Infinity Journal Volume 5, Issue 2, Spring 2016

Volume 5, Issue 2, Spring 2016

Infinity Journal

Page 23

In a nation torn apart by internal strife and rivalries for

power, a terrorist organization emerged in the ungoverned

spaces, bent on imposing its extreme ideology on the

populace. This group laid out a multi-year plan to take the

capital of the country, expand its territory, and recruit tens

of thousands of fighters to its banner. In areas where it held

power, this organization became the

de facto

government,

dispensing social services and security to the occupied

population. Coupled with a robust illicit funding stream, the

organization grew and grew in power until it commanded

the attention of major western powers and touched off an

international struggle to defeat it.While this description could

easily apply to the most notorious terrorist organization of

today, the Islamic State (ISIL), it does not. Instead, this is a

description of the origins of the Revolutionary Armed Forces

of Columbia, abbreviated FARC in Spanish, a 50-year-old

terrorist organization.While not perfect mirrors of one another,

understanding the rise and endurance of the FARC, even in

the face of massive intervention in Colombia by the United

States, sheds useful light on potential ways forward in the

struggle against ISIL. Central to this understanding will be the

nexus of ungoverned space, radical ideology, and access to

illicit funding key to the survival of both the FARC and ISIL. In

light of this, efforts to defeat ISIL cannot only consist of kinetic

strikes against fighters and funding sources, but must also

recognize that separating the group from its funding sources

means separating ISIL from the population it oppresses.

Civil wars are exacerbated and prolonged by the presence

of lootable wealth. This wealth can take many forms, from

so-called blood diamonds to drugs to oil. The fundamental

characteristics for lootable wealth are the portability of

the commodity and the existence of an unregulated, or

“black”, market for the goods. Furthermore, the commodity

is generally lootable when terrorists or other non-state actors

can use relatively simple means to extract the resource from

the surrounding environment.[i] In the case of diamonds, for

example, the ability to extract the stones by simple means

and then smuggle them across borders to waiting markets

directlyaffected their influenceoncivil wars.In situationswhere

complicated mining machinery or specialized expertise was

required to extract diamonds, they played a smaller role in

prolonging conflicts. Interestingly, in the case of secondary,

or alluvial, diamonds, widespread smuggling routes and

markets often existed prior to the outbreak of conflict.[ii]

Insurgent or terrorist organizations then co-opted these

networks to funnel lootable wealth out of the conflict zone. In

both Syria and Colombia,these pre-existing smuggling routes

and robust unofficial economic activity were instrumental in

the genesis of both the FARC and ISIL.The presence of these

mobile, valuable goods created an opportunity for terrorist

and insurgent organizations to finance their operations while

also creating business relationships with smuggling networks

able to move guns and currency in and out of the conflict

zone.

In the case of the FARC, the primary lootable good was, of

course, drugs. Just as in the example of diamond-fueled

conflicts in Africa, the presence of cocaine cultivation in

Colombia provided vast amounts of funding to the FARC

and enabled its rapid growth. Gauging this growth, the FARC

consisted of 802 fighters across nine fronts in 1978. By the

1990s, this group was 18,000 fighters strong and held territory

exceeding 42,000 square miles in size. This growth was the

result of the $250 to $400 million annually generated by the

FARC’s drug trafficking network.[iii] Just as important, the

nature of the drug trade lent itself to the growth of the FARC

as a pseudo-state in the jungles of Colombia. Many units

within the FARC were content to leave the cultivation and

purification of cocaine and its precursors to the farmers and

residents of the territory it occupied. Instead, the FARC levied

a series of taxed on these groups, from drug protection fees

to an outright “war tax” to defray the costs of the struggle

against the central government.[iv] This exchange provided

Larry Doane

United States House of Representatives / U.S.Army

Maj.Larry Doane is a US Army Officer currently serving as a

Defense Congressional Fellow.He holds a Master’s degree

in Legislative Affairs from George Washington University

as well as a Master of Military Studies from Marine Corps

University where he was a distinguished graduate of the

Marine Corps Command and Staff College. Maj. Doane

is an infantry officer with deployments to Afghanistan and

Iraq and has commanded at the company and platoon

level in combat. Maj. Doane’s opinions are strictly his own

and do not reflect the official position of the Department

of Defense or US Government.

To cite this Article:

Doane, Larry, “Feeding Chaos: Why Air Campaigns Didn't Defeat the FARC and Won't Defeat ISIL,”

Infinity

Journal

,Volume 5, Issue 2, spring 2016, pages 23-28.

Feeding Chaos: Why Air Campaigns Didn't Defeat the

FARC and Won't Defeat ISIL