Colombia strategy would save Pakistan

Alexander Grenoble and William Rose:

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The army has renewed operations with artillery, bombers and helicopter gunships. The objective is to clear Taliban forces from the Swat Valley and neighboring districts. This cycling back to military assaults will fail, again, because efforts to “clear” a region must be followed by “hold” and “build.” Neither conventional war nor appeasement will win “hearts and minds” of the population, a precondition needed to end an insurgency.

Following this same flawed approach, the Colombian government nearly fell to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the 1990s. The government pursued a strategy that fluctuated between brute force and appeasement, but no progress was made toward ending the insurgency. In 1998 President Andres Pastrana established a demilitarized zone the size of Switzerland, in which FARC could operate without interference from security forces. The results were catastrophic, and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency warned that the Colombian government was at risk of collapse.

Then something remarkable happened. Today, FARC is the weakest it has been in decades, and the government is on the path to ending the 45 year insurgency. Alvaro Uribe, elected president in 2002, turned the tables on the FARC by implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy.

The cornerstone of the Colombian counterinsurgency is the “Democratic Security and Defense Policy,” initiated in 2003. This policy outlines a sequential set of actions to be taken against the insurgents. First was to rebuild state presence and authority, starting in strategically important areas. Second was to provide protection for the population. Third was to restore the normal functions of the state, with attention to meeting the long-ignored needs of the population.

To maintain security and ensure that the insurgents are unable to return to regained territories, President Uribe has deployed 100,000 local defense forces. These home-based troops are essential in a counterinsurgency, both for security and intelligence, as they possess a unique understanding of the political and geographic landscape.

Today, violence is down by all measures, the top leadership of the FARC has been dismantled, and vast numbers of insurgents have laid down their arms for the promise of reintegration. The immense resources committed to the counterinsurgency have restored the population's faith that the government has the will and the means to end the insurgency. This confidence is essential for citizens to openly support the government and confront the insurgents.

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Aggressively denying space to the insurgents has also worked to defeat the rebels in Sri Lanka. The strategy for defeating insurgencies is now pretty well known. It is past time for Pakistan to adapt it to the Taliban.