Colombian rebel group Segunda Marquetalia imposes control in restive coca zone
Guerrillas from the FARC dissident group Segunda Marquetalia, currently engaged in complex peace negotiations with the Colombian government, have taken control of southwestern region of Nariño.
A veneer of calm has settled over Nariño, one of the most violent regions of Colombia, where armed groups until recently waged bloody battles for control of vast coca fields.
The guerrilla group Segunda Marquetalia has taken control of the southwestern region – roughly the size of Belgium – using financial backing from Mexican cartels to unify myriad armed outfits, analysts say.
"The change has been spectacular, the groups have united, the violence has reduced considerably," said Jerson David, the president of a local association of subsistence farmers who work in the coca fields.
"Here, people grow coca according to the rules of the Segunda Marquetalia," he added.
Nearby, workers carry sacks filled with vivid green coca leaves that will be crushed and mixed with gasoline and chemicals in a makeshift laboratory, making a paste that will later become cocaine.
Coca fields stretch as far as the eye can see around the town of Zavaleta. In 2022, the Nariño region grew some 40 percent of the total coca in Colombia – the world's main cocaine producer.
In the town's centre, packs of motorbikes roar down the main street, and men dripping in gold chains and with handguns at their sides stare suspiciously at strangers.
At the entrance to the town hangs an old banner: "Segunda Marquetalia wishes you a Merry Christmas."
'Cauldron of violence'
Until 2016, it was the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group that held a monopoly over the profitable region.
When the group signed a landmark peace agreement with the government that year, "there was a rush to occupy this space," explained Elizabeth Dickinson, an analyst for the International Crisis Group (ICG).
Narino became a "cauldron of violence and competition around drug trafficking."
Segunda Marquetalia was formed by the chief FARC peace negotiator, Luciano Marín -- alias Iván Marquez -- who launched a new rebellion in 2019.
Dickinson said one of the group's commanders had links with Mexican cartels who provided the capital to recruit forces from other regions.
"The Segunda Marquetalia, with that influx of money and fighters, swept through Narino with remarkable speed," in the last two years, she said.
The takeover also involved a bloody war with another FARC dissident group, the EMC (Central General Staff) in 2023.
Since then, Segunda Marquetalia has reigned supreme in this Pacific coastal region, where the Andes descend into the foothills of the Amazon, towards scorching savannah and seaside mangroves.
Nariño in 2023 accounted for 27.3 percent of all victims of conflict in Colombia, according to the Indepaz thinktank.
About 30 massacres have been committed there and 130 community leaders killed since 2016.
'Pact' with locals
In the baking afternoon heat in Zavaleta, coca workers and guerrillas, with beers in hand, flock to bars like "El Patron," bearing the image of the late narco kingpin Pablo Escobar.
The police and army are totally absent, entrenched behind sandbags at their bases dozens of kilometers away.
The guerrillas keep a close watch over coca production and development projects such as road building.
Like several of Colombia's armed groups, Segunda Marquetalia has been involved in stop-start peace negotiations with the government.
"Peace, and the abandonment of coca, requires a transformation of the land, that is to say road construction, electricity networks," the group's second-in-command and chief negotiator, Walter Mendoza, told AFP surrounded by gun-toting men.
The group says it works in the interest of local communities, but experts refer to coercive control of the population.
Local journalist Winston Viracacha described the relationship as a "pact" in which locals carry out projects for the benefit of both sides, in return for payment from the guerrillas who "ensure order and social control."
One reason for the respite from violence is that the armed group is no longer interested in taking on the government directly.
"What interests them is local control to facilitate illegal economic activity. Rather than fighting the army, they want to control the population," said Dickinson.
Segunda Marquetalia has enforced its authority in other towns too, such as coastal Tumaco with its mainly Afro-Colombian population and long history of extreme poverty and violence between armed groups.
Until 2023, "no foreigner could set foot" in Bajito, a neighborhood of Tumaco with a pretty beach where mutilated bodies used to turn up, said municipal councillor Duvan Mosquera Cortes.
Now, "tourists can come here in peace."
However, Dickinson warns that "the situation remains extremely fragile," as a rival armed group could try and edge out the Segunda Marquetalia at any time.
by Hervé Bar, AFP
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Monday, September 23, 2024
Saturday, September 21, 2024
Colombia’s first ever progressive government
SEPTEMBER 20, 2024
Nick MacWilliam reports on the progress of Gustavo Petro’s administration and previews Justice for Colombia’s fringe meeting at Labour’s upcoming Party Conference.
As eyes look ahead to Colombia’s presidential election in 2026, the current administration of Gustavo Petro – the first progressive government in Colombian history – is striving to turn its vision of a fair and conflict-free society into a reality.
Petro’s 2022 election was rooted in mass rejection of a ruling system that for decades enforced economic hardship on the majority. This was consolidated through state-led violent repression of social movements that challenged the status quo: trade unionists, indigenous communities, peasant farmers and students were routinely targeted by the security forces and their paramilitary proxies.
In April 2021, just over a year before Petro’s election, public indignation erupted in Colombia’s largest social uprising since the 1948 bogotazo (the violent protests that followed the assassination in the capital, Bogotá, of Liberal leader and presidential candidate Jorge Gaitán).
Huge protests across towns and cities were met with extreme state violence, as unarmed protesters were killed, sexually assaulted, beaten and blinded amid virtual impunity for the police officers responsible. The neoliberal system’s legitimacy was in shreds, paving the way for Petro – who had come close to the presidency four years earlier – to win the election on a pledge for transformative change rooted in peace, social investment, environmental protection and human rights.
Since taking office, the Petro government has made notable efforts to advance its progressive agenda. One major area is the peacebuilding strategy known as Paz Total, or Total Peace, that promotes dialogue with armed groups in pursuit of negotiated settlements for their disbandment. The previous government’s disregard for the 2016 peace agreement with the FARC, then Latin America’s largest guerrilla movement, resulted in a proliferation of armed groups. As a consequence, conflict violence continues to affect several regions, as rival groups compete for territorial control, with local populations in the firing line.
Reaching settlements with these groups – which range from guerrillas to paramilitary successors to urban gangs – is a complex task, yet crucial to a stable and lasting peace. However, ongoing confrontation by some groups, which in places has seen ceasefires end, has raised questions over whether Total Peace will achieve its primary objective. International support can help keep the talks on track.
Tackling Colombia’s gaping inequality is another of the government’s core goals. The longstanding impact of oligarchic violence and neoliberal governance has created one of the world’s most unequal societies, with the outgoing Duque government’s woeful management of the pandemic exacerbating social conditions that, at the time of Petro’s election, saw over 40 per cent of the population subsisting below the poverty line.
The new government has proposed a series of expansive social reforms – in healthcare, labour rights, education and pensions – that provide access to essential services for millions of low-earning Colombians. Only the pensions reform has so far been approved, with the others encountering strong opposition in the national Congress, where Petro’s Historic Pact coalition lacks a majority and must find compromises with opposition blocs if it is to enact the economic redistribution so clearly required in Colombian society.
The prospects for Total Peace and the social reforms are just two of the important themes to be discussed in Justice for Colombia’s fringe meeting at Labour Party Conference. The keynote speaker is Historic Pact Congress member Alirio Uribe, who will provide an update on the current situation, while also examining the 2026 election in which Petro cannot be re-elected owing to Colombia’s single-term limit.
While there is awareness that the legacy of violence and inequality that has been the norm for generations of Colombians cannot be overcome in just four years, advances in Total Peace and the social reforms increase the likelihood of a continuation of progressive governance in 2026. Otherwise, Colombia’s traditional elite, still determined to stamp out any challenge to its economic interests, will be optimistic of retaking control of the country. That would be a major step backwards for all those in Colombia who dream of living amid peace and social justice.
If you are attending Labour Party Conference, you can join JfC’s fringe meeting:
‘How a Labour Government Can Support Peace in Colombia’
Tuesday 24th September, 5-6.30pm: Room 14, ACC Liverpool
Please note, you must have a conference pass to attend this fringe.
Alirio Uribe will also be speaking at the following Labour Friends of Progressive Latin America event (open to all):
‘¡Viva la Solidaridad! Stand with Latin America’s Left’
Monday 23rd September, 6.30-8pm: The Racquet Club Hotel and Ziba Restaurant, Liverpool L3 9AG
Nick MacWilliam is Trade Union & Programmes Officer at Justice for Colombia.
Image: Colombia – Women Peace and Security: Reintegration of former female combatants is a key piece of implementing peace. https://www.flickr.com/photos/unwomen/52607403838 Creator: UN Women/Pedro P’o | Credit: UN Women/Pedro P’o Copyright: UN Women/Pedro P’o. Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
The Questions at the Heart of Conflict and Peace
By Heather Graci
September 18, 2024
“How do you balance dreams of peace with the complex reality of achieving it,” said conflict researcher Mareike Schomerus, “without giving up on the dream, but without ignoring the reality?”
Tensions permeate the work of those trying to understand the roots of conflict and pathways to peace. What motivates people to accept those they’ve only ever learned to hate? Why do people join extremist groups, and how do some get out? How do institutions contribute to violence, and how can they foster peace?
The answers to questions like these are far from simple. They are nuanced and context-dependent, but not out of reach. Recently, a group of people who have dedicated their careers to finding those answers convened at the third annual Neuropaz conference in Medellín, Colombia.
One of those people is Andrés Casas, the founder and organizer of Neuropaz, an annual conference in Colombia that explores how the behavioral sciences can promote peace. Casas led this year’s conference with support from local and international organizations, including Comfama, Fundación Corona, UNDP Colombia, and the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism. Across the four-day conference and workshop, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers from within Colombia and around the world came together to share what they’ve learned.
Colombia was a fitting setting for the gathering. After more than 60 years of war between the government and guerrilla and paramilitary groups, a peace deal in 2016 brought a formal end to the conflict. It was a significant step for the peace builders who had spent years dedicated to the cause. But their work was far from over. Since then, they’ve been working to ensure that the declaration of peace translates to peace in practice. Neuropaz is part of that ongoing mission.
During the conference, I spoke with eight of the local and international experts who have worked on conflicts in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and the U.S. and U.K. These are behavioral scientists who have convinced members of al-Qaeda to have their brains scanned in an fMRI machine, consulted with decision-makers on the ground in South Sudan in the years leading up to independence, and provided a platform for former guerrilla combatants and their victims to share their stories together.
Below are their reflections on the questions that define their work, the answers they’ve found so far, and their aspirations for what’s yet to come.
* * *
Economist Pablo Abitbol asks: “How can we build democracy in local communities to nurture more dignified human development?”
Pablo Abitbol is an economist at the Technological University of Bolívar and a member of the Montes de María Regional Space for Peace Construction in Colombia. He studies collective memory, cultural change, and deliberative democracy in an effort to restabilize the territories in Montes de María and Cartagena that were impacted by years of violence. Many of those territories are still governed by corrupt actors that neglect public institutions like education and mental health services. Abitbol works with local leaders to restore the voices of those who have been excluded from the democratic process and political decision-making within their own communities.
“Our approach is to create spaces and processes of democratic deliberation within these communities. We are trying to reincorporate into the democratic process its heart, which is what Amartya Sen calls government by discussion—exchange of arguments, being able to listen attentively and respectfully to others’ positions and worldviews, and being open to reconciling your own worldviews and perceptions with those of other people.
“One thing that emerged from these deliberative assemblies, which is what we call our specific design, is the precariousness of mental health services for these kinds of rural communities. They’re often totally absent or harm-producing.
“But given the absence of good mental services for these communities, many have developed their own practices for taking care of themselves. A paradigmatic example is the tejedoras, the weavers of Mampuján, a group of displaced women from the town of Mampuján. They were displaced by paramilitaries and had to resettle. A lot of pain, a lot of trauma. The women started gathering to make sancocho, which is a delicious soup that is typical of the region, and to take care of their hair. And then they started producing tapestries. Those tapestries tell the memory of their displacement and their resistance, and they have become an incredible work of art that is now in the National Museum of Colombia. And now they have their own museum of Mampuján. That is a clear example of how, in the absence of the institutional service of mental health, they developed their own way of healing anchored in their traditions.
“We have deliberated about how to connect local practices with institutions so that institutions might offer a better kind of service that is more connected with their communities. If you want to have better mental health services, or any other kind of service—state services, public services—you have to change the way that politics is done.”
* * *
Psychologist Boaz Hameiri asks: “Why is it so difficult to change people’s views about conflict?”
Boaz Hameiri is a senior lecturer and head of the Conflict Management and Mediation Program at Tel Aviv University. He studies the psychological barriers to conflict resolution and how we might overcome them. One of those barriers is cognitive freezing—a hallmark of intractable conflict. When our views about a conflict are characterized by closed-mindedness and rigidity, there’s little that activists and policymakers can do to garner support for peace. Unfreezing, then, is central to moving toward peaceful conflict resolution. A useful tool for unfreezing people’s views, Hameiri believes, are metaperceptions.
“Metaperceptions are what we think others think. When we talk about intergroup relations, they refer to what we think members of the outgroup think about us. If I’m Jewish Israeli, a metaperception is what I think Palestinians think about Israelis.
“We find that people tend to have pessimistic metaperceptions. They often think that people from the outgroup think much more negative things about them than they actually do. In a study published in 2020, led by Samantha Moore-Berg, we found that Democrats and Republicans in the United States are essentially in complete agreement: both of them think that the other party thinks much more negative things about them than they do in reality. They think that the other side dehumanizes them much more than reality. They think the other side dislikes them much more than reality. And the differences are staggering—on a 100-point dehumanization scale, the perceived dehumanization and dislike was 20 to 40 points higher than actual dehumanization and dislike.
You’re not trying to change people’s views about the outgroup . . . The only thing that you’re saying is: You think that they think something about you, but the truth is something else.
“But it’s not only that the divide is so big—it’s also consequential. If you think that the other side dislikes you, you dislike them in return. There’s a reciprocal response. If they dehumanize you, you dehumanize them.
“So metaperceptions are overly pessimistic and completely false in the vast majority of cases. If that’s the case, then you can correct these kinds of perceptions. And if you correct those erroneous metaperceptions, you can also reduce dehumanization and dislike.
“You’re not trying to change people’s views about the outgroup. You’re not trying to contest anything that they think about the outgroup. You’re not trying to persuade them to think something different. The only thing that you’re saying is: You think that they think something about you, but the truth is something else. It’s much easier to do—people will be less defensive.”
* * *
Conflict researcher Mareike Schomerus asks: “When working toward peace, how do we make visible the tension between an idealized version of the future and the reality of getting there?”
Mareike Schomerus is a vice president at Busara, an organization working to incorporate behavioral science into development work in the Global South, and author of Lives Amid Violence: Transforming Development in the Wake of Conflict (open access here). She studies the emotions, memories, experiences, and actions of people in situations of violent conflict to better understand how we might facilitate peace. Lately, Schomerus has been thinking about the mental models of conflict held by practitioners working toward peace and the cognitive dissonance that arises when reality is at odds with those models.
“I worked on the conflict in South Sudan five or six years before independence. Although this was a seemingly happy moment for a country about to become independent, we could see that conflict dynamics were already developing.
“I was trying to convey that concern to decision-makers. They would patiently and politely listen to me, but at some point you could see this cognitive dissonance click into action. They would go, ‘Yeah, but people wouldn’t throw away newly gained independence to go back to war.’ The decision-makers would dig in their heels and effectively say, ‘I just cannot imagine that this would be any other way than exactly how I imagine it to be.’
“There was this international wave of consensus that carrying South Sudan through the democratization process, elections, and a referendum on independence was going to be a huge international freedom fighter success story. After South Sudan went into horrific civil war, a lot of senior decision-makers said, ‘Well, if we’d only known.’ But people had written about this—it just didn’t fit into the narrative, the mental model of peacemaking, so it couldn’t be heard.
“People often imagine peace processes to be romantic, but the reality is human. The romanticism can be detrimental because it means you ignore the real problems. But sometimes it’s also quite beautiful—that’s where human dignity, hope, and beauty lie. How do you balance dreams with realities without giving up on the dreams, but without ignoring the reality? And if we know this tension to be true—the cognitive dissonance between dream and reality—how do we make it visible?”
* * *
Cognitive scientist Nafees Hamid asks: “Why do people join and leave extremist groups?”
Nafees Hamid is the research and policy director of XCEPT at King’s College London. He investigates how trauma and mental health influence an individual’s propensity for peace or violence. He has also studied political violence among groups spanning jihadists, white nationalists, and QAnon to better understand how individuals get pulled into extremist groups, and how we might pull them back out again.
“When people hold sacred values—values so morally important that they’re willing to give their lives—the material incentives that governments typically use to dissuade violence not only fail but actually backfire. If you’re trying to get people to compromise on their sacred values (if you’re trying to negotiate with the Taliban or trying to convince someone to not join a neo-Nazi group, for example), then you would be better off avoiding material incentives or disincentives. Instead, things like social inclusion, social norms, acknowledgment, symbolic concessions, making people feel like they’re heard, giving them space to talk—all become useful.
“Tools like social inclusion aren’t going to get rid of your sacred values, but they can adjust what you’re willing to do for them. Maybe you’re not going to fight, maybe you’re not going to kill people. On the other hand, when you socially exclude people, as our neuroscience studies on early-stage extremists show, you can see nonsacred values turning into sacred values. You can see that at the level of the brain. You can see both an increase in sacred values and an increased willingness to fight and die for those sacred values.
How do you make the extreme group feel . . . that they’re still part of the broader society, while at the same time making it clear that you do not support their level of violence?
“Now think about the wake of a terrorist attack, for example. You have political leaders telling this broader group, ‘You must condemn this extremist group in your midst. You must say they are not one of us.’ I understand where that’s coming from, but what you’re actually doing is severing the only vector of influence we have over these extreme people.
“It’s like telling people who have a child or relative in a cult to condemn them for being part of the group—to stop talking to them, to stop listening. Guess what’s going to happen if you do that? They become more a part of the cult. If you want to influence the cult, you want to make sure that each of those cult members still has multiple connections to the outside world—that’s the only way you can influence who they are and what they do.
“This is why demands for the broader population to condemn the more extreme population can, in some cases, make the problem worse, rather than better. And so the balance that the broader population must find is: How do you make the extreme group feel like they belong, that they’re still part of the broader society, while at the same time making it clear that you do not support their level of violence?”
* * *
Economist Sandra Polanía-Reyes asks: “How do we influence people’s preferences to achieve a less divided, more integrated society?”
Sandra Polanía-Reyes is an associate professor at the University of Navarra and a research associate at the Navarra Center for International Development. She studies social norms, trust, and cooperation and works to steer people toward prosocial behavior—to help them make decisions for the common good in contexts including migration and peace building.
“Mainstream economics would describe endogenous preferences—those shaped by our economic and sociocultural environment—as complex. But actually, in one word, it’s education. As we learn, we define our preferences, and then we behave according to our preferences. This is why early intervention is crucial. The brain is still developing, so helping children, teenagers, or young adults adopt prosocial behaviors during these formative years can have a lasting impact.
“For example, when kids are exposed to different phenotypical groups—in Europe, you have Black and Caucasian Europeans, African communities, refugees from Syria—in their public school classrooms when they are very young, there is evidence that when they are teenagers, it’s completely normal to interact with people that are different from them. We play together. We make the same mistakes. We both like soccer.
“This is an example in terms of phenotype, but of course there are many kinds of differences. In Colombia, we have Venezuelans and Colombians, and we are very similar physically, ethnically, religiously—so why does this still happen?
“Across contexts, we find that influencing endogenous preferences in kids by exposing them to diverse groups results in adults who are more generous, care about others, and are open to diversity—so many positive attributes that otherwise would have been much harder to cultivate in adults whose past experiences have shaped preferences that are far more difficult to change.”
* * *
Technologist and innovation researcher Martin Waehlisch asks: “How do we use new technologies to address global challenges in conflict prevention and peacemaking?”
Martin Waehlisch has been a leader in innovation at the United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and is now a researcher at the University of Birmingham. He focuses on how we can borrow knowledge from disciplines that haven’t typically played a role in the peace process—with a particular focus on computational social science—to measure things we haven’t been measuring, to communicate more accurately and effectively with peace constituencies, and to bring voices to the forefront that aren’t usually part of the peace process.
“Technology can play a role in the conflict prevention, management, and peace building phases equally. First, we can use new technologies to prevent conflict—for instance, to help us get a sense of public sentiments. When we know something is brewing, the data that we have on hand might ordinarily be built based on surveys or social media analysis in the best case. But now there are ways that we can multiply data sources to get a more thorough idea about what the public thinks at large, and those issues can then be addressed in order to prevent an outbreak of violence.
“Then we have the actual ongoing peace negotiation, which is right in the middle of the war. That’s where technology can help to bring people together who wouldn’t normally have the chance to be heard by politicians. One example is the digital dialogs we’ve been running for years where artificial intelligence is used to achieve the scale of a poll, but the intimacy of a focus group. Imagine thousands of people talking to each other at the same time about the same issue in a 45-minute conversation, and then an AI listening digitally to every individual, and then summarizing everything to instantly give the peace mediator a sense of what’s relevant.
Imagine thousands of people talking to each other at the same time . . . and an AI listening digitally to every individual, and then summarizing everything to instantly give the peace mediator a sense of what’s relevant.
“Trauma work usually comes at the very end of the peace process. I’m curious about how machines allow us to have conversations in a deeper way, in comparison to human-to-human conversations, when it comes to overcoming trauma. There’s research showing that people often feel more comfortable talking to a machine than a human psychologist—there seems to be some comfort in talking to an object whose memory can be deleted. It also gives more privacy and creates a sense of safety, to a certain extent. We only have a limited number of psychologists or mental health workers, so that’s where these technologies can step in. But of course, this must be approached with sensitivity and responsibility, as many questions remain around AI, including concerns about algorithmic biases and hallucinations.”
* * *
Behavioral science specialist Josh Martin asks: “How do ‘normal’ people—those who otherwise seem like typical members of society playing typical roles—come to participate in extreme action?”
Josh Martin is a lead expert in countering extremism at the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism and former director at ideas42 and Beyond Conflict, a project dedicated to applying behavioral science toward conflict resolution. One theme of his peace and conflict work is the often subtle pathways toward extremism and how we might use our knowledge of human behavior to help people detect, avoid, and escape them.
“One lens through which I often view this problem is channel factors—the bucket of behavioral mechanisms that conspire to put you on a path that you may not realize you’re on. And then they keep you there by imposing some nonmonetary cost for leaving that path.
“A lot of people who end up in extremist organizations, for instance, start on a path that looks nothing like that. Channel factors are things like networks of friends or your information environment on social media, but also much more mundane things like the timing of when you’re exposed to certain messages. These things all contribute to the existence of this channel that pushes you toward extremism.
“An example is the case of Adolf Eichmann. I just finished reading Hannah Arendt’s book about the banalities of evil, and there’s a quote by Eichmann: ‘It was like being swallowed up by the party against all expectations and without previous decision. It happened so quickly and suddenly.’ He ended up working on the Holocaust and murdering millions of people without any ideological predisposition on his part. Arendt is pretty skeptical about this—he’s not blameless. Just because people can be guided without their knowledge toward an extreme doesn’t make them blameless. We’re all still accountable for our actions. But she cites him as much more of an example of the situation acting on an individual than an individual who was violent from the beginning.
“We often want to console ourselves by thinking that people who do bad stuff are just bad because that keeps us from seeing ourselves in them. But all the evidence goes in the other direction. We are all the sort of people who might. It’s not that we’re all evil, or that there’s evil inside of us. That’s not the point. The point is that we are all people who, under the wrong set of circumstances, would do the wrong thing.
“And to be clear: you would never tell victims of armed conflict that they shouldn’t blame their perpetrators for the violence and atrocities. The distinction I would draw is between accountability and prevention. We should hold people accountable for not doing more to get themselves out of the channel. But it is totally fine to analyze the future behavior of others in a way that would lead us toward better prevention strategies. If we appreciated the ways in which the modern world can act upon somebody, then we might design the modern world slightly better.”
* * *
Psychologist Andrés Casas asks: “Can people change?”
Andrés Casas is a doctoral researcher studying neuroscience and conflict resolution across Latin America, the United States, Africa, and the Middle East. He is also the founder and organizer of Neuropaz, and the reason that all the experts quoted in this piece—among many other researchers and practitioners from Colombia and around the world—came together as a part of this effort to advance the science of peace. He shared a personal anecdote that captures the heart of his work.
“I grew up in a country where not supporting your side of the conflict was seen as inappropriate. You’re a coward—you’re not supporting your national identity while we’re fighting against these terrorists, the worst people in the world, who kidnap people, who commit massacres.
“But my grandpa was a political activist back in the 1940s. His mission, in a sense, was to educate us about the real situation of the country. And he worked with a famous political leader called Jorge Eliécer Gaitán who was an inspiration to all rebel causes—he was from one of the poorest sectors, made it through law school, and became an incredible communicator about the injustices of the country.
“Gaitán was assassinated in Bogotá in 1949, and his death changed the history of Colombia. That event was called El Bogotazo because the city got destroyed, and it sparked the outbreak of violence that persisted through the next 60 years. My grandpa was working with him, yet the people who rose up to avenge his death were responsible for the atrocities that followed. In my family, the idea that things are not black-and-white and that you need to educate yourself about context and the nuances of reality was very important.
If we appreciated the ways in which the modern world can act upon somebody, then we might design the modern world slightly better.
“That’s why I got into this. My mom, who has already passed away, was against FARC because she always worked to provide services for people who were victims of the insurgent violence. Colombia has the second highest rate of internal displacement after Syria, and my mother devoted the last part of her life to helping people in that situation. I’m so proud. But again, my mother was very prejudiced against FARC members because she saw the effects of what they did.
“When I was younger, difficult situations in my family made me think that people cannot change. I saw my mom working hard and doing this stuff for other people, but she was prejudiced against FARC. It was confusing. Growing up, I had a very difficult relationship with my mom, politically speaking, because she was on one side, I was on the other side.
“But my grandpa had educated me about politics. That’s why I became a political scientist. I want to go beyond just understanding political systems, I want to understand how political change happens. In a sense, my work was trying to convince my mom to think differently.
“She was diagnosed with cancer back in 2000. And before she passed, Emile [Bruneau, a peace scientist and former collaborator of mine who has also since passed away] and our team had managed to do the first stage of our project to help correct misperceptions of former FARC combatants and foster their peaceful reintegration into society. We had conducted the interviews, developed the first videos, and run the first study to find the video that worked best to reduce dehumanization and increase support for peace.
“My mother was sick already, but she was still aware. ‘Mom, I want to show you what we’re working on,’ I said to her. So we played the video, and I asked her, ‘What do you think about it?’
“And she told me, ‘Maybe I was wrong.’”
Disclosure: Mareike Schomerus is a vice president at Busara which provides financial support to Behavioral Scientist as an organizational partner. Organizational partners do not play a role in the editorial decisions of the magazine.
Heather Graci is an editor at the Behavioral Scientist and an editorial researcher who has worked with authors Angela Duckworth and Dan Heath. Previously, she was a research coordinator at the University of Pennsylvania’s Behavior Change for Good Initiative. She graduated in 2019 from Carnegie Mellon University with degrees in Behavioral Economics and Psychology.
By Heather Graci
September 18, 2024
“How do you balance dreams of peace with the complex reality of achieving it,” said conflict researcher Mareike Schomerus, “without giving up on the dream, but without ignoring the reality?”
Tensions permeate the work of those trying to understand the roots of conflict and pathways to peace. What motivates people to accept those they’ve only ever learned to hate? Why do people join extremist groups, and how do some get out? How do institutions contribute to violence, and how can they foster peace?
The answers to questions like these are far from simple. They are nuanced and context-dependent, but not out of reach. Recently, a group of people who have dedicated their careers to finding those answers convened at the third annual Neuropaz conference in Medellín, Colombia.
One of those people is Andrés Casas, the founder and organizer of Neuropaz, an annual conference in Colombia that explores how the behavioral sciences can promote peace. Casas led this year’s conference with support from local and international organizations, including Comfama, Fundación Corona, UNDP Colombia, and the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism. Across the four-day conference and workshop, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers from within Colombia and around the world came together to share what they’ve learned.
Colombia was a fitting setting for the gathering. After more than 60 years of war between the government and guerrilla and paramilitary groups, a peace deal in 2016 brought a formal end to the conflict. It was a significant step for the peace builders who had spent years dedicated to the cause. But their work was far from over. Since then, they’ve been working to ensure that the declaration of peace translates to peace in practice. Neuropaz is part of that ongoing mission.
During the conference, I spoke with eight of the local and international experts who have worked on conflicts in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and the U.S. and U.K. These are behavioral scientists who have convinced members of al-Qaeda to have their brains scanned in an fMRI machine, consulted with decision-makers on the ground in South Sudan in the years leading up to independence, and provided a platform for former guerrilla combatants and their victims to share their stories together.
Below are their reflections on the questions that define their work, the answers they’ve found so far, and their aspirations for what’s yet to come.
* * *
Economist Pablo Abitbol asks: “How can we build democracy in local communities to nurture more dignified human development?”
Pablo Abitbol is an economist at the Technological University of Bolívar and a member of the Montes de María Regional Space for Peace Construction in Colombia. He studies collective memory, cultural change, and deliberative democracy in an effort to restabilize the territories in Montes de María and Cartagena that were impacted by years of violence. Many of those territories are still governed by corrupt actors that neglect public institutions like education and mental health services. Abitbol works with local leaders to restore the voices of those who have been excluded from the democratic process and political decision-making within their own communities.
“Our approach is to create spaces and processes of democratic deliberation within these communities. We are trying to reincorporate into the democratic process its heart, which is what Amartya Sen calls government by discussion—exchange of arguments, being able to listen attentively and respectfully to others’ positions and worldviews, and being open to reconciling your own worldviews and perceptions with those of other people.
“One thing that emerged from these deliberative assemblies, which is what we call our specific design, is the precariousness of mental health services for these kinds of rural communities. They’re often totally absent or harm-producing.
“But given the absence of good mental services for these communities, many have developed their own practices for taking care of themselves. A paradigmatic example is the tejedoras, the weavers of Mampuján, a group of displaced women from the town of Mampuján. They were displaced by paramilitaries and had to resettle. A lot of pain, a lot of trauma. The women started gathering to make sancocho, which is a delicious soup that is typical of the region, and to take care of their hair. And then they started producing tapestries. Those tapestries tell the memory of their displacement and their resistance, and they have become an incredible work of art that is now in the National Museum of Colombia. And now they have their own museum of Mampuján. That is a clear example of how, in the absence of the institutional service of mental health, they developed their own way of healing anchored in their traditions.
“We have deliberated about how to connect local practices with institutions so that institutions might offer a better kind of service that is more connected with their communities. If you want to have better mental health services, or any other kind of service—state services, public services—you have to change the way that politics is done.”
* * *
Psychologist Boaz Hameiri asks: “Why is it so difficult to change people’s views about conflict?”
Boaz Hameiri is a senior lecturer and head of the Conflict Management and Mediation Program at Tel Aviv University. He studies the psychological barriers to conflict resolution and how we might overcome them. One of those barriers is cognitive freezing—a hallmark of intractable conflict. When our views about a conflict are characterized by closed-mindedness and rigidity, there’s little that activists and policymakers can do to garner support for peace. Unfreezing, then, is central to moving toward peaceful conflict resolution. A useful tool for unfreezing people’s views, Hameiri believes, are metaperceptions.
“Metaperceptions are what we think others think. When we talk about intergroup relations, they refer to what we think members of the outgroup think about us. If I’m Jewish Israeli, a metaperception is what I think Palestinians think about Israelis.
“We find that people tend to have pessimistic metaperceptions. They often think that people from the outgroup think much more negative things about them than they actually do. In a study published in 2020, led by Samantha Moore-Berg, we found that Democrats and Republicans in the United States are essentially in complete agreement: both of them think that the other party thinks much more negative things about them than they do in reality. They think that the other side dehumanizes them much more than reality. They think the other side dislikes them much more than reality. And the differences are staggering—on a 100-point dehumanization scale, the perceived dehumanization and dislike was 20 to 40 points higher than actual dehumanization and dislike.
You’re not trying to change people’s views about the outgroup . . . The only thing that you’re saying is: You think that they think something about you, but the truth is something else.
“But it’s not only that the divide is so big—it’s also consequential. If you think that the other side dislikes you, you dislike them in return. There’s a reciprocal response. If they dehumanize you, you dehumanize them.
“So metaperceptions are overly pessimistic and completely false in the vast majority of cases. If that’s the case, then you can correct these kinds of perceptions. And if you correct those erroneous metaperceptions, you can also reduce dehumanization and dislike.
“You’re not trying to change people’s views about the outgroup. You’re not trying to contest anything that they think about the outgroup. You’re not trying to persuade them to think something different. The only thing that you’re saying is: You think that they think something about you, but the truth is something else. It’s much easier to do—people will be less defensive.”
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Conflict researcher Mareike Schomerus asks: “When working toward peace, how do we make visible the tension between an idealized version of the future and the reality of getting there?”
Mareike Schomerus is a vice president at Busara, an organization working to incorporate behavioral science into development work in the Global South, and author of Lives Amid Violence: Transforming Development in the Wake of Conflict (open access here). She studies the emotions, memories, experiences, and actions of people in situations of violent conflict to better understand how we might facilitate peace. Lately, Schomerus has been thinking about the mental models of conflict held by practitioners working toward peace and the cognitive dissonance that arises when reality is at odds with those models.
“I worked on the conflict in South Sudan five or six years before independence. Although this was a seemingly happy moment for a country about to become independent, we could see that conflict dynamics were already developing.
“I was trying to convey that concern to decision-makers. They would patiently and politely listen to me, but at some point you could see this cognitive dissonance click into action. They would go, ‘Yeah, but people wouldn’t throw away newly gained independence to go back to war.’ The decision-makers would dig in their heels and effectively say, ‘I just cannot imagine that this would be any other way than exactly how I imagine it to be.’
“There was this international wave of consensus that carrying South Sudan through the democratization process, elections, and a referendum on independence was going to be a huge international freedom fighter success story. After South Sudan went into horrific civil war, a lot of senior decision-makers said, ‘Well, if we’d only known.’ But people had written about this—it just didn’t fit into the narrative, the mental model of peacemaking, so it couldn’t be heard.
“People often imagine peace processes to be romantic, but the reality is human. The romanticism can be detrimental because it means you ignore the real problems. But sometimes it’s also quite beautiful—that’s where human dignity, hope, and beauty lie. How do you balance dreams with realities without giving up on the dreams, but without ignoring the reality? And if we know this tension to be true—the cognitive dissonance between dream and reality—how do we make it visible?”
* * *
Cognitive scientist Nafees Hamid asks: “Why do people join and leave extremist groups?”
Nafees Hamid is the research and policy director of XCEPT at King’s College London. He investigates how trauma and mental health influence an individual’s propensity for peace or violence. He has also studied political violence among groups spanning jihadists, white nationalists, and QAnon to better understand how individuals get pulled into extremist groups, and how we might pull them back out again.
“When people hold sacred values—values so morally important that they’re willing to give their lives—the material incentives that governments typically use to dissuade violence not only fail but actually backfire. If you’re trying to get people to compromise on their sacred values (if you’re trying to negotiate with the Taliban or trying to convince someone to not join a neo-Nazi group, for example), then you would be better off avoiding material incentives or disincentives. Instead, things like social inclusion, social norms, acknowledgment, symbolic concessions, making people feel like they’re heard, giving them space to talk—all become useful.
“Tools like social inclusion aren’t going to get rid of your sacred values, but they can adjust what you’re willing to do for them. Maybe you’re not going to fight, maybe you’re not going to kill people. On the other hand, when you socially exclude people, as our neuroscience studies on early-stage extremists show, you can see nonsacred values turning into sacred values. You can see that at the level of the brain. You can see both an increase in sacred values and an increased willingness to fight and die for those sacred values.
How do you make the extreme group feel . . . that they’re still part of the broader society, while at the same time making it clear that you do not support their level of violence?
“Now think about the wake of a terrorist attack, for example. You have political leaders telling this broader group, ‘You must condemn this extremist group in your midst. You must say they are not one of us.’ I understand where that’s coming from, but what you’re actually doing is severing the only vector of influence we have over these extreme people.
“It’s like telling people who have a child or relative in a cult to condemn them for being part of the group—to stop talking to them, to stop listening. Guess what’s going to happen if you do that? They become more a part of the cult. If you want to influence the cult, you want to make sure that each of those cult members still has multiple connections to the outside world—that’s the only way you can influence who they are and what they do.
“This is why demands for the broader population to condemn the more extreme population can, in some cases, make the problem worse, rather than better. And so the balance that the broader population must find is: How do you make the extreme group feel like they belong, that they’re still part of the broader society, while at the same time making it clear that you do not support their level of violence?”
* * *
Economist Sandra Polanía-Reyes asks: “How do we influence people’s preferences to achieve a less divided, more integrated society?”
Sandra Polanía-Reyes is an associate professor at the University of Navarra and a research associate at the Navarra Center for International Development. She studies social norms, trust, and cooperation and works to steer people toward prosocial behavior—to help them make decisions for the common good in contexts including migration and peace building.
“Mainstream economics would describe endogenous preferences—those shaped by our economic and sociocultural environment—as complex. But actually, in one word, it’s education. As we learn, we define our preferences, and then we behave according to our preferences. This is why early intervention is crucial. The brain is still developing, so helping children, teenagers, or young adults adopt prosocial behaviors during these formative years can have a lasting impact.
“For example, when kids are exposed to different phenotypical groups—in Europe, you have Black and Caucasian Europeans, African communities, refugees from Syria—in their public school classrooms when they are very young, there is evidence that when they are teenagers, it’s completely normal to interact with people that are different from them. We play together. We make the same mistakes. We both like soccer.
“This is an example in terms of phenotype, but of course there are many kinds of differences. In Colombia, we have Venezuelans and Colombians, and we are very similar physically, ethnically, religiously—so why does this still happen?
“Across contexts, we find that influencing endogenous preferences in kids by exposing them to diverse groups results in adults who are more generous, care about others, and are open to diversity—so many positive attributes that otherwise would have been much harder to cultivate in adults whose past experiences have shaped preferences that are far more difficult to change.”
* * *
Technologist and innovation researcher Martin Waehlisch asks: “How do we use new technologies to address global challenges in conflict prevention and peacemaking?”
Martin Waehlisch has been a leader in innovation at the United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and is now a researcher at the University of Birmingham. He focuses on how we can borrow knowledge from disciplines that haven’t typically played a role in the peace process—with a particular focus on computational social science—to measure things we haven’t been measuring, to communicate more accurately and effectively with peace constituencies, and to bring voices to the forefront that aren’t usually part of the peace process.
“Technology can play a role in the conflict prevention, management, and peace building phases equally. First, we can use new technologies to prevent conflict—for instance, to help us get a sense of public sentiments. When we know something is brewing, the data that we have on hand might ordinarily be built based on surveys or social media analysis in the best case. But now there are ways that we can multiply data sources to get a more thorough idea about what the public thinks at large, and those issues can then be addressed in order to prevent an outbreak of violence.
“Then we have the actual ongoing peace negotiation, which is right in the middle of the war. That’s where technology can help to bring people together who wouldn’t normally have the chance to be heard by politicians. One example is the digital dialogs we’ve been running for years where artificial intelligence is used to achieve the scale of a poll, but the intimacy of a focus group. Imagine thousands of people talking to each other at the same time about the same issue in a 45-minute conversation, and then an AI listening digitally to every individual, and then summarizing everything to instantly give the peace mediator a sense of what’s relevant.
Imagine thousands of people talking to each other at the same time . . . and an AI listening digitally to every individual, and then summarizing everything to instantly give the peace mediator a sense of what’s relevant.
“Trauma work usually comes at the very end of the peace process. I’m curious about how machines allow us to have conversations in a deeper way, in comparison to human-to-human conversations, when it comes to overcoming trauma. There’s research showing that people often feel more comfortable talking to a machine than a human psychologist—there seems to be some comfort in talking to an object whose memory can be deleted. It also gives more privacy and creates a sense of safety, to a certain extent. We only have a limited number of psychologists or mental health workers, so that’s where these technologies can step in. But of course, this must be approached with sensitivity and responsibility, as many questions remain around AI, including concerns about algorithmic biases and hallucinations.”
* * *
Behavioral science specialist Josh Martin asks: “How do ‘normal’ people—those who otherwise seem like typical members of society playing typical roles—come to participate in extreme action?”
Josh Martin is a lead expert in countering extremism at the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism and former director at ideas42 and Beyond Conflict, a project dedicated to applying behavioral science toward conflict resolution. One theme of his peace and conflict work is the often subtle pathways toward extremism and how we might use our knowledge of human behavior to help people detect, avoid, and escape them.
“One lens through which I often view this problem is channel factors—the bucket of behavioral mechanisms that conspire to put you on a path that you may not realize you’re on. And then they keep you there by imposing some nonmonetary cost for leaving that path.
“A lot of people who end up in extremist organizations, for instance, start on a path that looks nothing like that. Channel factors are things like networks of friends or your information environment on social media, but also much more mundane things like the timing of when you’re exposed to certain messages. These things all contribute to the existence of this channel that pushes you toward extremism.
“An example is the case of Adolf Eichmann. I just finished reading Hannah Arendt’s book about the banalities of evil, and there’s a quote by Eichmann: ‘It was like being swallowed up by the party against all expectations and without previous decision. It happened so quickly and suddenly.’ He ended up working on the Holocaust and murdering millions of people without any ideological predisposition on his part. Arendt is pretty skeptical about this—he’s not blameless. Just because people can be guided without their knowledge toward an extreme doesn’t make them blameless. We’re all still accountable for our actions. But she cites him as much more of an example of the situation acting on an individual than an individual who was violent from the beginning.
“We often want to console ourselves by thinking that people who do bad stuff are just bad because that keeps us from seeing ourselves in them. But all the evidence goes in the other direction. We are all the sort of people who might. It’s not that we’re all evil, or that there’s evil inside of us. That’s not the point. The point is that we are all people who, under the wrong set of circumstances, would do the wrong thing.
“And to be clear: you would never tell victims of armed conflict that they shouldn’t blame their perpetrators for the violence and atrocities. The distinction I would draw is between accountability and prevention. We should hold people accountable for not doing more to get themselves out of the channel. But it is totally fine to analyze the future behavior of others in a way that would lead us toward better prevention strategies. If we appreciated the ways in which the modern world can act upon somebody, then we might design the modern world slightly better.”
* * *
Psychologist Andrés Casas asks: “Can people change?”
Andrés Casas is a doctoral researcher studying neuroscience and conflict resolution across Latin America, the United States, Africa, and the Middle East. He is also the founder and organizer of Neuropaz, and the reason that all the experts quoted in this piece—among many other researchers and practitioners from Colombia and around the world—came together as a part of this effort to advance the science of peace. He shared a personal anecdote that captures the heart of his work.
“I grew up in a country where not supporting your side of the conflict was seen as inappropriate. You’re a coward—you’re not supporting your national identity while we’re fighting against these terrorists, the worst people in the world, who kidnap people, who commit massacres.
“But my grandpa was a political activist back in the 1940s. His mission, in a sense, was to educate us about the real situation of the country. And he worked with a famous political leader called Jorge Eliécer Gaitán who was an inspiration to all rebel causes—he was from one of the poorest sectors, made it through law school, and became an incredible communicator about the injustices of the country.
“Gaitán was assassinated in Bogotá in 1949, and his death changed the history of Colombia. That event was called El Bogotazo because the city got destroyed, and it sparked the outbreak of violence that persisted through the next 60 years. My grandpa was working with him, yet the people who rose up to avenge his death were responsible for the atrocities that followed. In my family, the idea that things are not black-and-white and that you need to educate yourself about context and the nuances of reality was very important.
If we appreciated the ways in which the modern world can act upon somebody, then we might design the modern world slightly better.
“That’s why I got into this. My mom, who has already passed away, was against FARC because she always worked to provide services for people who were victims of the insurgent violence. Colombia has the second highest rate of internal displacement after Syria, and my mother devoted the last part of her life to helping people in that situation. I’m so proud. But again, my mother was very prejudiced against FARC members because she saw the effects of what they did.
“When I was younger, difficult situations in my family made me think that people cannot change. I saw my mom working hard and doing this stuff for other people, but she was prejudiced against FARC. It was confusing. Growing up, I had a very difficult relationship with my mom, politically speaking, because she was on one side, I was on the other side.
“But my grandpa had educated me about politics. That’s why I became a political scientist. I want to go beyond just understanding political systems, I want to understand how political change happens. In a sense, my work was trying to convince my mom to think differently.
“She was diagnosed with cancer back in 2000. And before she passed, Emile [Bruneau, a peace scientist and former collaborator of mine who has also since passed away] and our team had managed to do the first stage of our project to help correct misperceptions of former FARC combatants and foster their peaceful reintegration into society. We had conducted the interviews, developed the first videos, and run the first study to find the video that worked best to reduce dehumanization and increase support for peace.
“My mother was sick already, but she was still aware. ‘Mom, I want to show you what we’re working on,’ I said to her. So we played the video, and I asked her, ‘What do you think about it?’
“And she told me, ‘Maybe I was wrong.’”
Disclosure: Mareike Schomerus is a vice president at Busara which provides financial support to Behavioral Scientist as an organizational partner. Organizational partners do not play a role in the editorial decisions of the magazine.
Heather Graci is an editor at the Behavioral Scientist and an editorial researcher who has worked with authors Angela Duckworth and Dan Heath. Previously, she was a research coordinator at the University of Pennsylvania’s Behavior Change for Good Initiative. She graduated in 2019 from Carnegie Mellon University with degrees in Behavioral Economics and Psychology.
Tuesday, August 20, 2024
Perspective: Colombia's Security Crisis – An Emerging Dilemma for US Foreign Policy
César Niño
Tue, 08/20/2024 -
Colombia is currently experiencing a significant national security crisis, hindering territorial consolidation and strategic advancements against both internal and external threats. The “Total Peace” (“Paz total”) policy implemented by the administration of President Gustavo Petro has encountered critical shortcomings, jeopardizing both Colombian security and regional stability. Key issues include the paralysis of the military forces amidst negotiations with armed groups, the proliferation and expansion of criminal organizations that threaten national stability, and a diminished deterrence capacity against external threats.
Colombian Military Police Welcome US Army Chief of Staff, Bogotá 2012.
Public Domain, DVIDS
Bogotá has long been a key ally of the United States in combating drug trafficking, terrorism, and organized crime. For decades, successive Colombian governments have maintained a strong diplomatic relationship with the US, facilitating the exchange of intelligence, strategies, and doctrines to achieve shared goals. One notable collaboration is the various phases of Plan Colombia, which significantly advanced the professionalization of Colombian security forces. It also enhanced their strategic capabilities to conduct combat operations under asymmetric conditions and to effectively counter threats from armed groups, particularly the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC), the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Naciona – ELN), and paramilitary organizations.
However, this close relationship has led to tensions with neighboring countries, particularly Venezuela and Ecuador. Under the administrations of Hugo Chávez, Nicolás Maduro, and Rafael Correa, these nations viewed the Colombian governments of Álvaro Uribe, Juan Manuel Santos, and Iván Duque as adversaries representing US interests in the region. The 2016 Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas offered hope for resolving issues related to security, crime, and terrorism. Nonetheless, even during the peace negotiations, dissident factions emerged, leading to the resurgence and revitalization of armed groups. These factions forged criminal alliances with former rival organizations and contributed to new forms of violence and criminality.
The state of Colombian national security
Under Gustavo Petro’s presidency (2022–2026), the government designed a security policy focused on the human security dimension. This policy argues that meeting the population's basic needs positively impacts national security and reduces violence. However, official government documents fail to clarify the national security concept it aims to achieve. Paradoxically, security remains an unresolved issue in Colombia because decision-makers developed a Total Peace policy without a thorough understanding of national security. This oversight has created strategic uncertainty for the security forces and decision-makers, as they have set up simultaneous negotiation tables with FARC dissidents, the ELN, criminal gangs, and other groups. Meanwhile, the groups negotiating with the government continue their involvement in drug trafficking, human trafficking, illegal mining, and terrorism. For instance, the ELN and dissidents led by alias “Iván Mordisco” control over half of the cocaine trafficking routes out of Colombia, particularly to the United States and Europe.
Despite the FARC's demobilization, peace in Colombia remains an elusive goal while insecurity grows. The ambitious “Total Peace” project aims to achieve sustainable peace in the country. However, the current security situation and rising violence reflect a crisis in implementing this project. New criminal actors have emerged, the number of massacres has increased, marginalized communities face heightened confinement, and ambushes against security forces continue. One major challenge is the disconnect between the Total Peace policy and the security and defense strategies. This lack of coordination has allowed armed groups to strengthen and led to non-compliance with some agreements by criminal actors in the negotiation processes. While violence directed at the state has decreased, criminal violence against civilians has increased, suggesting an armed peace rather than true Total Peace.
Various regions of Colombia have experienced an increased presence of illegal armed groups, including the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia – AGC or Clan del Golfo), the ELN, FARC dissidents, and both domestic and foreign organized crime structures. Among these groups, the AGC have shown the greatest expansion, increasing their influence from 253 municipalities in 2022 to 392 in the past year. FARC dissidents (Estado Mayor Central and Segunda Marquetalia) follow, expanding from 230 localities to 299 in the same period. This expansion indicates a displacement of the state in its own territory and suggests that state security capacities have been insufficient to prevent the criminal recycling and geographic expansion of these groups, which control strategic areas.
The state of the Colombian military forces
So far this century, Colombia has allocated an average of 3.2% of its gross domestic product to security and defense, a figure comparable to the 3.8% spent by the United States. This allocation is the highest in Latin America and reflects a long history of armed conflict that has driven military investment, along with the US alliance to combat transnational threats. This partnership has secured Colombia a priority position as a global NATO partner. The Colombian military’s experience in irregular warfare, asymmetric conflicts, and complex operations such as humanitarian demining has made it a reference in contemporary hybrid warfare and military diplomacy cooperation projects. However, defense spending has substantially decreased over the past two years. Under President Petro’s administration, it has dropped to 2.8%, despite the country’s continued conflict and growing security challenges. The proliferation of armed groups in various regions of Colombia, along with the involvement of international criminal actors, means that, despite having robust military forces (456,000 troops, the second largest in Latin America after Brazil), security remains paralyzed and in crisis. While Colombia does not face existential threats from abroad, such as a hypothetical invasion or nuclear tension, its military capacity has not significantly reduced internal threats. Although armed groups are negotiating with the government and some cease-fires have been agreed upon, it appears that the security and defense system has suspended its offensive capabilities to confront these groups.
In recent months, the ELN, FARC dissidents, and other organizations have started using drones to launch explosives at the army and civilian population. This method has enabled precise and lethal attacks on specific targets, including strategic infrastructure. Modified drones carrying explosive charges have become tools of war, complicating national security due to their low cost and the difficulty in detecting their use. These attacks pose a significant challenge to the state's defensive capabilities and raise concerns about escalating violence and the increasing sophistication of tactics used by non-state actors. While Petro's government has introduced a new project called the Sistema Integral de Defensa Nacional (SIDEN), or Integrated National Defense System, aimed at renewing military equipment for defensive and offensive purposes to protect the country’s energy, industrial, and strategic assets in a conflict scenario, the project does not seem to address the dynamics of national crime effectively.
Why should the next U.S. government care?
The insecurity sweeping Colombia is a US national security issue. Drug trafficking and organized crime in Colombia should be a central focus of the next US administration's foreign policy. For example, events in the Cauca department of Colombia significantly affect the geopolitical dynamics of crime in the hemisphere. The interactions among armed groups surpass the deterrent and strategic capabilities of states, making it crucial for Washington to prioritize understanding the regional criminal order, which has a key starting point in Colombia. Additionally, Colombian armed groups are developing dangerous networked relationships with extra-continental terrorist organizations, such as the ELN’s interactions with Hezbollah in the Arauca region, near Venezuela. Furthermore, Colombia serves as a corridor for transnational crime, exemplified by the Tren de Aragua (Aragua Train), which has established criminal franchises throughout South and Central America, posing significant risks to the United States.
The foreign and security policy approach to Colombia should emphasize increased cooperation to enhance internal and intelligence capabilities. It should also pressure the Petro government to define a national security concept that addresses the territorial and social particularities of each region in Colombia. In the strategic framework between Washington and Bogotá, it is important to recognize the existence of criminal governance and sovereignty. Ultimately, the security risks in Colombia and Latin America stem from crime-related deaths, not nuclear threats, although these crimes are no less lethal.
Categories: El Centro
About the Author(s)
César Niño
Dr. Niño is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the Universidad de La Salle (La Salle University) in Bogotá, Colombia. He is a researcher in national security, international terrorism, organized crime and foreign policy.
Tuesday, August 13, 2024
Colombian villagers release more than 60 soldiers who had been held captive for 3 days
BY MANUEL RUEDA
August 12, 2024
BOGOTÁ, Colombia (AP) — Colombia’s defense ministry on Monday said 66 soldiers who had been “kidnapped” by villagers in the south of the country were released unharmed and will continue to carry out operations against rebel groups in the province of Guaviare.
Colombia’s army has long struggled to defeat rebel groups in the Guaviare area, which has been heavily affected by deforestation and cocaine trafficking. The rebels sometimes exert control over remote settlements in the area.
In a message posted on the social platform X, the defense ministry said the soldiers had been held since Friday by large numbers of villagers who were following orders from a local rebel group, known as the Jorge Suarez Briceño front.
On Sunday, Colombia’s defense minister had threatened to break off a ceasefire with the Briceño front if the soldiers were not released.
The province’s governor, Yeison Roja, told Colombia’s Caracol TV network that while some of the villagers who detained the soldiers could have been influenced by the rebel group, others were attempting to protest the army’s presence because they don’t want more fighting in the area.
RELATED COVERAGE
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Colombia is currently holding peace negotiations with several armed groups that refused to join a 2016 peace deal between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, in which more than 14,000 fighters laid down their arms.
The Briceño Front, is part of the FARC-EMC, a group of around 4,400 fighters that split recently, with around 40% of its fighters continuing negotiations with the government, while the rest walked away from peace talks and are now fighting the army in rural parts of Colombia.
In a statement published on Saturday, Colombia’s army said the soldiers who had been detained were headed to two villages where business owners had complained they were being extorted by the Briceño front.
BY MANUEL RUEDA
August 12, 2024
BOGOTÁ, Colombia (AP) — Colombia’s defense ministry on Monday said 66 soldiers who had been “kidnapped” by villagers in the south of the country were released unharmed and will continue to carry out operations against rebel groups in the province of Guaviare.
Colombia’s army has long struggled to defeat rebel groups in the Guaviare area, which has been heavily affected by deforestation and cocaine trafficking. The rebels sometimes exert control over remote settlements in the area.
In a message posted on the social platform X, the defense ministry said the soldiers had been held since Friday by large numbers of villagers who were following orders from a local rebel group, known as the Jorge Suarez Briceño front.
On Sunday, Colombia’s defense minister had threatened to break off a ceasefire with the Briceño front if the soldiers were not released.
The province’s governor, Yeison Roja, told Colombia’s Caracol TV network that while some of the villagers who detained the soldiers could have been influenced by the rebel group, others were attempting to protest the army’s presence because they don’t want more fighting in the area.
RELATED COVERAGE
Colombia’s President Petro was the target of a possible attack in July, says defense minister
Colombia’s congress considers ban on Pablo Escobar souvenirs
Colombia is currently holding peace negotiations with several armed groups that refused to join a 2016 peace deal between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, in which more than 14,000 fighters laid down their arms.
The Briceño Front, is part of the FARC-EMC, a group of around 4,400 fighters that split recently, with around 40% of its fighters continuing negotiations with the government, while the rest walked away from peace talks and are now fighting the army in rural parts of Colombia.
In a statement published on Saturday, Colombia’s army said the soldiers who had been detained were headed to two villages where business owners had complained they were being extorted by the Briceño front.
Thursday, August 01, 2024
Colombia rebels to halt attacks during UN biodiversity summit
Bogotá (AFP) – Colombia's EMC guerrilla group said Thursday it would not launch attacks in the city of Cali during the upcoming COP16 UN biodiversity summit, as it had previously threatened.
Issued on: 01/08/2024
Bogotá (AFP) – Colombia's EMC guerrilla group said Thursday it would not launch attacks in the city of Cali during the upcoming COP16 UN biodiversity summit, as it had previously threatened.
Issued on: 01/08/2024
Colombian special forces stand guard at Farallones de Cali National Natural Park on the outskirts of Cali on July 6, 2024, during security operations ahead of the upcoming COP16 Summit
© JOAQUIN SARMIENTO / AFP/File
The rebels, who broke away from the FARC guerrilla movement when that group signed a peace deal in 2016, had ramped up attacks in towns around Cali in recent months, with a spate of bombings and shootings setting authorities on edge.
"To guarantee the smooth running of COP16 we decree the suspension of offensive military operations against public forces in the city of Cali, in the period between October 11 and November 6."
The summit runs from October 21 to November 1.
In July, the EMC warned the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP16) of the Convention on Biological Diversity "will fail even if they militarize the city with foreigners."
The event hopes to attract some 12,000 delegates and exhibitors, as well as heads of state, to one of the world's most biodiverse countries.
Presenting itself as "protector of forests, waters and animals," the EMC criticizes COP16 as an event that prioritizes commercial interests and "justifies militarism."
But this summit is an opportunity "to open a debate on the need for a change in the economic model and a questioning of extractivism and predatory exploitation of the planet," the statement said.
The summit security manager, General William Castano, recently said more than 10,000 uniformed officers supported by Interpol, Europol and Ameripol were working on defense and intelligence cooperation dubbed the "Hummingbird Plan."
The idea is to "minimize criminals' attempts to affect security at the COP," he said.
Cali is the capital of the southwestern Valle del Cauca department, an EMC stronghold and the main coca-growing region in Colombia, the world's largest cocaine producer.
Being granted COP16 host status was a major coup for Gustavo Petro, Colombia's first-ever leftist president, who campaigned on an ambitious conservation and climate change program.
Petro has seen his quest to achieve "total peace" in a nation struggling to emerge from decades of armed conflict bogged down in complicated negotiations with a variety of armed groups.
The EMC recently split into supporters of Petro's peace efforts and opponents led by a man known as Ivan Mordisco, who commands an estimated 2,000 fighters.
Rights groups accuse guerrillas in Colombia of taking advantage of various ceasefires to expand their influence by seizing more territory and recruiting new members.
© 2024 AFP
"To guarantee the smooth running of COP16 we decree the suspension of offensive military operations against public forces in the city of Cali, in the period between October 11 and November 6."
The summit runs from October 21 to November 1.
In July, the EMC warned the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP16) of the Convention on Biological Diversity "will fail even if they militarize the city with foreigners."
The event hopes to attract some 12,000 delegates and exhibitors, as well as heads of state, to one of the world's most biodiverse countries.
Presenting itself as "protector of forests, waters and animals," the EMC criticizes COP16 as an event that prioritizes commercial interests and "justifies militarism."
But this summit is an opportunity "to open a debate on the need for a change in the economic model and a questioning of extractivism and predatory exploitation of the planet," the statement said.
The summit security manager, General William Castano, recently said more than 10,000 uniformed officers supported by Interpol, Europol and Ameripol were working on defense and intelligence cooperation dubbed the "Hummingbird Plan."
The idea is to "minimize criminals' attempts to affect security at the COP," he said.
Cali is the capital of the southwestern Valle del Cauca department, an EMC stronghold and the main coca-growing region in Colombia, the world's largest cocaine producer.
Being granted COP16 host status was a major coup for Gustavo Petro, Colombia's first-ever leftist president, who campaigned on an ambitious conservation and climate change program.
Petro has seen his quest to achieve "total peace" in a nation struggling to emerge from decades of armed conflict bogged down in complicated negotiations with a variety of armed groups.
The EMC recently split into supporters of Petro's peace efforts and opponents led by a man known as Ivan Mordisco, who commands an estimated 2,000 fighters.
Rights groups accuse guerrillas in Colombia of taking advantage of various ceasefires to expand their influence by seizing more territory and recruiting new members.
© 2024 AFP
Thursday, July 25, 2024
Victims Win Historic Victory Against Chiquita in Colombia Paramilitary Case
JULY 25, 2024
Photograph Source: APIMADERO – CC BY-SA 3.0
In what prosecutors called a “landmark ruling in the fight for human rights,” a U.S. jury in Miami has found banana giant Chiquita Brands International liable for the deaths of Colombian civilians due to its financing of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a brutal paramilitary death squad.
The AUC was responsible for thousands of civilian deaths and hundreds of other human rights violations while it was active between the late 1990s and mid-2000s, some of the most violent years of the Colombian civil war. The ruling holds Chiquita accountable for making hidden payments to the paramilitary organization from 1997 to 2004. Even in the early years, the group’s atrocities were already well documented not just in Colombian media, but also in the United States, where the State Department declared the AUC a terrorist organization in 2001.
After 17 years of legal proceedings, the first set of victims and their families have finally attained a measure of closure. The jury ruled that Chiquita must pay $38.3 million to plaintiffs in eight of the nine “bellwether” murder cases presented in the six-week trial.
The families brought the suit after Chiquita pleaded guilty in a U.S. criminal case in 2007 to making over 100 payments to the AUC totaling more than $1.7 million over more than six years.
“This historic ruling marks the first time that an American jury has held a major U.S. corporation liable for complicity in serious human rights abuses in another country, a milestone for justice,” EarthRights International, the NGO that represented plaintiffs, said in public statements immediately following the ruling.
As part of Colombia’s 2016 peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country created an independent transitional justice body to investigate crimes against humanity committed by both armed groups and Colombian security forces. The investigations have included cases like the “false positives” scandal, in which the military, with the aid of AUC forces, killed over 6,400 innocent civilians and recorded them as guerilla fighters to inflate rebel casualty statistics at the height of the civil war.
The Miami ruling in the Chiquita case represents a further step towards what Colombia’s peace court has called restorative justice—attempts to offer remedy and justice to the millions of victims killed, displaced, injured, or assaulted during the conflict.
Jurors in Miami sided with plaintiff’s claims that Chiquita Brands chose to profit from the bloodiest period of Colombia’s more than half-century conflict rather than abandon its operations in the country, and that the decision to fund death squads actively participating in that conflict meant the company was liable for the deaths of family members of victims in the case.
In an internal email sent in December 2003, a Chiquita Brands director wrote: “We appear to be committing a felony.” Yet the company continued financing the paramilitary group until well into the next year, according to court documents from the previous criminal case.
Families of the victims of the AUC in the Colombian regions of Urabá and Magdalena Medio have for years sought the right to sue the U.S. fruit giant in civil courts in both Colombia and the United States — petitions that Chiquita Brands delayed for nearly two decades with legal tactics in both countries.
Now, any final settlement with the families will likely involve further litigation and perhaps negotiations with the company. A second case featuring other victims with claims against Chiquita is set to begin preliminary hearings in July.
Chiquita has already announced it will appeal the decision, and unless the fruit giant offers a general settlement, EarthRights lawyers, who also represent other victims, have said they will continue to pursue further litigation in future cases. Chiquita’s legal troubles—including claims from more than a thousand victims in hundreds of cases, as well as a slow-moving criminal case in Colombia accusing executives of “aggravated conspiracy to commit a crime”—are far from settled.
“The struggle for justice is slow, but victory is possible, even against the wealthy and the powerful,” Tatiana Devia, a lawyer with EarthRights who worked on the case, said in a press conference following the verdict. Devia underlined that the ruling is “important for justice in Colombia as well.”
The case marks the first time a foreign company has been held liable for financing death squads in Colombia, an accusation that has also long been made against Coca-Cola, U.S. coal company Drummond, and Canadian mining giant Aris Mining (formerly Colombia Gold), among others.
Some experts suggest the Chiquita ruling could set a precedent in ongoing investigations into the actions of some of these companies as well.
Although the AUC nominally disarmed as part of an agreement with the government in 2006, many of their fighters simply re-armed and joined new criminal groups, perpetuating a dynamic that still fuels low intensity conflict in the country today.
Exacerbating and Profiting from Conflict
In addition to their arguments regarding the illicit paramilitary payments, attorneys for the plaintiffs also presented witnesses, including former AUC leaders and Chiquita employees, that accused the U.S. corporation of providing AUC forces with direct material assistance, including gasoline, transportation, and the use of shipping docks controlled by Chiquita Brands. The AUC used these resources to import weapons on multiple occasions.
Among the several former paramilitary leaders who testified in the trial was Salvatore Mancuso, one of the AUC’s most infamous commanders and a key witness in several ongoing investigations into paramilitary financing cases before Colombia’s transitional justice court.
Mancurso testified that Chiquita executives met personally with top paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño Gil, spokesman and political chief of the AUC, widely considered “the godfather of paramilitarism” in Colombia. The two parties negotiated payment in return for the AUC’s security services against left-wing rebel groups in the region, which had in previous years attacked Chiquita infrastructure.
Rather than denying the atrocities being committed by paramilitaries in those days, key witnesses for Chiquita’s defense stated that the AUC’s brutal reputation and propensity for human rights violations were well known by executives at the time—part of the company’s legal strategy of justifying executives’ actions by claiming that they agreed to work with the AUC only because they feared them.
Chiquita denies that the company should be held liable for violence perpetrated by paramilitary groups, arguing they were extorted by the AUC and financing was provided under duress and out of fear for their own safety and that of their employees.
However, another former AUC leader, Raúl Hasbún, testified that, contrary to the company’s claims, the paramilitaries never forced Chiquita to pay extortion fees. Nor did AUC forces ever attack Chiquita Brands operations institutionally—a fact that Charles “Buck” Keiser, who directed Chiquita’s operations in Colombia from 1987 to 2000, admitted under questioning during his own courtroom testimony on May 3.
On the contrary, the AUC, almost immediately after its formation as a paramilitary group in the region, provided Chiquita with security teams in multiple departments in the north of the country in exchange for regular financing in a relationship that plaintiffs described as “an equal partnership,” according to court documents.
At no point in this period did Chiquita choose to simply leave the country and extricate itself from Colombia’s spiraling conflict. Instead, EarthRights lawyers argued in court, “they chose to exacerbate and profit from” it.
According to court findings from the 2007 case, the company paid 3 cents on the dollar to AUC forces for each box of bananas exported from the country.
Remedies for a Debt Long Owed
As part of the 2007 investigation, Chiquita admitted to making illegal payments, as well as initially trying to conceal them as legitimate business expenditures. The company was fined $25 million in that case, but victims of the AUC never saw any of that money.
This latest ruling does not mean money is changing hands immediately, explained Marco Simons, lead counsel for EarthRights. This is but one case of many, which are part of “an ongoing process,” he said. “We hope that this win will pave the way for compensation and adequate remedies for all plaintiffs.”
For Ignacio Gómez, the verdict is a long-awaited personal vindication. He was the first journalist in Colombia to make these allegations public 21 years ago, and over the years he endured efforts by Chiquita Brands to suppress his work via lawsuits, as well as threats from paramilitary forces.
“I’ve been waiting years for this decision,” he told us. “And for Colombia, the importance of this decision cannot be understated.”
“Chiquita’s history in Latin America goes beyond this case,” he said, retelling the story of the “Banana Massacre” in Colombia, the slaughter of hundreds of striking plantation workers in the early 20th century, back when Chiquita went by another even more infamous name: the United Fruit Company.
“This debt is finally starting to be paid,” Gómez continued. In a country still suffering the after-effects of 53 years of civil war, fueled at least in part by the actions of private sector companies like Chiquita Brands, “we have hundreds of thousands of reasons to celebrate this ruling.”
This article is syndicated in partnership with the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA).
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