Thomas Marks

Colombian Army Adaptation to Farc Insurgency Thomas Marks

Insurgency is a political campaign to mobilize the disaffected and the dispossessed into an alternative society. Until it can actually liberate areas openly, this takes the form of covert infrastructure. Always, unless the insurgents are incompetent-which does happen with startling regularity-their ultimate goal in deploying power is to create and safeguard the alternative to the society that they are creating.1 Governments, faced with violence directed at the system, initially go after that which they can see, insurgents with weapons, leaving the infrastructure virtually alone to grow and become ever more deadly. The forces of the state thus normally seek to ?close with and destroy the enemy,? while the insurgents continue the process of successively dominating areas. What makes it so difficult for systems to see their way clear to an accurate appreciation of the situation is that the people in positions of authority are those who often have benefited from the status quo.