![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
In the aftermath of a peace agreement, the demobilisation of armed combatants from the field of war is taken as an indication of improved security. However, in many contexts, the withdrawal of armed groups also represents the dismantling of informal sources of order for local communities. Drawing from work on rebel governance and the local turn in peace-building, I argue that rebel orders shape security experiences even after a rebel group demobilises. In Colombia, following demobilisation of the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC), local communities framed their insecurity in the face of other armed groups – including government forces – by invoking features of order previously provided by the FARC. I introduce the concept of relational security indicators, building on Mac Ginty’s everyday peace indicators, to incorporate the influence of rebel order on subjective evaluations of security. Through an inductive qualitative approach in the Departments of Antioquia and Nariño, I identified two features of FARC order, protection and structure, that framed communities’ experience of insecurity in their absence. Communities had to address the dual legacies of rebel order and violence in order to make sense of the uncertainty they faced after the FARC’s demobilisaton. Work on rebel governance has largely excluded the legacy of rebel order post-demobilisation, while local peace-building studies rarely consider the experience of local communities through the lens of rebel order. The recent demobilisation of a long-standing example of ‘rebel ruler’ such as the FARC offers an insight into how communities invoke the legacy of rebel order to evaluate and understand their insecurity during conflict transitions.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank first and foremost all the people in the field who were willing to share with me their experiences of the conflict and their ongoing concerns, as well as their hopes and aspirations for peace in Colombia. I would like to thank the CSD Editor and anonymous reviewers whose insightful comments improved my manuscript, to my friends and colleagues Drs Juan Masullo, Julia Zulver, Daire McGill, and Adriana Rudling for reading and providing feedback, and to my supervisor, Dr Annette Idler, for her advice and unwavering support during my fieldwork and for this manuscript. Finally, a thank you to Wadham College and the ESRC Grand Union DTP whose financial support made this possible. All errors are my own.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Acosta and Symmes Cobb, ‘FARC Dissidents Face Full Force of Colombia Military: President’.
2. Schultze-Kraft et al., ‘Decentralisation, Security Consolidation and Territorial Peacebuilding’.
3. The literature on rebel governance is discussed in more detail in the next section.
4. Calle Aguirre, ‘Colombia, En Una Espiral de Violencia a Cuatro Años de Los Acuerdos de Paz’.
5. Mac Ginty, ‘Indicators+: A Proposal for Everyday Peace Indicators’; for a follow-up on the applicability of the concept see: Firchow and Mac Ginty, ‘Measuring Peace’.
6. Kasfir, ‘Guerrillas and Civilian Participation’; Mampilly, Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life during War; Podder, ‘Mainstreaming the Non-State in Bottom-up State-Building: Linkages between Rebel Governance and Post-Conflict Legitimacy’; Brenner, ‘Ashes of Co-Optation’; Loyle, ‘Rebel Justice during Armed Conflict’; Cunningham, Huang, and Sawyer, ‘Voting for Militants: Rebel Elections in Civil War’; Lidow, Violent Order.
7. Chojnacki and Branovic, ‘New Modes of Security’, 90.
8. Idler, Borderland Battles, 60; also see 141.
9. Arjona, Rebelocracy, 22.
10. Hills, Policing Post-Conflict Cities, 223.
11. Mac Ginty, ‘Indicators+: A Proposal for Everyday Peace Indicators’, 56; For more on local peace-building see Mac Ginty and Richmond, ‘The Local Turn in Peace Building: A Critical Agenda for Peace’; For understanding the local turn in Colombia see Schultze-Kraft, Valencia, and Alzate, ‘Decentralisation, Security Consolidation and Territorial Peacebuilding: Is Colombia about to Close the Loop?’; Berents, Young People and Everyday Peace: Exclusion, Insecurity and Peacebuilding in Colombia; For an overview and critique of the local turn see Randazzo, ‘The Paradoxes of the “Everyday”: Scrutinising the Local Turn in Peace Building’.
12. Mac Ginty, 57.
13. Caplan, Measuring Peace, 171.
14. For a recent examination of everyday security in Colombia see Nilsson and González Marín, ‘Violent Peace’.
15. Mac Ginty, ‘Indicators+: A Proposal for Everyday Peace Indicators’, 56.
16. Firchow and Mac Ginty, ‘Measuring Peace’, 8.
17. Ibid., 42.
18. Podder, ‘Mainstreaming the Non-State in Bottom-up State-Building’, 236.
19. Huang, The Wartime Origins of Democratisation, 9.
20. Chojnacki and Branovic, ‘New Modes of Security’, 94.
21. Urdaneta, ‘Justicia Guerrillera En Tiempos de Negociación’, 31, 39.
22. Arjona, Rebelocracy, 53.
23. Thoumi, ‘Illegal Drugs, Anti-Drug Policy Failure, and the Need for Institutional Reforms in Colombia’.
24. Felbab-Brown et al., Militants, Criminals, and Warlords: The Challenge of Local Governance in an Age of Disorder, 77.
25. In history of Latin America’s longest insurgency various attempts have been made to end the armed conflict between the Colombian state and the FARC, from the Betancur administration in the mid-1980s, to the Pastrana administration in 1999. For more details on these historic talks, see Beittel, Peace Talks in Colombia; Bouvier, Colombia: Building Peace in a Time of War; Leech, The FARC: The Longest Insurgency.
26. Hiev Hamidi, ‘Why Grassroots Peacebuilding?’.
27. This is also reflected in studies that examine these efforts and their success, such as Berents, Young People and Everyday Peace: Exclusion, Insecurity and Peacebuilding in Colombia; Del Pozo Serrano, Jiménez Bautista, and Barrientos Soto, ‘Pedagogía Social y Educación Social En Colombia: Como Construir La Cultura de Paz Comunitaria En El Postconflicto’; Olarte Delgado, ‘Gestores de Paz, Una Experiencia Restaurativa Desde Lo Cotidiano y Desde Lo Local’.
28. Nilsson and González Marín, ‘Violent Peace: Local Perceptions of Threat and Insecurity in Post-Conflict Colombia’, 239.
29. Murphy, ‘Colombia Asks Cuba to Capture ELN Leaders after Attack on Police Academy’.
30. El Espectador, ‘Clan Del Golfo Tiene 7.000 Hombres, Dice La Fiscalía’.
31. Alsema, ‘FARC 2.0 Consolidating Guerrilla Control throughout Colombia: Report’; Salazar, Wolff, and Camelo, ‘Towards Violent Peace?’.
32. Subedi, ‘Ex-Combatants, Security and Post-Conflict Violence’; Hume, ‘El Salvador: The Limits of a Violent Peace’; Knight, ‘Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration and Post–Conflict Peacebuilding in Africa’.
33. Defensoria del Pueblo, ‘Sistema Alerta Temprana Briceño’; Krahmer, ‘Demobilising with the FARC’s 18th Front’.
34. Salazar et al., ‘Towards Violent Peace?’.
35. Hennink et al., ‘Code Saturation Versus Meaning Saturation’.
36. Cataño, ‘Justicia Con Intimidación’.
37. Gutiérrez-Sanín and Wood, ‘What Should We Mean by” Pattern of Political Violence”?’, 32.
38. Jiménez, ‘Challenges for the Protection of Child Victims of Recruitment and Use in an Era of Complex Armed Conflicts: The Colombian Case’.
39. United Nations. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 31.
40. Interview with local development NGO, Pasto – February 2019.
41. Ángeles Reyes, ‘Awá: Esta No Fue Una Tragedia de Un Día’.
42. Interview with indigenous governor, Pasto – February 2019.
43. Mac Ginty, ‘Indicators+: A Proposal for Everyday Peace Indicators’, 60.
44. Snow, ‘Framing Processes, Ideology, and Discursive Fields’, 400.
45. As expressed in an interview with local human right activists, Medellin – November 2018.
46. Interview with local civil servant, Pasto – February 2019.
47. Interview with development NGO, Medellin – November 2018.
48. Interview with local (b), Tumaco – March 2019.
49. Interview with local leader (a), Amalfi – November 2018.
50. Interview with local human rights activist, Medellin – November 2018.
51. Across Colombia there was reported a growing concern with robberies, murders, and petty crimes in areas previously controlled by the FARC and even the rise of private vigilante groups to deal with it Brodzinsky, ‘Colombia’s Armed Groups Sow Seeds of New Conflict as War with Farc Ends’.
52. A recent report on medical security in Colombia indicates that since the demobilisation of the FARC there has been an increase of domestic violence (National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, ‘Forensics: Data for Life Report’. However, Cuartas cautions that a direct causal link has yet to be properly examined and understood (Cuartas, ‘Physical Punishment against the Early Childhood in Colombia: National and Regional Prevalence, Sociodemographic Gaps, and Ten-Year Trends’.
53. Interview with local leader (b), Tumaco – March 2019.
54. Interview with local leader, Ituango – November 2018.
55. Interview with local teacher, Ituango – November 2018.
56. Interview with local (a), Tumaco – March 2019.
57. Interview with civil servant, Pasto – February 2019.
58. Gutiérrez-Sanín and Wood, ‘What Should We Mean by” Pattern of Political Violence”? Repertoire, Targeting, Frequency, and Technique’, 29.
59. Interview with local official, Ituango – November 2018.
60. Interview with local human rights activist, Medellin – November 2018.
61. Defensoria del Pueblo, ‘Sistema Alerta Temprana Informe Amenaza a Lideres y Defensores DDHH’, 19.
62. Interview with a development worker, Pasto – March 2019.
63. Defensoria del Pueblo, ‘Sistema Alerta Temprana Informe Amenaza a Lideres y Defensores DDHH’.
64. Interview with local (b), Ituango – November 2018; Interview with indigenous governor, Pasto – February 2019; Interview with local development NGO (b), Pasto – February 2019.
65. Interview with Awa, Pasto – February 2019; also interview with Awa, Pasto – March 2019.
66. Interview with a local (e), Ituango – November 2018.
67. Interview with indigenous Governor, Pasto – February 2019.
68. Amalfi (b) – November 2018.
69. Interview with indigenous Governor, Pasto – February 2019.
70. Brodzinsky, ‘Colombia’s Armed Groups Sow Seeds of New Conflict as War with Farc Ends’. The community in Argelia noted here was a municipality controlled by the FARC 60th Front in Cauca region for the last twenty years.
71. Interview local leader (c), Amalfi – November 2018.
72. Field observations in the Santa Lucia Reincorporation Space for former FARC combatants in Ituango – January 2019.
73. Particularly certain elements of FARC dissidents (Interview with local NGO, Pasto – February 2019).
74. This type of dynamic also emerged in South Africa, Mozambique, and Bosnia Herzegovina where previously structured armed groups gave way to groups with less internal deterrents and fewer social ties (McMullin, ‘Reintegration of Combatants: Were the Right Lessons Learned in Mozambique?’; Moratti and Sabic-El-Rayess, ‘Transitional Justice and DDR: The Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina’.
75. Interview with local leader (a), Tumaco– March 2019.
76. Vargas, ‘Drugs, Hearts and Minds: Irregular War and the Coca Economy in South Bolivar, Colombia (1996–2004)’.
77. Interview with local activist, Ituango – November 2018.
78. Interview with local leader (b), Amalfi – November 2018.
79. ‘Colombia’s Armed Groups Battle for the Spoils of Peace’; ‘Colombia/Venezuela: Ataques a Civiles En Zona Fronteriza’.
80. In one interview with a local representative of the community in Tumaco, he indicated that under former President Santos the armed forces were carrying out less violation of human rights and that it was easier to demand rights from them then from the armed groups. However, a wider range of response indicated a concern with increasingly heightened tension between community and government forces post-demobilisation.
81. Casey, ‘Colombia Army’s New Kill Orders Send Chills Down Ranks’.
82. Interview with local leader (c), Tumaco – March 2019.
83. Interview with Awa, Pasto – February 2019.
84. ‘Masacre de El Tandil, Un Año Sin Justicia Del Crimen Que Se Atribuyó a “Guacho” Pero Apunta a Agentes En Tumaco.’
85. Forero, ‘Masacre de El Tandil’.
86. For a more detailed exploration of attribution and conflict, see Sillars and McLaren, ‘Attribution in Conflict’.
87. Interview with local leader (b), Tumaco – March 2019.
88. Interview with local official, Pasto – February 2019.
89. Interview with local development NGO, Pasto – February 2019.
90. Oquendo, ‘Los Grupos Criminales Se Fortalecen En El Primer Año de Gobierno de Duque’.
91. Interview with local NGO, Pasto – February 2019.
92. Interview with local development NGO (b), Pasto – February 2019.
93. Interview with local development worker, Tumaco – March 2019.
94. Interview with local leader, Ituango – November 2018.
95. Interview with Awa, Pasto – February 2019.
96. Interview with worker at human rights IO, Tumaco – March 2019.
97. Interview with a national development official, Bogota – February 2019.
98. Interview with local aid worker, Pasto – February 2019.
99. Interview with local (b), Tumaco – March 2019.
100. Kreiman and Masullo, ‘Who Shot the Bullets?’.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Clara Voyvodic
Clara Voyvodic is a doctoral candidate (DPhil) at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on conflict dynamics, post-conflict peace-building, development, organised crime, and non-state governance.