Reintegrating Armed Groups After Conflict

Politics, Violence and Transition

Mats Berdal, David Ucko, Mats Berdal, David Ucko

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780415596619
• eBook ISBN: 9781134023134
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This book looks at the political reintegration of armed groups after civil wars and the challenges of transforming 'rebel', 'insurgent' or other non-state armed groups into viable political entities.

Drawing on eight case studies, the definition of 'armed groups' here ranges from militias, paramilitary forces, police units of various kinds to intelligence outfits. Likewise, the definition of 'political integration' or 're-integration' has not been restricted to the formation of political parties, but is understood broadly as active participation in politics, policy-making or public debate through parties, newspapers, social organisations, think-tanks, NGOs or public service.

The book seeks to locate or contextualise individual cases within their distinctive social, cultural and historical settings. As such it differs from much of the donor-driven literature that has tended to abstract the challenge of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) from their political and historical context, focusing instead on technical or bureaucratic issues raised by the DDR process. Among the issues covered by the volume as a whole, three stand out: first, the role of political settlements in creating legitimate opportunities for erstwhile leaders of armed factions; second, the ability of reintegration programmes to create genuine socio-economic opportunities that can absorb former fighters as functional members of their communities; and third, the processes involved in transforming an entire rebel movement into a viable political party, movement or, more generally, allowing it to participate in political life.

This book will be of great interest to students of security and development, peace and conflict studies, and IR in general, as well as practitioners and policymakers.

Mats Berdal is Professor of Security and Development in the Department of War Studies at King's College London. From 2000 to 2003 he was Director of Studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. Mats Berdal is a Visiting Professor at the National Defence and Command College, Oslo.

David Ucko is the Programme Coordinator & Research Fellow for the Conflict, Security & Development Research Group, King's College London.

1 The way back in

Reintegrating illegal armed groups in Colombia then and now

Alexandra Guáqueta

Introduction

Colombia has been a democracy for most of the 20th century, has no ethnic or religious divides and it is ranked as a mid-level developing economy. Nevertheless, internal violence in the form of armed conflict has been a critical feature over the past decades. Seven left-wing guerrilla organisations emerged between the 1960s and the 1980s, along with a series of right-wing illegal forces, the so-called ‘paramilitary’. Through their armed struggle against the state, Marxist guerrillas aimed at redressing grievances related to inequality, social exclusion and the concentration of political power in the hands of a few, and proposed installing a socialist regime. Paramilitary forces, on the other hand – who grouped loosely as Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) in 1997 – have sought to repel guerrilla influence and, as we now know, frequently served as natural allies of the state security forces in the battlefield.

Five out of the seven guerrilla groups, the Movimiento 19 de Abril (M-19), the Movimiento Armado Quintín Lame (MAQL), the Ejército Popular de Liberación (EPL), the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRT) and the Corriente de Renovación Socialista (CRS) – totalling approximately 5,000 combatants – demobilised after peace negotiations in 1989–94 and temporarily became a ‘relevant political force’.¹ While it is true that none of the original political movements they created ultimately survived democratic political competition, it is possible to argue that these guerrillas underwent a relatively successful political reintegration. Ever since their demobilisation, many have participated in policy-making and public debate through think tanks, NGOs, journalism and jobs in the public sector, and their sustained political engagement has contributed to strengthen liberal political ideas and human-rights norms in Colombia.² Moreover, several former guerrilla leaders are currently key figures of the Polo Democrático (PD), a left-wing party with important public appeal created in 2003. Whether as groups or individually, guerrillas found space for legitimate political participation at the local and national levels and they did so despite the continuation of war waged by the remaining armed groups, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) and the paramilitary.³

Almost two decades later, Colombia is once again attempting to reintegrate ex-combatants: 31,671 from AUC who demobilised between November 2003 and August 2006 as the result of negotiations between the Álvaro Uribe government and the commanders of the various blocs; and approximately 15,800 ‘individually demobilised combatants’ – members of FARC, ELN and AUC who have since 2002 deserted their group. This time, however, the task of transforming illegal armed groups into legitimate political entities or finding other means for combatants to participate in policy-making is much harder than before. The AUC’s reintegration has not only elicited criticism from around the globe due to the group’s previous human-rights abuses. Domestically, the participation of former combatants in politics has become anathema and individually demobilised guerrillas have experienced social rejection, such as the demand by Bogotá citizens in 2005 that reintegration hostels be relocated ‘far away’.⁴ Before, bringing guerrillas in was not only convenient from a security standpoint; it was seen almost as a moral obligation because of their grievances and even as connoting a positive contribution to social order given their ideals. In contrast, while the demobilisation and reintegration both of the right-wing paramilitary and of left-wing rebels may still be convenient, it is undoubtedly less palatable to Colombian society and the international community. Surely FARC and ELN, the two guerrilla groups that chose not to participate in the early 1990s peace processes and remain active, will encounter higher entry barriers when they do demobilise, as their popularity among Colombians and the international community has eroded.⁵

Why are things so different today? By examining and comparing the processes of political reintegration of M-19 and the paramilitary, this chapter will argue that there are at least four critical factors that either allow or bar former combatants from becoming legitimate players with a capacity for political interlocution: the international and domestic political and normative contexts; the nature and behaviour of the illegal armed group (how much power they command, to what extent groups use war for personal profit and whether they commit egregious crimes); the terms of the peace negotiations; and the practical dimensions of exercising political interlocution. The analysis does not focus on the menu of incentives that drove these illegal armed groups to demobilise but rather on the barriers of entry. These factors relate to issues of acceptance and permanence. Acceptance into the sphere of legitimate politics stems from the congruence of rules, both explicit and implicit, that allow entry (the normative, legal and political contexts) and the combatants’ identity and behaviour. As to permanence, the capacity to perform as a political party, an NGO or as a public official is often conditioned by more practical aspects of the transformation process, such as political and organisational skills and the availability of funding.

The question of political reintegration is as important to sustainable peace as the technical aspects of DDR. Power sharing, in particular within a democratic framework, is a means of reducing the potential for renewed violence, as it may harness illegal armed groups’ motivations and capacity to resort to violence. Current academic and political debates on conflict resolution and peace building, though, have tended to downplay or elude this fundamental issue. Apart from the institutionalisation of DDR in international organisations as a technical and administrative process to find jobs for combatants and to transform the state security sector, this may be explained by the ‘economic turn’ in the analysis of armed conflict. By highlighting the economic dimensions of civil wars, the new conceptual lens has portrayed fighters as greedy individuals who do not have a legitimate political cause and, therefore, can or should not be politically reintegrated.⁶ In addition, greater access to information regarding the conduct of illegal armed groups on the ground (which has exposed the cruelty of many); the reduced salience of prior ‘good causes’, such as rebellions against dictatorships, due to democratisation and the globalisation of liberal political ideas; a deeper internalisation of human-rights norms and other anti-crime regimes; and the War on Terror that followed the events of 11 September 2001 have shaped the debate and contributed to the shunning of political reintegration as an issue. Combatants no longer hold the same idyllic aura of former ‘well-intended rebels’; note that the term ‘guerrilla’ is hardly used anymore and many armed organisations are now labelled ‘terrorists.’ As a result, the reintegration of rebels, criminals and terrorists today faces different political and legal challenges. For instance, opponents of AUC’s demobilisation and reintegration have alluded to the group’s close connections to the drug trade, its mafia-style behaviour, its relatively high degree of influence over economic and political transactions in certain Colombian localities, and its appalling human-rights record as reasons why it should be barred from politics. However, even though greed can be an important variable in conflicts and moral imperatives call for strict punishments for perpetrators of human-rights abuses, the practical issue of what to do with former combatants who wield influence over entire communities – and how to stop them from re-arming – remains.

The chapter is organised as follows: the first and second sections examine M-19’s and AUC’s experiences, respectively; and the concluding remarks reflect on the above-mentioned critical dimensions affecting acceptance and permanence.

The good old days: the reintegration of M-19

M-19 emerged in 1974 in response to a reported case of fraud in the 1970 presidential elections, which favoured the Conservative Party’s candidate, Misael Pastrana. The group was formed by urban middle-class progressive activists, intellectuals, communist youths, disgruntled members from Alianza Nacional Popular (ANAPO) – the party that had lost the elections – and former FARC and ELN members, and defined itself as a nationalist, democratic, revolutionary movement. The guerrilla group demobilised 791 combatants in 1989–90 during peace negotiations with the Virgilio Barco government (1986–90) and became a political party, Alianza Democrática M-19 (AD M-19), joined later by EPL and PRT members. It had important victories at the local and national levels and obtained the second largest representation in the National Constituent Assembly that redrafted Colombia’s constitution in 1991, a process that consolidated key democratic reforms and introduced modern liberal ideas on human rights. However, AD M-19’s popularity then declined and the party disappeared after the 1998 elections. How did M-19 become a legitimate political party and why did it decline in later years?

It should be noted that AD M-19’s decline as a party did not end the group’s political reintegration process, which proceeded apace but took other forms. Many of its leading members, like Antonio Navarro Wolf and Gustavo Petro, remained active in politics and have become cornerstones of the PD. Today, the PD has become the first social democrat/leftist party with national appeal in the history of Colombia, a remarkable development considering the country’s 150-year-old bipartisan tradition that had privileged both the Liberals and Conservatives. For the sake of brevity, the section will focus on the AD M-19 party and not the developments thereafter. It is suggested, though, that many of the same elements that allowed AD M-19 to exist can also explain the political survival of many of its leaders up until today.

A politically favourable window of opportunity

M-19’s peace agreement and demobilisation occurred in tandem with substantial political reforms, carried out through a one-off National Constituent Assembly, which updated Colombia’s 1886 constitution. Both events were perceived as key in overcoming the deep national crisis caused by weaknesses in Colombia’s democratic institutions. It was a unique moment of great optimism and hope in which M-19’s entrance into the political arena – as well as that of other guerrilla groups that demobilised right after M-19 – symbolised Colombia’s passage to an improved political stage based on democratic values.⁷

The moment also provided respite from the anguishing sense of crisis and chaos that had emerged because of increased violence and crime in Colombia in the mid-1980s. The illegal drug industry flourished, traffickers amassed great wealth and power and launched a war against the state to prevent anti-drug laws that could land them in jail and, in particular, to avoid extradition to the United States. The war led by Pablo Escobar and the Medellín cartel featured the assassination of government officials, politicians, journalists and judges, for which the cartels had trained squadrons of mercenaries, the sicarios. Drug barons also resorted to targeted and indiscriminate bomb attacks in Bogotá, Medellín and Cali. ‘Narco-terrorism’ combined with the systematic bribery of authorities and the contamination of legal politics, extravagant spending and money laundering (which distorted the economy) and the use of violence to settle vendettas.⁸

Drug-trafficking and drug-related violence intertwined with conflict. In the 1960s and 1970s, guerrilla groups had remained small, survived on petty theft and extortion, recruited in less populated rural areas and acted as authority figures in localities with little state presence. Confrontation with the armed forces was infrequent and usually occurred far from Bogotá. Besides, unlike other Cold War conflicts, neither side was supported by the United States or the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, in the early 1980s, illegal armed groups, especially FARC, began to swell.⁹ To fund its military expansion, FARC taxed the production of cocaine and the farming of coca bushes that was by then gaining ground in Colombia. Estimates in 1985 claimed that FARC earned $99 million in a single year through such practices.¹⁰

Boosted by the illegal drug industry, but also by other sources of funding (ELN, for example, relied more on extortion and kidnapping), the guerrillas gained power and in turn served as a trigger to the rise of AUC. In the 1980s, right-wing paramilitary groups emerged as independent counterinsurgency forces in different parts of the country, supported by cattle ranchers, emerald traders, agricultural entrepreneurs and large landowners frustrated at the lack of state protection.¹¹ In time, some of the old leadership of these paramilitary groups was replaced by drug traffickers and their allies. Other paramilitary groups, like the Muerte a Secuestradores (‘Death to Kidnappers’), were from the start directly tied to drug traffickers and aimed to protect their business and ill-gotten properties from extortion. It was then that the struggle took the form of a ‘dirty war’ against guerrillas and the left in general, waged by sicarios and the paramilitary, at times in collusion with public security forces.¹² Conflict and crime combined to claim some 20,000 deaths per year;¹³ and, driven by the drug-based economy of war, Colombia went from a few hectares of coca bushes in the early 1980s to approximately 40,000 hectares in 1990.¹⁴

Colombia’s problems overwhelmed state institutions and the political system, which had remained weak and outdated. Slow and partial reforms and fringe improvements (like anti-corruption purges in state security forces) were deemed insufficient. Therefore, many in Colombia began calling for ‘structural’ changes to solve what was seen as the root causes of conflict and crime, such as the lack of security guarantees and legal opportunities for the left, the concentration of power in Bogotá and in the hands of the elites, the absence of the state in many parts of the territory, administrative weaknesses of the public sector an...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction: the political reintegration of armed groups after war
• 1 The way back in: reintegrating illegal armed groups in Colombia then and now
• 2 Reintegration before disarmament: the case of post-conflict reintegration in Tajikistan
• 3 Bureaucratic façade and political realities of disarmament and demobilisation in Afghanistan
• 4 Militias, tribes and insurgents: the challenge of political reintegration in Iraq
• 5 Flip-flop rebel, dollar soldier: demobilisation in the Democratic Republic of Congo
• 6 The challenge of DDR in Northern Uganda: the Lord’s Resistance Army
• 7 Engaging with disengagement: the political integration of Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front
• 8 Beyond bullets and ballots: the reintegration of UNITA in Angola