Although Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize recently, there is a wide perception that Afghanistan is turning into his Vietnam. A few weeks ago a report by general Stanley McChrystal, commander of the North American troops in Kabul, in which he not only requested more soldiers but emphasized the urgency of changing the strategy to avoid loosing the war, became public. And although there cannot be two more different political and culture realities in Afghanistan and Colombia, many expert voices are finding lessons for Afghanistan in the U.S intervention model applied in Colombia.
The first to label Colombia as a laboratory of the “new wars” was writer Robert Kaplan, who has also pointed out that a worthy model to imitate is one where the United States strengthens the capacities of the host state, in order for it to be ready to wage the battles. In april of this year, in a Sunday article in The Washington Post, journalist Scott Wilson, who worked for four years as a correspondent in Bogotá, suggested that the positive elements of the Colombian process should be kept in mind for the difficult situation in Afghanistan.
Two weeks ago the Center for Strategic and International Studies published a report on the lessons learned with the intervention by the United States in Colombia. One of its most prestigious analysts Anthony H. Cordesman, even compared the two nations. Colombia is the third country where the United States is currently involved, and it is not mere coincidence that many diplomats go back and forth between both nations. For example, Anne Patterson and William Wood, both former ambassadors in Bogotá when Plan Colombia was being implemented, are now working for the North American government in Pakistan and Afghanistan respectively.
From some perspectives, the Colombian case is an example for Afghanistan. In the report’s presentation, they recalled that ten years ago Colombia was in the brink of becoming a failed state, with an insurgency that haunted towns and cities, a weak army incapable of defeating the rebels, authorities that were absent in great stretches of the national territory, and a narcotics business that was skyrocketing. According to Cordesman, this has changed because Plan Colombia was a long term program with a defined strategy, Democratic Security, that focused on winning back territory and protecting the population. In Afghanistan the emphasis has been put on chasing the talibans while generating trust among the people has been ignored.
Also, unlike the Asian country, Colombia had institutions that worked to some extent—like the police, military forces and the courts—and were strengthened with North American support. The country was no longer seen as a collapsing state. Afghanistan, on the other side of the spectrum, continues to be a pre modern society with fragile institutions, far from operating like a western democracy.
Cordesman highlights the efforts to strengthen not only the army but the police in Colombia, a necessary improvement to secure the military triumphs. After eight years of intervention in Afghanistan, the North American and German troops have not succeeded in creating a regular police force, failing in various attempts.
But there is one critical issue where the Afghanistan intervention has failed and where comparison is useless: the war on drugs. The eradication of opium fields impoverished the civil population and pushed the cultivation of the illegal crop into territories controlled by the talibans, who have used it to fuel their finances. The forced eradication programs, which in Colombia did not prove useful either, have become the Aquiles heel of NATO’s military intervention in Afghanistan. Likewise, in Colombia the war on drugs is perhaps one of the few issues where Plan Colombia has not accomplished its due. But that is not highlighted in the studies.