R.J. Godlewski's The Independent Counterterrorist. I, Militia. June ...

entering the United States, and contributed heavily to
the perhaps 20,000 drug-related deaths that occurred
in the United States per year. 99 Within Colombia, the
drug trade was fueling massive corruption that reached
as high as the office of the president, driving intense
internal violence (around 30,000 murders per year, a
sixfold increase from 2 decades prior), and feeding the
ambitions of a powerful Marxist insurgency. 100 The
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)
used the approximately $380 million it garnered from
the drug trade each year to acquire advanced weapons
and entice new recruits. By 2000, the FARC boasted
around 20,000 combatants, was able to overwhelm and
annihilate isolated army garrisons, had Bogota nearly
cut off from the rest of the country, and controlled
roughly 40 percent of Colombian territory. 101 The
group also staged hundreds of attacks on U.S. interests
in Colombia; according to one count, the FARC was
responsible for 55 percent of terrorist attacks against
American targets in 2001. 102
Plan Colombia represented a joint U.S.-Colombian
response to these interlocking threats. U.S. aid would
allow a besieged government to take strong action
against the FARC and hundreds of Colombian cartels,
as the thinking went, thereby restricting drug exports
and restoring internal order. “The ultimate test of
success,” said DEA administrator Donnie Marshall,
“will come when we bring to justice the drug lords
who control their vast empires of crime which bring
misery to so many nations.” 103 Of the roughly $7 billion
in aid granted under the initiative, nearly 80 percent
went to facilitating interdiction and strengthening
Colombia’s military and National Police, with 10-20
percent devoted to economic and social programs
meant to provide alternative sources of income for
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