Different Resources, Different Conflicts? A framework for understanding the political economy of the armed conflict and crime in the regions of Colombia
| Autor | Angelika Rettberg, Ralf J. Leiteritz, Carlo Nasi, and Juan Diego Prieto |
| Páginas | 3-43 |
Dierent resources, dierent conicts?
A framework for understanding the
political economy of the armed conict
and crime in the regions of Colombia*
A R, R J. L,
C N, J D P
Introduction
O main concerns during t he peace talks between t he Colombian gov-
ernment and two guerril la groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) involved the sustainabilit y of
any agreement to disarm and support mas s demobilization of combatants in a
social and economic context in which there are mult iple incentives for contin-
ued crime. e wide circulat ion of weapons, the existence of diverse crimi nal
organizations, the persistence of dru g tracking and, especia lly, the availability
of natural resources and economic activ ities which, for decades, have been inte-
grated into the dynamics of looti ng and extortion practiced by armed groups,
all create opportunities for the continuation of crime and violence, even aer
rebel groups lay down their arms. Taken as a whole, these factors comprise an
enormous challenge in terms of setti ng the country on the path towards a sus-
tainable peace which complements and leverages the advances which C olombia
has been making i n other elds.
e book investigates the sources of risk for Colombia’s post-conict stage.
It does so from the standpoint of the link s, established for decades by now, be-
tween legal natural resou rces and the dynamics of armed conict a nd crime in
* To cite this chapter: http://dx.doi.org /./..
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,
Map . e regions and resources under study
Source: Map drawn by Paola Lu na, Cartogr aphy Laboratory, Universidad de lo s Andes,
based on inform ation from the authors
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,
dierent reg ions. Its emphasis is intentionally dierent from the usual focus on
drug track ing — an illegal natura l resource — as the factor which has fueled
the war in Colombia (Angrist and Kugler ; Ar ias et al., ; and Holmes,
Gutiérrez de Piñeres, and Curtin ) in order to explore the links between
the war and Colombia’s key legal economic activities. e premise of this book
is that Colombia is a country of regions, not only from a cultu ral or economic
point of view, as is oen maintained (Gutiérrez de Pineda, ; Zambrano, ;
Banco de la República, ; Arango Cano, ; Meyer and Villar Borda, ),
but also in terms of the varied forms a nd intensity of armed conict and crime.
Once disag gregated, nationa l violence indicators y ield great dierences ac ross
regions and over time, suggesting that over the course of more than ve dec ades,
the Colombian war has been dynamic, reviving in some parts, weakening in
others, and continually cha nging its forms of operation. is book argues that
a look at the subnational level, which describes and analyzes the relationship
between illegal resources a nd warfare in dierent regions, and identies some
of the factors which have shaped this relationship over time, will enable us to
spot the critical points to which schola rs and policymakers should direct their
attention. us, they may be able to prevent the end of the armed conict from
unleashing or agg ravating new forms of crime. In short, it is matter of nding
lessons that will stop any peace agreement from becoming irrelevant in light
of enduring criminal practices that go beyond armed confrontation. If natu-
ral resources have played a role in the onset or duration of the armed conict ,
peacebuilding should necessa rily deal with their impacts a nd legacies.
e chapters which make up this book are gu ided by the following questions:
What have been the regional realities of t he relationship between legal resources
and war in Colombia? What are some of the sources of variation across di erent
regions in the relationship between legal resources and wa r which may be asso-
ciated with the dierent dyna mics of war? In addition to the strategic aspirations
of the armed actors on a national level, in what way do the charac teristics and
productive processes of dierent resources inuence their act ions? Furthermore,
By armed conict we mean the violent cla sh about matters like the d istribution of land and
the management and ow nership of natural res ources which severa l illegal armed or ganizations
have had with the C olombian state for decades. By crime we mean t he phenomenon through
which indiv iduals and organi zations capture of go ods and money for their pe rsonal enrichme nt
without a politic al agenda. In order to char acterize the Colombi an conict as an a rmed one, we
employ the denition of t he Stockholm International Peac e Research Institute (SIPRI), which
states that the c onfrontation must be violent, include the st ate, have a political objective, a nd
directly c ause at least , annua l deaths (SIPRI, ). In the e xperience of countr ies immersed
in conict, t he dividing l ine between arme d conict and cri me is blurry, insofar a s armed actors
need to nance t hemselves and resor t to crimina l activities , while crim inal actors have de veloped
political age ndas with which the y try to inuence socie ty.
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