Colombia’s problem was not, then, the absence of institutions, but the weakness of them. The state had lost the monopoly on the use of force. Right-wing militias targeted labor leaders, and left-wing insurgents kidnapped and assassinated businessmen and government officials. The police and the army were viewed as worthless or, worse, complicit in political violence. The judiciary was seen as a tool to shield high-ranking officials from justice, not as an impartial arbiter of truth. And the presidency seemed unable to govern and protect the country. This institutional landscape that Uribe inherited makes it all the more remarkable that he succeeded in addressing Colombia’s challenges through existing institutions.
First, the Colombian government had to provide security for its people. No state can thrive without a monopoly on the use of force. This meant that paramilitary and insurgent groups had to either disarm through negotiation or be disarmed by force.
Bolstered by greater military assistance from the United States, the Colombian administration set out to do exactly that. During a visit to Colombia in December 2002, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced that the United States would provide $537 million in annual aid, an increase of $125 million. The new American commitment put aid to Colombia at roughly the same level as aid to Afghanistan and Pakistan. But Colin also put the United States squarely on the side of eliminating the security threat to the country by military means. He stated that America viewed the war on leftist guerrillas and rightist paramilitary groups as a part of the Bush administration’s war on terror. It was not just a counternarcotics mission; it was a counterterrorism mission as well.
I told the president that day that we had finally resolved the long-standing reluctance to take sides in the conflict. “We’re taking a risk in saying that Colombia can gain the upper hand in the insurgency by military means,” I said.
“But it’s the right thing to do,” the president replied.
The government’s task was easier regarding the right-wing paramilitaries. Some would argue that the close connections between Colombian officials, the army, and these groups helped to explain the almost immediate response of the AUC to Uribe’s election. On November 30, 2002, the AUC declared a unilateral cease-fire. “The government,” the group declared, “is demonstrating its capacity and political will” against the insurgents. The AUC reserved the right to respond to opportunistic attacks by the FARC. As a first step, eight hundred fighters from Medellín laid down their weapons. Over the next few years, larger blocs of paramilitaries would be demobilized: fourteen hundred fighters from Norte de Santander; two thousand from Antioquia, eleven hundred from Casanare, and so on.6 In the end, some thirty thousand paramilitaries would lay down their arms after 2003.
For the most part, the fighters were transferred to halfway houses and put into job training programs. The terms of demobilization essentially constituted amnesty. The decision to forgo jail time for those who disarmed was of course controversial. International human rights groups, European governments, and more than sixty members of the U.S. Congress criticized the program as too lenient, allowing those with blood on their hands to go free. Some AUC leaders had been involved in the drug trade. Several had outstanding U.S. extradition warrants or trafficking charges. Some drug lords who had only tangential connection to the AUC used the opportunity to negotiate with the government and thus avoid punishment.
The decision to let violent people “walk” largely without consequence points to one of the hardest choices facing countries emerging from conflicts and insurgencies: When are societies’ needs best served by forgetting the past, even if the guilty are not brought to justice? Many people have lost their lives. The families of victims want someone to be punished. It’s fine to tell parents, wives, and children to move on, but they can’t. It’s too much to ask that they put the trauma behind them. Still, leaders have a national purpose to overcome the past and move the country forward. Facing this dilemma, the Colombian government opted for the chance to peacefully end the right-wing insurgency.
And while the demobilization of the paramilitaries was largely successful, sporadic, high-profile violence continued for some years. International attention was again drawn to Colombia when gunmen of one of these groups killed a vacationing Italian tourist in 2005—just a reminder that the paramilitaries were dangerous people.
If the paramilitaries’ role in Colombia’s violent landscape was subsiding, the struggle against the left-wing insurgency was proving more difficult. The ELN entered into on-and-off negotiations with the government, reducing one source of conflict. But the war against the FARC escalated. The Colombian army launched offensives against FARC strongholds. In retaliation, the FARC kidnapped more victims, including three American government employees after their plane crash-landed in the jungle.
The circumstances of guerrilla warfare are often murky, and there were multiple reports of atrocities by Colombian soldiers. One such incident garnered international attention when officials from the UN refugee agency accused the military of involvement in killing a peasant leader and seven villagers, three of them children, for suspected ties to the insurgency. The Colombian government initially denied the claim, but indictments were eventually brought against several high-ranking figures in the army’s 17th Brigade, resulting in military trials, convictions, and jail terms. The Uribe administration pushed on with aggressive operations to root out the FARC. The Marxist rebels fought with equal furor, on one occasion killing seventeen Colombian soldiers in an ambush. The army commander called it a “terrorist, criminal act.” In fact, it was simply an indication of how intense and violent the fighting had become between government forces and the FARC.
The violence reached a crescendo in the spring of 2007. Left-wing rebels blew up a truck carrying nine federal police officers on May 10. The next day, ten more soldiers were killed patrolling in the west of the country. Then, on June 18, a group of kidnapped lawmakers died. The guerrillas said the hostages had been killed in crossfire during a military attack. Many Colombians believed they had been assassinated by the FARC. More than a million people took to the streets of Bogotá, calling for the release of the hundreds of people being held hostage by the FARC. Among the captives were Colombian politicians, military officers, and U.S. military contractors. Such a protest would have been unthinkable only a few years earlier. Now, the Colombian people were fed up. They were no longer afraid and were willing to rally against the insurgency.
That same year I found myself face-to-face with the new foreign minister, Fernando Araújo Perdomo, who had been kidnapped by the FARC and had finally escaped after six years in captivity. He personified the sense that the Colombian government had turned the tide against the terrorists.
Uribe took seriously his pledge to President Bush to hunt down the FARC’s leaders, and dozens of high- and mid-level guerrillas were taken out in the following years. In one particularly high-profile case, FARC leader Rodrigo Granda was captured by bounty hunters in the capital of Venezuela, leading to one of several disputes between the neighbors. Indeed, Uribe was insistent that Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez was harboring the FARC and permitting his territory to be used to launch operations against Colombia. While Chávez denied the claims, there was evidence to support Uribe’s version of events. During a raid just across the Ecuadorian border (leading to a break in diplomatic relations with that country), Colombia killed Raúl Reyes, one of the most senior FARC leaders. The army recovered his laptop computer containing documents detailing Venezuela support for the Marxist rebellion. Caracas disputed the claim, but the United States supported Uribe.
The dispute between the Colombian president and Chávez was ideological as well. I remember first meeting the firebrand populist from Venezuela at the Summit of the Americas in 2001. He practically jumped across the table to shake the president’s hand and talk about baseball. He was rough and almost clownish. The president turned to me afterward and said, “He’s just a thug.” Now he was also an active adversary of the United
States. Given his support for leftist politicians from Nicaragua to Mexico, Chávez did not take kindly to the rout of the FARC that was under way. It was a considerable setback for his hemispheric ambitions.
By the time the FARC leader and founder, Manuel Marulanda, died of natural causes in 2008, the organization was a pale shadow of itself. While the FARC was able to carry out car bombings in several cities, the attacks were small and well outside the capital. The Colombian military was back in control of the country’s territory. In July, the army’s rescue of Íngrid Betancourt, who had been held in captivity for six years, underscored the government’s success. The FARC was severely weakened and beginning to look toward accommodation with Bogotá.
The government refused direct talks with the FARC, continuing to chip away at the insurgency. Still, Uribe had to face the fact that it would be far harder to heal the deep and festering wounds in Colombian society than to secure military victory.
The Question of Justice
Rebuilding the reputation of the judiciary required showing that no one was above the law. And that would lead to some of the most challenging and dramatic tests of the political system.
The record of the Uribe administration was by no means perfect in investigating allegations and bringing people to justice. Still, many were indeed held to account. Questions surrounding the murders of journalists and labor leaders were brought out into the open. Uribe noted recently that before his election there had been only one murder conviction in relation to those events. By the end of his presidency there had been more than two hundred.7
The army, which had performed admirably against the FARC, was not immune from justice either. In late 2008, an investigation tied dozens of military personnel to the deaths of innocent citizens. The charge was that they had tried to inflate the number of insurgent deaths, increasing the body count by killing civilians. On October 29, President Uribe fired twenty-five officers, including three generals, in connection with the affair. A week later, the commander of the army was forced to resign as well.
By far the most sensitive issue was the continuing claim that members of the president’s own cabinet, indeed, even the president himself, had been complicit in the right-wing violence that crippled the country. And the charges had an ideological tinge, many of the claims originating with organized labor and human rights groups that were sympathetic to the FARC.
The most serious and far-reaching allegations emerged in what would come to be known as the “parapolitics” scandal. The laptop of a former paramilitary warlord, “Jorge 40,” contained evidence of collusion between Colombian politicians and right-wing death squads. When the story broke in October 2006, it was a national and international sensation. The Colombian Supreme Court acted a month later, ordering the arrests of Senators Álvaro García and Jairo Merlano; a member of the lower house, Deputy Erik Morris; and two other former politicians on charges ranging from supporting paramilitary groups to receiving campaign funds from them. All were strong supporters of Uribe.
Over the next few weeks, a steady stream of politicians were arrested or investigated. The Colombian inspector general charged Jorge Noguera, the former head of the Police Intelligence Service, with leaking operational information to the paramilitaries. The scandal would ultimately lead to the resignation of the foreign minister, María Consuelo Araújo, who resigned after her brother, a senator, was arrested.
The scandal failed to engulf the president, however. There was certainly a lot of smoke around him. Salvatore Mancuso, a notorious former paramilitary commander, had made a sensational claim. He said that during the 2002 election, Uribe enlisted his militia to engage in voter intimidation. Uribe denied the claim and openly defended himself in the press, leaving the judgment to his people. In the end, the Colombians supported him. He was reelected in May 2006 with 62 percent of the vote, the largest margin of victory in the country’s history. At the height of the scandal his approval ratings never dropped below 60 percent.
Uribe was popular because he had returned Colombia to stability and a modicum of security. But he did not rule with an iron fist. He had done so through his presidential powers and his supporters’ majority in the legislature. Right before his reelection, pro-Uribe coalition parties won 61 percent of the 102-seat Senate and 57 percent of the 166-seat lower house. The people were voting for his platform of keeping the pressure on the FARC. And his popularity was greatly enhanced by his partnership with the United States, which promised to bring not just security but also economic growth.
Partnership, Not Paternalism
The Bush administration and the Colombian government had more expansive goals in mind for Plan Colombia. At every opportunity, President Bush and I emphasized the larger picture—the potential triumph of democracy in Colombia and the shared values that underlay the bilateral relationship. The narrative of the United States in some parts of Latin America has not always been a positive one. Our history in the region, dating back all the way to our founding, has not always been one of equal partnership and respect, which at times has colored the way the region has viewed us and what we have tried to do. Cold War–era attempts to improve relations, such as President Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress, were overshadowed by other actions, such as covert U.S. assistance in the overthrow of Chile’s socialist government in 1973. Our goal in the Bush administration was to write a new narrative for the United States in the region based on our shared commitment to democracy and democratic development, and Colombia clearly demonstrated the promise of that approach. President Bush visited Bogotá in March 2007, becoming the first American president to do so in twenty-five years. It was a symbolic gesture of support and faith in Uribe’s security efforts and his commitment to democracy.
The Colombians went all out with a lavish ceremony in the courtyard of the Presidential Palace. State visits are pretty much by formula, and this one was no different. There is a formal arrival ceremony. The presidents introduce the members of their delegations to each other. Both national anthems are played. There are some brief remarks—sometimes not so brief. And then there is a full review of the troops, a rather archaic ceremony complete with swords and flags. Yet, given the rebirth of the Colombian military, the ceremony carried considerable weight.
Walking along a red carpet, accompanied by martial music, the presidents receive the salute of unit after unit in what seems like an interminable slog. The American president is usually asked to acknowledge the troops in their native tongue—not so difficult in this case for George W. Bush, who speaks Spanish, but sometimes a bit of a problem in less familiar languages.
Standing in the courtyard of the Presidential Palace while all of this transpired, I remember thinking, I hope this ends soon. There had been multiple reports of terrorist threats against us and it was easy to see that there was a heavy security presence. I was anxious to get inside where it seemed a little safer. I’m pretty sure the Secret Service shared my view. Colombia was safer but not yet safe.
Uribe was determined to parlay the relationship with the United States into economic benefits for his country. After years of civil conflict, the Colombian economy needed growth. In the late 1990s, per capita GDP was in decline, falling from $2,814 in 1997 to $2,197 in 1999.8 Meanwhile, the slowing economy started to shrink, contracting by 4.2 percent in 1999. Uribe’s emphasis on security was part and parcel of a broader agenda that included promoting economic development and private investment. And it delivered on that front too. As the Colombian government regained control of its country, the economy boomed. GDP per capita increased during his time in office, from $2,376 in 2002 to $6,180 in 2010.
There was a larger hemispheric goal as well. Uribe was the most important bulwark against Hugo Chávez and his effort to remake Latin America in the image of his “Bolivarian Revolution.” In his own bombastic and over-the-top way, Chávez promised and often delivered largesse to Latin American governments. Buoyed by high oil prices ($147 a barrel in 2008), he bought the election in Nicaragua, tri
ed to do so and failed in Mexico, and gave concessionary oil deals to countries in the Caribbean.
Uribe and other friends of the United States, like Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, implored us to, as one put it, “steal away the social justice card from Chávez.” So as we sought to rewrite the narrative of the United States in the region, and to center it on democracy, that became part of our language as well. It was not just about elections, free trade, macroeconomic soundness, and economic growth; it was also about making sure that democracies are accountable for something else. Are they delivering for their people? Are lives actually getting better? Are there improvements in education, health care, housing, and transparency in government? It was not about the language of the left or the right, but about the language of democracy.
The U.S.-Colombian Free Trade Agreement became the centerpiece of this economic strategy with Bogotá, and I visited Colombia in January 2008 with a U.S. congressional delegation. This trip was intended to generate bipartisan support for the agreement. We wanted to give members of Congress a chance to see the transformation of Colombia firsthand.
We found ourselves in Medellín, a city once associated with violence and chaos. Now there were glorious parks and a boom in construction. One moment seemed to sum up everything Uribe had tried to do. We visited a horticultural center where flowers were being grown to ship overseas. The FTA would greatly enhance access to our market for these products. Our guide was a woman, a demobilized paramilitary fighter, who could not have been more than thirty-five years old. She explained that she had joined the AUC when she was fifteen to “protect her village.” Her unit had taken advantage of the chance to lay down arms in 2003. Now she was learning to read and had a job packing the flowers for shipment. Her teenage children came and helped out after school for a small wage.
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