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August 31, 2006
Still swatting flies in Caquetá
In a post to the Democracy Arsenal blog, I discuss USAID's plans to ignore Caquetá department completely, even while the "Plan Patriota" military offensive continues there. It seems to say a lot about how little the U.S. government understands the challenge of dealing with insurgencies.
Does USAID really mean to say that it will only invest in zones where the economy is already viable and where guerrilla presence is low? Does the United States make similar choices in Iraq, too? ("Forget about the Sunni Triangle, let's get the electricity flowing in the few towns where the locals are happy to have us.") If so, that would explain quite a bit.
Posted by isacson at August 31, 2006 5:21 PM
Comments
It's hard to disagree with the premise or the conclusions of your post there, since I've been basically agreeing with those same arguments for most of the past year or so here, at the very least.
Military strategies in areas of strong guerrilla influence and presence need more brain than mere muscle, in essence. Most of us commenting here would tend to agree with that.
One relatively minor thing I'd point out is that overly zealous observers there might too easily equate the Sunni Triangle with Caquetá and Colombia with Iraq, without noticing the many differences involved, but then again that's always going to happen, no matter what one might do...some people will always have that mentality.
Posted by: jcg ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
at August 31, 2006 6:12 PM
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