What the Fall of Drug Lord Pablo Escobar Could Teach Us About Security in Afghanistan (Jan 25, 2013)

In the 1980s and 90s, Medellín, Colombia was one of the most violent cities in the world, as the home of the Medellín Cartel led by drug lord (and one-time politician) Pablo Escobar. Escobar was killed in 1993, and his cartel fell apart due to cooperation of the rival Cali drug group, and the Colombian and U.S. governments.

Robert Lamb lived in Medellín for nearly a year while studying gang governance and legitimacy. He described a three-phase approach to counter violence in Medellín that eventually dropped the city’s homicide rate below Detroit, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. in the U.S.

First, the Colombian government co-opted the drug traffickers and paramilitary groups to defeat separate leftist guerrilla groups, like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC) and the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional, or ELN).

“Once they're co-opted, use the decline in violence and the space that gives you to build a relationship between the government and the people who had lived in the hillside slums for years without any kind of city presence,” Lamb says. “As that relationship builds and improves, then you can start to take off the co-opted guys bit by bit - arrest them for the organized crime that is ongoing.”

Lamb says political leaders in Afghanistan can hold power by cutting similar deals with regional power-brokers, warlords, and other so-called “malign actors,” and keeping reforms moving slowly. He says both the U.S. and Hamid Karzai’s government have tried to push modernization too quickly, sparking backlash.

“It's not that people in rural Afghanistan don't want to have things like human rights, and predictable daily lives, and jobs,” Lamb says. “It's that they'd prefer to do it on their own terms, and at their own pace.”

INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:

On the sources of violence in what was once one of the world’s drug capitals

Medellín, Colombia, two times in its history, was the most violent place, either in the world or the Western Hemisphere. I went there a few years ago because I wanted to study what people were calling the "Medellín Miracle." How does a place that has the highest homicide rate in the world, in the course of a few years, become a place where the murder rate was lower than Detroit? Lower than Baltimore? Lower than Washington, D.C.? And I was curious to know how that happened, because I knew that the violence there had many sources. Obviously, Colombia had the reputation as a cocaine capital of the world, particularly Medellín, Colombia, but there was obviously also a 40-year insurgency with the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People’s Army), and the ELN (National Liberation Army), and other groups like that. In the city of Medellín itself, there was violence from the drug cartels, but there was also violence from the left wing guerrilla groups trying to infiltrate the city, violence from the right wing paramilitaries also trying to infiltrate the city, violence related to very localized organized crime, and violence related to communities building up their own armed neighborhood watch organizations.

On why state-building hasn’t necessarily worked in Afghanistan

What we're trying to do in Afghanistan is build a modern state that can fit in to the modern state system. That requires a constitution, and a parliament, and elections. That's a prerequisite to membership in the club of "states" internationally. That's fine, as long as we don't take too literally the idea that we outsiders can help transform their society in a way that their processes are consistent with the constitution that was written with the assistance of professional constitution writers. As long as we don't take too literally our own PR about what we're going to accomplish in Afghanistan, it's fine to build those institutions. In fact, it's important to build those institutions. But if you look at any of the communiques released at these international conferences about Afghanistan for its development and stabilization, they're fantasy. They're completely fantasy. The Afghanistan Compact in 2006 - this massive document about what Afghanistan was going to accomplish in four years - it laid out a list of accomplishments. Not one of which was achieved in that four year period of time. Everywhere I've traveled in the world, I have offered to buy the most expensive beer in Washington, D.C. to anybody who can find even one task in the Afghanistan Compact that was accomplished. Not one. So that says to me that our expectations for what's possible in state building are all out of proportion to reality. It leads me to wonder why we haven't looked at our own history of state building, and the history of state building in Europe.

FULL INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:

REBECCA CRUISE, HOST: Dr. Lamb, thank you for joining us, and welcome to World Views.

ROBERT LAMB: Thank you.

CRUISE: Well, you have spent some significant time in Colombia, and I think for most Americans, if we think about Colombia, we think about the 1980's. We think about the drug cartels, narcotrafficking, and the violence that took place there - Pablo Escobar and the Medellín cartel. Today though, Colombia has kind of rebuilt itself. It's rebuilt its image, and even Medellín is seen as a resurgent city - the "Medellín Miracle." I was wondering if you could explain a little bit about what happened there, what's going on, and are there lessons that we can draw, or perhaps heed, from the Medellín situation?

LAMB: Sure, well, thanks for having me on. Medellín, Colombia, two times in its history, was the most violent place, either in the world or the Western Hemisphere. I went there a few years ago because I wanted to study what people were calling the "Medellín Miracle." How does a place that has the highest homicide rate in the world, in the course of a few years, become a place where the murder rate was lower than Detroit? Lower than Baltimore? Lower than Washington, D.C.? And I was curious to know how that happened, because I knew that the violence there had many sources. Obviously, Colombia had the reputation as a cocaine capital of the world, particularly Medellín, Colombia, but there was obviously also a 40-year insurgency with the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People’s Army), and the ELN (National Liberation Army), and other groups like that. In the city of Medellín itself, there was violence from the drug cartels, but there was also violence from the left wing guerrilla groups trying to infiltrate the city, violence from the right wing paramilitaries also trying to infiltrate the city, violence related to very localized organized crime, and violence related to communities building up their own armed neighborhood watch organizations. So the violence was very, very complex in Medellín, Colombia, and it was interesting to me to think about, in a complex situation like that, how do you solve the problem of complex violence? Incidentally, this obviously was very good training for looking at places like Afghanistan and Pakistan as we'll talk about in a bit, but the interesting thing about Medellín, Colombia is that the way the government and other actors helped stop the tide of violence in Medellín was through a strategy that was essentially inadvertent. The way I analyze it there was essentially a three-phase strategy to counter violence in Medellín. The first phase was to defeat the armed actors who could be defeated, and those were the leftist guerrillas. Co-opt the armed actors who you could not defeat, and that would be the narcotraffickers and the paramilitaries who had allied themselves with each other against the guerrillas so that they could get themselves a monopoly on organized crime. And then once they're co-opted, use the decline in violence and the space that gives you to build a relationship between the government and the people who had lived in the hillside slums for years without any kind of city presence. As that relationship builds and improves, then you can start to take off the co-opted guys bit by bit - arrest them for the organized crime that is ongoing. It turned out that these were actually three separate efforts that happened in Colombia that didn't necessarily have anything to do with each other. It was, in a way, dumb luck that they all came together in the sequence they did, and at the time they did.

CRUISE: So that means that there's perhaps not a way to replicate that sort of success? These were kind of accidental, or the stars aligned, as you say.

LAMB: It was a bit accidental. The stars did align in just the right way to help violence decline. But a lot of people in Medellín, and in Colombia more generally, have been studying violence, and have been trying to reduce violence for many, many years. I think one lesson from there is, "try everything until something works." But the second lesson there is, yes, there was inadvertent success, but that doesn't mean we can't take the lesson from there, and apply it to other places.

JOSHUA LANDIS: Well, speaking of other places, Afghanistan. To what extent have we been successful in providing some roots for the Karzai government? When we leave, does that thing just crumble, and does Afghanistan go back, or have we spent all this money and effort to build something that's going to be an advance for Afghanistan?

LAMB: There has been real progress. If you compare it to where Afghan governance has been in the recent past, and to how bad it could be, then I think you could say with a degree of confidence that it's actually much better than we think. Yes, there's a lot of corruption. Yes, Hamid Karzai has been trying to stack his Cabinet with his own patronage networks. And that does not look good to the outside world. On the other hand, it's not all that unfamiliar to Afghans...

LANDIS: Has he been successful enough to at least have a chance of providing stability for Afghanistan through these networks? The networks are fine if he can provide some kind of good governance with patronage networks that buy in different groups, and provide for some stability, or are they really dependent on American soldiers?

LAMB: I wouldn't put too much faith in the central government, and especially in Karzai himself. We have a tendency here in the United States to think that if we can support Karzai, and we can get him to behave, that he'll be able to govern the country. The centers of power throughout Afghanistan are widely distributed among a lot of different people called power-brokers, or warlords, or "malign actors." These different faction leaders have their own spheres of influence throughout Afghanistan. They do interact with Karzai. They do want to get government positions. They want to be governors. They want to be ministers. They want their people to become ministers, and line department heads, and so on. But the truth is, it's really a balancing act that Karzai has to play with these guys. Politics in Afghanistan is a matter of minimizing the number of people who want to kill you. So that's essentially what everyone is doing. If you look at the way power is distributed in Afghanistan, de facto - forget about constitution, forget about the formal governance system - just the old-school realist balance of power, but here at the sub-state level, there is actually a fairly reasonable balance of power right now among the different warlords and Hamid Karzai and his network.

LANDIS: So he could survive?

LAMB: He could survive. He very well could survive. Remember, we have this version of history in which Afghanistan fell because the United States abandoned it. That's not true. The United States abandoned it and the government of Afghanistan continued for several years. Afghanistan fell when the Soviet Union fell, and they lost their main patron. They were able to negotiate with each other the balances of power. "OK, you're in this region, you've demonstrated that you have the power and support to be able to control this region as long as you don't try to expand beyond that, we're kind of cool with it." That's been Afghanistan's history. The political leaders in Afghanistan who held power for the longest periods of time are the ones who essentially did two things. They cut a deal with the regional power brokers, whether tribal leaders or faction leaders, and told them essentially, "As long as you maintain stability in your area, and as long as you give us some tax receipts, or military recruits if we ever need them, we'll let you just have de facto control." And two: They tried to keep reforms moving slowly. It's when reformers in the cities in Afghanistan have tried to impose reforms on the entire country too quickly, that's when it's always sparked a backlash. That happened early in the 20th Century, in the middle of the 20th Century when the communists came into power, they tried to push modernization really quickly. That sparked a backlash. We westerners and Hamid Karzai have tried to reform very quickly. That has sparked a bit of a backlash as well. So it's not that people in rural Afghanistan don't want to have things like human rights, and predictable daily lives, and jobs. It's that they'd prefer to do it on their own terms, and at their own pace.

CRUISE: Well, it surely looks like the situation in Afghanistan, and U.S. involvement has been an effort in some way to build a state, and that has been a trend there and elsewhere since the end of the Cold War, and perhaps a little bit before. Is this the only option for creating stability - this state building approach? Or are there other options? What lessons can we draw again from the Afghani case?

LAMB: It's hard to find any state that has been "built." What we're trying to do in Afghanistan is build a modern state that can fit in to the modern state system. That requires a constitution, and a parliament, and elections. That's a prerequisite to membership in the club of "states" internationally. That's fine, as long as we don't take too literally the idea that we outsiders can help transform their society in a way that their processes are consistent with the constitution that was written with the assistance of professional constitution writers. As long as we don't take too literally our own PR about what we're going to accomplish in Afghanistan, it's fine to build those institutions. In fact, it's important to build those institutions. But if you look at any of the communiques released at these international conferences about Afghanistan for its development and stabilization, they're fantasy. They're completely fantasy. The Afghanistan Compact in 2006 - this massive document about what Afghanistan was going to accomplish in four years - it laid out a list of accomplishments. Not one of which was achieved in that four year period of time. Everywhere I've traveled in the world, I have offered to buy the most expensive beer in Washington, D.C. to anybody who can find even one task in the Afghanistan Compact that was accomplished. Not one. So that says to me that our expectations for what's possible in state building are all out of proportion to reality. It leads me to wonder why we haven't looked at our own history of state building, and the history of state building in Europe. But I think the United States, as long as the Afghan government does not do what the Iraq government did, which is tell us to leave, we will have Special Forces there who can continue to collect intelligence, and continue to do operations, and technically we're not drawing down the civilian side. History suggests we're drawing down the civilian side of things, but we will continue to have a diplomatic and a development presence in Afghanistan - the purpose of which will be partly to see what's happening there, partly to try to affect things there. But also to try to support the institutions of government just at the most basic level possible, to help the government hold things together.

CRUISE: So, as you said, some very complex issues that we have to deal with, and unfortunately we're out of time, but thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. Lamb.

LAMB: Thank you for having me.

LANDIS: Thank you.

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