neighbours have histori cally been neutral or favourably disposed
towards Colombian guerrilla move ments-induding FARC-or have been unable to
control their border regions, creating space for guerrilla safe havens astride Colombia's
frontiers.7
Colombia is very large-the fourth-largest country in South Arnerica (with
a land area of more than a million square kilometres, and 3,000 kilometres of
coasdine on thc Carihbean and the Pacific)-and, with 46.2 million people, is second
only to Brazil in population.8 As the population map shows, how ever, human
setdement is extrcmely heavily concentrated in the western third of the country,which is
made up of a narrow coastal strip along the Caribbean and Pacific coasdines, a
highland plateau and the extraordinarüy rugged sier ras of the Eastern, Central an
Western Cordilleras. These ranges 'form the extended Magdalena and Cauca river
valleys [west of the dotted line on the maps] whcre most of thc population resides.
Because of the difficult terrain,
most people Üve in fourteen main clusters of "city-states each with a distinct economy
and social character.'9
extraordinarily
This uneven population distribution relative to terrain malees Colombia
difficult to gove 1 dº
rn. t creates a 1verse set of operating environ-
 GUERRILLA AND COUNTER-G UERRILLA WARFARE IN COLOMBIA

']bt 1mitoriAÍ logic o/ stalnnatt

Inpart bccausc of its history- Colombia was settled and developcd from the
centre out, rathcr than from the coastline in-and in pan because of these
gcographic and demographic conditions (which together creare the 'territorial
Iogic' of che conflict), Colombia in economic and political terms is rcally two
countries, or rathcr one country embeddcd within another. Its economic and
socio-political core is an urbaniscd, long-scttled, relatively dcveloped middlc
income dcmocracy (though also vulnerable to urban terrorism). This centre,
however, is surrounded by an underdeveloped, unequal, hiscorically ungovern
able feudal-agracian periphery lacking infrastructure and government pres
ence, with a population that has historically experienced economic exdusion
and political marginalisation, making it highly vulnerable to guerriUas who
can exploit the legitimare (or, at che very least, complctely understandable)
grievances of poor rural campesinos.
The paradox of Colombia is that because of the country's uneven popula
tion distribution, even if every person in its rural periphery was an aggrieved,
guerrilla-supporting campesino, they could only ever be a small minority of
Colombia's overall population. This creares a built-in dynamic of sralemate in
guerrilla warfare: because the agrarian poor have historically been a small
minoriry, out of sight and out of mind for most Colombians, a series of demo
cratically clected governments in Bogotá since the nineteenth century has
lacked strong incentives to address peasant grievances, making uprisings and
rural criminality more likely.At the same time, because marginalised
campes
inos, though a minority in the country overall, were often the majority of che
population in any given rural district, guerrillas could expect significanr
popu lar support in these districts, allowing them to operare with impunity
from a distant state, operating ac the extreme edge of its reach, while hiding
within the populacion like Mao's guerrilla fish in che sea.
Bccause disenfranchised and aggrieved peasants made up the bulle of the
populacion in many remoce discricrs in the councry's marginalised
periphery, Colombia experienced near-permanenc banditry and guerrilla
activity in these discricts, making guerrillas excraordinarily hard to suppress
as long as they stayed in the councryside. Buc in Colombia overall, such
peasanrs were a small minority, concentrated in the remotest, least
populaced pares of the periphery. Thus the same guerrillas who could
survive and thrive in the countryside could casily be defeated if they over-
extended themselves beyond their rural sanctuar ies to confront the stace in
the industrialised and urbanised centre of Colombia.
67
 A GREAT PERHAPS?

. tem"torial louic makes it virtually impossible for rural gu ill

Th is o- . err as to
rthroW the Colombian state, yet. also extremely. d1fficult
. for anY centra}
ove
govcmmcnt to stamp out a dcte mcd rural upns1ng,_and this in turn has
·ven rise to a longstanding crad1non of low-level guerrilla warfare and b
g i f" " b 11 · · ·
d itry in Colombia-'a habit o easy re e i on aga1 nst i nept an.
that
governrnents
were habitually inattentive to the needs of [the small minority of ] their
12
citi. zcns' living in remote rural districts.' In the twentieth century,
urbanisation and population growth-the emergence of poor urban-
dwellers, rural-to urban migrants and urban fringe populations who
could be exploited by
urban guerrillas or criminal gangs-began to change this dynamic to sorne
degree, tipping the balance against the state by the 1970s. In broad
terms, however, the same conditions continued to exist.

1he regi.ona1setting
But Colombia's internal circumstances are only part of the setting for its con
Aict, which is also heavily inAuenced by regional conditions. Colombia's
hemispheric context is defined by competing inff uences: historical US eco
nomic and poÜtical dominance; competition from longstanding revolution
ary Marxist movements in Cuba and Central America; the emergence of 'New
Left' governments (in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela) in the first decade of
the twenty-first century; and the recent region-wide Bolivarian Continental
Movcment. External state actors, including the US, the Soviet Union (later
Russia), China, and Iran, along with non-state actors including the IRA, ETA,
Hezbollah, European socialist parties, and human rights groups, have shaped
thc environment for guerrilla and counter-guerrilla warfare in Colombia. The
influcnce of this regional system can be seen most clearly in the interplay of
narcotics and insurgency in Colombia.
lhe rise of a regional drug economy in the l 970s, responding to
competing dcmands from US consumers seeking cocaine and US
governments deter mined to dcny it to them, gave Colombian guerrillas
access to vast resources so vast, in fact, that the very scale and
availability of these resources transformed FARC and other Latin
American groups into self-funding con flict entrepreneurs (see
lntroduction). Over time, they became so unlike das sical insurgents that
the new terms 'narco-terrorist' and 'narco-guerrilla' had to be invented in
thel980s to describe them.n
US dominance of high-value commodity markets was nothing new in
the western hemisphere- companies like United Fruit (parent to
today's

68
-,-

GUERRILLA AND COUNTER-GUERRILLA WARFARE IN COLOMBIA

Chiquita brand) had achieved huge political and economic inff uence in
Colombia, Ecuo.r and the West Indies by the fust half of the
cury twentieth through hc1t exports of bananas, while US oíl and minm·
ce n
g .
. , . compan1es
dominatcd Colomb1as extract1ve sector. The frequent use of American mili-
cary _power and diplomatic inff uence to preserve the commercial dominance
of American companies led Major General Smedley Butler, one of the most
highly decorated US Marine Corps officers of the century (who served in the
'Banana Wars' in the Caribbean), to describe war as a racket. 14
But che drug trade was different. The biggest new factor was the vast
amount of money involved- in part because of the immense cash value of
narcotics, and in part because competing players in the United States funded
both sides of the drug war, with drug consumers funding the narcos and gov
emment funding the counternarcotics effort, thus effectivdy doubling US
investment in the cocaine economy. The violence inherent in illicit markets
gave guerrillas- and later paramilitaries- a comparative advantage that
quickly gained them a dominant position. As James Henderson points out,
Illegal drug money has been the common denominator of Colombian
violcnce since the 1970s.Abundanc cash generated by illcgal drug sales fuelled
che craffick ers' violence against one anocher, and against the Colombian state
and its cirizenry. Colombia's guerrillas ceased being innocuous only when illegal
drug money staned cascading into the councry.Their successes from the l970s
onward were, ironically, a function of the most savage form of capitalism: che
illegal consumer-producer market dynamic. 1s
As explained in Chapter l, FARC initially taxed coca growers and
subcon tracted to, collaborated with, and extorted funds from drug
traffickers. Later, after the collapse of the Medellin and Cali cartels, the
guerrillas took over large parts of the narcotics process, produced and
distributed cocaine on their own account, excluded other players from the
drug trade, and, inplaces like the San Vicente del Caguán demilitarised
zone (DMZ) in 1998-2002, con structed entire political economies around
16
narcotics. This ready access to drug money had four effects on the
guerrillas' operational system: it reduced their dependence on externa!
sponsors, made them less reliant on popular support, allowed them to
develop a vast overseas financial hinterland, and tied them to fixed
positions.
Whereas 'FARC survived in che 1970s thanks to support from poor camp
esinos and externa! ideological partners, such as Russian and Cuban com
munist groups', once the drug trade took off in the second half of the 1970s
this dependence was sharply reduced. 17 Access to independent sources of
funding from narcotics, kidnapping and enortion made FARC less reliant
rced rccruianent of child soldicrs-bccausc it depended
fo crimi.nal
00 . revenue
ro sustain its systcm, rathcr than relying on popular mobilisation.
Third, narcotics intemonaliscd FARC's intercsts., driving che guerrillas
to dcvdop an ovcrscas financ1al structure estimatcd in 2012 to account for
more than 70 per cent of thc grup's assets, and which includes holdings
in Venezuela, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Panama and Mexico-as well in
Norway, Holland, Denmark, Gcrmany, and Swcden.19 Given annual drug
revcnuc of roughly $1.1 billion, chis created a vast financia! hinterland for
the guerrillas, lctting them use ovcrscas funds to recovcr from losses within
Colombia, or continue thc conflict aftcr (or in parallel with) peace talks.
The &agmcnted
nature of the financia! structurc-cach FARC front managcs its own finances
indcpendcntly, whilc many asscts are hdd by the international commission
(COMINTER)- makcs this part of the guerrilla system both resilient to dis
ruption and difficult for FARC's own lcaders to control20 Indecd, the sharp
increase in coca cultivation and expon in 2014-15-an increase that has taken
place against thc background of pcace talks, the suspension of aerial
spraying, and a reduction in military activity-emphasises how
extraorclinarily resilient
this element of the FARC system remains, even as it calls into question thc
21
long-term effcctiveness of counter-drug operations under Plan Colombia.
Finally, as Fidel Castro argued in his 2008 critique of FARC (La Paz °!
Colombia), thc guerrillas' dependence on drug trafficking- and on e
assoc1- ated kidnapping and extortion revenue-tied em to.fixed
locanons (ca
fields, drug · fi lds trafficking routes), making therr movements predict-
labs, ,
foundcd on 'thc combination of ali forms of strugglc' and a New Mode of
:11
Opcrations (Nueva Forma de Operar, NFO). combiatio of all fonns of
strugglc integratcd social, political, econo1c, 1deologtcal, d1plomatic, and
guerrilla campaigns; the emphasis would sh1ft fro one form of struggie to
another in response to changing circumstances. Th1s strategy, discussed fur
thcr in Chapter s, created a flexible approach that helped FARC adapt to
military reversals after 2002.The guerrilla system that emerged from the
NFO includes five main elemcnts: support networks, military structures
(including the main force, urban milicias and terrorist cells), clandestine
political move mcnts, the FARC central structure, and thc COMINTER.
Each of these elements is worth examining as part of the overall FARC
system.

Support networks
FARC support networks are made up of an underground comprising sympa
thisers and supporters, along with an auxiliary or supporting logistic
network. As clandestine organisations, the size of FARC's auxiliary and
underground is hard to calculate, but 2014 estimates suggest it may number
as many as 22,000 members. Network organisation often takes the form
of clandestine cells located in (or on the edge of ) urban districts or villages.
Members of FARC support networks blend into local communities and-
wherever possible avoid interaction with security forces, though their
identities are often known to at least sorne members of the civil population
in the arcas where they oper ate. Underground members conduct
reconnaissance, collect intelligence, engage in propaganda, pass messages
among guerrilla units, and inform on membcrs of the local population and
the security forces. The auxiliary helps the guerrilla forces store and
transport weapons, maintains ammunition and explosives caches, gathers and
transports food and medica! supplies, and assists in money laundering and
black-market currency exchange. Members of sup port networks often have
longstanding relationships with specific FARC leaders and guerrilla units,
but may be motivated by commercial, family, or
criminal-rather than purely political-interests.

Military structure

As of carly 2015, FARC's milit structure comprised roughly 7,000

combat- ants-down from almost 20,000 m 2002-and was-ponents: the
main force, milicias, and terrorist cells lhe · r ·
· mai n rorce-organ1 s
since 1982 in a hierarchical military structure, the
is based in remoce rural arcas and composed of full-time guerril las. lt
compriscs fiv blocs and two combined joint commands, sixty-eight
numbered fronts, rune ed fronts, seventeen mobile columns and thirty
dll'ee independent comparues. lhe blocs and joint commands are
responsiblc for a given gcographical area, and bloc headquarters control
both territorial and mobile forces within their zone. lhe mobile and
territorial forces within each region are organised into fronts-combat
units of varying size and func
tion-that are responsible for planning and conducting their own operations,
supporting themselves financially, and generating funding for their parent
bloc and the FARC central structure. Under pressure from security forces,
only about half of the fronts within FARC's military structure remain
operationally active as of 2015, though those fronts that do survive have
shown impressive capacity for regencration, replacing as much as 90 per
cent of their losses over the course of the campaign since 2002. Several
independent fronts exist, repre senting elite mobile forces attached to bloc
headquarters; most num bered fronts are territorial units that operate in a
single zone, control a specific popu lation, target a specific aspect of che
industrial or government system (for example, an oil pipeline or a port), or
prorect an element of FARC's narco trafficking enterprise; n?ffied fronts
often operare in a more mobile manner. Fronts are organised into columns-
the basic fighting unit of between twenty and forty guerrillas-with larger,
more capable mobile columns conducting offensive or high-value tasks.
Independent companies operare like mobile col umns, bur are smaller and
often more specialised.
Members of main-force guerrilla columns are full-time members of
FARC, recruited from rural and urban populations and from other
insurgenr and criminal groups. They wear milirary uniforms and insignia,
hold formal mili tary rank, carry both small arms and crew-served
weapons, and include spe cialist heavy-weapons teams, snipers, IED
specialisrs, communications teams and reconnaissance units. For a period in
the latel990s and early 2000s, the level of equipment and weaponry fielded
by FARC main force guerrillas was at least as good as, if not better than,
that of the Colombian army and police units they were likely to encounrer
in their operating arcas. Since then, under pressure of military operations,
all FARC columns-whether territorial or mobile columns-have been
forced to become more mobile and to move back from the edges of urban
arcas. At the same time sorne elite groups, such as the Teofilo Ferrero
Mobile Column, have been severely damaged and forced to curtail their
operations.
The milicias are a looser, cell-based, element rhat has become increasingly
important since 2011 as pressure from the Colombian army's Joint Task
 73

Forces (JTFs) descroyed much of e main-force gucas·miltary capabij¡

and forccd them to withd.raw to 1ungle bases or curtail offens1ve operation
Urban müitias are organised into fo named fronts targeting Colornb¡a·
major cities. They may be linked to spec1fic blocs,.or form part of the
clandes tine political scructure (discusscd in the ne.xt sect1on). Urban militias
operare
in small groups up to a maximum of about weve peoplc, and maintain safe
houses in urban or peri-urban arcas, along with 1ndependent escape and infil.
tration routes. Each militia front is led and supported by a small cell of fuU.
time cadres who can draw on a larger pool of part-time members within an
operational area. The mÜitias operate in civüian clothing with light, conceal
able weapons and rely heavily on explosives-though heavy weapons such as
gas-cylinder mortars or heavy sniper rifles may be used for specific high-value
operations. For survivability, members of urban milicia fronts tend to live in
one district, hold cover jobs in another, and operate in a third district within
the same city or even in a different town. Weapons and explosives are moved
and cached by specialists within the fronts, and may be kept separate from cell
members until just before an attack, allowing 'clean' infiltration by an assault
team into a target arca.
Milicias (also known as Bolivarian milicias) operate in both rural and
urban arcas. Rural milicias operate as part-time auxiliarles in support of a
Main Force front and traditionally depended on that front. They provide
intelligence and logistics for Main Force units and execute terrorist attacks in
rural and urban environments. Their role has evolved, however, as the Main
Force has been weakened through the COIN campaign since 2002. As a
result, more rural militias have received formal military training and it's
increasingly common for milicias to operare autonomously.
Urban milicia operations typically involve asymmetric tactics such as
bomb· ings, kidnappings, sabotage, blackmail, assassinations, racketeering,
support to drug trafficking, and operations in conjunction with FARC's
criminal alli· anees. The urban milicias have successfully adopted tactics and
weapons frorn internacional terrorist groups including IRA and ETA
(induding remotely· fired mortars, IRA-designed ramplas, Hamas-designed
Qassam rockers, an?
severa! IED designs) and may have modelled their cell struccure on the IRAS
Active Service Unit system. At their peak in 2003, the urban milicias
induded as my as .12,000 combatants, focused on Bogotá and Medellín
but also targetmg mid-sized cities like Bucaramanga. Under military and
pollee pres· sure, thesc numbers have been reduccd, and FARC urban
tactics have shifred to ds reconnaissancc and intelligence-but the
primary role of the urbaJl mil1nas rcmains asymmetric combat within
Colombia's cities.

for specific clandestine operations-bombings, high-profile murders

and kidnappings, or hijackings-knowledge of which is
'comparcmented, to senior FARC leadership and thus may not be
known to, or coordinated with,
local guerrilla commanders. These terrorist commands primarily operate within
Colombia, but have the capability to operate internationally.

Clandestine political structures

Clandestine political structures have existed alongside FARC's

military struc mres since its earliest days, but have evolved over
time. They currencly include the Partido Comunista Clandestino
Colombiano (Clandestine Colombian Communist Party, PC3)
and the Movimiento Bolivariano por la Nueva Colombia
(Bolivarian Movement for a New Colombia, MBNC), both
founded in 2000. The PC3 was led by Guillermo León Sáenz
Vargas {alias 'Alfonso Cano') until his death in 2011, and is
structured as an illegal, under ground political party that controls
the more overt MBNC, sponsors attacks by FARC urban milicias,
engages in agitation and propaganda, subverts Colombian
government structures and legal political parties, and manipulates
social movements such as trade unions and indigenous
communities. The PC3 emerged afi:er FARC's split with che
official Colombian Communist Party in the earlyl990s-an example
of FARC's ability to operate outside the formal communist line due
to its independence through access to drug money. The
 FARC central suuctures

political components support, and are (at least .theo . . .

cally) controlled by FARC's central structures, mcludmg tts General Sraff
and
Secretariat. The Central Headquarters (Estado Mayor Central) is
responsiblc for appointing, controlling and supporting the commanders
of each bloc, delineating their areas of operation, collectin funds
from blocs, resolving disputes between them, organising joint
operat1ons among colurnns &om dif
ferent blocs, and managing centralised functions such as intelligence,
training (via the FARC military academy) and specialised weapons,
intelligence and explosives cadres. This sounds like a busy job but, in
practicc, FARC blocs (as well as the combined joint commands, and
oftcn fronts themselves within blocs) are operationally autonomous-
increasingly so, as the military high value-target campaign has .killed
senior FARC leaders and forced decencralisa tion since 2007.
Within the central headquarters, che FARC Secretariat (Secretariado
del
Estado Mayor Central) is a small decision-making body-wich onJy
seven members for much of its history-that sets overall strategy,
coordinares propaganda and political activities, and acts as the core
command group for the whole movement. Since 2002, six Secretariat
members have been killed or died of natural causes (possibly aggravated
by the stress of pursuit through Colombia's mountainous jungle). Those
killed included Alfonso Cano, Mono Jojoy, Raúl Reyes and Iván Ríos,
while FARC spokesmen daim that Manuel Marulanda (alias 'Tirofijo')
and Efraín Guzmán died of natural causes.
Further, since the start of peace talles in 2012, FARC leaders havc
caken the opportunity tojoin che talks and escape the incrcasingly
dangerous .fidd envi ronment in Colombia-as oflate 2014, the Havana
group induded three out of seven members of the Secretariat, three out
of six known bloc commanders,
24
and four sub-commanders. This cxodus of senior talent from che fidd
has
create a drain on F R's le:dership within Colombia, leading to
further operational decentral1sat1on,with many FARC fronts now
operating rdativdy independcndy.

The internacional comrnission

tional Political, 6nancial and ubversive support network for FARC. As
..-rn}aincd in Chapccr 1, accord1ng to documencs capcured in th R 'd
-r , e eyes ra1
in 2008, che COMINTERs internacional scracegy had four k b' .
. .. ey O JCCtlVCS:
to acquirc 6nanc1al and military support from overseas state and non-state
actors, induding advanced weapons systems such as man-portable air
defence systems; to build policical legitimacy (including recognition of
belligcrent scarus) for FARC while rcducing internacional supporc for the
Colombian govcmmcnt; to undermine Colombia's securicy cooperation with
ncighbour
ing countrics; and to cscablish cross-bordcr safc havcns in Venezuela,
Ecuador and elscwhere.25

Optrational methodology
Within this relacivcly stable operacional scructure, the operating method of
FARC has changed significantly since the l990s, as discussed in the Prcface
and in Chapter l. With the adoption of the NFO in 1993, FARC began a
build-up to a semi-convencional military force. lt created officer and NCO
academies, centralised unit structures, created specialist units, adopted
formal military organisations, ranks and uniforms, and attempted to turn
itself into something resembling a regular army-as indicated by the
addition of 'Ejercito del Pueblo' to its name in 1993. In part, this was an
attempt to meet the requirements under internacional law for recognition as
a legitimate com batanc in an incra-state conff.ict, as a w y of bolstering
FARC's credentials as a counter-government.
In pare, also, this transition to convencional conflict was a mark of FARC's
confidence in its strategy of encircling the cities by occupying and
controlling pcri-urban terrain and smaller towns and routes between
Colombia's major urban areas. lhe model for this approach was the
successful Sandinista move ment inEl Salvador, which FARC cadres
studied in detail in their academies, and which led FARC to transition to a
pseudo-convencional 'war of move lllent' in thel990s-only to be forced to
drop hade a stage to guerrilla warfare
(with thc addition of a significant upsurge in urban milicia terrorism) after
the dcath of Raúl Reyes in2008 and che adoption of Alfonso Cano's Plan
Renacer. As of mid-2015, thc strategic purpose of FARC's remaining
main-force guerrilla units, in addition to rural guerrilla operations, appears
to be twofold: to maintain a force-in-being allowing FARC to claim
legitimare combatant status and bolster thc credibility of FARC ncgotiators
in Havana, and to pre serve and protect FARC's bases and illicit sources of
revcnue. This represents
77
 A GREAT PERHAPS?

a shifr from the late 1990s and.early 200, when FAC sought to
encirde

and conquer c1 a es
· · in Colombias industnahsed core. Th1s strategy•
. . d urrounding che national capital with a force of 16,000 armed fi
h g
••• cnVlSIOflC s . t·
crs, cutting thc city's food supply, and thcreby causmg a general uprising
against thc
government. When that car·ne to pass FARC tliea.ders wouJd emulatc both 1

F·dd
Castro and Daniel Ortega and ride triumphan y mt Bogotá at thc hcad of
thcir
rebd army.The NFO was fanciful when announced [m 1982] as the
FARC's total armed force consisted of just 1,000 men. Yet thanks to the
peace initiativc of Bdisario Bctancur che FARC grew virtually unimpcdcd
for four years, more than tripling by 1986, to 3,600 fighters. Thc
cncirclemcnt and scizure of Bogotá was pan of che FARC master plan for
eventual triumph drawn up at thc 1982 meeting. Called thc Stratcgic
Political-Military Plan (Plan Estratégico Político Militar), it projected
continuation of the insurgems' early 'centrifuga! strategy' of continuously
spinning new fronts out into kcy pares of thc nation. Thc plan was
spcctacularly successful, for it allowed the FARC to increasc its fronts from
sevcnteen to thirty by Betancur's last ycar in officc.26

As noted earlier, this attempt to fight the govemment on its own

turf breached the system boundaries of Colombia's longstanding
territorial logic of guerrilla scalemate, prompting a massive countervailing
response. When che Colombian government pushed back in 1999-
2002, recapturing control of cities and surrounding districcs, FARC was
forced to drop back to a guerrilla approach, and then, following losses
of key FARC commanders in 2008, ro whar mighr be described as an
'enclave' strategy. This combined a rural guer· rilla force-in-being-
which fulfilled its purpose sirnply by continuing to exist and generare
revenue-with increased urban guerrilla warfare and rerrorism by the
urban miliria fronts. Under Alfonso Cano, Plan Renacer sought to
disperse fronts and colurnns inco smaller guerrilla units to increase rheir
sur· vivability against air strikes and army operations; to move in a
dispersed for· mation of small groups racher than in large conventional
battalions; co operare
n more remoce and rural terrain; to increase engagement with the
population
m orde to rebuild che popular support FARC had squandered in its
highlY
aggrsiv mbile warfare phase; and to strengthen the urban milicia
 froncs. Despite sign1ficanr losses since 2011, th1' s remam· s th e
b as1·c F'.AnRC scructure and operacional posture in 2015.

2002 demonsuates, Colomia has ade huge progress in reducing the threat
FARC pased to che cou.ntry s urhanISed and industrialised core··y¡et ,
d . curnaround so dramanc that sorne analysts have called it 'The
espi te a
Colombian Mifadc:it should be clear t Colombia still faces a robust
insurgency.21Four
spccilic isses, as o 2015, dude: long-term sustainabilicy; che inabilicy of
civil agencies to build effect1ve COIN programmes to match the
successful counter-guerrilla warfare efforts of che military; the problem of
village govem
ancc and security; and FARC's criminal alliances (perhaps better described as
the convergence betwecn crime and guerrilla warfare).
The first critica! issue is sustainability. In driving che guerrillas away
from their attemptcd cncirclement of its cities, the Colombian government
relieved che nacional crisis of 1999-2002, bue che danger now is that,
having re-estab lished che tradicional equilibrium-the state controlling che
centre, che guer rillas maintaining safe havens in the country's periphery-
the dynamic of stalemate will reassert itself and Colombia will fail to cake
che necessary steps
to resolve che conflict and prevent its resurgence. What Colombia needs
now is a sustained counter-guerrilla e.ffort-perhaps lasting between 6.fi:een
and twenty years-to consolidate the gains achieved since 2002. lhe risk is
that these gains could potentially be undone overnight in the event of failed
peace
talks, an economic setback that forces cuts to che defence budget or a reduc
tion in che number of troops deployed, or a lopsided peace agreement that
allows FARC to recover and build back its strength.
More fundamentally, there is an asymmetry of objectives here: on the one
hand, the goverrunent of Colombia seeks to end the conff ict via a political
settlement, (ideally on favourable rerms) with the guerrillas. On the other,
many senior and mid-level FARC commanders, as conflict entrepreneurs,
may seek not to end the conflict, but to preserve ir so as to maintain access
ro ready sources of drug funding. Dcspite huge progress against the
guerrillas since 2002, Colombia's cocaine producrion and smuggling
networks remain extremely vibrant, and as long as che guerrillas can
access this source of funds they can sustain their activities more or less
indefinitely, even in che absence of significant popular support. Inany case,
undcr the strategy of the combina tion of all forms of struggle, FARC
Ieaders appear to regard peace talles as just one more phase in an ongoing
struggle rhat serves their business interests as
much as their political goals.
For its part, Colombia's military, after its hard-won bartlefield
successes, a hugc cxpansion in its numbers and combar capability (as
discussed in Chaptcr 2), and a rnassivc growth in public support and
prestige, faces a dif-

A GREAT PERHAPS?

·cary
1 1
commanders underscand they muse sustain a oc
fercnt dilemma. Mil
al
.
gov secunty presence,d an
remain involved for the foreseeable future in
ern-
ance and economics via programmes such as tegral Action (local-
leveI . and community engagement proJeCts sponsored by
1on
rcconscruct . ·
11

the n..ij· tary), in order to enahle civilian agencies to work w1th

1- e
popuation, extend
governance, improve services, and reduce the structur inequal1 and
exclu sion that provoked the insurgency in the first place. Th1s effort
will take enor mous policical commicment over a long time-
particularly since historical benchmarks suggest chat posc-conflict
stabilisation may cake twice as long as the conflict that preceded it.28
Bue.such a commitment- on top of che massive growth in military
budget, manpower, and prestige of che past decade-brings personal
and institutional incentives that carry che risk that che military, too,
may become stakeholders in a political economy of war, with
institucional intereses in preserving che conflict. This risk may be
worth caking-without a sustained counter-guerrilla presence in
contested arcas, it is hard to see how che conflict can end-but it is
still a risk.
A second critica! issue lies in che emerging gap between che
military's efforts in counter-guerrilla warfare, and the broader whole-
of-govemment COIN effort that (in theory) should surround and
complement the efforcs of security forces. As we have seen, milicary
counter-guerrilla efforts have rolled FARC back into a defensive
posture, bue civilian agencies need to step more accively into the space
created by these military operations, lest soldiers be left holding an
empty hag-or, worse, become tempted to usurp civil authority in order
to get the job done.
. -s originally designed, che Sword of Honour campaign plan
envisaged civilian agencies assuming administrative functions in
contested areas and pollee taking over cleared areas once che
military had defeated or displaced the FARC main force. This was
intended to free military forces (led by the thir teen mobile JTFs
established under Sword of Honour) from a ground-holding role,
allowing them to manoeuvre against FARC base areas. Under
Green Heart, the Nacional Police companion plan to Sword of
Honour, police were to. sume responsibility for protecting cleared
('green') areas and for dealing