“Always
remember that the most important thing in a good marriage is not happiness, but
stability” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombian Author.
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| Myself with two of the authors - Dickie Davis and David Kilcullen - at the book launch in London. |
On 16 May 2016, I attended the A Great Perhaps? London
Book Launch at the Royal United Services Institute, Whitehall. I did not manage
to engage in the actual discussion myself because, up to then, my knowledge of
Colombia was very limited. But this has since changed after I managed to finish
reading this book in a record 4 days, despite my other commitments. I now know
enough to have a competent discussion on Colombia, as this book has illuminated
a part of the globe that was previously dark to me.
The book is very readable (and accessible) even to a
non-academic readership. I have sometimes read books that are quite useless to
the policy-maker as they are laden with high sounding academic premises and
analyses that have no relation with reality, the type that is often referred to by
the shorthand - “ivory tower speculation.” This book avoids that pitfall. The
authors have military backgrounds in counterinsurgency campaigns such as the
ones in Iraq and Afghanistan and, therefore, manage to get the balance right between
academic premise and practicality. A Great Perhaps? thus succeeds
in its main stated aim, that is, to furnish the policy-maker with actionable
intelligence insofar as it explains the dynamics of Colombia’s conflict, and
what lessons can be drawn from them by African governments.
The whole of government approach (Defence,
Development, Diplomacy) is emphasized as the solution to Colombia’s problems, and the book finds endorsement from African leaders such as Uhuru Kenyatta
(Kenya), Donald Kaberuka (African Development Bank), and Olusegun Obasanjo
(Nigeria). I presume they have read the book, Obasanjo certainly, for he wrote
the foreword and was involved in the project. Lessons learnt from Afghanistan
and Iraq have proved what should have been obvious all along, that: even a military
with an annual budget of over $700 billion may not win against a rag tag
militia. Military power alone does not solve conflict, attention has to be paid
to the political and socio-economic issues as well if success is to be
attained. This is the important lesson that comes from this book for the
policy-maker.
But, dismayingly, the book also highlights that there
are people known as ‘conflict entrepreneurs’ who may have no interest in peace
because they benefit from the war economy. These conflict entrepreneurs can be
found in the government as well in the insurgencies and will not be enticed by
the prospects of peace. A further disheartening point is that even if peace is
negotiated successfully in Colombia, it may actually sow the seeds of the next
conflict. From reading this book, the advice I would give to any African
countries is that, if they can help it, they should never open the door to war,
as once war starts, it has logics of its own which defy human control.
The main weakness of this book is that although it
mentions the 'dual economy’ in Colombia, the racial differences, the need for
land reform, the marginalisation of indigenous people, human rights abuses by
the government and other genuine grievances, the authors were hosted by the
Colombian government and the book is essentially written from the point of view
of the government. The story of the poor, the marginalised, and the
disenfranchised who fight on the side of FARC is not given its own voice. But
this is excusable because these authors are former military men and advise “legitimate”
governments all over the world. This defect in their book can be easily
corrected by picking up the works of FARC sympathisers, to which I am certain
there is no law against.
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| My copy, signed by two of the authors. |
