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81. The ELN's War

Author:
Ramon Campos Iriarte
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
The recent 50th anniversary of the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (National Liberation Army—ELN) led journalist Ramón Campos Iriarte to the jungles of Colombia's western Chocó province, where open war between guerrillas, government forces and paramilitary groups has been escalating. The ELN—self-defined as a Marxist-Leninist organization influenced by liberation theology—was created on July 4, 1964, in the mountains of central Colombia by a group of students and clerics inspired by the Cuban Revolution.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Colombia and Cuba

82. Constructing Peace: How the Private Sector Can Help

Author:
Alejandro Eder Garcés
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Colombia finds itself at a watershed in the country's history. With the possible end to over half a century of violence, a new peaceful future beckons. But Colombia's much-desired peace will not just fall from the sky. It will have to be built by all Colombians through an arduous, perhaps decades-long process.
Political Geography:
Colombia

83. Post-Conflict Campesinos: Recovering Rural Colombia

Author:
Ricardo Argüello
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Armed conflict and the presence of non-state armed actors harm both agricultural production and rural households' well-being, for at least two broad reasons. First, conflict disrupts economic activities by hampering access to critical inputs and markets. As a result, producers may reduce or curtail planting or harvesting. Second, rural producers face an unpredictable environment for making economic decisions. Armed actors may “tax” producers, coerce them into growing particular crops (licit and illicit) or require them to follow their rules regarding production and land use. In these cases, farmers grow what will produce the least risk to their quality of life and safety.
Political Geography:
Colombia

84. The Myths of the Colombian Peace Process

Author:
Marcela Prieto
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
From its very beginning, Colombia's peace process has aroused enormous expectations, not only within Colombian borders, but also in the international community. The negotiation is, in good measure, the result of the “Policy of Democratic Security” adopted by President Álvaro Uribe Vélez during his two terms (2002 to 2010), which helped limit the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—FARC), weakened the group structurally and turned the dynamic of the armed confrontation back in the state's favor.
Political Geography:
Colombia

85. Ask the Experts: Colombian Peace Process

Author:
Joydeep Mukherji
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Colombia has already had the foresight and wisdom to analyze the experience of other countries in bringing internal conflicts to an end—including South Africa, the Philippines and Northern Ireland. As I write, representatives of the conflicting parties in Northern Ireland have just finished meeting Colombian government and FARC negotiators.
Political Geography:
South Africa, Philippines, Colombia, and North Ireland

86. Building up a peace infrastructure for Colombia: lessons from implementing the Victims Law

Author:
Silke Pfeiffer
Publication Date:
10-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Centre for Conflict Resolution
Abstract:
Whether a potential peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia will translate into the necessary transformations on the ground will depend, among other things, on the quality and legitimacy of its implementation system. Colombia will need to set up a peace infrastructure that not only facilitates formal compliance, but helps to transform the state, particularly at the local level, as well as citizens’ interactions with it. Tasked with implementing the 2011 Victims and Land Restitution Law, the National System for Comprehensive Attention to and Reparations for Victims provides important lessons for the architects of a future peace infrastructure. In order to have an impact on local dynamics, such an infrastructure will need to be developed in cooperation with regional and local actors and allow a degree of flexibility and autonomy for setting up cooperative spaces, while establishing clear standards and effective accountability systems. In the long run these spaces can only become vehicles for peace and confidence-building if power asymmetries and security risks facing community leaders are addressed. Finally, the success of a peace infrastructure will depend on the degree to which it is woven into existing institutional processes and logics, and manages to introduce good management practices instead of creating parallel, partly competing systems.
Topic:
Infrastructure, Institutionalism, Peace, and Reparations
Political Geography:
Colombia and South America

87. Blood Revenge and Violent Mobilization: Evidence from the Chechen Wars

Author:
Emil Souleimanov and Huseyn Aliyev
Publication Date:
11-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Despite a considerable amount of ethnographic research into the phenomena of blood revenge and blood feud, little is known about the role of blood revenge in political violence, armed conflict, and irregular war. Yet blood revenge—widespread among many conflict-affected societies of the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond—is not confined to the realm of communal infighting, as previous research has presumed. An empirical analysis of Russia's two counterinsurgency campaigns in Chechnya suggests that the practice of blood revenge has functioned as an important mechanism in encouraging violent mobilization in the local population against the Russian troops and their Chechen proxies. The need to exact blood revenge has taken precedence over an individual's political views, or lack thereof. Triggered by the loss of a relative or humiliation, many apolitical Chechens who initially sought to avoid involvement in the hostilities or who had been skeptical of the insurgency mobilized to exact blood revenge to restore their individual and clan honor. Blood revenge functions as an effective, yet heavily underexplored, grievance-based mechanism encouraging violent mobilization in irregular wars.
Topic:
Political Violence, Civil War, War, and Sectarian violence
Political Geography:
Russia, Asia, Chechnya, Yemen, Colombia, Georgia, and Albania

88. Amérique latine - L’année politique 2015

Author:
Maya Collombon, Hélène Combes, Olivier Dabène, Gaspard Estrada, Marie-Laure Geoffray, Ana Carolina González Espinosa, Erica Guevara, Damien Larrouqué, Marilde Loiola de Menezes, Frédéric Louault, Frédéric Massé, Mohcine Mounjid, Eduardo Rios, and Darío Rodriguez
Publication Date:
12-2015
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
Abstract:
Amérique latine - L’Année politique is a publication by CERI-Sciences Po’s Political Observatory of Latin America and the Caribbean (OPALC). The study extends the work presented on the Observatory’s website (www.sciencespo.fr/opalc) by offering tools for understanding a continent that is in the grip of deep transformations.
Topic:
Political Violence, Economics, Regional Cooperation, Bilateral Relations, Sociology, and Elections
Political Geography:
Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, Arab Countries, Latin America, Nicaragua, Caribbean, Venezuela, Mexico, and United States of America

89. Left in the Cold? The ELN and Colombia's Peace Talks

Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
Whether the National Liberation Army (ELN) joins the current peace process is one of the biggest uncertainties around Colombia's historic opportunity to end decades of deadly conflict. Exploratory contacts continue, and pressure to advance decisively is growing, as the Havana negotiations with the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) approach a decisive point. However, hopes fresh negotiations with the second insurgency were imminent were repeatedly dashed in 2013. Agreeing on an agenda and procedures that satisfy the ELN and are consistent with the Havana frame-work will not be easy. The ELN thinks the government needs to make an overture or risk ongoing conflict; the government believes the ELN must show flexibility or risk being left out. But delay is in neither's long-term interest. A process from which the ELN is missing or to which it comes late would lack an essential element for the construction of sustainable peace. Both sides, therefore, should shift gears to open negotiations soonest, without waiting for a perfect alignment of stars in the long 2014 electoral season.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Treaties and Agreements, War on Drugs, Insurgency, and Narcotics Trafficking
Political Geography:
Colombia and Latin America

90. Scarcity without Leviathan: The Violent Effects of Cocaine Supply Shortages in the Mexican Drug War

Author:
Juan Camilo Castillo, Daniel Mejia, and Pascual Restrepo
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Using the case of the cocaine trade in Mexico as a relevant and salient example, this paper shows that scarcity leads to violence in markets without third party enforcement. We construct a model in which supply shortages increase total revenue when demand is inelastic. If property rights over revenues are not well defined because of the lack of reliable third party enforcement, the incentives to prey on others and avoid predation by exercising violence increase with scarcity, thus increasing violence. We test our model and the proposed channel using data for the cocaine trade in Mexico. We found that exogenous supply shocks originated in changes in the amount of cocaine seized in Colombia (Mexico's main cocaine supplier) create scarcity and increase drug-related violence in Mexico.
Topic:
Crime, Economics, War on Drugs, Narcotics Trafficking, and Law Enforcement
Political Geography:
Colombia, Latin America, and Mexico