Colombian Armed Conflict

Blog 8: Categorizing Political Violence

Political violence is an issue that has been affecting world affairs since the earliest historic records. This may refer to conflicts within a state, between states or even between state and non-state actors (Samuels). It is still challenging however, to determine what specific kind of political violence is taking place in each of the different conflicts that have happened or are happening around the world. We will examine the Colombian armed conflict to determine if the current definitions used for the different kinds of political violence are accurate.

The three main kinds of political violence that we will study through this armed conflict will be revolution, civil war, and terrorism. Our goal is to understand in which category does the Colombian armed conflict fall into. According to David J. Samuels, a revolution is an “armed conflict within a sovereign state between insurgents and the state” (Samuels), while a civil war is an “armed combat within the boundaries of a sovereign state between parties subject to common authority at the start of hostilities” (Samuels). In the case of Colombia, there are the insurgents (guerrilla groups), which have taken a stand against the state.

Historically, the Colombian armed conflict has been mostly categorized as a civil war (Wikipedia, 2012). When the conflict began in 1964, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia sought to bring socialism to the country. This may be greatly attributed to a spillover effect, “which occurs when violence in one state spills over into neighboring states”, caused by the socialist movements of Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Fidel Castro in Latin America happening at that time. This means that the conflict actually began as a revolutionary movement. However, the conflict has progressed into what is now known as a “drug war” and there have now been more things going on other than fighting between armed combatants within the boundaries of the state. This conflict now involves drug trafficking, kidnapping, and bombings coming from guerrilla groups. Moreover, the issue of drug trafficking has caused the United States to become involved. Does this mean though, that the political violence coming from guerrilla groups is terrorism?

Terrorism “is the threatened or actual use of violence for political purposes by non-state actors, particularly against civilian targets” (Samuels). This has actually become a very crude reality for Colombia, especially in rural areas were guerrilla domain is the strongest. For example, the guerrilla threatens the peasants and farmers that live in these areas that they control so that they receive aid from these people (Hanson, 2012). These are civilians we are referring to of course and all this evidence suggests that these are acts of terrorism coming from the guerrilla.

It has therefore become a difficult matter to classify the Colombian armed conflict because it has had such a varying nature. This conflict has major qualities that could qualify it as a revolution and a civil war, but the nature of its fighting also qualifies it to be terrorism.

Can we really define all political conflicts then? The Colombian armed conflict has certainly proved that it cannot be classified into a category yet. It has too many different qualities that could make it fall in any of these three sections. We cannot really say that it is a revolution, civil war or acts of terrorism, at least not with the definitions provided by David J. Samuels. Perhaps it may be a combination of all three and a new term will result from studying this conflict, or more simply, we will just have to wait the ending result in order to classify it.

References

1.     Wikipedia search: “Colombian Armed Conflict”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombian_armed_conflict_%281964%E2%80%93present%29

2.     Hanson, Stephanie. "Council on Foreign Relations." Council on Foreign Relations. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2012. http://www.cfr.org/colombia/farc-eln-colombias-left-wing-guerrillas/p9272

3.     Valencia, Robert. "Colombia and FARC: Will the Internal Conflict Reach an End?" Yale Journal of International Affairs |. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2012. http://yalejournal.org/2012/07/colombia-and-farc-will-the-internal-conflict-reach-an-end/

4.     Samuels, David. Comparative Politics. 2012. New York: Pearson Education. 257-84.