Irregular Warfare Podcast - Plan Colombia: Anatomy of a Successful Counterinsurgency Campaign

Episode Date: June 3, 2022

Plan Colombia has been described as a model of successful counterinsurgency and foreign internal defense at a time when large footprints in Iraq and Afghanistan have had mixed results. In this episode, we're joined by two guests. Alberto José Mejía Ferrero served as the general commander of the Military Forces of Colombia and has worked closely with American forces throughout his career. Dr. David Spencer is a professor at the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies at the National Defense University and coauthored of A Great Perhaps? Colombia: Conflict and Divergence. They reflect on their extensive firsthand experience to outline the key components of Plan Colombia, and more broadly to discuss its successes and shortcomings as a model for counterinsurgency and military intervention in the future. Intro music: "Unsilenced" by Ketsa Outro music: "Launch" by Ketsa CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

At the very beginning, because of force protection measures, most of the Americans, they could only be in very safe locations and they couldn't really be in forward locations in a more difficult environment. But after a couple of years, the U.S. government allowed them to go there. And in my opinion, that really transformed the relationship because now the victories were owned by the two sides. Any people killed or injured in action, we, the two sides, were suffering. So I think what really makes a difference is when you have a partner that is really determined to win their own war, then the United States can come in and we can help them or enhance their ability to win their own war.

And I think that's fundamental. And I think it's often missed when we discuss, you know, insurgency and irregular warfare. Welcome to Episode 54 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast. I am Kyle Atwell, and I am your host today along with Ben Jebb. Today's episode is on the topic of Plan Colombia, which was a United States initiative to assist the Colombian government in its fight against drug cartels and insurgents. Plan Colombia has been described as a model of successful counterinsurgency at a time when large footprints in Iraq and Afghanistan have had mixed results. Our guests reflect on their extensive firsthand experience to outline the key components of Plan Colombia and more broadly to discuss its successes and shortcomings as a model

for counterinsurgency in the future. Alberto Jose Mejia Ferrero served as the General Commander of the Military Forces of Colombia, the senior military officer in the country. He also served as the commander of the Colombian Army and as the Colombian Ambassador to Australia. General Mejia has worked closely with American forces throughout the duration of his career, and he provides a unique perspective on foreign internal defense and military advising from the perspective of the supported country. Dr. David Spencer is a professor at the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies

at the National Defense University. He has worked for think tanks and in government as a policy expert on South America. In 2016, he co-authored A Great Perhaps, Columbia, Conflict and Divergence, which chronicles the evolution of Plan Colombia and serves as the basis for today's conversation. You are listening to the Irregular Warfare Podcast, a joint production of the Princeton Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. Here's our conversation with General Mejia and Professor Spencer. General Mejia, Dr. David Spencer, welcome to the Irregular Warfare podcast. We are excited to have you here today. Thanks. It's good to be here. Thank you very much, Cal. It's an honor to

be here. So today we're going to discuss what lessons for the future of irregular warfare we can take from Plan Colombia. This is particularly relevant as Plan Colombia has generally been viewed, as it's put in your book, David, as a, quote, shining success story for both Colombia, but also for how the U.S. can build partner capacity and conduct foreign internal defense. Before we get into the meat of analyzing what worked and did not work during Plan Colombia, it'll be helpful to provide a quick overview of what Plan Colombia was and why it's a topic worth knowing about. David, you've written extensively and lived Plan Colombia. Can you outline the very broad strokes of what it was to help frame the conversation? Plan Colombia was originally the Andres Pastrana government strategy to deal with both narcotics

and gorillas. Under that plan, the United States had a solely counter-narcotics focus. In fact, we did a lot of things to separate our involvement in Colombia in counter-narcotics from the war against the FARC and the other insurgent groups. What time period is this that we started focusing on counter-narcotics? 1999 is when Plan Colombia started. And I think some people even think Plan Colombia is kind of still going. But I would say 2016, when the peace agreement was signed with FARC, although, you know, residuals, I think, keep on going. It kind of started as a counter narcotics focus, even though there was this insurgency going on in the background correct in fact we were very determined not to get involved with the insurgency right to focus on counter narcotics and our justification for doing with that was that you know the cold war

had ended we were no longer in the business of counterinsurgency obviously this is pre-irak and also we rationalized it by saying that you know we knew that FARC was receiving a lot of funding through narcotics and actually all of the enemies of the state in Colombia were getting a lot of money from counter-narcotics. And so we rationalized it by saying if we focus on doing counter-narcotics, then this will contribute to bringing general peace across the country. And of course, that evolved over time. And by the end of Plan Colombia, it really was more of a whole of government approach to look at all of Colombia's problems to include narcotics and insurgents. And that's what it ended up being. And so most people usually, when they think Plan Colombia, they think of what it ended up being and not what it started out as. So if I understood correctly, you're saying that Plan Colombia started out as an effort to counter narcotics and then kind of morphed into more of a counterinsurgency fight, which is fascinating in its own right. But I was wondering if you could break it down a little further.

Did it involve sending aid, transferring military equipment, or actually deploying U.S. troops to trans-security forces and enhance the Colombian military's doctrine? Or maybe it was some combination of, you know, cross-section of approaches. This comprehensive plan, it was really a mix of different approaches, different strategies. It did have an economic approach, a fiscal and financial strategy. Also, it intended to support the peace process approach. But at the same time, it really had a big impact over the military force and the national police restructuring our forces and also helping in modernization programs. One piece that was very, very important was the judicial piece, which was very view is still one of the most difficult pieces of

counter-narcotics, and we are still struggling and not being very successful in trying to replace illegal crops by legal agriculture. Also, a strong social strategy, which in my view brought our basic civic action doctrine into a higher level, what we call integral action, which is very important. And finally, a human development strategy, which also tended to help education and health. And finally, the tenth piece of this comprehensive approach is international strategy. Colombia tried to reach other partners in Europe, other countries in the region to help. But at the very end, we were left with our greatest

and only ally in this, the US. So overall, the plan was supposed to be a $7.5 billion plan. I think over three or five years, I can't remember the exact number of years. And the only part of that plan that got fully funded was the United States part, which was focused on counter-narcotics. But I think one of the most important elements of that plan was the helicopter program. We put in, I think, about $900 million worth of hardware and then another $200 million worth of other things to support the air component. And the reason that's important is all of that air power was designed to go after narcotics, but it ended up being a very important plank once the plan was expanded beyond counter-narcotics

to a more holistic counter-insurgency and national development type of program. So yes, the plan was holistic, it was ambitious, but in the end, Plan Colombia, at least the initial plan under President Andres Pastana, didn't get off the ground in the comprehensive way that General Mejia just described. And that came later, that came later under President Uribe. It was a moment of such difficulties for the country. Let's go back a little bit to the whole region, having a strategic look at what was happening after the Berlin Wall went down. Most insurgencies in Latin America disappeared. And the only insurgency that continues to present a challenge against democracy was FARC

and Colombian ELN, especially and perhaps only because of the economic support and financial support of narcotrafficking. So it was a big challenge for the U.S. and the production of narcotics was increasing because of this. And of course, you can imagine the impact of this production in Central America, the Caribbean, Venezuela, and of course the U.S. So SOTCOM, in my view, in my military perspective, played a vital role in reading this strategic environment. And the Colombian relationship with SOTCOM is really, really very tight. Of course, they are not part of our military organizations,

but this partnership, it goes from planning processes, from exchanges, from constant exchange of intelligence and among other aspects. So this relationship between SOTCOM and the Colombian military helps in a way to have a better understanding of the problem. And politically speaking, President Pastrana and President Uribe, the two of them, they were very close to the U.S. government. The two of them have strong ties with very important senators and politicians in the U.S. So the whole environment, in my view, was, you know, perfectly organized to serve this comprehensive strategy. Don't forget,

David, one thing that you mentioned in your papers is Colombia also invested $3 billion of its own budget in support of all these strategies. Yeah, two things that I think are fundamental to understanding Colombia. Number one, this is really kind of the first major insurgency in Latin America, maybe in the world as well. It's kind of the transition between the Cold War dynamic to this post-Cold War, where your insurgency is being funded by illicit economies, right? Because prior to that, it was really the Soviets and their allies that were funding and funneling money to a lot of these organizations. So this is a real important transition from kind of the classic model to things that we're more familiar with today. The second thing that I think is really important to emphasize,

and it can't be overstated, is the synergy that existed between the Colombians and the Americans. I started going down there, really getting involved in this conflict in 1996. And I just always felt like I was part of the Colombian team. I never felt like I was a foreigner working with another army. I just always felt like I was, the way they would say it in Spanish is they say propias tropas, which means own forces. You're one of us. And I always felt that way. And I've had multiple friends in the U.S. military and in the other U.S. services.

It was just very easy to walk into a Colombian headquarters or a Colombian unit and just start working with them because they immediately accepted you. And the developments of doctrine and processes since the 1950s had been so synergistic with us that it was very easy just to fit in. And I think almost anybody that worked down there would say the same thing. It was really extraordinary, more so than El Salvador, which is where I was before. David, when considering lessons for the future of irregular warfare from Plain Columbia, how relevant of a comparison is this to Iraq and Afghanistan? Some have argued that in the Middle East, large footprints of U.S. troops was a huge mistake compared to the kind of

lighter approach used in Columbia. Do you think that's a fair assessment of U.S. policy and intervention? I think that's the wrong element to focus on. I think every war has its own requirements. I think the real difference between Colombia, El Salvador, Iraq, and Afghanistan is national will. In Colombia, we had a partner that wanted to win, and they were going to do it with or without us in some ways. And obviously with us, it was better. And so large footprints, I think sometimes are indicative of the lack of will on the locals to solve their own problem. So I think what really makes a difference is when you have a partner that is really determined to win their own war, then the United States can come in and we can help them or enhance their ability to win their own war. And I think that's fundamental. And I think it's often missed when we discuss insurgency and irregular warfare.

The two conflicts, even though the two of them, they could be called irregular conflicts, are, of course, very, very different. In the case of Colombia, you have here not only an army and all services of the different military forces, but you have democratic institutions already established. Remember that our relationship really, really changed since the Korean War, when we were part of two different army divisions during that conflict. After that, our relationship, the level of exchanges between the two countries was really, really very high. One thing that we never mentioned today was the impact of the Panama Canal sun, you know, of our military. For decades, we used to send their units and individuals and NCOs, officers,

units and individuals and NCOs, officers, many people. We all went two, three times there to train, to learn, and to really build perhaps the same kind of doctrine between Colombia and the US. So in my opinion, this DNA serves at the end the purpose of being able to work together and to share a common goal. Of course, political will, it was really, really very important. Our presidents, our society, and the armed forces at this point in which our democracy was completely challenged because of the presence of the FARC, we were able to get together and to design a policy that will confront this challenge. And of course, at the same time, we were able to find the perfect partner to do this because during, for decades, especially before President Uribe, our politicians, our governments, in order to invest in social aspects such as education, health, among others. Investing in security, investing in the armed forces was the last priority.

Plan Colombia, in a way, helped to change this. President Uribe came into power by offering Colombians, look, if we want better health, better roads, better infrastructure, more tourism, etc., etc., etc., we need to have a stronger security. So that is why the nature of what was happening was completely different of what you have to confront in Iraq or Afghanistan. The reason we're kind of pushing on this is that there have been comparisons of Colombia and Iraq and Afghanistan.

And one of the kind of assessments that came out of it, it's highlighted by what you said, Alberto, is that Colombia was essentially an easier case of foreign internal defense or counterinsurgency because it was a pre-existing democracy, because the foundations were there for good governance. And yet it wasn't easy from a counterinsurgent perspective, because if I understand correctly, the FARC was surrounding the capital city of Colombia at the time when the kind of U.S. ramped up its support. I guess that's one of the questions is, was this kind of an easier case of counterinsurgency or is it just that every fight is unique?

Well, I think there's a bit of both, right? I think, yes, it was easier. And I think Alberto highlighted some of the reasons why. I think another reason that really distinguishes Colombia from Iraq and Afghanistan, we've said it, but I want to make it explicit, is that we had a long standing relationship with Colombia and with the institutions that had to carry out the counterinsurgency. A lot of books that talk about planned Colombia start with 1999, which is kind of when the whole thing started. But my book starts in 1982. And the reason I started in 1982 is that's really when the United States started providing counter-narcotics assistance to Colombia and getting involved in their internal struggle. That just shows there was a whole history there prior to 1999, which made it an ideal platform to then build on to then do this counterinsurgency effort. That didn't exist

in Afghanistan and Iraq. Gentlemen, I'd be interested to know how we measure success on Plan Colombia. What objectives did we actually accomplish and where and how did the U.S. and Colombia come up short? I'm going to start by mentioning that in these kinds of war, irregular wars, there are some really key aspects in which the government really should focus. One of them is what we call in Colombia territorial control. In Colombia, if you want to know in the past and present where these illegal activities are happening, you just have to build the map and find out where the coca crops are located,

where this illicit extraction of minerals is happening. And at the same time, especially in the borders where this contraband, for example, contraband of fuel between Venezuela and Colombia is happening. Just to mention one thing. So there are these criminal economies that grow in these very, very far away locations. It was very difficult, especially for policymakers and for Colombian citizens in general, to really see the dangers of this cancer, because normally in the cities, people wasn't seeing that.

Their life was kind of normal. They go to theater, to movies, to restaurants, etc. While very far from them, we have like small Vietnams burning. So that was very, very difficult. So to measure success, for example, is how you take control of these areas. And in there, not only that you go there to destroy coca crops or to destroy coca labs, but you are doing that with your own population. So you have to be very careful when we talk about human rights. At the end, we do a struggle between how many hectares of coca we destroy per year, how many labs we seize and burn, how many tons of cocaine we seize per year, and we are still confronting these challenges because every year we want to have higher numbers than the year before, but at the same time, higher numbers represent that the strategy

is not moving forward, and sometimes you feel like you are in a static bike, just pedaling and pedaling and pedaling, and no major changes are occurring in the field. So measuring success is very, very difficult. More difficult, of course, if you go into the body count HESPIRAL, which in my opinion, there's many examples in history that can bring military institutions to the abysm and to the most difficult situations. But in general, we tended to build combined measures with the United States in order to please our partners,

to please US Congress, and at the same time to please, of course, our own institutions. Yeah, let me just add to that. I 100% agree with what Alberto said. I think that militarily and in terms of the police, that Colombia was a great success. We were able to first stop the offensive actions of the illicit groups. And in that sense, we were able to stop their offensive, push them back, and in many ways, defeat them militarily, or at least make them so that their only impact on the country was tactical versus strategic. I think that was a total success.

The Plan Colombia goals were to destroy 50% of the coca crops in Colombia. That was achieved. But the thing that we were never able to do was to get the civilians to step into the spaces that had been created. So militaries can open doors. They can open space so that the rest of the government can come in and establish governance. And that has been much less successful in Colombia. The same places where we were fighting the FARC from 1999 to 2016 are the places where there is COCA and illicit groups today. So governance was never established adequately, but the military was highly successful.

And because governance was never established adequately, the Plan Colombia successes were very fragile. So I think the lesson is we know how to fight insurgencies. We know how to militarily defeat our enemies. We know how to find them. We know how to kill them. And we know how to stop them. I think we get wrong everywhere, not just in Colombia, was we haven't figured out the non-military piece yet. We've made some efforts towards it and we made some progress, but I think we're not there yet. Because as soon as you stop the military effort, as soon as you stop these massive amounts of aids, as soon as the military withdraws, the enemies come right back. So earlier you mentioned that the U.S. addressed

critical gaps by providing aerial reconnaissance platforms, helicopters, and the like, and some other means to help track these ungoverned spaces. But in your opinion, what were some of the other key components that the U.S. provided to the Colombian government and military to help combat the ongoing insurgency? They help us at the operational levels. I mean, Army headquarters and division and joint task forces level. They help us in what to me is very dear to my heart, which is planning, campaign planning processes in order to really, you know, have a broader perspective in order to be able to have a stronger interagency approach, for example, in order to work with other services. Before

Plan Colombia, every single service was fighting its war individually. Plan Colombia, in my opinion, helped as a glue to bring together not only Army, Air Force, Navy, but also our National Police, which today is very, very dear to our heart, and also the judicial authority. Within the Army, Plan Colombia and the U.S. approach in general was very strong in what you call in your doctrine capabilities-based planning. So you help us in areas such as intelligence, special operations, demining, engineers, civic action, among other areas, the use of fires, for example, in general, not only air but artillery fires. You help us to strengthen first our doctrine. Second, help us to change and transform organizations to have better technology and new material and equipment. Personal training, in my opinion, was vital in all of this. For example, today we have, I don't know, perhaps more than 1,000, 2,000

blackout pilots. All of them, they are used to go to training the U.S. to recertify in U.S. simulators and things like that. And it's the same in special forces and other areas. And finally, a strong impact of these capabilities on military leadership, military education and training. And finally, one thing that for years we really were not very good at all was how to maintain all of these. So capability-based planning was like underneath all of these Plan Colombia and U.S. efforts. David, he mentioned a lot of important things, encouraging jointness, specific capabilities that were effective, like special operations forces, rotary wing, a whole bunch of important things.

I'd like to get your take on what were the most important components from what the U.S. provided to Colombia, but also what were some things that were not effective that the U.S. pursued? Probably, for me, the biggest difficulty in Colombia has really been getting the services to act jointly at more than the tactical and operational level. Certainly they did improve a great deal, you know, particularly air to ground support. I remember in the early days when I first went down there in the late 1990s, 1998 to 2000, to get air support, the troops

couldn't talk directly to the aircraft. Basically, the aircraft and the troops were talking to the brigade commander, who was then trying to coordinate the tactical employment of an aircraft over a specific piece of terrain by relying on secondhand information he was receiving from the different forces and all the difficulties that that implied. I remember one time there was a wounded man. It took 17 hours to get evacuated because of this lack of coordination. All of that stuff was solved through Plan Colombia. So at the tactical level and even at the operational level, there was very good joint coordination and even interagency coordination.

But at higher levels, we've never been able to implement that. And Kyle, to complement what David is saying, I agree with everything he mentioned. Remember, we in Colombia, we have never developed a law like the Gold, Waters, and Nickels Act that brought U.S. forces to really work together, that created opportunities in every chain of command in order to be joint certified. I had the opportunity to go to Leavenworth and to the U.S. Army World College and there this joint part was really, really vital. And I was very proud to be in a way like joint certified. I try and our institutions, they continue to try to work joint. We are trying to create the necessary adjustments and especially the incentives for people to go from, for example, Army, Navy, Air Force headquarters into a joint

headquarters. So I will say, yes, we have a struggle. We have sometimes, for example, I remember when President Santos, he was the Minister of Defense and President Uribe was in charge of government, when they proposed for the first times to go very, very strong on jointness. I remember generals, for example, resigning during those times because of that. Imagine losing great people just because they don't get it. They don't understand that we need to work together. All of that has really changed. I remember days in which in the army, for example, we were shocked and amazed to see the police making an operation with bombing missions, with air force support, and the army not knowing about it. Of course, you want to be part of winning. You want to be part of this victory against criminal organizations and terrorist organizations. But then when you take that as a lesson learned and you study what happened, you come to realize

that within your chain of command, within your own organization, there were people not helping, not facilitating, not pushing in the same direction. Because at the end, everything is run by humans. You know, that said, so even though I mentioned that gap, I think particularly at the tactical and lower operational level, Colombians actually did some pretty amazing things. So for example, one of the issues that they had in Colombia was constant accusations of human rights abuses. And a lot of it was because of the gap that existed.

Every combat operation in Colombia is a potential crime scene. They don't have a law of war. So you have to stop and you have to secure the area and you have to bring in the judicial investigators to investigate the scene and make sure that procedures and processes were followed. But you're in combat, so securing those scenes isn't always the easiest thing to do. And there's things that happen and then that opens up room for accusations of human rights abuses. And so they actually did some very creative things where they were embedded police and investigative and technical investigators that because they were embedded with the unit could immediately get to the scene and process it before it could be changed or things could be moved. And human rights accusations against the Colombian military, which were already low, went down to essentially zero.

A common through line of irregular warfare for the U.S. is working by, with, and through partner forces. And a lot of ink has been spilled discussing the challenges and opportunities of working with partner forces and proxies from the lens of the donor. Basically, the U.S. lens, right? We'd like to take this opportunity with you both here to discuss the lens of the donor, basically the U.S. lens, right? We'd like to take this opportunity with you both here to discuss the lessons of working with partner forces from the perspective of the recipient of military assistance. So General Mejia, what were the opportunities, challenges, and frustrations of working with Americans

from a partner force lens? The professional change between your officers and also your civilians working together, not only in training areas, but in operational areas, was really, really very important. At the very beginning, because of force protection measures, most of the Americans, they could only be in very safe locations and they couldn't really be in forward locations in a more difficult environment. But after a couple of years, the U.S. government allowed them to go there. And in my opinion, that really transformed the relationship because now the victories were owned by the two sides. Any people killed or injured in action, the two sides were suffering. To me, tactically speaking,

was very important. Can I push you on that one a little bit? Because this is a really big point we see with U.S. forces all over the world is this balance between the risk of putting U.S. forces forward with partners versus keeping them back in safer locations. And it's a huge question on the U.S. side of what is the benefit of pushing these troops forward? So you're saying that there were benefits to that. If you could explain that a little bit more, but also be curious, from the Colombian perspective, were your subordinate commanders in Colombia always willing to have American partners with them forward? Were they seen as kind of a nuisance or a burden sometimes?

No, we were always very, very open. In some places, for example, that are safer, they could go to civilian hotels or civilian places to stay or to live there. That approach was not seen very well by the troops because the idea is sharing the same difficulties, the same restrictions, and the same struggle. But the U.S. was smart enough to change this very rapidly. At the same time, we also invested Colombian resources and U.S. resources to build infrastructure in these four areas, infrastructure with force protection measures in order to save lives. There was chemistry. We love Americans. We like Americans. We always pray for them to be there with us. But now the relationship was transforming and that person there was my friend, my buddy. And we were fighting against the same problem and he was helping me to change my own operational or tactical capabilities. For example, we were not seeing the enemy movements completely. Our intelligence was partial. These American

officers and NCOs, they were able to call the embassy, to call SOTCOM, to call other commands, and to bring, for example, satellite information that at the end saved hundreds of lives. So this relationship was very, very important. You argue that holding U.S. troops back to safe locations was suboptimal. What have been other difficulties you have experienced working with Americans over the past decades or things that the U.S. has done with its forces that you felt were less effective? One of the things that affected this relationship was, of course, constant rotation. Every time we have a rotation

after a couple of months, bringing a new team and bringing new leaders and starting again all over was kind of difficult. It was so, especially because all these special forces are very, very flexible and very smart. So they had the ability to adapt to those organizations, but it was difficult. And the other thing is I confronted them and pushed them very hard, especially when talking about training, because some teams that came back from Iraq and Afghanistan, they tried to, and their core force was to train our troops again in the basics. But they were training professional soldiers with 50, 70 combats, with missions and professional soldiers with 8, 10 years of experience. And our people didn't want to continue to train only the basics.

So when we pushed them very hard, that was with the support, of course, of your own chain of command. That was, in my opinion, tactically speaking, a turning point because they started to really train us in how to do long range reconnaissance patrol, how to do better direct action operations, how to really use in a better way intelligence and how to do, for example, intelligence planning of the battlefield in a better way. So by pushing these teams a little bit hard, we really went from one level to the other. And in my opinion today, for example, Colombian Special Operation Forces are really at a very, very high level, thanks to this incredible partnership with the U.S. El Salvador is another case study that I've looked into myself. And there was a case where we sent small teams of U.S. advisors out to partner with Salvadoran brigades. Often the advisors felt like they had to prove value to their Salvadoran partner forces because there was a perspective

that the U.S. was just there to essentially spy and see if they were conducting human rights violations. Was there kind of this concern in Colombia that were the Americans here to actually support us or are they really just kind of like spies to report and track human rights violations? No, I never saw that. Never. They were our family, our partners, our buddies. They were never there to report on us. And to tell you the truth, on the contrary, I saw, I'm sorry what I'm going to say, but I saw many Americans going a little bit further from their own restrictions. For example, the FARC attacked one of my Black Hawk helicopters and they landed in the middle of a river between Ecuador and Colombia.

And around then we had a very, very big fight confronting like 200 guerrilla fighters. The helicopter was very, very badly damaged. And I saw, for example, American civilian mechanics coming in with our own Colombian mechanics and on their fire, they recovered that helicopter. So when you see that, man, you realize that these people are really, really the same lot. Yeah. So going back to El Salvador, a lot of the U.S. personnel in El Salvador did the same things. They would violate the rules to show their worth so that the brigade commanders would respect them. I don't think we had that much of an issue in Colombia.

I think there was a better relationship. But if I can, Alberto shows a rosy picture, which is mostly true, mostly true. But I think Americans that came in and tried to impose their knowledge and their experience on the Colombians didn't do so well. The ones that did really well were the ones that came in and would reserve judgment and would listen. Because as Alberto said, a lot of the soldiers that the Americans were trying to train were men with up to 20 years experience of combat, of constant combat, that knew tricks in the jungle or ways of doing things because it

was the best way to solve the problem. And so those Americans that were able to kind of hold back, watch and listen, and then offer solutions did a lot better than those that would come in and say, oh, I was in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was in the real war. Let me show you how it's done. Based on what you just said, David, there seems to have been characteristics of some good advisors and then characteristics of less competent advisors. Alberto, from your perspective, what were the characteristics that made the best American partners kind of an individual personality level or skillset level? And what were some characteristics where you saw it just didn't work out for that advisor or that

partner? As you can imagine, of course, speaking the language is really very, very important. Even though all of them are trained in how to speak Spanish, not all of them really have the ability to do it. So we tend to have more confidence with that sergeant, that captain, that major that really have the ability to express himself in Spanish. We have also English speakers, officers or NCOs helping in the relationship. But in my opinion, and perhaps because of such a difficult uptempo in Iraq and Afghanistan, you have some teams that were looking to approach. Their course of action was to rest, have a good time, and accomplish the mission.

And some of them, that they have a higher dedication to the mission and less dedication to have a good time in different places of Colombia. I saw that, and it really depends on leadership and the character of Colombian and American leaders, a mature relationship in which you can come to the leader and tell him, look, I don't like this. I think by breaking security and you going out, you are exposing the troops, et cetera. So it really depends on that. But I saw that as you have many and many tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, Colombia in a way became like a third priority, if I can say it like that. So gentlemen, we've touched on a lot of subjects today. And what I'd really like to know is what

are the implications from both your research and policy experience, David, and from your career in the military, General Mejia. What lessons should we take away from Plan Colombia moving forward? From a policy point of view, I think the importance of the partner is key. You know, I was in the initial kind of counterinsurgency discussions in Iraq. I've been working in Colombia for five years,

and I said something that wasn't very popular at the time, but I think it holds true, and that is I said that the United States cannot go in and win a counterinsurgency in a foreign country. The best we can do is help a host nation win their own war. And so the quality of the partner is vital. And I don't think that that means that anytime we have a low quality partner that we can't go in and help them. I just think we need to understand that we're going to have to build up that quality in our partner at the same time that we're trying to fight the war. So I think the example of Colombia is the benefits or the positive impact that a really high quality partner has, both in terms of political will, in terms of their military quality, because Columbia was a high quality military, even if they were not resource abundant, and other characteristics as well. I think the second thing that really sticks out to me in terms of Columbia, and particularly when illicit economies, drug trafficking, illegal mining, and other types of illicit economies are

involved, is the fragility of the military victory or the military success. And unless that's followed up by significant and important non-kinetic action to establish governance and territorial control, that the situation can very quickly slip back into a conflict mode and sometimes even worse than the previous one because now the enemy has adapted and they've learned you know because again we've taken fark off the battlefield but they've been replaced by new actors who are more savvy who have learned the lessons who are more difficult to fight and so the importance of the non-kinetic component which we have not gotten right in my opinion i think one of the big problems with counterinsurgency is that it still is regarded in most people's minds as a military endeavor,

and it really is a state endeavor with a military component. We need to change our mindset that counterinsurgency is a military activity. For me, those are kind of the big planks from the policy level. Especially for policymakers, of course, political involvement from the top is really, really, very important. In Colombia, for years, presidents, they tend to leave these counterinsurgency tasks to the military. It was their mission. So you, on your own, see how you can be successful doing that.

That approach proved historically to be very, very negative. And at the very end, it weakens democracy. Because, of course, civilian control over the military is not there. On the other side, and especially with the U.S., bipartisan support was vital. We are very, very proud to say that. and we are very proud to be able to work with the Republican side of the House and with the Democratic side of the House. We should continue in that direction because it is very important. And the U.S. Congress and U.S. government in general, they have been very, very special in support of Colombia from both sides.

very, very special in support of Colombia from both sides. Civil-military approach for the campaign is very important, and Dave mentioned this. We continue to struggle in Colombia because we haven't been able to really bring what is called unified action into these areas of Colombia. In many places of Colombia, an army lieutenant, an army sergeant, an army captain or a marine captain is the only presence of the state. When you have that, it is impossible for you really to solve the problems

for these people that are living under this criminal pressure and under this difficult. We already went into joint and interagency vision, but I really believe that even though we have done progress, especially the interagency piece, it continues to be complicated to implement. Just let me give you one historical example. When we were building Sword of Honor, as part of the whole campaign organization, I proposed the creation of a civilian SAR for the campaign in support of military commanders. The idea was to have this SAR that could jump in different ministries and bring different budgets and different support from mining ministry, transportation ministry, commerce, agriculture, etc. And when I proposed that, military leaders, they almost killed me because I was proposing to bring a civilian to the top leadership for

this campaign. So leadership in this policymaker piece is very important. Alberto said something very important. For 40 years, the conflict in Colombia was seen as essentially a contest between irregular actors, FARC, ELN, paramilitaries on the one hand, and military and police on the other hand. And they kept on talking about, well, we want to separate the civilians from the war. So, you guys go up there and you guys play in your sandbox, but leave the rest of us alone. And it wasn't until they had political leadership, particularly President Uribe, but starting with President Pastrana, that understood that this was really a whole of state activity and that it needed to be handled at the highest political and strategic level, that things began to turn around.

So there was a real synergy that happened in Colombia that was in some ways fortuitous. There'd been a police reform between 1996 and 1998, 1999. There was essentially a military reform that happened in the first years of Plan Colombia between 1999 and 2001. The United States had come in and gotten on board. The population, which was very divided and kind of mixed about the degree to which you had to fight or make peace with the guerrilla organizations or hold peace talks, everybody wanted to make peace. They'd seen the FARC in particular do some very terrible things, and Colombians had unified on the topic of that the state needed to come back to the park. And all this stuff kind of came together. And then you had the leader, the right leaders, in this case, Uribe. And in the case of the military, you had

Generals Tapias and General Mora, who had come from the counterinsurgency fight, who understood that the mission, that the military's mission needed to be the fight. In the past, it had been kind of an ad hoc mission. It was kind of something that you did on the side while you focused your institution on kind of normal development of conventional forces. They said, no, this is the focus of the military. This is what we need to do. This is our fight, and all our effort is going to be guided towards that. All of those things came together in a very happy coincidence that then helped turn the situation around.

And so in some ways, it was coincidental and fortuitous. But I think, you know, trying to recreate those conditions in future conflicts would be very important. Alberto, we're about to end the conversation, but I want to see if you have any other thoughts from your extensive experience working with the United States that you'd like to share before we do so. The only thing I will add is, look, the U.S. strategy in general, one of the tools the U.S. government uses is called the IMET program. uses is called the IMET program. And thanks to the IMET program, we have been able to send to the U.S. military schools thousands of officers and NCOs. And this training, these courses, and these certification processes have really changed the lives of many, many of our people in our military institutions. These people, when they come, certify in how to do, for example, staff planning processes,

how to be a cavalry or an artillery using the different elements that we have here in Colombia. They are good in how to do that because they were trained and certified it. But at the very end, all these people, they continue to progress in our chain of command and then they go back to more advanced courses. So what I'm trying to say is that all these educational and training process that is in a way invisible to the conflict is very, very important because the same officers that had, for example, a sponsor in the U.S. are now here in Colombia sponsoring U.S. officers and NCOs. There's an officer that saw how kind are you with foreigners and with allied officers in the U.S. in the different courses? Are the ones here, you know, providing for the protection of U.S. special forces in places like Tumaco, San Jose, Guaviare, Mocoa, some other, Tegu, some other very hard places.

So in my opinion, these training and education programs are not only worth it, but we need to continue to expand that. Thanks to what we learned there, we have been able to continue to move forward. Even though Plan Colombia ended for our military, we had the ability to continue to fly Black Hawks, to continue to strengthen our special operations, to continue to be more technological in the way we do the mining all over the country, for example, as a result of the peace process. So at the end, we are more professional. It is one of the reasons why we became global security partners of NATO, which for us is very important. And now we have access to different excellence training centers in Europe. For example, we have now a NATO certified excellence

training center in Colombia, in Tolimaida, in demining operations. So now we are training people that are coming directly from Europe to train here and to be certified here. We are very proud of that. And recently, President Biden announced that Colombia will become a special partner, a strategic ally, non-NATO, a strategic ally. Correct me if I'm wrong with it. Major non-NATO ally. Exactly. So all of that is because we have been able to carry this weight because you teach

us and you help us and train us how to do that. And in my opinion, we have been able to prove that we have the ability and the leadership and the professional capability to move in that direction. Gentlemen, unfortunately, we have run out of time. This has been a great conversation, and I want to thank you for taking the time to join us today on the Irregular Warfare podcast. You're welcome. Thank you very much, Cal.

Thanks again for joining us for episode 54 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. In our next episode, Laura and Kyle have a conversation with Michael Kaufman and Kent Benedictus on both Russia and Ukraine's use of irregular warfare from the 2014 annexation of Crimea to Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. After that, Laura and Sean have discussed the bin Laden papers, and more broadly, the evolution of Al-Qaeda with Dr. Nelly Lahoud and General David Petraeus. If you liked today's conversation, please be sure to subscribe to the Irregular Warfare Podcast so you do not miss an episode. Also, please consider leaving a review and comment

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