Georgia RPCV Michael Durnan writes: The FARC's Best Friend: U.S. Antidrug Policies and the Deepening of Colombia's Civil War in the 1990s



The strengthening of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) during the 1990s was an unintended consequence of a series of tactical successes in U.S. antidrug policies. These included dismantling the Medellin and Cali drug cartels, interdicting coca coming into Colombian processing facilities, and using drug certification requirements to pressure the Colombian government to attack drug cartels and allow aerial fumigation of coca crops. These successes, however, merely pushed coca cultivation increasingly to PARC-dominated areas while weakening many of the FARC's political- military opponents.

Georgia RPCV Michael Durnan writes: The FARC's Best Friend: U.S. Antidrug Policies and the Deepening of Colombia's Civil War in the 1990s

The FARC's Best Friend: U.S. Antidrug Policies and the Deepening of Colombia's Civil War in the 1990s

Jul 1, 2006

Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs

[Excerpt]

The strengthening of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) during the 1990s was an unintended consequence of a series of tactical successes in U.S. antidrug policies. These included dismantling the Medellin and Cali drug cartels, interdicting coca coming into Colombian processing facilities, and using drug certification requirements to pressure the Colombian government to attack drug cartels and allow aerial fumigation of coca crops. These successes, however, merely pushed coca cultivation increasingly to PARC-dominated areas while weakening many of the FARC's political- military opponents.

This provided the FARC with unprecedented opportunities to extract resources from the cocaine industry to deepen its long insurgency against the Colombian state. The Colombian experience demonstrates the importance of creating a more sophisticated understanding of how lootable wealth can exacerbate civil wars.

Sweeping through the isolated, remote jungle settlement of Las Delicias, Putumayo, approximately 400 revolutionaries armed with grenades, mortars, and machine guns overran a remote outpost of the Colombian armed forces on August 31, 1996, killing 54 soldiers and leaving dozens more missing or kidnapped (Rabasa and Chalk 2001, 42). Over a span of 24 hours, parallel offensives raised the count to 73 military and police casualties. These surprise attacks, the strongest in nearly four decades of civil conflict, vividly demonstrated the deepening of the challenge from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (PARC) to the government.

By the end of the decade, the PARC had consolidated its position as the strongest guerrilla movement in contemporary Latin America, doubling the size of its army to between 15,000 and 20,000 soldiers while simultaneously expanding its political and economic power to nearly half of Colombia's territory (Echandia 1998; Vargas 1999; Ferro and Uribe 2002; Richani 2002).

The FARC's revitalization during the 1990s appears as a stark anomaly in the region, considering how the spread of liberal democracy and withdrawal of international assistance to formerly Cold War-era guerrilla groups has shattered the ideological and financial base that has traditionally fueled revolutionary upheavals. Globally, the PARC today is one of the strongest Marxist insurgencies in a world where ethnic and religious divisions have generally replaced the ideological combat of the Cold War as a central nexus of conflict in contemporary civil wars. How has the FARC, facing the limitations that have challenged the viability of left-wing insurgencies throughout the world, so effectively reinvigorated its armed campaign to become an increasingly serious threat to the Colombian government?

Official accounts label the FARC a "narcoguerrilla" movement whose success can be explained simply as a consequence of its increased participation in the drug trade (U.S. Department of State 2000, 2002). Such explanations find an echo in academic literature depicting rebellion as a "quasi-criminal activity" designed to extract rents from natural resource exports (Collier 2000). This article argues that this perspective holds a kernel of truth. The FARC's growth during the 1990s cannot be understood without an analysis of how changes in the political economy of the cocaine industry in Colombia created new opportunities for the FARC to strengthen its forces.

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