US Intervention in Colombia: The Role of Transnational Relations

In July 2000, US President, Bill Clinton, signed into law the aid package popularly known as ‘Plan Colombia’. Foreign policy analysts examining the ‘US drug war’ have generally focused upon the perceived national security interests of the US state and/or the intermestic nature of domestic politics, or the economic interests of an imperial US state in explaining US drug policy. I posit that the development, initiation and implementation of Plan Colombia cannot solely be understood through these various nation‐state paradigms, as this process was aided by, and facilitated through, an incipient transnational state. The emergence and consolidation into power of a neoliberal state within Colombia, the role of transnational lobbying by US and Colombian policy‐makers, as well as the influence of transnational corporations all played instrumental roles in the initiation, development and implementation of Plan Colombia.     

Green multiculturalism: articulations of ethnic and environmental politics in a Colombian ‘black community’

This paper analyzes the intersection of two parallel developments that have had a curious impact on agrarian politics in Colombia: on the one hand, attempts to appropriate land for ‘green’ ends such as biofuel production, which have become ubiquitous all across Latin America, and on the other, the implementation of multicultural reforms, which in Colombia resulted in the collective titling of more than five million hectares of land for ‘black communities’. Although these two developments can be read as contradictory – with ‘green grabs’ threatening ethnic groups’ territorial rights and multicultural reforms purportedly safeguarding them – I argue that, together, they produce a unique political articulation which I term ‘green multiculturalism’.

My analysis of oil-palm cultivation in a ‘black community’ in southwestern Colombia reveals three interrelated consequences. First, I suggest that green multiculturalism produces ‘black communities’ as ‘green’ collective subjects charged not only with being wardens of nature, but also bearers of the responsibility to right environmental wrongs. Second, I note that the agrarian practices associated with oil-palm cultivation act as disciplining technologies that seek to transform local rationalities into entrepreneurial ones. Finally, I contend that these initiatives are ‘landscaping projects’ that seek to transform forms of interspecies relating.     

Peace-Making Amidst an Unfinished Social Contract: The Case of Colombia

ABSTRACT

After more than fifty years of conflict, in 2016 a peace agreement was signed by the Colombian government and the leftist group FARC. The agreement created important opportunities for addressing historical inequalities. However, some of the aspirations of the peace agreement may be too ambitious and generate expectations that exceed the capacities of existing state institutions. In addition, there has been opposition by political and social actors. This article examines the challenges to building a comprehensive and inclusive social contract through the lens of two ‘core conflict issues’: land, and illicit crops and the drug trade.     

Gendering the border effect: the double impact of Colombian insecurity and the Venezuelan refugee crisis

Abstract

In the Colombian–Venezuelan borderlands, the reconfiguration of armed group presence and mass migration create and reinforce conditions of high violence and risk. Against this backdrop, we ask: What are the gendered security implications of the double crisis in the borderlands? Based on fieldwork in four regions along the border, this article argues that the border effect is gendered; the very factors that coalesce to produce this effect exacerbate existing gendered power dynamics, particularly as these relate to gender-based violence. Accordingly, this article demonstrates the specific ways in which the border – as a facilitator, deterrent, magnet and/or disguise – reinforces experiences of gendered insecurity in this region. The article finishes by outlining the implications for other international borderland settings.     

The political economy of impunity in Colombia: the case of Colombian labour

The problem of impunity has dominated the Colombian political landscape against the backdrop of almost non-stop war in the country since independence. The focus here shall be upon impunity in relation to human rights abuses regarding Colombian workers and union members. The central argument is that impunity is socially entrenched in Colombia due to an historical legacy of a weak state, a concomitant lack of institutionalised conflict resolution mechanisms and the stigmatisation of unions as havens for the revolutionary Left.     

Applying the security-development nexus on the ground: land restitution in Colombia

The general consensus on the security-development nexus is that both are key to achieving sustainable peace in war-torn societies. However, this debate has largely taken place among international actors, with little empirical evidence about how security and development relate to each other or are even considered by local actors. The current paper applies the security-development nexus to the case of land restitution in Colombia. Following decades of internal armed conflict, in 2012 the national government passed sweeping land restitution legislation amid ongoing violence. Through in-depth interviews and focus groups with multiple actors involved in this process, ranging from international organisations to national government units, from regional institutions to local communities, the paper analyses the objectives, impact, challenges and opportunities for land restitution related to security and development. Undermining peace-building, a lack of coherence in the integration of security and development priorities limits the extent to which either supports, or is promoted by, land restitution efforts in Colombia. The paper concludes with reflections on how the security-development nexus may promote peace-building amid ongoing conflict.     

Humanitarian aid and host state capacity: the challenges of the Norwegian Refugee Council in Colombia

How can humanitarian actors operate in a host state with significant subnational variations in willingness and capacity to meet its obligations? This is an issue of pressing importance, given the expansion of humanitarian aid to middle-income countries with growing state capacity, but with persistent infrastructural weakness in their periphery. The article illustrates the challenges and potentialities of engaging these states through the case study of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Colombia. It describes the way the NRC has located its offices in peripheral areas, and how its activities have fostered the rule of law, successfully using rights-based approaches to strengthen subnational state institutions, activate and mobilise citizen demands and bridge national and subnational administrations. The article concludes that these activities, operated by officers with extensive practical knowledge and local trust networks, can open the way for durable solutions for humanitarian crisis, but can also provoke backlash from subnational actors.     

Playing by the rules of the game: partisan use of recall referendums in Colombia

As a bottom-up mechanism of direct democracy, recall can be triggered by citizens to remove elected officials through a vote, which is expected to increase accountability. Contradicting this hope, previous research has suggested that intensive use of recall referendums became an instrument of party competition. However, empirical evidence is scant. Thus, focusing on the 107 attempts of activating recall in Colombia during the first half of 2017 this article seeks to understand if recall activations are more likely to reinforce democratic governance (by giving an institutional solution to exceptional problems of legitimacy) or are more likely to erode it (by becoming a weapon to escalate the partisan competition beyond regular elections). We created a dataset to identify who started the recall – partisan, mixed or civil society actors – and for what reasons. Then, we examined to what extent the effective number of parties in the council, the majority reached in the previous election, or the size of the municipality have an effect on the likelihood of recall attempts. The study finds that in Colombia, political leaders (and not specific parties) are the main actors promoting recall.     

Child soldiers as peace-builders in Colombian peace talks between the government and the FARC–EP

Children, especially girls, are considered victims in armed conflicts. Children who participate in conflicts, as combatants, sexual servants, spies, informants and messengers, may be considered perpetrators of atrocities. These two classifications of children in armed conflicts do not consider their roles as agents who may also participate in peace-building efforts. This paper analyses how children involved in armed conflicts are classified and represented in the current peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo). We aim to understand if children are recognised in this peace process as participants and, in some capacity, as peace-builders. Dialoguing with the literature on critical security studies and childhood studies, we conduct a critical discourse analysis of the peace agreement documents. The study of the Colombian case enables an empirical analysis in which child soldiers are categorised as victims with the possibility of participating in peace-building and, at the same time, as potential challengers to the peace process.     

Dynamics of State Modernization in Colombia: The Virtuous Cycle of Military Transformation

Military transformations are usually understood as linear processes involving diverse, steady, and costly initiatives to be achieved during a specific timeframe. However, other influencing elements, such as assessment, follow-up, and feedback from the personnel in charge of enforcing and evaluating their implementation, are often disregarded. This article seeks to bridge this information gap and provide a model to analyze the transformation of the military forces of Colombia as a virtuous cycle using the perceptions of its future implementers as its core and main evaluating resource. The questionnaire developed focuses on national interests and the roles and functions of the military forces, gathering the perceptions of officers who will be responsible for implementing the transformation. The statistical findings suggest that determining threats, factors of influence, obstacles, enhancers, and priorities such as drug trafficking, defense expenditure, conflict of interests, fiscal responsibility, and doctrine and policy are central to obtaining successful outcomes.