Engaging Insurgency: The Impact of the 2016 Colombian Peace Agreement on FARC's Political Participation

The 2016 Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People's Army (the FARC-EP or FARC) commits to reforming political participation, especially of traditionally marginalized sectors throughout the country to consolidate Colombian democracy. While the Peace Agreement provides implementation mechanisms that support the insurgency's transition from armed group to political party, it also complements the FARC's political strategy that has traditionally maintained consistency. This article argues that the 2016 Peace Agreement has the potential to enhance democratic, political, and societal participation by engaging with FARC in two key ways—by attempting to reconcile key FARC grievances and containing specific mechanisms that increase participation of traditionally marginalized groups in Colombia. This article argues that the Agreement has impacted positively on FARC's political participation and given it incentives to pursue its political strategy democratically. Likewise, the Agreement has provided a positive-sum outcome for the Colombian government to strengthen its democratic legitimacy by placing emphasis on structural reform.     

Narcotization as Security Dilemma: The FARC and Drug Trade in Colombia

This article addresses the relationship between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the cocaine trade in Colombia, and implications for the FARC's complete demobilization under the 2016 peace agreement. The article identifies two phases of FARC interaction with drug markets. During the regulation phase (1982–1991), the FARC regulated the coca economy and charged protection rents. During vertical integration (1991–present), the FARC directly participated in drug markets. Contrary to conventional approaches, the article adopts the concept of the security dilemma to argue that FARC integration in drug markets was a strategic response to threats from paramilitaries and narcotics traffickers.     

It's Easier to Decapitate a Snake than It Is a Hydra: An Analysis of Colombia's Targeted Killing Program

While the use of targeted killings by the United States and Israel has received the most press coverage, Colombia has also utilized targeted killings in its conflict with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Utilizing an original dataset, this study quantitatively gauges the effectiveness of Colombia's targeted killing program, by examining the influence of FARC leadership deaths upon the number and severity of FARC attacks during the years 2004 to 2011. The results suggest that the Colombian government's killing of FARC leaders has been effective in decreasing the number of attacks, but not the severity of attacks     

Networks and Armies: Structuring Rebellion in Colombia and Afghanistan

Until recently, the importance of organizational factors in the understanding of the variance of the behavior of state challengers had not been recognized. New studies and theories have underscored its crucial character. This article contends that challengers can be placed in a continuum constituted by two opposed polar types, army like and network associations, and compare the Afghan Taliban's and the Colombian Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—FARC)'s organizational principles from this point of view. The main claim is that organizationally inspired explanations behave much better than resource inspired ones when accounting for the differences between the Taliban and the FARC.     

Insurgent Strategies in the Post-Cold War: The Case of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia

This article analyzes the adaptation of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to the post-Cold War strategic scene. In this process of change the Colombian guerrilla organization has broken away from the traditional behavior patterns of Latin American armed groups in four key ways. First, the FARC has reduced the rigidity of its ideology in order to make its political message more attractive. Second, it has made a great effort to boost its military potential. Third, it has established independent channels of funding and arms supply. Finally, the Colombian rebels have developed a very decentralized organic structure that nevertheless maintains a sufficient degree of cohesion. These innovations have made the FARC a new model of insurgency that has managed to corner the Bogota government and destabilize a significant part of the Andean region.     

The Colombia–Ecuador Armed Crisis of March 2008: The Practice of Targeted Killing and Incursions against Non-State Actors Harbored at Terrorist Safe Havens in a Third Party State

This article analyzes the 2008 Colombia–Ecuador armed crisis in the light of the practice of targeted killings and incursions against non-state actors harbored at terrorist safe havens in a third party state. The Colombian use of force against Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—FARC) is discussed in the context of use of force in International Law regarding the right of self-defense against non-states actors and third state parties’ obligation to deny passive support. It is argued that the Colombia situation is similar to the situation faced by Israel and Turkey.     

Uprooting or Sowing Violence?: Coca Eradication and Guerrilla Violence in Colombia

Belligerent nonstate actors including terrorist organizations often exploit illicit economies to fund their activities. In Colombia numerous belligerent groups are involved in illegal narcotics markets. For more than 20 years, the Colombian government has responded with targeted eradication of illicit crops, intending to undermine the groups' sources of revenue while simultaneously disrupting the illicit drug economy. Despite its duration, this policy's effect on guerrilla violence remains unclear. Examining the potential for violent backlash to these tactics, this research note assesses the impact of aerial coca crop eradication in Colombia from 2004–2005 on domestic Colombian guerrilla kidnappings, assassinations, and terrorism.     

Criminality and Armed Groups: A Comparative Study of FARC and Paramilitary Groups in Colombia

Terrorist groups and armed insurgents regularly exploit illicit markets to launder money, traffic illegal goods, and purchase arms. In such an environment, the line between armed political organizations and criminal groups appears to break down. However, through a comparative study of paramilitary groups and Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—FARC) in Colombia, this article finds that group goals, the political environment, and membership strongly influence the types of criminal activities a given armed groups undertakes. Thus, the membership and political agenda of sub-state armed groups not only distinguishes them from criminal groups—organized for and motivated by economic gain—but also shapes their criminal behavior.     

Education for territorial peace in Colombia: what role for transrational peace?

ABSTRACT

In this article, we present the idea of a territorial peace and explore it in the context of Colombia. We locate our investigation in peace education, particularly in Colombia’s Catedra de Paz, and explore the adaptations and application of the iPEACES programme (originally the iPEACE programme, developed by one of the authors with Bevington in 2017) as a possible way of contributing to sustaining the plurality of many peaces in this and other contexts. We outline the Innsbruck school’s many peaces approach and Elicitive Conflict Mapping (ECM) framework in order to show how they contributed to developing the iPEACES programme – which is responsive to territorial peace in the Colombian context. We end by presenting limited findings from four surveys with teachers in Colombia who attended a taster day for the iPEACES programme in 2018. We discuss their contributions and perspectives, and the ways in which we feel the iPEACES programme might be taken up more widely in schools in Colombia and elsewhere.     

Pardon,punishment, and amnesia: three African post‐conflict methods

This article examines the thesis that A´lvaro Uribe, the new president of Colombia (2002–06) is a neopopulist. Such a thesis holds that Uribe can be classified as a neopopulist given his election to the presidency after breaking ranks with the Liberal Party, his massive support from largely unorganised citizens, his government under a state-of-siege decree, his promotion of a national referendum, and his frequent public meetings with citizens throughout Colombia. I reject this thesis, arguing that Uribe's method of winning the presidency did not constitute a significant departure from previous practice in Colombia's system of fragmented political parties. His personality lacks a strong charismatic aura. More significantly, Uribe made no concerted effort to cultivate political support among the masses. In office Uribe's state-of-siege powers have been curtailed by decisions of the Constitutional Court, which he has, significantly, been careful to respect. His proposed referendum had to be negotiated with—and was significantly transformed by—the Colombian Congress. And Uribe's public meetings consist largely in his listening to citizen complaints, rather than giving electrifying public orations. A close examination of Uribe's history and governing style shows him to be a talented politician but not a populist.     

Empty schools and Silencios: pedagogical openings for memory-making in Colombia

This paper draws from Silencios – a photography series by the Colombian artist Juan Manuel Echavarría. Silencios comprises more than 120 portrayals of abandoned schools due to armed conflict in Los Montes de María, Colombia. Sharing Echeverría’s belief that ‘these chalkboards have lessons to tell us about war’, the author of this paper advocates for the pedagogical use of Silencios to promote and support memory works in Colombia. The present analysis acknowledges that hegemonic memories and narratives have a negative impact on conflict-affected societies due to their authoritarian and oppressive character.

Therefore, the pedagogical use of Silencios seeks to ignite multiple narratives and counterhegemonic memories that might emerge as the public interacts with the photography. The visuals, in this sense, become an educational opportunity to stimulate reflection and resistance against the monopoly of the past in a country that is currently emerging from conflict. In this paper, the abandoned schools are considered as memory sites, and as renewed learning spaces to stimulate reflections and debates upon the armed conflict. Silencios can contribute to peacebuilding efforts by bringing up the possibility to reconsider essentialist conceptions of peace, memory, and pedagogy, that might hinder potential venues for enduring peace in Colombia.     

Reform and regulation of electricity in colombia -uk experiences taken across the atlantic

The Colombian reform of its electricity industry was inspired in the British experience. The theoretical support and the actual application of the reform in the UK and Colombia are examined in this paper. Both theory and the British experience show the importance of designing an appropriate institutional framework for the sector that takes into account its specific features. The main challenges presented by the reform in Colombia are the control of the concentration of property, the introduction of antitrust and anticorruption mechanisms, as well as the development of new managerial skills that are required to confront the complex dynamics of the new environment.     

Safeguarding Political Guarantees in the Colombian Peace Process: have Santos and farc learnt the lessons from the past?

This article discusses the lessons of previous peace processes between the government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (farc). It has two policy implications. In regard to Colombia it suggests that safeguarding the lives of demobilised farc members is necessary for the current peace process to succeed, hence it proposes a hybrid Specialised Protection Force (spf). In terms of peace building the article discusses the challenges for spfs to avoid becoming tools of foreign policy diplomacy that perpetuate conflicts. The article aims to contribute to both the critique of liberal peace and of the negotiating teams in the current Colombian peace process.     

Conflict-Induced Displacement and Violence in Colombia

Recent work in the refugee literature finds that both insurgents hiding in camps and aid to refugees may increase violence. This article assesses whether this theory applies to Conflict Induced Displaced People (IDPs). Specifically, it asks if the arrival of IDPs increases leftist violence in Colombia. Colombia has high numbers of IDPs, significant insurgent violence, and available sub-national data to enable an examination of IDP flows on leftist violence. In the Colombian case, the arrival of conflict induced displaced people is not associated with increased leftist violence.     

Capital punishment: The fragmentation of Colombia and the crisis of the nation-state

The Colombian nation-state is in its worst period of crisis since the infamous Violencia of the late 1940s and 1950s. State power is being contested by a number of groups: paramilitaries, the revolutionary Left, drug cartels and corrupt high-level officials. But these latest challenges must be set in a wider historical context: a 200-year history of failed attempts by the oligarchy to forge a stable modern nation-state without undermining their dominant position in the Colombian polity. The writing of a new constitution in 1991, the first since 1886, was an attempt to address many of the above problems, including the granting of special powers to the executive to deal with civil unrest, the need for a decentralised and pluralised political landscape and constitutional guarantees for minority and indigenous representation and rights. However, constitutional change has also taken place in the context of the consolidation of the globalisation project and the practical effects of the new constitution have been its provision of legal and administrative measures to facilitate the neoliberal restructuring of the economy, a process which, over the past 10 years, has been a devastating form of 'capital punishment' for the Colombian underclasses and has contributed to the further fragmentation of the nation.     

Monetary and Exchange Rate Policy in Colombia: Effects on the Real Exchange Rate in the 1990s

This article examines the causes and effects of the real exchange rate appreciation in Colombia during the 1990s. The substantial appreciation of the real exchange rate during the 1990s was an important factor contributing to the economic crisis of 1998-2000. While a number of Colombian economists have argued that the real appreciation was an equilibrating response to real shocks, such as rising fiscal deficits, petroleum discoveries, and increased productivity, this paper argues that nominal variables (including the nominal exchange rate, monetary policy and capital flows) also played an important role. These transitory shocks caused the real exchange rate to overshoot its long-run equilibrium, contributing to the recent economic crisis and the necessity for the large nominal depreciation of the peso in 1998-99.     

Know thy enemy: Hizbullah, ‘terrorism’ and the politics of perception

The labelling career of the Lebanese armed group and political party Hizbullah is an interesting case with which to investigate the epistemological consequences of the politics of naming. Having found itself since its inception in the mid-1980s on the receiving end of mainly US and Israeli policy makers' and analysts' scorn for being an archetypical terrorist organisation, Hizbullah has been surprisingly successful in achieving its stated aims and in enduring the verbal and military onslaught against it. Although it is not the intention here to reduce explanations for Hizbullah's durability to discursive politics, this article suggests that both the labelling of Hizbullah as terrorist and, conversely, its identification as a ‘lebanonised’ political force that is about to make its conversion into an unarmed political party are misleading and incapable of grasping this organisation's complexities. In fact, both ‘terrorist’ and ‘lebanonised’ labels produce a quality of knowledge inferior to that produced by Hizbullah's own conceptualisation of its enemies. But most importantly, the debate on Hizbullah's alleged terrorist nature has obscured several of its traits that many should register before passing judgement on it. Our analysis shows that the variety of institutions Hizbullah has been carefully elaborating and readapting over the past two decades in Lebanon operate today as a holistic and integrated network which produce sets of values and meanings embedded in an interrelated religious and political framework—that of the wilayat al-faqih. These meanings are disseminated on a daily basis among Shi'a constituencies through the party's institutionalised networks and serve to mobilise them into ‘the society of the Resistance’ (mujtamaa’ al-muqawama), which is the foundation of the hala al-islamiyya (Islamic sphere) in Lebanon. Accordingly, any prospect of Hizbullah's transformation away from armed ‘resistance’ should be firmly placed in an analysis of its hegemony among the Shi'a of Lebanon and of the tools it uses to acquire and sustain this status.     

Failed States and the Spread of Terrorism in Sub-Saharan Africa

Plagued by systematic state failure, sub-Saharan Africa's failed states have helped facilitate internationally sponsored terrorist networks and operations. However, until recently, this type of activity was primarily relegated to North Africa and the Horn. But that has begun to change. Now, what was once a seemingly benign terrorist presence in sub-Saharan Africa is starting to transform into a movement, with states such as Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) now lending arms, financial support, and radical militants to the extremist jihadist movement of internationally sponsored terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda. Further, with the recent bombings in Kenya and Somalia, and the failed bombing attempt on a U.S. airliner by a Nigerian national, it is becoming increasingly evident that internationally sponsored terrorist networks have found a permanent home in sub-Saharan Africa and within the hearts and minds of its people, which poses significant challenges for the international community, given the region's patchwork of failed states, where terrorists can easily hide and thrive. Consequently, this study discusses how the conditions of state failure have fostered support for internationally sponsored terrorism in sub-Saharan Africa. Terrorist groups are now actively recruiting more militants from within the region and popular support for extremist acts is on the rise in sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, the article argues sub-Saharan Africa will soon become the site for the next generation of terrorists, and the next wave of terrorist activity.     

Cacophonies of Aid,Failed State Building and NGOs in Haiti: setting the stage for disaster,envisioning the future

The January 2010 earthquake in Haiti was a catastrophe not only for the loss of life it caused, but also because it destroyed the very thin layer of state administrative capacity that was in place in the country. This article argues that the fragility of the Haitian state institutions was exacerbated by international strategies that promoted NGOs as substitutes for the state. These strategies have generated a vicious circle that, while solving immediate logistical problems, ended up weakening Haiti's institutions. However, the article does not call for an overarching condemnation of NGOs. Instead, it explores two cases of community-based NGOs, Partners In Health and Fonkoze, that have contributed to creating durable social capital, generated employment and provided functioning services to the communities where they operated. The article shows that organisations that are financially independent and internationally connected, embrace a needs-based approach to their activities and share a long-term commitment to the communities within which they operate can contribute to bringing about substantial improvement for people living in situations of extreme poverty. It concludes that in the aftermath of a crisis of the dimension of the January earthquake it is crucial to channel support towards organisations that show this type of commitment.