Crisis?  What Crisis?   Security Issues in Colombia

Toward an Institutional Collapse?

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It has been three years since the publication of my book entitled Insurgency Without Revolution: The Guerrillas in Colombia in a Comparative Perspective, in which I attempted to outline the basis of a sociology of the guerrillas in Colombia. I continue believing that the central thesis in that analysis is basically valid. However, it is true that not only has the phenomenon of the guerrillas undergone important changes, other researchers have also made new findings and shed new light on the dynamics of the internal conflict in which Colombia now lives.

Based on a review of the old and new literature on the subject, I would like to present a few questions. Is Colombia bordering on an institutional collapse as a result of the multifasceted violence that afflicts it? What are the features of the political violence? Is there a strategic balance between the armed forces and the guerrilla movement? Has the paramilitarism made a transition toward becoming right-wing guerrillas? Is a policy of peace viable? These are some of the questions I will use to guide my comments.

In general terms, three basic components have characterized Colombia during the past four decades, since the National Front in 1958: a recognized and praised macroeconomic stability; an equally distinguished institutional stability; and, in contrast, a high index of violence. In effect, Colombia has been the only country in Latin America that has managed to maintain sustained positive economic growth levels throughout the past forty years. Also, alongside Mexico, Costa Rica, and Venezuela, it was one of the four states on the continent that managed to sort out successfully the wave of military coups that afflicted the continent during the 1960s and 1970s. But at the same time, Colombia bears the doubtfully honorable title of being one of the countries with the highest levels of violence in the world.

Is this situation in transition? Are the recessive signs waived about currently an indication of grave future economic imbalances? Was the political crisis throughout the administration of Ernesto Samper only the prelude of a deep institutional crisis already inscribed on the horizon? Does the violence tend toward unresolvable increases? In other words, if the economic and political stability have served to cushion the impact of the violence, what will happen if this double shock absorber fails?

Recently, in diverse articles published in the international press, the future of Colombia has been compared to Bosnia in some cases and to Vietnam in others, if the current levels of violence continue. Both comparisons are wrong, in my point of view. No ethnic conflagration, no small country war between the two superpowers is comparable to the Colombian experience. As I see it, because of the superimposition of multifasceted violence, organized and diffuse, the risks in Colombia include the increasing erosion of the institutions and social fabric that could in the next few years deepen the already delicate partial collapse of the state, affecting the institutional and economic stability.

In 1978 the North American researcher Paul Oquist published his book entitled Violencia, conflicto y política en Colombia,¹ without a doubt one of the most distinguished studies on the period of La Violencia the country underwent between 1946 and 1953. In his work, Oquist coined the polemic term "partial collapse of the state" to refer to the impact these different modes of violence produced on the state institutions during these years:

This collapse was concretely manifest in: the breakdown of the parliamentary, policy, judicial, and electoral institutions; the loss of state legitimacy in great sectors of the population and the concomitant use of high levels of repression to obtain obedience to state orders; contradictions within the armed apparatus of the state that reduced the effectiveness of the high levels of repression; the physical absence of public administration in great and important areas of the national territory.²

Fifty years later, Colombia suffers from a similar situation. Our precarious state, facing challenges and demands that overwhelm its capacity to control or manage, lives in the partial avalanche of some of its key institutions, such as justice and security. Other institutions on the contrary maintain their consistency, as is the case of the organizations responsible for managing the macroeconomy or the foreign relations of the state. The principal indicators of this partial collapse are the loss of monopoly on weapons, the high indices of criminality, the levels of impunity, and the vacuum of the government’s presence in multiple regions of the country. In many of these regions a "praetorian system" has been developed, in the sense that Samuel Huntington defined the concept.³

Could this partial collapse degrade into a generalized collapse in the next few years? In specialized journal, analysts have sought to design a matrix common to those states in which there has been a total collapse of the state, such as Somalia, Afghanistan, or Bosnia-Herzegovina. Nine central points have been detected in the three cases:

• A strong democratic pressure.
• A massive movement of refugees.
• An economic increase tied to a specific ethnic segment.
• A long tradition of revenge and repression.
• A deep delegitimization of the state.
• A severe economic crisis.
• A progressive deterioration or elimination of public services.
• A manifest incapacity to implement the legal norms.
• Security organizations operating as a "state within a state."⁴

Despite the presence of many of these points day by day in the country (for example, the brutal displacement and migration from urban areas to the cities⁵), there nonetheless exists a notable difference: In the three cases mentioned, there are strong collective identities along ethnic, linguistic, religious, or ideological lines. Because of the absence of this factor in Colombia, it is very improbable from my perspective for a civil war to develop in Colombia. The risk is that the persistence and deepening of this grave social lack of order could place the political and economic institutional stability of the country at risk in the medium term.

In Colombia, for more than a decade there has been a negative tie between the armed forces and the guerrilla groups. With this term, which I coined a few years ago, I sought to differentiate from the more commonly used "military balance" or "strategic equilibrium" which I find inappropriate in describing the characteristics of the Colombian conflict.

This last idea was proposed initially by General José Joaquín Matallana in a study that sparked a sharp debate in the mid 1980s, and according to whom the guerrillas did not have the capacity to defeat the army, though the army did not have the resources to defeat the guerrillas. This resulted in a need to find a negotiated settlement to the armed conflict. In Latin America the notion of a "strategic equilibrium" grew out of the experience in El Salvador. Several years ago the U.S. Congressional Research Service wrote that

The notion of a "military tie," on the contrary, holds that if the armed forces have lost the tactical initiative on the battlefield, they still maintain a clear strategic superiority. But if the military cannot review in depth its operational capability in the medium range, this situation will negatively affect the institutional stability of the country. Thus there is an urgency to implement specific military changes, knowing full well that the peace negotiations on which the country has embarked will be carried out in the midst of the war.

Before continuing this analysis, therefore, it is necessary to respond to a fundamental question: Is it possible at least in the short term to achieve a military victory over the guerrilla movements?

The successive and increasingly troublesome defeats suffered by the armed forces require an unremitting national debate. Since the beginning of the 1990s, there has been a gigantic increase in military expenditures and in force posture. The military budget has grown by more than 400 percent, and the troop level increased from 60,000 to 120,000 men. However, the results of their actions are increasingly precarious. What causes this growing inefficiency?

First, if the military has maintained a clear strategic superiority in comparison to the guerrilla groups (troop levels, resources, logistics), they have completely lost the tactical initiative on the battlefield. Until a few years ago, the FARC was limited to carrying out ambushes similar to those of guerrilla groups in the 1950s. But thanks to the expert advice of the Salvadoran insurgents, in the last two or three years they have begun acting in military units of several hundred men each. Despite this evident transformation, the army continues operating with small units whose function is to contact the guerrillas, demand support from air transported troops, and attempt to flank the insurgents for annihilation. Because of the guerrillas’ superior firepower, the reinforcement troops usually arrive to find their comrades already surrounded and killed.

Second, in contrast to the Salvadoran example, the FARC and ELN decided to not concentrate in large military units, preferring instead to disperse in dozens of fronts throughout the width and breadth of the crazy Colombian geography.⁶ The army fell into the trap and likewise began to disperse in dozens of brigades, battalions, and military strong points. But, while the guerrillas maintained tactical mobility, the army remained in fixed positions. Today, more than seventy percent of the National Army protects military installations, urban centers, oil pipelines, or energy pylons. There are few mobile units, and only 20,000 professional soldiers. How can the military achieve success with only 20,000 or 30,000 men to counter over a hundred guerrilla fronts? How can it respond with the speed required to confront a massive ambush when the only military units available are dispersed throughout the tens of thousands of square kilometers? The answer cannot be the absurd proposal of the former commander of the armed forces General Harold Bedoya to create an army air corps, nor to augment the force structure based on obligatory national service, nor to multiply exponentially the military budget. What is required is an increase in the number of professional soldiers, better prepared and organized around mobile units, in a context of redefining the modalities of military action.

Third, how is it possible, as has happened recently, that 300 or more guerrillas can close in on an army unit without being detected? This implies two things: Outstanding intelligence failures and an absence of support among the peasant population. The intelligence arm created after the dissolution of the 20^th MI Brigade carries out the same conventional tasks as other units such as the Administrative Intelligence Department (DAS) or the intelligence task force of the National Police (SIJIN), that is, intelligence work to dismantle urban networks or the logistic apparatus of the guerrillas. But its central task, to accompany military units in the combat zones has not been carried out. As a result, the army operates blindly, at the mercy of guerrilla ambushes.

The vacuum in intelligence could be filled by the peasant population, serving as the eyes and ears of the military units in the combat zones. Why is this function not carried out? Could it be that the peasants perceive the military not as an ally but rather as a source of depredation and violence? It is necessary not only to improve military intelligence in the combat zones, but first to radically transform relations between the armed forces and the civil population. In the southern part of the country, for example, there is an extensive colonization based on the cultivation of illegal drugs. It is very difficult to count on this population, because of its ties to this illegal activity. To achieve a level of cooperation, such precarious human intelligence must be substituted with a technical mode of intelligence collection, one based on satellites and aircraft adapted to such use.

Fourth, the lack of continuity in state policy is one of the reasons army officials use to justify their meager results. Administrations launch peace initiatives, changing them a few days later to declarations of total war. This lack of continuity permits neither the construction of a peace nor the carrying out of a successful war effort. Definitely, there is a requirement to develop an official, integrated stated policy not subject to the vagaries of politics or changes of government.

The absence of political guidance by the civilian authorities whose ignorance and disdain of military issues is traditional, the improvisation in naming a minister of defense who doesn’t have a clue of military issues as well as the vacuum of long-range national strategy are all causal factors in the disasters the state has experienced in this area.

In this context, and in addition to the changes mentioned above, there are two urgent tasks necessary: First, a requirement to create an institute for strategic studies to serve as a bridge between the government, the political parties, academia, the press, the business sector, and the armed forces, to build a concept of national security and defense that involves the entire society, not just the military community. Second, the creation of a commission to reform the military is required, similar to that which allowed us to put behind us one of the most questionable police forces in the world, changing it into a police force that today is a source of national pride.

In any case, in the real circumstance – at least in the short term – a military victory by the armed forces is unthinkable. But a weak military incapable of containing the guerrillas’ expansion provides to the insurgents the idea that they can continue indefinitely, accumulating military power and territory. That is to say, a weak military apparatus is not conducive to the development of a climate of peace.

The guerrilla movement, whose initial nucleus emerged in Colombia ten years before the Cuban revolution, was born in a context that did not favor its possibility of achieving revolutionary success. Nonetheless, because of multiple factors such as the long experience of guerrilla conflicts, the relatively closed political Frente Nacional system, the precariousness of the central state, and the incapacity of the government to mediate and channel the social conflicts in the rural areas of the country, conditions were created for the consolidation of these insurgent cells. Thus a phenomena of chronic insurgency resulted, similar to the general characteristics and experiences of the Philippines and Guatemala, countries where the guerrillas were able to also consolidate themselves without power, but nonetheless achieve their final objectives.

The guerrilla groups that emerged, then, in a precocious manner when compared to the rest of the continent, were able to consolidate themselves firmly by the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s. They proceeded to capture practically all the space of the politically leftist democratic opposition parties, and led to an early militarization of the left’s political agenda and policy. In a good measure, the war stopped being an extension of politics by other means. In the political subculture of the Colombian left, the armed confrontation became part of its repertory of action, alongside other logic of social and political action. The "combination of all the forms of revolutionary fights" has constituted since the 1970s the strategic heart of the communist family, which includes the FARC, the Communist Party of Colombia, and the Patriotic Union Party.

After a period of decline and crisis during the 1970s, during which these groups almost disappeared, there was a reemergence in the beginning of the 1980s, characterized by a strengthened and expanded presence. This expansion, rooted in complex issues, was achieved thanks to the resources available through the drug business and taxation of the oil business.

The centrifugal strategy, that is to say, the model of unfolding or doubling of fronts, increasing the number of men diffused throughout all of the national territory. This strategy resulted in an expansion from the rural areas of colonization toward areas of dynamic economic activity (the oil, gold, coal, emerald mining, and commercial agriculture areas) toward the most important administrative and political centers of the country, through the use of so-called urban militias. In comparing the numbers of military action carried out by the guerrilla organizations in the last few years, I discovered that in 1985 these took place in 173 municipalities. By 1991, the number was 437 municipalities, and by 1995, 622 municipalities.

In order to sustain this strong guerrilla expansion, the insurgent groups sought to diversify their sources of financing, thanks to a delimitation of the frail borders between what is political and what is criminal action. For instance, they kept their traditional depredation on "traditional enemies" through kidnapping, and also multiplied their extortion of the drug producers and traffickers, and also on the oil, mining, and agro-industrial sectors of the Colombian economy.

Given the impossibility of carrying out military action at a strategic value level, as well as sustaining a continuous military action, the FARC and the ELN have taken the decision to increase their influence at the local level. This influence seeks not only to control territory in areas of strategic value (such as the Serranía de San Lucas for the ELN and the Llanos del Yarí for the FARC), but also to seek control over the network of municipal political power. In effect, this political-administrative decentralization, the transferrence of resources toward the municipalities and the popular election of mayors, has encouraged the armed groups from both the left and right to search for control over both political and economic resources at the municipal level. This is in effect, armed clientelism.

From my perspective, the guerrillas at their core hold a vision of accumulation of military power, with an eye on a radical transformation of society and the state. But in the absence of any real possibility of military victory (given, among other factors, the disappearance of the ancient socialist camp and thus the existence of a hostile international environment), the guerrillas maintain as a strategic view the "salvadorization" of the country. That is to say, they seek a transition from a negative tie to a strategic balance to negotiate with the state from a condition of peer equality.

For more than a decade, since former U.S. Ambassador Lewis Tambs coined the name narcoguerrillas, a debate has waged over the appropriateness or inappropriateness of this term in describing the insurgent movement. The notion of narcoguerrillas implies at least two things: first, that a strategic agreement exists between the guerrillas and the drug cartels, given a similarity of interests in confronting the state and to conduct business in illegal drugs. Second, it implies an assumption that the guerrillas have made a transition from being a political actor to being a delinquent actor, in that it discarded political ideals in favor of private enrichment.

The consequences of accepting these two postulates are clear. Given that it is only viable to carry out negotiations with political actors, the delinquent composition of the guerrilla groups would oblige the state to give them treatment exclusively penal and military in nature. That is to say, that the peace negotiations would be excluded in principle.

From my perspective, nonetheless, one of these postulates is false. In regard to the first, the geography of the armed conflict has seen at least two different situations. In the regions in which the guerrilla is hegemonic, it imposes taxation on the diverse agents committed to the production and commerce of illegal drugs. That is to say, in those regions there is a pragmatic co-existence between the traffickers and the guerrillas, especially so with the FARC and some of the ELN fronts. The co-existence provides these two groups (and especially the former) the immense majority of its economic resources. Second, in those regions where the narcoparamilitaries are hegemonic, the narcotraffickers militarily confront the guerrillas to prevent paying war taxes to them. That is to say that the co-existence or conflict situation is determined not by the supposed strategic accord, but rather by the correlation of military forces in one or another region of the country.

The possibility of close identification with the drug traffickers is contrary to the international experience in this regard. The evidence is to the contrary, because of the manifest conservative character of the mafias, and because of their preference of weak states and an open market economy. In Italy, for instance, the mafia always maintained close ties with the political leadership of the Christian Democrats. It is unthinkable to have a strategic accord between the conservative drug mafias and the left wing guerrillas, which would require both advocating a strong state (the "dictatorship of the proletariat") and a centralized economy.

Regarding the second point, the limits that separate politics and delinquency are very fuzzy in Colombia. The guerrillas do not escape from the national crisis that is drowning us in a sea of corruption and criminality. More than in any other place in Latin America, the Colombian guerrillas since their beginning have practiced a systematic delinquent form of financing their movement, through kidnapping, extortion, and gramaje.⁷ These practices, without a doubt, have their origins in the period of La Violencia, when the principal framework of the FARC emerged, as did the principal symbol of that organization, Manuel Marulanda Vélez. This action in plain light is condemnable, yet it co-exists despite all, within a discourse of political character, and within the politicized leadership of the guerrillas.

For these reasons, I believe that it is not only inadequate but also inconvenient for the country to use the term narcoguerrilla. This does not stop us from condemning the marriage, even though it is one of convenience, that the guerrillas and the drug traffickers have consummated in multiple regions of the country.

Since the end of the 1970s, armed organizations emerged in Colombia of a different type, reacting to the guerrilla groups, which were beginning to reactivate themselves during the same years. These armed organizations have the expressed justification of filling the vacuum created by the state’s weak capacity to counter the insurgent threat.

During the first stage, these groups were primarily regional self-defense bands rooted in the local communities. But as time passed, they increased their capacity to mobilize offensive power, thanks to the support from drug trafficking or emerald smuggling mafias, which allowed them to acquire a certain organizational complexity. Finally, in the past two or three years, under the leadership of Carlos Castaño and his Autodefensas de Urabá y Córdoba are attempting to transition toward a type of right-wing guerrilla movement, provided with a unified command and a coherent doctrine. This was, of course, the creation of the United Colombian Self-Defense Forces (AUC).

The creation of this national-level organization motivates us to ask some questions I believe are the key to understanding the real meaning of these armed actors. Until there is a clear definition of these groups in which the state declares whether they are political actors or common criminals, it will be impossible to define a coherent policy to deal with them. The questions are as follows:

• Are the self-defense groups making a transition toward a model of right wing counterinsurgency force, complete with a political dialogue, territorial control, and solid base of societal support?
• Have the self-defense groups unified around the AUC with a joint staff and thus must be considered as a single actor?
• If considered as a single actor, do all the groups share policies and doctrine, or to the contrary, is there to be found hiding behind the rubric of the AUC a multiplicity of disparate actors, some politicized and others criminal, some far from the drug business, and others subordinate to it?

Probably the most significant impact of the contents of recent AUC documents is their political nature, that is, their intent of projecting an ideological justification for their counterinsurgency actions. This discourse could be synthesized as an extreme right authoritarian populism. During the decade of the 1980s, at the height of the Cold War, the U.S. supported without question all manner of armed organizations that fought against leftist governments. The Nicaraguan Contras, the Angolan UNITA, and the Afghan mujahedeens were the most successful movements. These are rightist guerrillas with a dialogue that served them to dispute their adversaries’ political legitimacy. In the AUC’s search for recognition of the self-defense groups as a political actor, the construction of a coherent discourse is fundamental: With such it could not be dealt with as a criminal movement that seeks private interests of a utilitarian nature (such as protecting illegal drug laboratories), but rather as a political movement that has collective ideals. To what point are the hundreds of ancient guerrillas in the EPL, the FARC, and the ELN who have joined the AUC’s ranks now agents for this transformation?

With great ability, the AUC posit that the final objectives of their movement (agrarian reform, a solution to the problem of displaced refugees, economic poverty) are not distinct from those of the guerrillas, except for the potential perspective that encourages individual action. This is the rightist populist element in its proposal, which is intimately related to the offer by the landowning sector to propose an important land bank in the eventual negotiation for peace. The extremist element is determined, obviously, by the modes of action of these groups, founded on a generalized terror, selective assassination, and massacres. That is, a vertical and authoritarian order in which a perverse dynamic of friend/enemy reigns. Carlos Castaño’s straightforward praise of a scorched earth policy in Mapiripán (Meta), where dozens of supposed guerrilla collaborators were shot without the benefit of legal justice is a simple verification of this.

One of Carlos Castaño’s principal pretensions is to unify totally the self-defense groups that exist in Colombia around a joint staff, as a sort of national counterinsurgency coordination staff. The self-defense groups have many diverse origins, however, Some were created by groups of landowners and local politicians fatigued by the criminal excesses of the guerrillas, of their kidnapping and extortion. Others were created by the drug traffickers such as the now dead Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha to avoid paying war taxes, the so-called gramajo, to the FARC. Others were formed directly by military officials within the framework of the counterinsurgency war. Finally, others were formed by known leaders of the emerald mining cartels.

Nonetheless, despite the diversity of origins of the self-defense groups, I believe that the framework that allowed their ample expansion has been an immense counter-agrarian reform movement. Certainly it has been enforced by the drug business in the country, through which the ancient landowning class has in a great measure been substituted by this new class enriched in an illegal manner.

This complex geography of the self-defense groups makes me doubt the homogenous character of the AUC. Too many differences exist in the degree of politization in the degree of autonomy with respect to the narcotrafficking groups. While some groups, such as that of Castaño, seeks to build a legitimizing political discourse, other groups act with a mentality that is purely delinquent an openly criminal.

One of the common elements of the different governments since 1977, that is, since the emergence of the first paramilitary groups in the middle Magdalena region, has been the total ambiguity in defining and treating these groups. Not only has there been a constant oscillation between their recognition as political actors and their qualification as criminal groups, but also in the opinion that different governmental agencies have in relations with these groups. Currently there exist at least four postures within the government. First, there are sectors that have lent these groups all their support and have incorporated them plainly in the disposition of counterinsurgecy military forces. It is impossible to know if this policy has enjoyed the support of the high levels of military command. Nonetheless, it would be like trying to cover the sun with one’s hands to deny the assistance these groups have enjoyed from multiple officers, brigades, and battalions in different regions of the country.

Second, there are sectors that consider these groups as a necessary evil, owing to the poor results of the military forces. If this sector is opposed to offering results, it also does not consider disbanding these groups convenient because they are the only ones producing positive results in paralyzing the advance of the insurgents in some areas of the country. Third, there are sectors of the state that think these groups should be combated by the public forces without second thought, because of their openly criminal characteristics. Finally, there are sectors who consider that these groups should be recognized as part of the conflict, that is, as political actors, and thus should be part of a parallel negotiation once the politics of peace with the guerrillas is opened.

From my point of view, the majority attitude in the government is the second, that is, the pragmatic co-existence. Because of the pressure and accusations, both international and national, the sectors think that open support is inconvenient, but because of the inefficiency of the armed forces and given the proven combat capacity of the paramilitaries, it considers that their dissolution is not advisable. The general opinion of this sector could be "neither support nor combat them."

In actuality, the paramilitary groups have a force of 4,000 to 5,000 men. That is to say, it is a apparatus similar in number to the ELN, distributed in some 25 war fronts. Its resources come fundamentally from two sources: The landowners and the drug traffickers. To a great measure, their strength is derived from the logistic support from many members of the military forces and the police, in addition to the almost compete impunity to operate.

Colombia cannot, from any viewpoint, continue privatizing the war and personal security, with daily losses of the state monopoly over weapons and justice. The encouragement or pragmatic co-existence with the paramilitary groups constitutes the two absolutely damnable policies because, as government policy, this aggravates and deepens the conflict. The state must decide if it should combat them as common criminals or open the road to their eventual incorporation into civil life through recognition as political actors. But the ambiguity must stop. Every day that passes further closes the possibility of the second option: How to offer amnesty to groups that daily commit more and more crimes injurious to humanity, which in principle are excluded from a policy of forgive and forget.

What are the future perspectives of the conflict that affects Colombia? Will a foreign military intervention be necessary to prevent a worsening of the conflict or to prevent an eventual triumph by the guerrillas? Is the negotiation route viable? To answer these questions, it is necessary to make a few basic definitions.

First, it is important to state that time runs against all the armed actors defying the authority of the state. On one hand, we find the increasing mobilization of the international community in favor of a negotiated exit to the conflict. On the other hand there is the important mobilization of the national community expressed in, for example the 10 million votes registered in October of 1997 in favor of a peace policy. These tend to erode the already precarious margins of legitimacy of the armed groups.

Second, there is an economic barrier to the expansion of the guerrillas. Even when the internal plans of the ELN and the FARC foresee a doubling of troops and fronts in the next few years, as well as a strengthening of their military infrastructure, their resources available to them makes the viability of reaching these objectives very low, unless they become true drug cartels. That is, in some measure, that they repeat the experience of the Maoist guerrillas in the golden triangle of heroin production in northern Myanmar.

Third, there is a growing military barrier. On one hand, the paramilitary advances in the north of the country is razing by blood and fire the support bases of the ELN, with the possibility of displacing these guerrillas from their strategic sanctuaries by 1999, especially from the Serranía de San Lucas. On the other hand, the current renovation of the armed forces will allow them in the median to recuperate from their insufficient tactics against the FARC in the south of the country.

Colombia is in the eye of the hurricane. It has not been able to overcome the insurgent conflict that constituted the axis of the international agenda during the East/West confrontation, and must now respond to the demands of the global agenda of the post-Cold War: Human rights, environment, corruption, and illegal drugs. This deepens Colombia’s international vulnerability on a daily basis.

In turn, this overlapping of the past and present conflicts deepens the internal conflict. In the last few years this has tended to aggravate not only the climate of the already chronic violence that has afflicted the country for several decades. This has tended to deteriorate the indicators of human rights violations and increase the levels of corruption, the traffic in drugs and the destruction of the environment.

Inn this manner, Colombia has been transformed into a problem country for the international community. From solid allies of the West during the Cold War, we are transiting toward a situation of isolation and condemnation. On this point, it is indispensable to remember the transformation suffered by the doctrine of national sovereignty, and thus, the sacrosanct autonomy of people. The United Nations and multiple developed nations today defend contrary thesis, the right of intervention for humanitarian reasons. Its application has not taken long: Bosnia, Haiti, and Somalia are a few examples.

Beyond the negative or positive effects these experiences of foreign military intervention may have had, many Colombian analysts talk of risks of conflict escalation. In effect, if day by day the guerrillas are seen by the immense majority of the population as one of the worst cancers afflicting the country, a foreign intervention could provide an unexpected base of political legitimacy to the guerrillas, as an agent fighting against the foreign invader. Thus it is necessary to insist until exhaustion on the need for internationalizing not the war, but the peace.

The successful negotiation between the Guatemalan government and the URNG allowed the convulsed Central American region finally to achieve peace and begin work on urgent economic development plans, political democratization, and regional integration plans. In both the cases of El Salvador and Guatemala the process was assisted by the mediating presence of the Groups of Friends and the U.N. The role of these multilateral organizations was strategic to the peace, but was equally important in the national reconstruction as guarantors of the implementation of the accords.

Colombia is in a point of dangerous escalation of the conflict in the midst of a climate of deep lack of confidence, which makes a solution based on domestic actors alone very improbable. We do not believe that the Colombian society can tolerate another edition of the negotiations that begin destined to failure because of hardheaded insistence by both sides in searching for specific advantages or pyrrhic victories. We also do not believe that our economy can continue resisting the multiple costs of the confrontation. The direct costs and the loss of international competitiveness are leading to an unmanageable situation.

If we do not play all the cards available to achieve peace, without doubt Colombia will become the worst country in the 20^th century in all of Latin America.

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Last Update:  September 30, 2002