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7.1 Introduction

The third chapter further explores the relation between the expansion of the paramilitary forces and its impact on the war system. Instead of taking the FARC and the paramilitary forces as main unit of analysis, this chapter primarily focuses on the acting of the state and the military. The reasons behind the passive reaction of the state to the expansion of the FARC have been mentioned. This chapter investigates why the military modernized in the late 1990s and how their expansion of power impacted the war system and the levels of violence. The objectives of the actors for participation in the war system are again used to do so. By looking at the dynamics between the military, the FARC and the paramilitary forces the arguments made in the previous chapters will be strengthened. The chapter ends by presenting the outcome of the changed dynamics of the war system on the levels of violence.

7.2 Dynamics between the Military and the Paramilitary Forces

The existence and the success of the paramilitary forces can for a part be found in the relation between the paramilitary forces and the military. To begin with, the military played a part in the creation of civil defense forces in the 1960s. When the FARC started expanding in the 1980s, the lack of response from the military allowed the paramilitary forces to fill the gap in the balance of power. For the military, the paramilitary forces were an effective way of continuing the low-intensity war and focus on other security threats such as the drug cartels.

This is in line with the different objectives of the military and the paramilitary forces. As has been argued, the primary objective of the paramilitary forces was not to defeat the FARC, but to enrich themselves economically. Their strategy of not confronting the FARC directly but target peasants and civilians instead, underlines this argument. The primary objective of the state and the military apparatus is the continuation of their hegemony. Consequently, the objectives of the military and the FARC are opposed. Nevertheless, as has been explained, the military itself profited economically from the war system by its strategy of low-intensity warfare. On the long term however, this chosen strategy was irreconcilable with its primary objective, as the strategy of low-intensity warfare greatly aided the FARC and the paramilitaries in their territorial expansion and caused violence to reach exorbitant levels. The argument here is that the state and the military condoned the existence of the

paramilitary forces as long as their primary objectives did not clash. The increasing threat of an expanding FARC and the ever-growing levels of violence caused by the struggle for economically strategic lands increased the pressure on the state to take matters in their own hands.

In a report on the transformation of the Colombian army, former Colonel Cruz Ricci

explains that between 1996-1998 the FARC had reached their strongest point (Cruz Ricci, 2008). In these years, the FARC implemented new ways of operation (Germani & Kaarthikeyan, 2005). Between 1996 and 1998 the Colombian army faced several major losses against the FARC in a way not seen before. The loss of the state’s hegemonic control in FARC territory augmented when the FARC had reached its zenith between 1996-1998. The mentioned time frame is visible when looking at the total victims per year (figure 1.2), the number of FARC attacks per year (figure 5.2), the number of civilian victims and combatant victims in war actions (5.4), the amount of coca cultivated in Colombian (figure 6.1), the creation of paramilitary groups per year (figure 6.2), and the number of massacres per year (6.4). It was in this context that the Colombian army modernized and expanded. The next part briefly explains the modernization of the Colombian army. Based on the dynamics between the military and the paramilitary forces, it is assumed that the paramilitary forces became obsolete at the moment the military changed the balance of power to their favor as the political-military purpose of the paramilitaries vanished.

7.3 Modernization of the Colombian Army and the Balance of Power

From 1998 on, the Colombian army modernized to be better able to deal with the new conditions of the war system. The aim was to create a more flexible and mobile army, better capable of adapting to its enemy and quicker reinforcing units under FARC attack. In addition, the Colombian army started improving its collection and processing of information and engaged in the development of integrated communication systems (Cruz Ricci, 2008). Moreover, the use of air power became a successful strategy to fight the FARC fronts. The modernization of the army included the expansion of manpower from 1999 onwards (Giraldo, 2006).

In the same year, the Colombian army also started to receive large amounts of money from the United States to help fighting the guerrillas and the cocaine problem. In 1999, Plan Colombia was approved by Colombian Congress and in 2000 by the American authorities. In

total nearly $10 billion was provided between 2000-2016, of which 72% was to be dedicated to the Colombian military (Cruz Ricci, 2011; Washington Office on Latin America, 2016). Part of the security plan consisted of extensive eradication of coca crops. From 2000-2004, Colombian coca cultivation decreased by 51% in terms of cultivated areas (UNODC, 2005). Large levels of U.S. Aid together with more government budget helped the Colombian army fight the FARC.

The balance of power switched once again to the favor of the Colombian army after the transformation. This conclusion can be drawn by looking at the same indicators that were used to establish that the balance of power had changed to the favor of the FARC. Concerning their territory and the number of fighters, FARC were removed from the critical areas surrounding the capital, and by 2008 were down to a number of 9000 fighters (Gentry & Spencer, 2011). While the FARC had increasingly changed their military strategy from guerrilla-warfare to army-like warfare, soon after the expansion of the Colombian military the FARC were forced to adopt their traditional guerrilla strategies once again. The guerilla movement fled to remote areas close to the borders (Maddaloni, 2011). In addition to the lower number of fighters and lost territory, the number of FARC incursions plummeted. After 1998, the number of FARC attacks more than halved in the time span of two years (figure 5.2). Throughout the 2000s, the number of incursions fluctuated between around 40 and 5 per year, but was very unstable (Ibid).

7.4_​​The Paramilitaries and Violence

As the balance of power was tilting towards the side of the Colombian army, the assumption is that the military function of the paramilitaries became obsolete. Between 2003 and 2006 the AUC and other paramilitary groupings demobilized. In this period, approximately 30,000 paramilitary troops handed in their weapons after a favorable peace deal had been bargained with the Colombian government (Porch & Rasmussen, 2007). The efforts of the Colombian government to engage in peace talks with the paramilitary forces, despite the massive amounts of violence executed by the latter, demonstrate the nature of relations between the army and the paramilitary forces. Moreover, it confirms the statement that the paramilitaries could only emerge because of a disequilibrium in the power balance between the FARC and the Colombian army and thus the connection between the rupture of the war system and the emergence of the paramilitary forces.

The last part of the chapter briefly considers the patterns of victims and violence in the period after 2000. According to logics of the war system and the methods used by the paramilitary forces, a decrease in the number of civilian victims should be noticeable while the number of casualties with respect to the fighters should have increased. This is assumed because the army expanded and intensified their fight against the FARC while between 2003 and 2006 the AUC demobilized. The casualties suffered by the fighting actors continued to be a high around 2000 per year until the year 2006 (RUV, 2013). In this year the number of FARC incursions reached its second-lowest point since 1992 (figure 5.2). The number of total victims should have decreased, as the majority of victims was internally displaced persons. Indeed, after the year 2002, a sharp decline in civilian casualties can be noted looking at the number of civilians killed, from more than 14,000 in 2002 to less than 6000 by 2006 (RUV, 2013). Furthermore, the number of massacres executed by the paramilitaries started to decline after a high had been reached in 2000 (figure 6.4). This trend could be explained by the assumption that the army started taking the initiative in the fight against the FARC, with less opportunities for the paramilitaries to expropriate land. The fact that the rate of increase of internally displaced persons started falling after 2000 affirms the argument that the paramilitaries could only have expanded because of a complementary power balance between the FARC and the military (CMNH-IEPRI, 2016).

In short, the paramilitaries were a primarily capitalist force to the war system, only existing because of the hegemonic crisis that was a necessary component of the war system. The destabilization of the war system in the 1980s helped the paramilitary forces expand territorially and financially as the need for security increased and the demand for coca increased. When the military changed the balance of power to its favor, the political-military purpose of the paramilitary forces diminished and they became obsolete, which is visible in the number of violence and massacres between 1990 and 2006 .