The Unlikely Revival of “Plan Patriota” in Colombia

“Under the leadership of incoming President Abelardo De La Espriella, we plan to take this partnership to new levels with Plan Patriot 2.0,” tweeted the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Americas Security Affairs, Joseph Humire, during the July 21 Washington visit of Colombia’s incoming defense minister, Gen. (ret.) Jorge Eduardo Mora. (Inauguration Day for De La Espriella is August 7.)

“Plan Patriota” is the “U.S. aid to Colombia” equivalent of what music lovers call a “deep cut”: unless you were closely following the Plan Colombia period, when the U.S. government was providing Colombia’s security forces about $2 million per day in assistance (in 2000s dollars), you may not be familiar with it.

Right around the same time that the Bush administration was escalating its military footprint in an ever-more-ungovernable Iraq, it was also backing a big military-only offensive against the FARC. It was an effort to get the Colombian military to be less of a “garrison force” and spend more time out in the field in territory historically controlled by the guerrillas. In order to do that, U.S. forces and contractors provided and maintained helicopters, delivered supplies and fuel to the battle front, and provided extensive real-time advising, including intelligence (especially signals and imagery) and detailed help with planning operations.

Plan Patriota came in two phases. “Operación Libertad” confronted guerrillas in areas near Bogotá and Medellín and won some early victories. The operation succeeded in pushing FARC fronts out of those areas near major population centers, where establishing a stronger state presence—police, municipal services, infrastructure—was easier.

The next phase, “Operación JM” (named for the incoming defense minister’s much older brother, former armed forces commander Gen. Jorge Enrique Mora), was larger, much more rural, and less successful. More than 15,000 troops fanned out over a stretch of territory in the south-central departments of Caquetá and Meta. They encountered minimal resistance from the FARC: the guerrillas retreated, then waited out the soldiers, who arrived with very few other, non-military, representatives of Colombia’s state (perhaps a few cops and prosecutors).

Eventually, the troops had to redeploy elsewhere, leaving little state presence behind, and the FARC came back. Today, the most powerful FARC “dissidents”—armed groups led by guerrillas who rejected the 2016 peace accord—continue to hold sway there. Colombia’s government just never truly arrived in the zone.

Here’s a description of Plan Patriota from a report that I wrote for WOLA in 2012. It was an experience that showed the limits of a military-only strategy, and offered lessons for what came later: a more comprehensive governance effort, and then a peace process. Joseph Humire’s comment is surprising: Plan Patriota should be remembered as a mixed success at best, not something that deserves a “do-over.”

Starting in late 2003 and early 2004, U.S. support, intelligence, advice and guidance made possible Plan Patriota, an offensive that brought tens of thousands of ground troops to a large swath of rural southern Colombia that, because of the Colombian government’s neglect, was a historical FARC stronghold. Plan Patriota enjoyed easy initial victories as guerrillas, no match for the military’s numbers and airpower, retreated from jungle towns they once controlled.

Plan Patriota had a fatal flaw, however. It came with no plan to bring the rest of the Colombian government into these zones in order actually to govern them. “[E]ach military victory requires the COLAR [Colombian Army] to occupy more territory, leading it to convert mobile brigades into units of fixed area control and reducing offensive capacity,” noted a 2006 cable from the U.S. embassy.[4] A December 2005 cable noted “low morale, a hostile environment, disease, resource shortages, and an inability to drive the FARC out of the area.”[5]

Armed forces units established strongholds in the Plan Patriota zone’s few towns. Yet even today, rural areas beyond the towns—including the tertiary roads between them—remain ceded to the guerrillas.

With this experience came a greater realization that only a full state presence, one that goes well beyond the military to incorporate the state’s civilian institutions, can secure places like Meta, Guaviare, Caquetá, Cauca, or Putumayo, and integrate them into Colombia’s civic and economic life in a way that improves living standards. This realization represented a break with Colombia’s historic pattern of leaving peripheral areas ungoverned, in the hands of warlords, or up to the military.

[4] U.S. Embassy Bogota, “Colombia Conflict Update,” cable (Bogota: October 13, 2006).
[5] U.S. Embassy Bogota, “Plan Patriota Phase 2B: Status Report,” cable (Bogota: December 7, 2005).