The effort to build a political economy of war without politics is finding its limits. The question now is what comes next. How to put politics back in? This article compares systematically two non-state armed groups that participate in the Colombian conflict, the main guerrilla (FARC) and the paramilitary. It shows that despite their similar financial bases, they appear to exhibit systematic differences— regarding both their social composition and their internal/external behavior—and claims that the key to understanding them is the set of organizational devices that each group crafts in its process of survival and growth. All this suggests that a main tenet of the early political economy of war, that all non-state armed groups can be understood as being strategically identical, is flawed. It also poses a classificatory challenge.
Paul Collier and Anke Hoffler, “ Greed and Grievance” Policy Research Working Paper 2355 ( 2002) http://www.-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/IW3P/IB/2000/06/17/000094946_00060205420011/Rendered/PDF/multi_page.pdf.
2.
Sun-Ki Chai , “An Organizational Economics Theory of Antigovernment Violence,” Comparative Politics, 26, no. 1 (1993): 99—110.
3.
See: Edmund Cairns, quoted in Jean-Paul Azam, “Looting and Conflict Between Ethnoregional Groups. Lessons for State Formation in Africa ,” Journal of Conflict Resolution46 (2002): 131—52. Mary Kaldor, Las Nuevas Guerras: Violencia Organizada en la Era Global (Barcelona: Tusquets , 2001).
4.
Christopher Cramer, “ Homo Economicus Goes To War: Methodological Individualism, Rational Choice And The Political Economy Of War,” World Development30 (2002): 1845—64.
5.
For example: Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Jan Angstrom, eds., Rethinking the Nature of War (London and New York: Frank Cass, 2005). Cynthia Arnson and William Zartman, eds., Rethinking the Economics of War: The Intersection of Need, Creed, and Greed (Washington-Baltimore: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).
6.
See for example: Scott Gates, “Recruitment and Allegiance: The Microfoundations of Rebellion,” Journal of Conflict Resolution46, no. 1 (2002): 111—30.
7.
Jeremy Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (London: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
8.
Of course, this freezing is always relative, rules are always perturbed by the actors they regulate.
9.
The paramilitary have thrived as a social phenomenon, before and after the negotiation process with the government. But the original paramilitary project—building a unified, national anti-subversive army—proved unviable. The centrifugal tendencies of the paramilitary were too strong.
10.
I do not incorporate in the analysis the ideological dimension. Discourses and practices can diverge utterly, and to assert that each group has a distinct politico-ideological project would assume away the very point that is under discussion.
11.
On the one hand, the paramilitary leadership was interested in swelling its ranks to enhance its negotiation power; on the other hand, reinserted combatants receive an allowance. This is nearly the ideal combination for promoting the phony recruitment of unemployed or sub-employed people by the paramilitary.
12.
Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar.
13.
The data is collected carefully by a selected group of professionals, and since the children remain a relatively long time in the ICBF programs, there is plenty of time to correct errors, etc.
14.
MaríaEugeniaPinto Borrego, Andrés Vergara Ballén, Yilberto La Huerta Percipiano, “ Diagnóstico del Programa de Reinserción en Colombia: Mecanismos para Incentivar la Reinserción Voluntaria Individual,” Archivos de Macroeconomía Departamento Nacional de Planeación211 (2002).
15.
They do not report specifically how much it is for the FARC. I take here the worse possible situation for the case I want to make.
16.
These proportions are calculated including the missing values. Deleting them yields basically the same result.
17.
None of them combatants, but I included them in the count.
18.
In this article, I am contrasting the two main groups. The evidence suggests that other guerrillas have also high levels of feminization. If I had weighted the databases by size, the result would had been identical.
19.
These reports were attached to the judicial proceedings that I worked on. Since they only gave the names and no additional information, the listings were not included in JUDICIAL. The only data that can be retrieved is gender based on the names.
20.
Unfortunately, in some cases there are different listings for the same front. So basically one can build three different stories. However, all three coincide on the basic landscape.
21.
And, from JUDICIAL and contextual data, possibly younger.
22.
Francisco Gutierrez and Mauricio Barón, “ Re-stating the State: Paramilitary Territorial Control and Political Order in Colombia” Crisis States Programme DESTIN-London School of Economics Working Paper no. 66 (2005) www.crisisstates.com/publications/wp/WP1/wp66.htm.
23.
I wish to thank Juan Guillermo Ferro for kindly giving me access to his extremely valuable set of in-depth interviews with FARC leaders, performed during the peace process in the Pastrana administration (1998—2002). Those interviews, plus Juan Guillermo Ferro and Graciela Uribe, El Orden de la Guerra Las FARC-EP: Entre la Organización y la Política (Bogotá, Colombia: CEJA, 2002), were a key source for the description of the FARC in this and the next section.
24.
In this article, I will make no further reference to the ELN.
25.
Juan Guillermo Ferro and Graciela Uribe, El Ordende la Guerra LasFARC-EP: Entre la Organización y la Política ( Bogotá: CEJA, 2002).
26.
For a somewhat different view: María Alejandra Vélez, “FARC-ELN. Evolución y Expansión Territorial” Tesis de Grado de la Facultad de Economía de la Universidad de los Andes, ( 1999). Ana María Díaz and Fabio Sánchez, “ A Geography of Illicit Crops (coca leaf) and Armed Conflict in Colombia,” Crisis States Programme DESTIN-London School of Economics Working Paper no. 47 (2004) http://www.crisisstates.com/publications/wp/wp47.htm.
27.
Human Rights Watch, “You'll Learn Not to Cry”: Child Combatants in Colombia, Human Rights Watch (September 2003), 69. In http://hrw.org/reports/2003/colombia0903/.
28.
Vergara Pinto and La Huerta, “Diagnóstico del Programa de Reinserción en Colombia: Mecanismos Para Incentivar la Reinserción Voluntaria Individual .”
29.
Ferro and Uribe, El Orden de la Guerra.
30.
Germán Castro Caicedo, En Secreto (Bogotá : Planeta, 1996).
31.
As we will see, the FARC also turns to deception when needed, i.e., promises salaries to recruits and afterwards fails to fulfill its offer.
32.
See Table 5, and Human Rights Watch, “ You'll Learn Not to Cry”; also Francisco Gutiérrez (in press): Organizing Minors, paper presented at the Child Soldiering Workshop held at the University of Pittsburgh, September 15—16, 2006.
33.
Semana, “¿Quién es el enemigo?” Semana (September 6, 2003), http://www.semana.com/wf_InfoArticulo.aspx?IdArt=70787 .
34.
Mauricio Romero , Paramilitares y autodefensas, 1982—2003 (Bogotá: Iepri-Planeta, 2002).
35.
At the same time, it has evicted hundreds of thousands of peasants, promoting a massive inverse agrarian reform.
36.
What about looting? I have not found detailed information about the allotment of the plundered goods. What percentage goes to the individuals and what to the organization?
37.
Gustavo Duncan , Los Señores de la Guerra: De Paramilitares, Mafiosos y Autodefensas en Colombia (Bogotá: Planeta2006).
38.
In the recent period, it was strictly prohibited to kill more than three people in a single event, because this technically would constitute a massacre. If the decision was to murder more than three, then they did it at distinct events.
39.
Though, of course, it cannot be assumed that entry is motivated exclusively by greedy expectations.
40.
Francisco Gutiérrez, “Organizing Minors.”
41.
The rules of the game are different in the militias, but here I restrict my analysis to the FARC proper.
42.
The standard practice is that each fighter finally gets his/her gifts, but there is no guarantee.
43.
The actual percentage must be higher, as some simply did not mention the issue.
44.
Sometimes they declared the salary they got before joining.
45.
It can be argued that prices are also higher, but the critical factor is that these peasants had a real chance to improve their living standards by their participation in the narcoeconomy—but they joined the guerrilla instead.
46.
A FARC deserter who joined the paramilitary said that he had abandoned the guerrilla “to have the right to choose the color of his own shirt.”
47.
Given the regional nature of paramilitarisms, the variance of practices is very wide.
48.
Human Rights Watch, “You'll Learn Not to Cry.”
49.
Ferro and Uribe, El Orden de la Guerra.
50.
For example, the weekly Semana reports that, in the last months, more middle-level leaders have abandoned the organization.
51.
Please note that this is extremely astringent. Regular armies do pay their soldiers, but nobody would claim—in regard to the guerrillas—as Collier has done, rather hyperbolically (2000), that for this reasons they are no more than criminals.
52.
In Colombia the figure of political crime is constitutionalized, and implies a different treatment than common crimes (and eventual access to amnesties, etc.).
53.
Or, for that, why do they accept to kill?
54.
No pun intended. A brilliant and eloquent description of such repertoires is found in John Keegan , The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme (London: Pimlico, 2004).
55.
Ibid, p. 53.
56.
Benjamin Constant, Ecrits Politiques (Paris: Gallimard , 1997).
57.
Machiavelli, L'art de la Guerre (Paris: Flammarion , 1991).
58.
Oral testimony in the group of interviews provided to me by Juan Guillermo Ferro.
59.
Oral testimony in the group of interviews provided to me by Juan Guillermo Ferro.
60.
Human Rights Watch, “You'll Learn Not to Cry.”
61.
Semana, “Si no hay Canje Habrá que Traer Políticos” Semana (February 8, 1999).
62.
Human Rights Watch, “ You'll Learn Not to Cry” 49.
63.
Ferro and Uribe, El Orden de la Guerra.
64.
Patricia Lara, Las Mujeres en la Guerra (Bogotá: Planeta, 2000), 66.
65.
Ibid., 66.
66.
Human Rights Watch, “ You'll Learn Not to Cry” 55.
67.
El Espectador , “Las Farc Imponen su “`Ley del Monte,' ” El Espectador (November 10, 1998), 6a.
68.
Oral testimony in the group of interviews provided to me by Juan Guillermo Ferro.
69.
Francisco Gutiérrez , “¿Ciudadanos en armas?” in Jaime Arocha, Fernando Cubides, and Jimeno Myriam, eds., Las Violencias: Inclusión Creciente (Bogotá : Facultad de Ciencias Humanas-CES, 1998), 186—204.
70.
Proceso por Rebelión no 18140 a Alexánder García Ramírez, Juzgado 011—05/04/2002.
71.
Plus, a demobilized fighter has incentives to state that he was forced to participate in the group. Even discounting by this factor, though, there seems to remain a portion of people that did not join the group voluntarily.
72.
Patricia Lara, Las Mujeres en la Guerra. Mauricio Romero, Paramilitares y Autodefensas, 1982—2003.
73.
Omar Gutiérrez , “La Oposición Regional a las Negociaciones con el ELN,” Análisis Político, no. 52 sept/dec (2004): 34—50.
74.
Andrés Grillo , “Viaje al Interior de las Farc, ” El Espectador (December 2, 1998), 4a.
75.
Peter Waldmann, “ Revenge without Rules: On the Renaissance of an Archaic Motif of Violence ,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism24 (2001): 435—50.
76.
Mauricio Aranguren, Mi Confesión (Bogotá: Oveja Negra, 2001).
77.
Arturo Alape, Tirofijo (Bogotá: Planeta , 1989). Mauricio Aranguren, Mi Confesión. Carlos Medina Gallego, ELN. Una Historia Contada a dos Voces ( Bogotá: Rodríguez Quito Editores, 1996).
78.
See Table 5 and Human Rights Watch, “You'll Learn Not to Cry.”
79.
Though they do have a continuous stream of factionalists desertions—passing from the clique of one commander to another.
80.
It's need to develop them does NOT explain their appearance. Probably it is the other way round: that in the armed competition between several guerrillas and paramilitary denominations, one guerrilla (the FARC) developed the proper mechanisms, and this helps to explain its survival.
81.
Benjamin Constant, Ecrits Politiques.
82.
Please note that this is precisely what has not happened with the FARC, despite the strong pressure applied by the Plan Colombia.
83.
A good description is found in Alonso Salazar, No Nacimos pa'Semilla (Medellín, Corporación Región , 1990).
84.
About the awareness FARC commanders have of these problems, with which they actually have to tackle, cfr. Juan Guillermo Ferro and Graciela Uribe, El Orden de la Guerra.
85.
It may not be too far fetched to suggest that precisely because of this, they lie to a percentage of the potential recruits, promising them a salary: they hope that after luring them into the group, they will transform, and thus retain, a certain percentage of them. This may be a completely “local” phenomenon (FARC front developing strategies to fulfill the recruitment quotas established by the center).
86.
Oral testimony in the group of interviews provided to me by Juan Guillermo Ferro.
87.
I am referring to its own members. Concerning civilians, the situation is somewhat different.
88.
The FARC database counts how many “errors” or “crimes” are committed by each combatant.
89.
Thomas Schelling , The Strategy of Conflict ( Harvard College, 2003).
90.
Arturo Alape, Tirofijo.
91.
It may be argued that the guerrillas who were unable to develop this transformative capacity were vulnerable, and eventually disappeared.
92.
Both drugs and booze. Once again, this is based on JUDICIAL, but also on systematic evidence recollected from the paramilitary of different parts of the country, especially Medellín.
This is indeed a simplification. Units within an army may have many different types of organization. Instead, the range of variance of a social characteristic (for example religion) of the fighters in one group may be negligible.
95.
We really do not know. But it should not be forgotten that right wing violence can be extremely ideological.
96.
For a detailed discussion of this point, see Francisco Gutierrez and Mauricio Barón, “Re-stating the State.”
97.
El Tiempo ,” ¿Qué hacer con 20 mil reinsertados? ,” El Tiempo (September 20, 2004).
98.
See Elisabeth Wood, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in ElSalvador (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
99.
Francisco Gutiérrez, “ Criminal Rebels? A Discussion of War and Criminality from the Colombian Experience ,” Politics and Society32, no. 2 (2004): 257—85.
