Colombian armed conflict (1964–present)

Colombian armed conflict
Colin Powell, then the US Secretary of State visiting Colombia as part of the United States' support of Plan Colombia.
Date 1964 – present Location Colombia Status ongoing Territorial changes El Caguan DMZ
Belligerents
Paramilitaries AAA (Dis)* AUC (De)* CONVIVIR (Dis)* Black Eagles Drug cartels	Government Army Navy Air Force National Police CONVIVIR (Dis)*	Guerrillas M-19 (De)* EPL (De)* FARC ELN MOEC CGSB Quintín Lame Command (Dis)* Drug cartels
Commanders
Fidel Castano † Carlos Castaño † Vicente Castaño † Rodrigo Tovar Pupo Salvatore Mancuso Diego Murillo	Álvaro Uribe Juan Manuel Santos General Padilla León General Montoya Uribe	FARC Manuel Marulanda † Mono Jojoy Raúl Reyes † Alfonso Cano ELN Antonio García Francisco Galán
(De): Demobilized (Dis): Dismantled

The Colombian armed conflict or Colombian Civil War are terms that are employed to refer to the current asymmetric low-intensity armed conflict in Colombia that has existed since approximately 1964 or 1966, which was when the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and later the National Liberation Army (ELN) were founded and subsequently started their guerrilla insurgency campaigns against successive Colombian government administrations.

It originally began as a backlash produced by a previous conflict known as La Violencia, which had been triggered by the 1948 assassination of populist political leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán.

The subsequent targeting of civilians and public infrastructure by the different armed factions contributed both to the creation of the guerrillas and that of paramilitary groups organized to fight against them. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the spread of both the illegal drug trade, the drug cartels and the U.S.-backed War on Drugs increased the intensity of the conflict and involved all of its participants.

Some historians and analysts consider both La Violencia and the current conflict to be different phases of the same violence which has been ongoing since Gaitán's assassination, while others view them as two separate conflicts.

Contents 1 Background 2 1960s 3 1970s 4 1980s 5 1990s 5.1 Early 1990s 5.2 Mid-1990s 6 Late 1990s / Early 2000s 7 2000s - present 8 Controversy about the term "civil war" 9 Threats to Colombian journalism 10 Quotes 10.1 Poverty 10.2 Weakness of Colombian government 10.3 Guerrillas and paramilitaries 11 Statistics 11.1 Statistics: Plan Colombia 11.2 Notes 12 See also 13 References 14 External links 15 References and Further Reading

Background

The direct origins of the current conflict are usually dated to 1964–1966, while the remote origins would at least go back as far as 1948.

The 1948 assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitán lead to the Bogotazo, an urban riot killing more than 4000 people, and subsequently to ten years of sustained rural warfare between members of Colombian Liberal Party and the Colombian Conservative Party, a period known as La Violencia ("The Violence"), which took the lives of more than 200,000 people throughout the countryside.

As La Violencia wound down, most self-defense and guerrilla units made up of Liberal Party supporters demobilized, but at the same time some former Liberals and active Communist groups continued operating in several rural enclaves. One of the Liberal bands was a group known as the "Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia" (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), or FARC, formed by Dumar Aljure in the early 1950s, one of the largest Liberal guerrillas in 1958. [1] This group eventually ceased to exist, but its name remained as a historical reference.

Also in 1958, an exclusively bipartisan political alternation system, known as the National Front, resulted from an agreement between the Liberal and Conservative parties. The agreement had come as a result of the two parties attempting to find a final political solution to the decade of mutual violence and unrest, remaining in effect until 1974.

1960s

Some of the guerrilla enclaves were attacked by Colombian Army units loyal to the National Front, and were driven from their mountain strongholds in the Marquetalia campaign of 1964. [2]

Inspired by the Cuban revolution, members of the Liberal and Communist guerrillas reorganized as a communist insurgency. In 1966, the modern incarnation of the "Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia" (FARC) was formally founded. The Cuban-backed ELN foco began operations independently that same year as well.

Unlike the rural FARC, which had roots in the previous Liberal peasant struggles, the ELN was mostly an outgrowth of university unrest and would subsequently tend to follow a small group of charismatic leaders, including Camilo Torres Restrepo. [3]

Both guerrilla groups remained mostly operational in remote areas of the country during the rest of the 1960s.

The Colombian government organized several short-lived counter-guerrilla campaigns in the late 50s and early 60s. These efforts were aided by the U.S. government and the CIA, which employed hunter-killer teams and involved U.S. personnel from the previous Philippine campaign against the Huks, and which would later participate in the subsequent Phoenix Program in Vietnam. [4] [5] These efforts were combined with civic action programs, based on John F. Kennedy's "Alliance for Progress", in a bid to resolve the longstanding conflict using a "carrot and stick" strategy, by bringing development to some of the areas that had been hardest hit by the conflict.

The immediate results were mixed. In some areas the programs were relatively successful, but in others, psychological traumas resulting from the violence of the hunter-killer operations may have overshadowed any goodwill created by the civic action programs, which were eventually discontinued as well. Several analysts argue that, even today, much of Colombia's continuing violence can be traced to individual acts of revenge for the deaths of family members, both on the side of the guerrillas and that of their opponents.

From the perspective of the Colombian government, the relative weakness of the guerrillas, especially after initial efforts appeared to be successful, would gradually lead to the end of most sustained operations against them by the end of the decade.

1970s

By 1974, another challenge to the state's authority and legitimacy had come from the 19th of April Movement (M-19), leading to a new phase in the conflict. The M-19 was a mostly urban guerrilla group, allegedly founded in response to an electoral fraud during the final National Front election of Misael Pastrana Borrero (1970 -1974) and the defeat of former dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla.

Initially, the M-19 attracted a degree of attention and sympathy from mainstream Colombians that the FARC and ELN had found largely elusive. This was due to extravagant and daring operations, such as stealing a sword that had belonged to Colombia's Independence hero Simon Bolívar and its theft of thousands of weapons from a Colombian Army installation. At the same time, its larger profile soon made it the focus of the state's counterinsurgency efforts.

Different presidential administrations chose to focus on ending the persistent insurgencies, all of which claimed to represent the poor and weak against the rich and powerful classes of the country, demanding the completion of true land and political reform, from an openly Communist perspective.

The ELN had been seriously crippled by military operations in the region of Anorí in 1974, but it managed to reconstitute itself and escape destruction, in part due to the administration of Alfonso López Michelsen (1974-1978) allowing it to escape encirclement, hoping to initiate a peace process with the group.

1980s

Colombia's four failed peace talks[6]
Year	President	Ended Because
1982-1985	Belisario Betancur	Most Supreme Court Justices were killed when M-19 commandos and the Army fought for control of the building
1986-1990	Virgilio Barco Vargas	FARC ambush killed 26 soldiers in Caquetá
1990-1992	César Gaviria Trujillo	FARC attack on the Senate President. FARC kidnapping and killing of an ex-cabinet member.
1998-2002	Andrés Pastrana Arango	FARC kidnapping of Senator.

By 1982, the perceived passivity of the FARC, together with the relative success of the government's efforts against the M-19 and ELN, enabled the administration of the Liberal Party's Julio César Turbay Ayala (1978-1982) to lift a state-of-siege decree that had been in effect, on and off, for most of the previous 30 years. Under the latest such decree, president Turbay had implemented security policies that, though of some military value against the M-19 in particular, were considered highly questionable both inside and outside Colombian circles due to numerous accusations of military human rights abuses against suspects and captured guerrillas.

Citizen exhaustion due to the conflict's newfound intensity led to the election of president Belisario Betancur (1982-1986), a Conservative who won 47% of the popular vote, directed peace feelers at all the insurgents, and negotiated a 1984 cease-fire with the FARC at La Uribe, Meta, after a 1982 release of many guerrillas imprisoned during the previous effort to overpower them. A truce was also arranged with the M-19. The ELN rejected entering any negotiation and continued to recover itself through the use of extortions and threats, in particular against foreign oil companies of European and U.S. origin.

As these events were developing, the growing illegal drug trade and its consequences were also increasingly becoming a matter of widespread importance to all participants in the Colombian conflict. Guerrillas and newly wealthy druglords had mutually uneven relations and thus numerous incidents occurred between them. Eventually the kidnapping of drug cartel family members by guerrillas led to the creation of the 1981 Muerte a Secuestradores (MAS) death squad ("Death to Kidnappers"). Pressure from the U.S. government and critical sectors of Colombian society was met with further violence, as the Medellín Cartel and its hitmen, bribed or murdered numerous public officials, politicians and others who stood in its way by supporting the implementation of extradition of Colombian nationals to the U.S. Victims of cartel violence included Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, assassinated in 1984, an event which made the Betancur administration begin to directly oppose the druglords.

The first negotiated cease-fire with the M-19 ended when the guerrillas resumed fighting in 1985, claiming that the cease-fire had not been fully respected by official security forces, saying that several of its members had suffered threats and assaults, and also questioning the government's real willingness to implement any accords. The Betancur administration in turn questioned the M-19's actions and its commitment to the peace process, as it continued to advance high profile negotiations with the FARC, which led to the creation of the Patriotic Union (UP), a legal and non-clandestine political organization.

On November 61985, the M-19 stormed the Colombian Palace of Justice and held the Supreme Court magistrates hostage, intending to put president Betancur on trial. In the ensuing crossfire that followed the military's reaction, some 120 people lost their lives, as did most of the guerrillas, including several high-ranking operatives and 12 Supreme Court Judges.^[7] Both sides blamed each other for the outcome. This marked the end of Betancur's peace process.^[8]

Meanwhile, individual FARC members initially joined the UP leadership in representation of the guerrilla command, though most of the guerrilla's chiefs and militiamen did not demobilize nor disarm, as that was not a requirement of the process at that point in time. Tension soon significantly increased, as both sides began to accuse each other of not respecting the cease-fire. Political violence against FARC and UP members (including presidential candidate Jaime Pardo Leal) was blamed on druglords and also on members of the security forces (to a much lesser degree on the argued inaction of Betancur's administration). Members of the government and security authorities increasingly accused the FARC of continuing to recruit guerrillas, as well as kidnapping, extorting and politically intimidating voters even as the UP was already participating in politics.

1990s

Early 1990s

Why did the three Colombian peace talks fail?
Camilo Azcarate cites the following reasons the peace process failed:
• Misdiagnosis of the conflict: The causes of the armed conflict in Colombia has been badly misdiagnosed all parties (including third parties and well-intended analysts). A consequence of this misdiagnosis the peace processes were flawed (i.e. all three have been largely direct negotiations- a bad idea given the characteristics of the conflict). A historical review of these mistaken causes of the conflict include: "widespread political partisanship" (1946-59); "the cold war"(1964-80). With these two narratives gone, a new narrative (starting in the 1980s) is that the conflict is a sub-product of the "drug trade". Another popular misdiagnosis, especially among US and EU analysts is that poverty and inequality are the "real" causes of the conflict. Never mind that few of the countries that are as poor and unequal as Colombia -or more- have such level of violence. These diagnosis are based on "objective factors". Although these factors play an important role in contributing resources (men, money) and excuses to the parties they fail to explain the real roots of the conflict, that is, the common denominators underlying all the historic moments of the conflict and the peace processes design flaws. An accurate diagnosis of the conflict must conclude that this is a "protracted social conflict" a special category of international and intranational conflicts in which ontological and mutual threats and denials to the basic psychological needs (security, identity, recognition, fairness, etc) of entire sections of the society function as the "inner core" of the conflict. Colombia's conflict belongs to the same category of social conflicts as the Palestinian-Israeli, Cyprus, Sri-Lanka and N. Ireland. In the case of Colombia the main psychological need threatened was and is security. In effect, starting at least as back as the wars of the 19th century and then flaring in the late 40's massive events of mutual moral exclusion between entire sections of the population allowed the dehumanization "others" (that is those linked with the opposite party/ ideology/ social class, etc). This social-psychological phenomena is behind the massacres and genocidal atrocities (i.e. moral exclusion). Little else but a massive social-psychological problem explain "war" practices such as dismembering people alive, kidnapping people for decades and other similar practices. For information about concrete recommendations for dealing with protracted social conflicts look up the experiences of John Burton and Herbert Kelman. For information about how these concepts apply to the Colombian case read Chapter 2 of Camilo Azcarate's: "Psycho-social Dynamics of the Armed Conflict in Colombia" (http://www.trinstitute.org/ojpcr/2_1columbia.htm)
• Use of Direct Official Negotiation model The parties were involved in direct, official negotiations without the assistance of knowledgeable third parties/ facilitators and without the participation of other stakeholders. This was a designed flaw crippled the processes. Direct negotiations of protracted social conflicts not only tend to be unproductive but counter-productive. They exacerbate rather than solve the conflict. For this check the work of Herbert Kelman, and others involved in similar conflicts around the world (protracted social conflicts)
• Threats of walking away: The parties threatened to walk away to pressure the other side, to extract concessions. This was a consequence of designing the peace process merely as a direct negotiation that could be "hijacked" by parties or events.
• Unnecessary influence by outside events:
• Peace talks were unnecessarily influenced by simultaneous events that swung public opinion in one direction or the other. The process should be designed in ways that limit the impact of such conjunctures.
• Actions specifically designed to disrupt negotiations. Direct negotiations in protracted conflicts tend to become a political stage for influencing public opinion. Aspiring power brokers within each party then use the peace process for their own purposes. [9]

The Virgilio Barco Vargas (1986-1990) administration, in addition to continuing to handle the difficulties of the complex negotiations with the guerrillas, also inherited a particularly chaotic confrontation against the drug lords, who were engaged in a campaign of terrorism and murder in response to government moves in favor of their extradition overseas. The UP also suffered an increasing number of losses during this term (including the assassination of presidential candidate Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa), which stemmed both from private proto-paramilitary organizations, increasingly powerful druglords and a number of would-be paramilitary-sympathizers within the armed forces.

Since 1987, the ceasefire between the FARC and the Colombian government had gradually collapsed due to regional guerrilla and Army skirmishes that created a situation where each violation of the ceasefire rendered it null in each location, until it was rendered practically nonexistent.

The M-19 and several smaller guerrilla groups were successfully incorporated into a peace process as the 1980s ended and the 90s began, which culminated in the elections for a Constituent Assembly of Colombia that would write a new constitution, which took effect in 1991.

Contacts with the FARC, which had irregularly continued despite the generalized de facto interruptions of the ceasefire and the official 1987 break from negotiations, were temporarily cut off in 1990 under the presidency of César Gaviria Trujillo (1990-1994). The Colombian Army's assault on the FARC's Casa Verde sanctuary at La Uribe, Meta, followed by a FARC offensive that sought to undermine the deliberations of the Constitutional Assembly, began to highlight a significant break in the uneven negotiations carried over from the previous decade.

Both parties nevertheless never completely broke off some amount of political contacts for long, as some peace feelers continued to exist, leading to short rounds of conversations in both Caracas, Venezuela (1991) and Tlaxcala, Mexico (1992). Despite the signing of several documents, no concrete results were achieved when the talks ended.

Mid-1990s

FARC military activity increased throughout the bulk of the 1990s as the group continued to grow in wealth from both kidnapping and drug-related activities, while drug crops rapidly spread throughout the countryside. The guerrillas protected many of the coca growers from eradication campaigns and allowed them to grow and commercialize coca in exchange for a "tax" either in money or in crops.

In this context, FARC had managed to recruit and train more fighters, beginning to use them in concentrated attacks in a novel and mostly unexpected way. This led to a series of high profile raids and attacks against Colombian state bases and patrols, mostly in the southeast of Colombia but also affecting other areas.

In mid-1996 a civic protest movement made up of an estimated 200,000 coca growers from Putumayo and part of Cauca began marching against the Colombian government to reject its drug war policies, including fumigations and the declaration of special security zones in some departments. Different analysts have stressed that the movement itself fundamentally originated on its own, but at the same time, FARC heavily encouraged the marchers and actively promoted their demands both peacefully and through the threat of force. [10][11] Additionally, in 1997 and 1998, town councilmen in dozens of municipalities of the south of the country were threatened, killed, kidnapped, forced to resign or to exile themselves to department capitals by the FARC and the ELN. [12] [13] [14]

In Las Delicias, Caquetá, five FARC fronts (about 400 guerrillas) recognized intelligence pitfalls in a Colombian Army base and exploited them to overrun it on August 30 1996, killing 34 soldiers, wounding 17 and taking some 60 as prisoners. Another significant attack took place in El Billar, Caquetá in March 2 1998, where a Colombian Army counterinsurgency battalion was patrolling, resulting in the death of 62 soldiers and the capture of some 43. Other FARC attacks against Police bases in Miraflores, Guaviare and La Uribe, Meta in August 1998 killed more than a hundred soldiers, policemen and civilians, and resulted in the capture or kidnapping of a hundred more.

These attacks, and the dozens of members of the Colombian security forces taken prisoner by the FARC, contributed to increasingly shaming the government of president Ernesto Samper Pizano (1994-1998) in the eyes of sectors of public and political opinion. He was already the target of numerous critics due to revelations of a drug-money scandal surrounding his presidential campaign. Perceptions of corruption due to similar scandals led to Colombia's decertification as a country cooperating with the United States in the war on drugs in 1995 (when the effects of the measure were temporarily waived), 1996 and 1997. [15][16]

The Samper administration reacted against FARC's attacks by gradually abandoning numerous vulnerable and isolated outposts in more than 100,000 km².² of the rural countryside, instead concentrating Army and Police forces in the more heavily defended strongholds available, which allowed the guerrillas to more directly mobilize through and influence events in large areas of rural territory which were left with little or no remaining local garrisons.

Samper also contacted the guerrillas in order to negotiate the release of some or all of the hostages in FARC hands, which led to the temporary demilitarization of the municipality of Cartagena del Chairá, Caquetá in July 1997 and the unilateral liberation of 70 soldiers, a move which was opposed by the command of the Colombian military. Other contacts between the guerrillas and government, as well as with representatives of religious and economic sectors, continued throughout 1997 and 1998.

Altogether, these events were interpreted by some Colombian and foreign analysts as a turning point in the armed confrontation, giving the FARC the upper hand in the military and political balance, making the Colombian government a target of critics from some observers who concluded that its weakness was being evidenced, perhaps even overshadowing a future guerrilla victory in the middle term. A leaked 1998 U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report went so far as to speculate that this could be possible within 5 years if the guerrilla's rate of operations was kept up without effective opposition. Some viewed this report as inaccurate and alarmist, claiming that it did not properly take into account many factors, such as possible actions that the Colombian state and the U.S. might take in response to the situation, nor the effects of the existence of paramilitary groups. [17]

Also during this period, paramilitary activities increased, both legally and illegally. The creation of legal CONVIVIR self-defense and intelligence gathering groups was authorized by Congress and the Samper administration in 1994. Members of CONVIVIR groups were accused of committing numerous abuses against the civilian population by several human rights organizations. The groups were left without legal support after a 1997 decision by the Colombian Constitutional Court which restricted many of their prerrogatives and demanded stricter oversight. After 1997, preexisting paramilitary forces and several former CONVIVIR members joined in creating the "Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia" ("United Self-defense Forces of Colombia") or AUC, a now illegal loose federation of regional paramilitary groups.

The AUC, originally present around the central/northwest part of the country, executed a series of offensives into areas of guerrilla influence, targeting those that they considered as either guerrillas in disguise or their suspected collaborators. This resulted in a continuing series of massacres, such as a July 1997 operation against the village of Maripipán, Meta, which left between 30 and 49 civilians dead. After some of these operations, government prosecutors and/or human rights organizations repeatedly blamed officers and members of Colombian Army and Police units for either passively permitting these acts, or directly collaborating in their execution. [18][19][20]

Late 1990s / Early 2000s

On August 7, 1998, Andrés Pastrana Arango was sworn in as the President of Colombia. A member of the Conservative Party, Pastrana defeated Liberal Party candidate Horacio Serpa in a run-off election marked by high voter turn-out and little political unrest. The new president's program was based on a commitment to bring about a peaceful resolution of Colombia's longstanding civil conflict and to cooperate fully with the United States to combat the trafficking of illegal drugs.

While early initiatives in the Colombian peace process gave reason for optimism, the Pastrana administration also had to combat high unemployment (up to a high of over 20% ) and other economic problems, such as the fiscal deficit and the impact of global financial instability on Colombia. Additionally, the growing severity of countrywide guerrilla attacks by the FARC and ELN, and smaller movements, as well as the growth of drug production, corruption and the spread of even more violent paramilitary groups such as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) made it seem increasingly difficult to solve the country's problems.

Although the FARC accepted participation in the peace process, they did not make explicit commitments to end the conflict in the short term. The FARC suspended talks in November 2000, to protest what it called "paramilitary terrorism" but returned to the negotiating table in February 2001, following two days of meetings between President Pastrana and FARC leader Manuel Marulanda. The Colombian Government and ELN in early 2001 continued discussions aimed at opening a formal peace process, though no concrete agreements were reached.

No single explanation fully addresses the deep roots of Colombia's present-day troubles, but they include limited government presence in large areas of the interior, the expansion of illicit drug cultivation, endemic violence, and social inequities. In order to confront these challenges, the Pastrana administration unveiled its Plan Colombia in late 1999, an integrated strategy to deal with these longstanding, mutually reinforcing problems.

On September 10, 2001, the AUC were added to the US State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Critics had long accused the US of hypocrisy for labeling the FARC and ELN terrorists, while ignoring the AUC, which was responsible for far more killings.^[21] Due to payments made by Chiquita Brands International to the AUC, requests have been made for the extradition of Chiquita's board members and executive officers. ^[1]

After the eventual breakup of the peace negotiations in early 2002, which had been stalled numerous times and finally ended due to a guerrilla kidnapping of a congressman and other political figures, the Caguán demilitarized zone was terminated by the Pastrana administration.

Soon after that, in May 2002, a former liberal politician with conservative leanings, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, whose father had been killed by left-wing guerrillas, was sworn in as Colombian president. He immediately began taking action to crush the FARC, ELN, and AUC, including the employment of citizen informants to help the police and armed forces track down suspected members in all three armed groups.^[2]

2000s - present

During President Uribe's first term in office (2002-2006), the security situation inside Colombia showed some measure of improvement and the economy, while still fragile, also showed some positive signs of recovery according to observers. But relatively little has been accomplished in structurally solving most of the country's other grave problems, possibly in part due to legislative and political conflicts between the administration and the Colombian Congress (including those over a controversial project to eventually give Uribe the possibility of re-election), and a relative lack of freely allocated funds and credits.

Some critical observers considered that Uribe's policies, while admittedly reducing crime and guerrilla activity, were too slanted in favor of a military solution to Colombia's internal war, neglecting grave social and human rights concerns to a certain extent. They asked for Uribe's government to change this position and make serious efforts towards improving the human rights situation inside the country, protecting civilians and reducing any abuses committed by the armed forces.

Two important FARC commanders were undergoing trial in Washington D.C., after being extradited due to drug-related offenses and other charges. One of them was Ricardo Palmera, aka "Simon Trinidad", who has been accused of "hostage taking" because of his alleged complicity in the capture of three U.S. contractors and/or CIA agents, who either crashed or were shot down while conducting surveillance over rural areas under FARC influence and control. Palmera has been related to this case due to his admission that he would allegedly have traveled to Ecuador, where he was arrested, in order to supposedly arrange for the negotiation of a prisoner exchange with the Colombian government. The defendant has argued that such efforts were made under the auspices of the UN. The other "co-defendant" in Palmera's case is the entire FARC organization. [22] The court heard arguments on Palmera's status as a prisoner of war. The other FARC commander was Nayibe Rojas Valderrama, also known as "Sonia", who has been accused of drug trafficking and, if convicted, would be a landmark case tying the FARC to the drug trade.

In mid 2005, after a long debate, the law for presidential re-election was finally approved, giving Uribe the opportunity to stay in office 4 more years if he were to be successfully reelected. His strongest contenders were Carlos Gaviria, of the new left-leaning Alternative Democratic Pole (PDA) and Horacio Serpa for the Colombian Liberal Party. During the campaign, there were complaints from media commentators and Uribe's adversaries who considered that he was taking advantage of his position as president to promote his campaign. There were numerous manifestations by followers of the PDA and the Liberal Party in public spaces and universities, where the opposition criticized the government's policies and the alleged links of several officials with the AUC.

In May 2006, Uribe was finally re-elected on the first round of the elections, with a historically unprecedented 62% of the total vote, with Carlos Gaviria in second place (22%) and Horacio Serpa in third. His success is due to high approval rate among the citizens to his Democratic Security Policy and positive economy's growth rate of 5%. In March of that same year, new elections for the Senate and Chamber of Representatives took place. Uribe's supporters won most of the positions, running in the name of newly created parties including the Social National Unity Party, ("Party of the U"), Radical Change and the less prominent Colombia Democrática and Alas-Equipo Colombia. It was expected that, with a majority of the legislative backing him, Uribe's potential new term (if reelected) would enjoy improved relations between the executive and legislative branches.

The first few months of Uribe's new administration (beginning on August 7 2006, Colombia's Independence Day) brought forth several complications, which could affect the solid image it originally projected. There have been conflicts among pro-uribist members of Congress, as well as a relative stagnancy in the work of both the Senate and the Chamber of Representatives, especially when dealing with important government initiatives such as a tributary reform project. Scandals surrounding the Army have surfaced, including accusations against several officers who could have planted and deactivated false car-bombs in Bogotá in the days before Uribe's new inauguration, with the participation of some members and ex-members of the guerrilla, allegedly to "show results" and advance their own careers in the military. High officials have also made contradictory statements on subjects such as the Free Trade Agreement, among other issues.

Controversy about the term "civil war"

There is an informal yet relatively widespread controversy about what would be the most accurate term to describe Colombia's war [23]. A common argument would be that a civil war would have started in 1964 as the result of the social, economic and political background of the country and thus current violence could not be considered an isolated phenomenon. This application of the term civil war to the ensuing conflict that began in Colombia has been considered debatable by some, as another position held by several analysts would point out that the conflict's characteristics, scale and intensity have not reached those of a full blown civil war.

Specifically, it is argued that the FARC and other guerrillas would not have become a powerful and relevant enough threat to the Colombian establishment until a couple of years in the mid-1990s, if at all. There was a period of approximately two to three years (1996 to 1998) when the FARC executed a string of military attacks considered as impressive operations nationally and internationally, which were interpreted as a demonstration of its armed strength.

Another of the arguments that have been employed by analysts would allege that Colombian society, as a whole, would not have noticeably and massively divided into organized supporters of both the insurgents and the government. Some have also pointed out that the label is not as often applied to past and present wars against armed insurgencies of some significance in the rest of South America, such as the Shining Path in Peru. It is additionally argued that such a label would give recognized legitimacy to the actions of the insurgents, something as of yet unclear in the international arena.

Other observers consider that the term civil war should also apply to those situations as well, as it would be suggested that, irrespective of the proportional strength of arms or numbers between the involved parties, several different social, political and ideological projects would be in conflict. In some vast, sparsely populated rural areas of the country where the FARC is present it has been considered to operate as a de facto government with a degree of civilian support. Some argue that, as FARC has increasingly come to resemble a regular army during the last two decades, with uniforms, modern weapons and a large, disciplined, hierarchical organization which has also engaged the Colombian Army in open combat, those factors give some legitimacy to the term "civil war" to describe the Colombian conflict.

By 2002, President Andrés Pastrana, as well as certain intellectuals and international organizations had often referred to the conflict as a "war against civilians" or a "war against civilian society", choosing to highlight the fact that most of the victims from guerrilla, druglord and paramilitary violence (as well as from any state abuses) are civilians irrespective of their specific political positions, as the result of the degeneration of a war that they considered currently devoid of any previous political and social meaning. President Pastrana also separately admitted that an armed conflict does exist in Colombia, but rejected its characterization as a civil war.

Another side of the issue has to do with translation and interpretation concerns. In traditional studies and press reports written in the English language, the term civil war is often used to refer to the war in Colombia, while it is somewhat rarer to see this term employed with as much regularity in the Spanish-speaking media, both inside and outside of Colombia. This has also become rare in some recent academic studies written in the English language as well, where the terms "armed conflict" or "internal conflict" are more common.

After having desisted repeatedly from categorizing the FARC as terrorists, President Pastrana adopted that terminology in the speech that ended the peace process on February 20, 2002. This position had been stated by the United States administration since November 2, 2001, when the State Department included FARC in its "List of Terrorists and Groups Identified Under Executive Order 13224"[24], after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

There are also several political and legal ramifications to the issue that have gained notoriety outside of academic circles. In recent years, an extra level of complexity has been added to the debate, as in different instances Colombian President Álvaro Uribe has said that he doesn't consider Colombia's war to be either an armed conflict or a civil war, rejecting both labels and instead focusing on what he calls the "terrorist threat". This new position had been considered increasingly controversial in Colombia itself, and this perspective initially had few outright defenders outside the circles of the Colombian administration.

The use of this new term has been criticized or ignored by both national and international NGOs, several supporters and opponents of president Uribe's government policies, some of the mainstream Colombian media outlets and also by other Colombian government officials associations, such as mayors and governors. Most of these groups would consider that there is in fact an armed conflict in the country, though in turn they all still disagree among themselves as to the proper employment of the term "civil war".

In September 2005, President Uribe modified his previous stance, by stating that if the ELN was willing to declare a ceasefire and enter negotiations with the government, he was willing to set aside his personal beliefs (the existence of a "terrorist threat" in Colombia) and accept the existence of an "armed conflict". [25] [26]

[Updated information about current prisoners released July 2, 2008 is needed]

Threats to Colombian journalism

Due to the wide range of groups and interests involved in the ongoing conflict, journalists have come under threat from various sides. Self-censorship is often practiced by journalists, as certain stories can risk upsetting one or more of the country's armed groups. Others have been threatened, murdered or forced into exile. Colombia ranks 131st out of 168 on Reporters Without Borders' 2006 press freedom index. A number of civil society organizations intend to preserve the objectivity and integrity of journalism in the country.^[2]

Quotes

Poverty

• "Colombia is a country of massive contrasts. It has huge natural wealth, including 26 billion barrels of oil and the world's fourth largest coal exports. UN reports show that, between 1991 and 1997, the gap between richest and poorest doubled." ^[27]

Weakness of Colombian government

• "It would be difficult to conceive of a geographic pattern of internal arrangement that would appear to make the achievement of political unity and coherence more difficult than in Colombia."^[28]
• "Poverty and inequality play a part (in the violence), but cannot be the only explanation as Colombia is not the poorest country in Latin America nor the most unequal. Colombia's history of recurrent civil wars and resulting enmities are important factors; but it is only in recent years that the level of violence has climbed to such heights: in the 1970s Colombia had a similar murder rate to Brazil, by the 1990s, it was three times higher.
  Colombia is suffering a crisis of the State that encompasses the political crisis but is broader than it. For political and historical reasons...the elite no longer have confidence in the State security forces. Landowners, businesses and local politicians have resorted to hiring private gunmen to defend their interests. The general population has little faith in the justice system, correctly perceiving that there is little chance of any criminal being caught. Only 5% of crimes in the 1990s were investigated and just 1% resulted in convictions, according to government figures; this compares with a conviction rate of 5% in the 1970s and 20% in the 1960s. Drugs are not the cause of this crisis, but have exacerbated it. During the 1970s and 1980s, the establishment turned a blind eye to—or shared in the profits of—the drugs trade, enabling the cartels gradually to undermine the judiciary and penetrate the state apparatus. The cartels followed a policy of plata o plomo [silver or lead] to cow the legal profession. Forty judges and lawyers were killed each year between 1979 and 1991, and many more fled the country, left their jobs, kept quiet or accepted bribes. Similarly many police officers were corrupted or killed. This has fatally undermined the rule of law in Colombia. It has also led to a proliferation of armed criminal gangs and professional hit men known as sicarios."^[29]

Guerrillas and paramilitaries

• [Colombian insurgents] "represent a danger to the $4.3 billion in direct U.S. investment in Colombia. They regularly attack U.S. interests, including the railway used by the Drummond Coal Mining facility and Occidental Petroleum's stake in the Caño Limón oil pipeline. Terrorist attacks on the Caño Limón pipeline also pose a threat to U.S. energy security. Colombia supplied three per cent of U.S. oil imports in 2001, and possesses substantial potential oil and natural gas reserves."^[30]
• "Do the guerrillas represent "the people"? In regions they control, FARC does support the survival of peasant farms against the encroachment of landlords. Beyond this, most knowledgeable observers say that FARC does not represent el pueblo. Rather, the guerrillas and the paramilitaries are engaged in a power struggle over control of territory as a way to control people and resources."^[31]
• [The paramilitaries] "are carrying out a kind of reverse agrarian reform, expelling peasants to take over land." ^[32]

Statistics

Statistics: Plan Colombia

• As of August, 2004, the US has 400 military personnel and 400 civilian contractors in Colombia.^[33]
• As of August, 2004, the US had spent $3 billion in Colombia, more than 75% of it on military aid. Before the Iraq war, Colombia was the third largest recipient of US aid only after Egypt and Israel.^{[34] [35]}
• In 1999, at the inception of Plan Colombia, the World Bank stated that "more than half of Colombians [were] living in poverty: the proportion of poor [has] returned to its 1988 level, after having declined by 20 percentage points between 1978 and 1995." The mid-1990s recession contributed to "a rise in inequality, a decline in macroeconomic performance, and a doubling in unemployment."...In 1990, the ratio of income between the poorest and richest 10 per cent was 40-to-one. Following a decade of economic restructuring, this ratio had climbed to 80-to-one in the year 2000.^[36]

Notes

See also

• FARC-EP
• ELN
• Paramilitarism in Colombia
• 2003 El Nogal Club Terrorist attack
• Colombian diaspora
• Alliance for Progress
• Plan Colombia
• Professor Gustavo Moncayo

References

External links

• "Background Note: Colombia". U.S. Department of State. Retrieved on 2006-02-11.
• "Q&A: Colombia's civil conflict". BBC. Retrieved on 2006-02-24.
• "Colombia Program". Center for International Policy. Retrieved on 2006-02-24.
• "Accord issue on Colombia's peace process". Alternatives to war. Retrieved on 2006-11-18. (In Spanish and English with chronology and key texts and agreements)
• "Information about the combatants". Center for International Policy. Retrieved on 2006-02-24.
• "CERAC". Conflict Analysis Resources Center. Colombian-based private research center that studies the conflict (In Spanish and English)
• "Colombian Army website". Retrieved on 2006-02-24. (In Spanish and English)
• Restrepo, Jorge A.; Michael Spagat. "The Colombian Conflict Where is it Heading?" (PDF). Javeriana University and CERAC. http://www.cerac.org.co/pdf/CSISPresentationwithtext-V10_Low.pdf.  [PDF] Excellent graphs about the conflict.
• "Colombian President's Office". Retrieved on 2006-02-24. (In Spanish and English)
• "Indigenous Community in Colombia Fears Start of "Dirty War". Democracy Now!. Retrieved on 2006-02-24. Guests: Ezequiel Vitonas, former mayor of Toribio, and Manuel Rozental, human rights activist. Interviewers: Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman. Segment available in transcript and via streaming real audio, 128k streaming Real Video or MP3 download.
• "Different Views of Colombian Territory". Retrieved on 2006-02-24. Maps of the conflict.
• "They killed a man - Documentary preview". The DocsOnline Foundation.
• "El Tiempo - Newspaper". Retrieved on 2006-02-24. (in Spanish)
• "Evolution of the Colombian Civil War". Paul Wolf. Retrieved on 2006-02-24. (collection of declassified U.S. documents online)
• "AUC Official Website". Retrieved on 2006-02-24. (in Spanish)
• "FARC website". Retrieved on 2008-07-12. (in Spanish and English)
• "Colombia - Insurgency". Global Security. Retrieved on 2006-02-24.
• "Colombia". Human Rights Watch. Retrieved on 2006-02-24.
• "Civil War? The Language of Conflict in Colombia" (PDF). Ideas for Peace Foundation. Retrieved on 2006-02-24. (PDF) Is the Colombia conflict a civil war?
• "America's Other War: Terrorizing Colombia". Retrieved on 2006-02-25.
• Plan Colombia by Carmen Guhn-Knight
• "The Peace Village San José Must Live". SOS San Jose. Retrieved on 2006-02-24. (in German and English)
• Azcarate, Camilo A. (March 1999). "Psychosocial Dynamics of the Armed Conflict in Colombia". Online Journal of Peace and Conflict Resolution. http://www.trinstitute.org/ojpcr/2_1columbia.htm.  Extenstive explanation of Colombia's past peace talks and suggestions for future negotiations
• "Solutions to Escape the Conflict's Impasse". National Human Development Report 2003. Retrieved on 2006-02-23. Extensive ideas on solutions to the Colombia conflict
• "Colombia 2005 Report". UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Retrieved on 2006-02-24. (Spanish and English)
• "Washington Office on Latin America". Retrieved on 2006-02-24.
• "Who Shot My Brother?". National Film Board of Canada.
• "Why the End of the Cold War Doesn't Matter: the US War of Terror in Colombia". Bristol University Politics Department. Retrieved on 2006-02-27. by Doug Stokes
• Red Resistencia
• "Insight on Conflict". Colombia Peacebuilding database.

References and Further Reading

• Bushnell, David (1993). The Making of Modern Colombia, a Nation in spite of itself. University of California Press. 0520082893. 
• Cuellar, Francisco Ramírez; Aviva Chomsky. The Profits of Extermination. 1567513220. 
• Dudley, Steven (January 2004). Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia. Routledge. 041593303X.  256 pages
• Giraldo, Juan Fernando (December 2005). "Colombia in Armed Conflict?: 1946-1985" (PDF). Papel Politico (Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Relaciones Internacionales, Universidad Javeriana) (18): 43–78. http://www.javeriana.edu.co/politicas/publicaciones/documents/colombia.pdf.  [PDF file]
• Kirk, Robin. More Terrible than Death: Massacres, Drugs, and America's War in Colombia. 288 pages. PublicAffairs. 1st ed. edition, January, 2003. ISBN 1-58648-104-5.
• Murillo, Mario and Jesus Rey Avirama. Colombia and the United States: War, Terrorism and Destabilization. 160 pages. Seven Stories Press, September 1 2003. ISBN 1-58322-606-0.
• Palacios, Marco. Entre la legitimidad y la violencia: Colombia 1875-1994. Norma, 1995.
• Pardo Rueda, Rafael La historia de las guerras. Ediciones B-Vergara, 2004. ISBN 958-97405-5-3
• Pizarro Leongómez, Eduardo. Las Farc: de la autodefensa a la combinación de todas las formas de lucha. Universidad Nacional, 1991.
• Ruiz, Bert. The Colombian Civil War. 271 pages. McFarland & Company. October 1 2001. ISBN 0-7864-1084-1.
• Safford, Frank and Marco Palacios. Colombia: Fragmented Land, Divided Society. 404 pages. Oxford University Press, July 1 2001). ISBN 0-19-504617-X.
• Stokes, Doug; Noam Chomsky (Foreword) (2005). America's Other War: Terrorizing Colombia. Zed Books. 1842775472. 
• Taussig, Michael. Law in a Lawless Land: Diary of a Limpieza. 256 pages. New Press. November 1 2003. ISBN 1-56584-863-2.
• Tirado Mejía, Alvaro (Ed.). Nueva historia de Colombia. Planeta, 1989.
• Zahller, Trina (2002). "Prospects for Peace:The Projected Impact of Plan Colombia" (PDF). McNair Scholars Project University of Montana 2002. http://www.cjpf.org/drug/prospectsforpeace.pdf.  [PDF file]

Colombian Armed Conflict
Participants in Colombian armed conflict			Timeline	Key aspects
			• Banana Massacre (1928) • La Violencia (1948-1958) • Marquetalia Republic • The National Front • Dominican embassy (1980) • Palace of Justice (1985) • Patriotic Union Party extermination • Humanitarian exchange • Mapiripán Massacre (1997) • Peace process (1999-2002) • Bojayá massacre (2002) • Valle del Cauca Deputies hostage crisis (2002-Present) • El Nogal Club bombing (2003) • Parapolitics scandal (2006–7) • Operation Emmanuel • Andean diplomatic crisis (2008) • Operation Jaque	Lawsuits  • Sinaltrainal v. Coca-Cola (2001) • Rodriquez v. Drummond (2003) • Doe v. Chiquita (2007)  Kidnappings  • Kidnappings in Colombia • List of political hostages held by FARC  Illegal drug trade  • Illegal drug trade in Colombia • War on Drugs • Narcoterrorism  Government aspects  • Democratic security • Plan Colombia • Plan Patriota • U.S.-Colombia relations • Human rights in Colombia • Politics of Colombia
Guerrillas	Government of Colombia	Paramilitaries
• ELN • FARC-EP • EPL Former guerrillas • M19 • MOEC • CGSB • ERP Linked to • PCCC • Foro de São Paulo • Cuban revolutionaries • Provisional IRA • ANNCOL • Fighters + Lovers • Some politicians	Military of Colombia: National Army Air Force Navy Colombian Naval Infantry National Police Other: DAS intelligence Attorney General units Former government program • CONVIVIR Linked to • DynCorp International • United Nations • United States • Canada • European Union	• Águilas Negras Former paramilitaries • AUC • AAA Linked to • Spearhead Ltd • Colombian drug cartels • CONVIVIR • Some Colombian military personnel • Some politicians
	Colombian armed conflict at Wiktionary  Colombian armed conflict at Wikibooks      Colombian armed conflict at Wikiquote  Colombian armed conflict at Wikisource       Colombian armed conflict at Commons  Colombian armed conflict at Wikinews

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