The Objective Reality of Plan Patriota

The Objective Reality of Plan Patriota
A Response to Subjective Propaganda

by James J. Brittain
January 24, 2005

The guerrilla leader Fabián Ramírez radios his commanders from a secure camp hidden in the rain forest. His organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), is fighting government and paramilitary troops in a civil conflict that has bedeviled the country for the past four decades. Photograph by Carlos Villalón.

In response to their failure to eliminate the guerrillas and their corroborators throughout rural Colombia under the guise of the war on drugs, the U.S. and Colombian governments have reformulated their politico-economic and military strategy toward the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People’s Army (FARC-EP), now targeting the Marxist rebel group as part of the war on terror. After the international public came to recognize that levels of coca cultivation, processing and trafficking were not only increasing, but were partially monopolized by the right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) paramilitary organization, the U.S. and Colombian militaries moved away from the façade of a war on drugs and shifted directly into a counterterrorism campaign called Plan Patriota. The Plan Patriota offensive in southern Colombia directly targets the insurgency and its support base, and as Constanza Vieira has noted, "makes no pretense of furthering U.S. counter-drug objectives."

Since its implementation, Plan Patriota has been reported to be the one true alliance of military power and proficiency, which has started to wear down the guerrillas. A November 2003 Associated Press article declared that "the Colombian government is winning in its offensive against the Marxist rebels in their jungle strongholds," and that "under the Plan Patriota offensive ... government forces are driving deep into rebel strongholds" throughout Southern Colombia. Such reports have become commonplace for many of those examining the Colombian conflict. However, the author of this article, who recently returned from southern Colombia, discovered that the reality on the ground is quite different than that portrayed in the mainstream media.

In reality, what is taking place is not a war against, or the destruction of, the guerrillas, but a campaign of disinformation propagated by the Colombian state to hide the true reality of what is occurring in southern Colombia: an expansion of the FARC-EP’s territory, support-base and combatant numbers.

News reports claiming that the Colombian army and U.S. forces are successfully defeating the FARC-EP are incorrect, unsubstantiated and objectively false. Journalist Philip Cryan has openly attacked such sentiments by stating that these reports are doing nothing more than supporting "right-wing propaganda" and that "stories" such as these ignore "compelling evidence to the contrary." Cryan cites Alfredo Rangel, one of Colombia’s most respected military analysts, who says that the FARC-EP is "merely biding its time until the offensive runs out of steam." Rangel warns that "it’s essential not to lose sight of the kind of war the FARC is carrying out ... this kind of war does not seek to openly confront the Armed Forces but rather to exhaust them."

The FARC-EP, however, has not merely retained its power in southern Colombia through a strategy of passivity, but has actually moved to prevent certain military attacks against campesinos living in the region. The close relationship between the peasantry and the FARC-EP has remained consistent for well over four decades and is extremely visible throughout much of rural Colombia. Since the beginning of Plan Patriota, however, some observable socio-geographical characteristics concerning the FARC-EP’s alliances with the rural peasantry have changed. The reason for this shift is the fact that the Plan Patriota offensive is not only targeting the guerrillas, but also their civilian support base.

Since its implementation, Plan Patriota has resulted in noncombatant casualties, displacements and deaths. During the early stages of Plan Patriota, General James Hill, former head of the U.S. Army’s Southern Command, stated that the campaign began "with an attack on rural areas where local peasant farmers support the FARC." This statement not only declared that Plan Patriota had been launched; it also hinted that the strategy was to target the people who support the need for sociopolitical change in Colombia. This has been evidenced in reports in various newspapers including The Guardian, which stated that state security forces have "carried out dozens of raids and detained" people in southern Colombia, not on charges of rebellion or murder, but "on suspicion of giving food and support to the rebels."

In response, the FARC-EP has utilized their ability to, as journalist Kim Housego puts it, "dissolve into the mountains and jungles like mist." In doing so, the rebel group has been able to take some of the pressure off its campesino and indigenous supporters. The reasoning behind this strategy is to protect local populations that support the FARC-EP by ensuring there are no guerrillas in the communities targeted by U.S. and Colombian forces. Because the Colombian military has a horrendous record of committing human rights abuses against non-combatants, the FARC-EP has decided to limit its visible presence in the hope of diminishing the levels of violence directed against the rural populations in FARC-EP extended regions.

However, this strategy does not mean that the FARC-EP is reacting passively to Plan Patriota. The FARC-EP still, in the words of James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, "pose the most powerful" and "greatest politico-military threat" toward the United States’ political and economic dominance in Colombia. As Petras and Michael Brescia have pointed out, the FARC-EP is "the most powerful and successful guerrilla army in the world confronting neoliberal regimes and their U.S. backers." And William Fisher and Thomas Ponniah have claimed that the rebel group is "the most important military and political force in South America opposing imperialism." Such statements make clear that the FARC-EP is a formidable threat to the economic interests of the United States and Colombia’s ruling class.

Plan Patriota has not diminished the threat posed by the FARC-EP. In fact, to the contrary, the rebel group’s strength has actually increased. Between the years 2002 and 2004, the FARC launched 900 attacks, compared to 907 during the previous four years. While the Colombian Armed Forces and state-supported paramilitaries have largely blocked the border regions of the departments of southern Colombia, the FARC-EP is expanding its control of internal areas throughout the region. In December 2003 alone, according to residents of one local community, the FARC-EP increased the size of its movement in the region by an average of 100 newly trained combatants per municipality. This extraordinary recruitment rate surpasses the rates of increases the insurgency has experienced in the past. In 1979, the FARC-EP maintained a presence in less than 10 percent of Colombia’s municipalities. By 2003, the rebel group was operating in all of the country’s more than 1,000 municipalities.

The U.S. and Colombian governments are desperately trying to create the impression that Plan Patriota is working; however, all one need do is examine the evidence, not unsubstantiated rhetoric, and it is clear that it is the insurgency that is thriving.

James J. Brittain is a Ph.D. candidate and Lecturer at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. His research interests center on revolutionary and social movements throughout Latin America, the relevance of classical Marxism within contemporary geopolitics, and alternative forms of international development and social change.