Systems of Violence, Second Edition

Nazih Richani

Description

This book examines the political, economic, and military factors that have contributed to thirty-seven years of protracted violent conflict in Colombia. Using four years of field research, and more than two hundred interviews, Nazih Richani examines Colombia's "war system"—the systemic interlacing relationship among actors in conflict, their respective political economy, and also the overall political economy of the system they help in creating. Several key questions are raised, including when and why do some conflicts protract, and what types of socioeconomic and political configurations make peaceful resolutions difficult to obtain? Also addressed are the lessons of other protracted conflicts, such as those found in Lebanon, Angola, and Italy. In this expanded second edition Richani contributes new chapters looking at developments in Colombia since the book's initial publication a decade ago and a look at the challenges for peace that lie ahead.
List of Illustrations
Prologue
Notes to Second Edition
Acknowledgments

1. The Contours and the Theory

2. Institutional Failure: Genesis of the War System

3. The Military and the Comfortable Impasse

4. Guerillas and the Impasse

5. Paramilitaries, Organized Crime, and the Dynamics of War

6. The Dominant Classes and the Prospects of Peace

7. Colombia’s Civil War in Comparative Perspective

8. Third Parties, War Systems’ Inertia, and Conflict Termination: The Doomed Peace Process in Colombia, 1998–2002

9. The War System: From Comfortable Impasse to Unstable Equilibrium, 2002–2012

10. Bastard Rentier Capitalism: The Political Economy of Organized Crime in Colombia Sicarios and Caudillos

11. Colombia’s War System in Comparative Perspective

Appendix: Selection of the Interview Population
Addendum
Notes
Bibliography
Index
SUNY series in Global Politics, List of Titles

Sujets

• Latin American
• América del Sur
• Political economy
• 20th century
• South America
• Latin America
• History of the Americas
• Caribbean

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 10 juillet 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438446950
• Langue: English

Extrait

SYSTEMS OF VIOLENCE
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR AND PEACE IN COLOMBIA
SECOND EDITION
NAZIH RICHANI

Cover art by Architect and Interior Designer Chakib Richani
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2013 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Richani, Nazih.
Systems of violence: The political economy of war and peace in Colombia / Nazih Richani.—2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4693-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Violence—Colombia. 2. Violence—Economic aspects—Colombia.  3. Colombia–Economic conditions—1970– 4. Colombia—Politics and government—1974– 5. Colombia—Social conditions. I. Title.
HN310.Z9V5659 2012
303.6'409861—dc23
2012025942
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This edition is dedicated to the memory of the distinguished sociologist Alvaro Camacho and all Colombians like him who dream of the possibilities of a peace with social justice.
List of Illustrations

T ABLES Table 2.1 Distribution of Land Ownership by Size (ha) Table 3.1 Fatalities: Armed Forces (FFAA) vs. Guerrillas, 1986–1999 Table 3.2 Guerrilla Military Activity, 1985–1996 Table 4.1 FARC's Rank and File Social Composition, 1998 Table 4.2 Social Composition of FARC's Leadership “Secretariado” Table 4.3 Guerrilla Rent Extraction, 1998–1999 Table 4.4 Increase in Guerrilla Presence by Municipality, Economic Structure, and Activity, 1985–1995 Table 4.5 ELN Founding Group (c. 1965) Table 4.6 ELN Class and Gender Composition of National Directorate (DN), 1998 Table 4.7 ELN Fighters and Presence/Municipality, 1986–1996 Table 5.1 Coca Plantations by Department (hectares), 1999 Table 5.2 Coca Plantations (hectares) Table 5.3 Military Expenditures, 1988–1999 Table 5.4 FARC's Major Attacks 1996–1999 Table 5.5 Indicators of Rising Violence, 1988–1999 Table 9.1 Military Growth and Expenditure, 1990–2011 Table 9.2 Fatalities: Armed Forces vs. FARC, 2002–2010 Table 9.3 FARC Leadership Composition, 2012

F IGURES Figure 4.1 FARC Organizational Structure. Figure 4.2 ELN Strategy Figure 5.1 Number of Victims of Massacres, 1988–2000 Figure 6.1 Total Costs of the Civil War, 1992–1998 Figure 8.1 Intensity of the Conflict at the National and Regional Level Figure 8.2 FARC Military Activity, 1990–2002 Figure 9.1 War-system Model Figure 9.2 FARC Military Operation, 2003–2011 Figure 11.1 UNITA Battle Related Fatalities, 1980–2002 Figure 11.2 Tigers Battle Related Fatalities, 1989–2009 Figure 11.3 Battle Related Fatalities (CPNM)
Prologue
“Prospects for Peace in Colombia”
In February 2012, exactly one decade after the last round of dialogues between representatives of the Colombian government and the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC-EP) ended in Caguán, secret exploratory talks between the parties began in Cuba. In late August, the parties signed a framework agreement for the renewal of peace talks. The agreement, the “ Acuerdo General para la Terminación del Conflicto y la Construcción de una Paz Estable y Duradera ,” lays out a road map for ending the conflict that includes a six-point agenda on agrarian development policy, political participation, an end to the conflict, illicit crops, victims, and verification mechanisms. By year's end, the parties had appointed their negotiators, launched official peace talks in Oslo, Norway, and reconvened in Havana, Cuba, to discuss the first agenda item—agrarian policy.
Civil society is conspicuously absent from the government team, which includes representatives of the business sector and the armed forces, two sectors that have been spoilers in past peace processes and whose evolving relationship to the conflict is analyzed in this book. The parties nonetheless established three mechanisms for civil society engagement outside the table. The first, a website ( www.mesadeconversaciones.com.co ) with documents in Sikuani, Wayúu, Embera, English, and Spanish, where civil society can submit proposals related to the six agenda items, registered more than 2,000 proposals in the first two hours after it came online on December 7, 2012. The second was a three-day forum on December 17–19, 2012, on integrated agrarian development, coordinated by the National University and the United Nations. More than 1,300 people participated in the forum, which many hoped would be a model that could be replicated for each of the items on the Havana agenda. Finally, the parties made provisions for inviting experts to the peace table as needed and have reportedly have begun to hear testimonies on agricultural development.
These initiatives join many others supporting an end to the long decades of internal armed conflict in Colombia. Women's groups, indigenous and Afro-Colombian groups, campesinos, victims' organizations, and numerous other sectors who have been calling for a political solution are organizing to support the peace process. The peace commissions of the Colombian Congress, with the support of the United Nations, held a series of nine regional workshops in October and November 2012, to discuss three of the agenda items—agrarian policy, political participation, and illicit crop production--and are planning a second round of meetings to discuss victims in early 2013.
As this period of unofficial national peace dialogue unfolds, many ideas are being generated on the changes required for a nation to be at peace. A consensus is emerging that civil society must continue to pressure the parties at the table to ensure that talks continue until the parties reach agreement, and the political pressure for the parties to undertake further humanitarian gestures, including a bilateral ceasefire, is growing.
At the end of 2012, the talks in Havana were suspended for the holiday season and will resume in mid-January 2013. Supported by Norway and Cuba, and accompanied by Venezuela and Chile, the talks have taken place in what the parties call an atmosphere of mutual respect. Nonetheless, some differences have emerged regarding how long each believes the process should take. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who hopes to declare his candidacy for a second term, has expressed his desire to have an agreement by November 2013. The guerrillas have disparaged this accelerated timetable and suggested that the “express” approach to peace could prove fatal.
At this stage, talks between the government and the other insurgent groups—namely the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Popular Liberation Army (EPL)-- have not been officially announced. It is widely assumed nonetheless that the groundwork is being laid for these groups to be brought into the process at a later stage.
Nazih Richani's book, Systems of Violence: The Political Economy of War and Peace in Colombia , published a decade ago, and reissued in 2013 with several new chapters, examines the other side of this movement toward peace—namely the resilience of war. In this book, Richani analyzes the complex and dynamic system of violence that has provided the scaffolding for Colombia's war for nearly half a century. He traces the course of a war that began as a response to political, economic, and social exclusion, and whose root causes include tremendous land and wealth inequities that have been exacerbated over time. Richani shows how the system has been bolstered by a range of new conflict drivers, including illicit crops and narcotrafficking, which are often linked to violence over land and natural resources.
Richani discusses past theories in the field of conflict resolution that explain civil war termination as a function of the military balance of power, political contexts or recalibrated economic costs; the resolution of core differences; guarantees by a third party; or the perception of the parties that a settlement is preferable to continued war. Richani's contribution to this literature is to underscore the dynamics and dynamism of the war system. His book traces the evolution of Colombia's conflict by analyzing the actors who have pursued war. He untangles for us the interacting and changing political and economic interests and behaviors of the parties—especially insurgent groups, the military, paramilitary and neoparamilitary groups, landowners, cattle ranchers, and the agribusiness and industrial sectors. Richani deftly explores how conflict actors constantly repositioned themselves, endlessly creating and breaking alliances between and within groups, as the shifting geographies of war and peace created new opportunities and limitations. Understanding how conflict actors created, buttressed, and strengthened this scaffolding of violence is key to dismantling it. In this regard, Richani's book makes an important contribution to the current historic juncture, providing us