Perspective: Long warsAmericas’ Longest-Running Insurgency: Lessons for U.S. Longest-Running War
In 2016, Colombia achieved a remarkable success by seemingly bringing to an end the Western Hemisphere’s longest-running insurgency. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has been at war with government forces for more than fifty years. And yet here was a negotiated settlement by which two parties that had been fighting for generations agreed to lay down their arms—by which the guerrilla organization itself would be brought into the government’s formal power structures. The case raises important questions—not least for a U.S. government that watches the clock on its own counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan tick ever closer to two decades. How was this possible? And are there lessons that can be exported and applied to other intransigent conflicts, like Afghanistan?
In 2016, Colombia achieved a remarkable success by seemingly bringing to an end the Western Hemisphere’s longest-running insurgency. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has been at war with government forces for more than fifty years. And yet here was a negotiated settlement by which two parties that had been fighting for generations agreed to lay down their arms—by which the guerrilla organization itself would be brought into the government’s formal power structures.
Lionel Beehner and Liam Collins Write in Welcome to the Jungle: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Colombia (Modern War Institute at West Point, 2019) that the case raises important questions—not least for a U.S. government that watches the clock on its own counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan tick ever closer to two decades. How was this possible? And are there lessons that can be exported and applied to other intransigent conflicts, like Afghanistan?
U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan have yielded a high stack of tactical wins—at great cost—and yet strategic success remains elusive. Whether a negotiated peace can bring the conflict to a close, or even whether such a deal is possible, remains to be seen. Beehner and Collins write that if a peace agreement with the Taliban represents a potential first step toward withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan, stakeholders in America’s longest-running war would be well served to consider the lessons from the Americas’ longest-running insurgency.
