MARTA LUCIA RAMIREZ, Minister of Defense, Republic of Colombia
CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
Washington, 8 October 2002

The problem is compounded by the existence of the drugs trade, in which all armed groups participate. Without its resources, it is doubtful that the Colombian conflict would be what it is today. An example: in 1983, there were 13000 hectares of coca in Colombia and the FARC had approximately 2000 men in arms. In 1999, there were 122000 hectares of coca and the FARC had 16000 men in arms. In the space of sixteen years, the coca fields had grown by a factor of 9; the FARC by a factor of 8. That is how the drugs trade feeds the Colombian conflict and has turned it in to a savage battle among the illegal armed groups for control over the territory.

The violence that results directly or indirectly from this conflict is unimaginable: over 34000 homicides a year; over 3000 kidnappings, including that of one presidential candidate, five members of Congress, and 12 deputies; 370 mayors threatened with death and the whole infrastructure of the country under permanent attack. Last year alone, one of the main oil pipelines was blown 270 times, causing irreparable damage to the environment and loses of 500 million dollars to the economy (oil accounts for a third of Colombia’s exports).

AMBASSADOR LUIS ALBERTO MORENO
School of Advanced International Studies, JOHN HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
October 29th 2002

The momentum building is due to more than pieces of legislation and agreements being put into place. Results are slowly beginning to show:

Kidnapping, which has been a widespread phenomenon in Colombia. Two thirds of all kidnappings in the world take place in Colombia, and as many as two children a day were being kidnapped during the first part of this year. However, there was a significant DECREASE in kidnapping during the month of September. Compared to September of last year there have been 27% less cases reported. October is showing a similar trend with the reduction in kidnapping rates down over 30%. This is a demonstration that civilian cooperation with the armed forces is beginning to work. In September, tips from civilian informants prevented the massive kidnapping of 28 peasant workers in the sugar region of the country in the south west(Valle, Pradera y Florida). Other cases of effective informants have led to the prompt rescue of kidnap victims.

The past weekend, for the first time in years, traffic levels increased on the roads leading from the major cities to the rural surroundings. In comparison to previous weekends, traffic was up by as much as 60% in some areas of the country. The President has urged people to drive out of the cities in defiance of terror on the roads promoted by illegal groups. He arranged security caravans to ensure that the roads would be safe. This, too, may mark a reversal of a trend and a reclaiming of our national territory.

The recovery of the rule of law has also begun in earnest in Medellin. Medellin is the second largest city in Colombia. The security situation has been so difficult that the armed forces had lost the ability to even enter some of the toughest neighborhoods. Thousands of people living in these neighborhoods have been under the control of local militias. The Government recently conducted one operation that led to a regaining of control of the area by legitimate authorities. More than 40 militia leaders were arrested and 10 were killed in combats with authorities. Dozens of weapons, ammunitions and explosives were seized from the illegal groups operating in the area.

http://www.crimesofwar.org/thebook/colombia.html
Colombia, by Douglas Farah

In the wake of the narcotraffickers have come common criminals who are willing to work for any group willing to pay for their services, and, of course, are even less mindful of the laws of war than the guerrillas and paramilitaries themselves. Perhaps predictably, the violence of the conflict has spilled over into almost every corner of Colombian life. The country is now among the most violent in the world, with an annual homicide rate of about seventy per 100,000 inhabitants. In contrast, the homicide rate in the United States, the most violent of all developed countries, is about eleven per 100,000 inhabitants.

This mixture of war and crime—the fighting can be shown to wax and wane according to the amount of narcotics money being channeled to both sides—makes the Colombian conflict very difficult to understand. What is clear, however, is the readiness of all sides to commit grave violations of humanitarian law, although certain groups tend to commit some violations more than others.

For example, while all sides rely on forced abductions, the FARC, and to a lesser extent the ELN, have come to use kidnapping and hostage taking of civilians both as a political weapon and as a means of obtaining funds. The FARC tends to target politicians and land owners, while the ELN is more prone to kidnap foreigners, especially those whom they believe can be ransomed for large sums. But there are no hard and fast rules. The ELN at times resorts to political kidnappings, while the FARC continues to hold three American missionaries it seized in 1993. And while kidnapping remains primarily the tool of the guerrillas, the tactic is being resorted to more and more frequently by right-wing paramilitary organizations.

No one knows how many kidnappings occur each year because only a percentage of them are reported to the authorities. If, as the Colombian authorities estimate, at most about 20 percent of the kidnappings are reported and there are about nine hundred reported abductions a year, the total would be destabilizing by any measure. The overall statistics for the past two years of persons killed by the violence is staggering.

Summary executions are another instance of a tactic which, while engaged in by all sides, is more commonly engaged in by one of the belligerents. It has been the paramilitary squads, according to most recent human rights reports, that have been the main offenders. Fighters loyal to two of the top paramilitary leaders, the brothers Fidel and Carlos Castano, have been singled out as users of the tactic. As has so often been the case in Colombia, the Castanos’ war against the guerrillas has been motivated in large part by family history. The brothers’ father was kidnapped by the FARC in the 1970s and held for ransom. The family negotiated with the guerrillas and eventually paid a ransom, but the father was killed anyway, and his body dumped on family property. It is not surprising, in the Colombian context, that upon reaching manhood the Castano brothers founded paramilitary
organizations that continue to this day to carry out some of the worst massacres Colombia has ever known.

In the case of the Castanos, political violence and crime soon became all but impossible to separate. Their forces were financed by the sale of cocaine, and, in late 1997, Carlos Castano was identified by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as a major drug trafficker. In the field, the Castanos’ fighters have made a practice of going in the middle of the night to a civilian area with a list of suspected leftists, dragging those they could find from their homes, executing them, and dumping the bodies where they will be seen by as many people as possible. Apparently, it was in retaliation for these acts that the FARC kidnapped and then reportedly killed Fidel Castano.

But, as in the case of kidnappings, while the paramilitary organizations have been responsible for most of the recent large-scale massacres, both the FARC and the ELN have summarily executed political officials in towns where the insurgents wanted to seize control. And in any case, determining who is responsible for any given massacre, or even why it occurred, is often complicated because groups routinely operate at the behest of other parties, especially the drug traffickers themselves. For example, the paramilitary units not only kill suspected leftists but also members of the drug cartels who know too much or are suspected of disloyalty. The guerrillas have also executed people working in the coca fields or in drug laboratories at the behest of the cartels for the same reasons.

The practice of carrying out summary executions is routinely compounded by the use of torture. Torture is used to extract information, but it is also employed as a punishment and as a deterrent to others. Such killings are only one element in the pattern of direct and indiscriminate attacks against the civilian populations in which all sides regularly engage. The result of these attacks, which have been little reported even in the Colombian press, has been hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people both in areas controlled by the guerrillas and areas controlled by the paramilitaries. This toll of internally displaced may be the most catastrophic human effect of all of the Colombian conflict. Even less noted has been the environmental disaster the fighting has caused. Despite widespread international protests, the ELN continues to blow up oil pipelines that run through virgin jungle. Tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil are spilled each year, fouling waterways, killing wildlife, and making cleanup virtually impossible, even if the will or resources to try were available.

Interview with Richard McCormick
Director of Pinkerton Business Risk International

(follow link above... whole interview)