Is FARC’s leader dead? And is this good or bad?

Colombia’s defense minister claims that a “very reliable” intelligence source reports that Manuel Marulanda, the supreme leader of FARC, died in March from heart failure. Marulanda first began fighting as a teenager in the 1940s, and led the FARC narco-terrorist organization for over forty years.

The FARC will not be able to find a replacement with Marulanda’s mythic stature. But that does not mean that the organization won’t be able to find a new leader, perhaps one even more energetic and effective. So even if FARC has lost its founder, along with many other senior commanders in recent months, it does not mean the FARC’s defeat is imminent.

From one perspective, this is a grim reality for the U.S. to face. It is well known that U.S. culture tires of the wars it fights after about three years or so. And yet, Colombia’s war against FARC has lasted more than four decades, with political violence extending farther back from there. The multi-billion dollar drug business, combined with meddling and unfriendly neighbors, would seem to promise more of the same into the future.

The U.S. has over 30,000 soldiers fighting in a very similar conflict in Afghanistan. And the Pentagon along with a broad spectrum of Washington’s political class want to add additional forces to the Afghan battle. As the U.S. does so, should it consider for a moment Colombia’s multi-decade struggle and what that might portend for an American commitment to Afghanistan?

This would appear to be a gloomy outlook, and ultimately unsustainable for U.S. society.

On the other hand, the U.S. mission in Colombia provides an excellent model for what the U.S. should be striving for in Afghanistan. A few hundred U.S. Special Force men, intelligence analysts, tech reps, and contractors have, with low visibility persistence, built up Colombia’s own security forces to the point where the Colombian government, and its society in general, have been able to significantly roll back the FARC. The U.S. government has been able to sustain the effort in Colombia over the course of many U.S. administrations because the effort has been small and out of the media spotlight.

Although the conflicts have many similarities, Colombia and Afghanistan are different places. Most notable is the vast difference in the maturity and capacity of each country’s government.

But that is the whole purpose of the U.S. and international missions in Afghanistan, to build up Afghanistan’s central and regional governments.

For years, I have argued that the U.S. assistance program in Colombia is the model the U.S. should be aiming for in Afghanistan (see my previous posts here, here, and here). For now, U.S. policy for Afghanistan is going in the opposite direction. Perhaps this is necessary for the moment. Hopefully it won’t take forty years to turn things around.