The extraordinary and successful struggle of President Alvaro Uribe Vélez in Colombia twenty years ago returned Colombia to Colombians. That beautiful country, with the vast majority of very good, creative, productive and hardworking people, with a great intellectual, cultural and business class, has been hijacked by guerrillas, drug trafficking and organized crime. The state did not belong to that great majority, but to that criminal minority.

I remember my visits to Medellín in the 70s. Every 10 minutes you had to look out the window to see if the car you were in was stolen. The process reached such a point that there was no Colombian without a relative who had been kidnapped by the guerrillas, or with properties that had been conquered, or with properties that they could not go to.

An extraordinary public man, from whom I learned a lot, Alvaro Gómez Hurtado, who ended up being assassinated and for me was the most cultured and structured politician I knew at the time, told me at a nice breakfast at his house, when I was very young: “Alberto, the big problem in Colombia is that you have lunch with 10 or 12 people in the most exclusive club in Bogota, and someone gets up from the table, and you no longer know if that person is ordering a shipment, or ordering you to be kidnapped sitting at the same table.”

In other words, that land was lost. It was taken over by these irregular groups, terrorists and criminals.

The success of President Uribe was not only that the country recovered, but that the militants of the extremist movements were not eliminated in the way that the dictatorships of the Southern Cone were. They were detained with the help of the law and the legitimate use of force. If there were certain specific abuses, it may be, but it was not state policy to make people disappear, to torture people.

This success clearly has a component of a very good military and police strategy, key intelligence work and successful implementation of the derived planning. But above these elements, all very important, the most important of all is the morale of the troops, that is the feeling of unconditional support of the superior towards the one who receives the order, starting with the president of the republic himself. Uribe was a master at this.

We experienced this in the Cenepa war, where our armed forces felt the unconditional support of their political leaders and the whole heart of the Ecuadorian people who supported them. The whole society got involved in the task of defending the homeland.

Recently, on a video circulating on social media where police officers killed some of the attackers, people could be heard cheering, supporting and applauding the leadership of the units that carried out the action.

I have no doubt that the Ecuadorian people applaud and appreciate, unconditionally support our armed forces and police in this struggle that has begun.

But that process is just beginning, and the key to success will be what is not seen, what is not written down, what is not “ordered”. What the soldier and the policeman feel only if it is real: The unconditional support of all superiors and political power, which is not only the executive, but the national power, of all the functions of the state.

This is not yet felt, not perceived, but voices are already heard criticizing this or that element of the regulation, or regulation, or this or that action.

If the decision has already been made to confront those who threaten the survival of this society with all the weight of law and weapons, who does not feel the unconditional support of the entire society for those uniformed men who must save us, would be the most dangerous of the worlds through which we could transit, because if does not achieve success with this fact, all these groups will be clothed with an aura of indestructibility and invincibility, with which they will emerge strengthened and not destroyed, threatening much more the survival of the Ecuadorian nation.

It is time for all functions of the state and military and police commanders to make those who risk their lives to protect us feel their unlimited support, to fulfill the goal of saving us at this critical moment in Ecuador. (OR)