1. By: LTJG Leah Ortiz Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Setting the Precedent for Leadership Decapitation: Lessons from the fall of the Medellin and Cali cartels
By: LTJG Leah Ortiz
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

2. Leadership Decapitation and Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs)
Institutionalization
Centralized or decentralized; wheel or chain
Popular Support
Widespread or localized
Violent Rivalry and Alliance Structures
Adapting to changing circumstances efficiently
Law Enforcement Efforts
Applying workarounds or adaptation
Testing whether factors that were identified in studies of terrorist organizations as having a significant impact on the effectiveness of leadership decapitation are as important when countering TCOs.

3. Colombia: Late 20th century
“We are up against an organization stronger than the state. . .”
– President Betancur, 1988
Rising violence heralds the rise of TCOs and violent insurgencies
Government prioritizes countering insurgencies and paramilitaries

4. Colombia: Leveraging the War on Drugs in the United States
October 1986: Reagan signs the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which appropriates $1.7 billion to fight the drug war
May 1987: Colombian Supreme Court annuls extradition treaty with the United States
1989: President George H.W. Bush creates the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and Forbes lists Escobar as 7th richest man in the world
1991: Colombian congress bans extradition in new constitution; Escobar surrenders to police to serve in La Catedral and later escapes
December 1993: Pablo Escobar, in hiding since mid-1992, is found by Colombian police using American technology that can recognize his voice on a cell phone call and estimate his location; Escobar is killed
1994: Clinton administration begins referring to Colombia as a “narco-state”
August 2000: President Bill Clinton gives $1.3 billion in aid to Plan Colombia, an effort to decrease the amount of cocaine produced in that nation
The Colombia government leverages the United States’ focus on counter-narcotics to fund their efforts to counter a variety of violent groups in their country, including the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Medellin cartel, Cali cartel, and various paramilitaries and left-wing militant organizations.

5. Medellin Cartel Main leader: Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria
Top associates: The Ochoa brothers, Jose Rodriguez Gacha, Carlos Ledher Rivas
Originally a band of traffickers looking for mutual protection from kidnappers became one of the most lucrative and violent businesses in the world
Plata o plomo as a business model
The Medellin cartel began as a modest trafficking organization before rapidly expanding into all aspects of the narcotics economy from farming to distribution.

6. Cali Cartel
Leaders: Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, Miguel Angel Rodriguez Orejuela, Jose Santa Cruz Londono, and Hélmer Herrera Buitrago
Aka the “gentlemen of Cali”
Preferred bribery and extortion to violence
First allies and then rivals to the Medellin cartel
Maintaining a low profile allowed for less law enforcement efforts targeted at it until the fall of the Medellin cartel
(Below) Ernesto Samper wins presidential election, scandal will strike shortly after. His campaign was funded by the Cali cartel.
The Cali cartel took over as the dominant regional TCO as the Medellin cartel was fading. It would enjoy this title only for a few short years before falling to the same strategy of leadership decapitation.

7. Institutionalization
Literature suggests that the more centralized an organization is and the less clear the lines of succession, the more vulnerable to leadership decapitation
Medellin and Cali cartels concentrated power and authority at the top
Medellin cartel
By the 1990s, ruled by Escobar
Cali cartel
Attempted some decentralization among the four leaders, still heavily centralized
Both the Medellin and Cali cartels operated as highly centralized wheel networks which made them particularly vulnerable to leadership decapitation.

8. Popular Support
Literature suggests widespread popular support provides protection for group’s against leadership decapitation
High levels of localized support for both, but violence keeps it from ever being widespread
Local support did allow for consistent safe havens and recruitment pools
As a result of their failure to garner widespread popular support, neither group had enough popular support to stabilize their organization and enable their operations to continue after their respective decapitations.

9. Violent Rivalry and Alliances
Literature suggests violent rivalries draw attention to organizational weaknesses that can then be fixed, while strong alliances provide the operational space to make changes
Medellin and Cali cartels: both rivals and allies
Allies politically
Both groups anti-extradition
Economic rivals
Competing for markets in the U.S. and for key trafficking routes
It is likely the violent rivalry between the Medellin and Cali cartels simply did not provide enough resiliency to cover the vulnerability created by the organizational structure of either organization.

10. Law Enforcement Efforts
Literature suggests that law enforcement efforts can lead to the same advantages as violent rivalries
Protracted conflict against both cartels
Law enforcement explicitly states goal is leadership decapitation
Neither cartel takes steps to address their vulnerability to leadership decapitation
The Medellin and Cali cartel case studies both suggest that law enforcements’ blatant efforts at leadership decapitation may not always cause the TCO to respond in a predictable way—namely, taking precautions for the survival of the cartel. This finding also implies that it could be the organizational structure and type of leadership that determines this reaction: with power concentrated in a single figure or small group, an organization’s response to leadership decapitation is effectively determined by the leaders’ idiosyncratic response to the threat.

11. INSTITUTIONALIZATION
Conclusion
TCO
INSTITUTIONALIZATION
POPULAR
SUPPORT
RIVALS/
ALLIES
LAW
ENFORCEMENT
OUTCOME
Medellin
High institutionalization:
Vulnerable
Localized:
Led to higher centralization:
Defeated
Cali
Did not resolve organizational issues:
Leadership decapitation was successful in both cases at dismantling the large TCOs, but it was unsuccessful at stopping the drug trade.

12. Questions?