The FARC-EP’s aptitude to take state power: The DIA bombshell

8

PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE: FROM “DUAL POWER” TO TAKING POWER

This chapter reflects upon why the FARC-EP has remained at the margins of centralized power even though it had the military capacity to take power. On several occasions the guerrillas held the capacity to carry out a coup d’état and simply usurp power through the military efficiency of a small collective, as numerous anti-systemic movements, militaries, and state antagonists in Latin America have done in the past. For example, from 1999 to 2003, the guerrillas maintained an average distance of 16 to 50 miles from Bogotá’s downtown (correspondence with Petras, November 26, 2004; see also Simons, 2004: 203–5; Housego, 2003; Petras, 2003: 25; 1999: 32). It would have been more than plausible for them to seize power through one or several major offensives targeting the capital. When asked why this line of attack was not deployed, a comandante told me, “to do so would have gone against the (Marxist-Leninist) ideology of the insurgency.” A coup d’état enables a select group to consolidate centralized state power. Potentially effective, as it enables those without power to obtain it, a coup generally negates any broad alignment between the political-military movement of power takers and the exploited. While a new consolidation of power transpires, a transformation of the capitalist paradigm does not, because of a lack of mass class-conscious direct action.1 The FARC-EP has opted to consolidate “political power at the local municipal levels instead of seeking outright military victory,” whereby “political consciousness” rises from the periphery of the city and countryside (Richani, 2002a: 153; Bernard et al, 1973: 326). This then begs the question; can the FARC-EP establish radical transformation on a national scale? The preceding chapters highlighted how social change has occurred at a local level; however, can similar conditions extend across the whole of Colombia? Is such a feat even possible under current geopolitical conditions? This final chapter therefore weighs the FARC-EP’s potential to move from a place of dual power to state power, and assesses its ability to further challenge the political stability of the Colombian state and the capitalist system itself.

THE FARC-EP’S APTITUDE TO TAKE STATE POWER: THE DIA BOMBSHELL

Under the auspices of the Democratic administration of John F. Kennedy (1961–63), the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was established. The DIA’s objective is to “provide timely, objective, and cogent military intelligence”

through the “integration of highly skilled intelligence professionals with leading edge technology to discover information and create knowledge that provides warning, identifies opportunities, and delivers overwhelming advantage to our war fighters, defense planners, and defense and national security policymakers” (DIA, 2007). Since 1961, the DIA has become the United States’ “principal military intelligence service” (Ruiz, 2001: 21).2 In November 1997, a top-secret report prepared by the agency criticized the Colombian state as being too militarily inefficient to withstand the expansion of the FARC-EP. In April 1998, a summary report of the November study was obtained by (in other words, leaked to) the Washington Post. The newspaper proceeded to examine the document, interviewed “sources with direct knowledge of the full text” and published an article of the findings (Farah, 1998). Journalist Douglas Farah (1998) exposed how “the guerrillas have been fighting the government for the past three decades but have never before evinced the strength now attributed to them.” Alongside his presentation of the FARCEP’s growing power from below, Farah went on to warn that “the Colombian military has proved to be inept, ill-trained and poorly equipped,” causing General Charles Wilhelm (former chief of US Southern Command, SouthCom) and General Manuel José Bonnet (then commander of the Colombian military) to admit that the Colombian army was unable to defeat the guerrillas (Farah, 1998; see also Ruiz, 2001: 21–3; Crandall, 1999: 223–4). The report asserted that increased direct foreign intervention was needed, as did the DIA when it forewarned that without heightened counter-insurgency through the guidelines, leadership, and military of the United States, the FARC-EP could realistically be the first post-cold war Marxist insurgency to take state power by 2002 or 2003 (Simons, 2004: 181; Bergquist, Peñaranda, and Sánchez, 2003: xxi; Ruiz, 2001: 21). A barrage of support for foreign intervention soon came from sectors of Colombia’s elite. Former US ambassador Mauricio Solaún applauded the notion of Washington becoming militarily involved in the civil war, as he himself had published that “63 percent of the respondents” from a 1998 national survey “opined that the guerrillas were capable of seizing power by force” (Solaún, 2002: 1). In fact, “by 1998, there was wide agreement within Colombia’s ruling circles that the Colombian military could not defeat the insurgency” (McInerney, 2003: 62). The dominant class was however not alone in fearing the FARC-EP’s promotion of a socialized economy, as various US-based political-economic interests showed signs of distress (Ross, 2006: 63; McInerney, 2003: 60). Immediately following the 1998 DIA summary, the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton (1993–2001) drastically adjusted its foreign policy and significantly increased its counter-insurgency assistance and military funding to Colombia (NACLA, 1998: 46).3 During the mid to late 1990s, the FARC-EP had demonstrated its growing political-military prowess, placing the military on the defensive (Ruiz, 2001). In light of this, Washington sought to increase Colombia’s anti-guerrilla leverage with the hope of decreasing the FARC-EP’s authority.

The impact of the United States’ involvement was to strengthen the bargaining position of the government’s armed forces, the agribusiness elite and their right-wing paramilitary allies, thereby reducing any incentive for them to negotiate under the 1996–98 balance of forces, which they perceived to be more favorable to the FARC.

(Richani, 2005b: 84)

The United States could not afford, politically or economically, to have a Marxist-Leninist insurgency movement come to power on a hemispheric or geopolitical level.

Washington sees the Colombian guerrilla ... as the major threat to its empire in Latin America. A victory of the popular forces in Colombia would establish an alternative socio-economic system to U.S. directed neo-liberal model. In addition it would encourage neighboring countries to break with U.S. tutelage by demonstrating that mass struggle can win against the empire. Furthermore, Colombia has oil, gas, agriculture and industry in a country for 40 million – a capacity to resist U.S. economic pressures. Finally, a Colombian–Venezuelan–Cuban alliance would be a formidable economic-political-military force capable of resisting imperial aggression and aiding other countries in the region seeking to move in the direction of social transformation.

(Petras, 2001a)

The United States had been well aware of the FARC-EP’s growth and increasing threat to domestic and international political-economic interests long before 1997–98. Evidence has shown Washington was involved in training Colombian forces in counter-insurgency techniques and deploying US troops in specific regions of the country since the early 1990s (Hinojosa, 2007; Gill, 2004; Goff, 2004: 31–2). In 1990, for example, the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Colombia post was the largest of its kind in the world (Scott, 2003: 88; see also Bowden, 2001: 159). Anthropologist Winifred Tate (2000: 19) characterized the deployment of US officers from “the Defense Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)” during this period as resembling tactics employed in Central America when US/Contra preparations began against the FMLN and the FSLN. Apart from the above, the end of the 1990s witnessed the US and Colombian states establishing the largest counter-insurgency campaign in Latin American history, Plan Colombia (1998–2006)4 (Chavez, 2007: 95). Washington and Bogotá perceived that an increased counter-insurgency assault, through an influx of US-backed military aid, would decrease the insurgency’s revolutionary potential and offset its ability to procure state power. Ironically, this never occurred. As mentioned above, 1998 saw the DIA report that the Colombian state could fall to the FARC-EP in about five years unless a significant binational counter-insurgency campaign was deployed. Interestingly, after this pronouncement, and military spending periodically averaging US$9 million per day, the

same plea was made six years later. In 2004, yet another administration appealed for the United States to increase its military presence. On April 1, President Uribe declared that “without an extension of U.S. aid under the multibillion dollar ‘Plan Colombia’” Colombia would be defeated by the FARC-EP (Stewart, 2004). As repeated counter-insurgency campaigns failed, further calls for increased US assistance were expressed in 2005: “barring unforeseen U.S. congressional action to re-evaluate the war on drugs in Colombia, what little is left of the South American country’s democratic institutions could die prematurely despite U.S. efforts” (Morales, 2005). The following year Colombia’s vice-president, Francisco Santos Calderón, confessed, “if we don’t make decisions quickly, if we do not strengthen our intelligence capacity and our legal system to fight them, criminals [FARC-EP] will destroy the state” (as quoted in Xinhua, 2006). Trained military specialists suggested that “without air support from the U.S. and its surrogates there, the Colombian armed forces could not match the FARC’s military prowess, nor do they have a popular base outside the urban petit-bourgeoisie and ruling classes” (Goff, 2004: 45). Numerous analysts have affirmed the FARC-EP will not and cannot be defeated. In fact, some have noted that:

despite the steady increase of the state’s military capacity, the state is still not capable of defeating the guerrillas today or in the foreseeable future ... its organizational structure, recruitment base, and ability to wage guerrilla warfare in all areas of the national territory remain undiminished. (Chernick, 2007: 76–7)

Experts, from former US ambassador to El Salvador Robert White to Colombian historian Herbert Braun, have claimed that in no way can Bogotá or Washington militarily defeat the FARC-EP (Braun, 2003: 66; Ungerman and Brohy, 2003; Murch, 2000; KAIROS, 2001). By the close of Plan Colombia over US$7.7 billion had been poured into a counter-insurgency strategy that had not only failed to see the FARC-EP collapse but saw some of the most ferocious guerrilla campaigns launched in a decade (Mondragón, 2007: 42; Brittain, 2005e). Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa’s (2007–) assessment of Plan Colombia was direct: “it’s a complete failure ... The coca crops are still there and there are still vast areas that are not controlled by the Colombian State” (see Colombia Reports, 2008c). Correa has even referred to Ecuador as not bordering on Colombia but rather on the FARC-EP (see Vieira, 2008e). Nevertheless, 2009 saw yet another Colombian state official (President Uribe) pronounce the familiar refrain that “we can only defeat these criminals completely with the help of the United States and the international community” (Colombia Reports, 2009a). Alongside the FARC-EP’s expansion, the social and psychological repercussions of counter-insurgency have begun to show. Segments of Colombia’s military fully believe the FARC-EP has the political and material potential to topple regional centers, while the state lacks the ability to respond to revolutionary surges from below. Sectors of the rank and file have even said that