Bargaining Problems in the Colombian Conflict
What is the Colombian Conflict?
The Colombian civil conflict started in the 1960s at the end of la Violencia (1948–58), an earlier civil war which pitted Colombia’s right against its left. The power sharing agreement excluded communist and far-left groups, a result of Cold War stigma. Two groups, the FARC and ELN were founded to firment communist revolution among the rural proletariat of Colombia. They were inspired by the recent Cuban Revolution and Che Guevera’s foco theory. Foco, or vanguard theory of revolution, held that a small group of intellectual communists supported by the people could defeat the government by hiding in the mountains and waging guerrilla war. The groups, with FARC being much larger and more powerful, used kidnapping, terrorism and extortion to achieve their aims.
Beginning in the 1980s, FARC began a loose alliance with Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel. American funded right wing paramilitary groups sprang up in response. FARC kidnapped an estimated 25,000 people between 1970 and 2010 and nearly 4,000 civilians have been killed or maimed by landmines planted by the FARC. Huge amounts of US aid, called Plan Colombia, and a series of decisive government actions weakened the FARC into the 2000s. In 2017 a peace deal was struck between the rebels and government, but some dissident members split. In total, the Colombian Conflict has left as many as 220,000 dead, 25,000 disappeared, and 5.7 million displaced over the last half century.
Why care?
The Colombian Conflict involves the rapidly developing but politically unstable Bolivarian nations of South America. The conflict is a brutal case study in nonstate actors, civil war, foreign intervention, and now with the recent Catatumbo campaign with Venezuela; how state failure influences neighboring countries. Issues that governments in the West have just had to start dealing with in the 21st century, like terrorism, political radicalism, and the power of the narcotics trade have been at the forefront of this conflict for forty years already. Finally, this article seeks to examine the conflict from all lenses: international relations, comparative government, and in a new manner through the lens of systemic injustice.
The Information problem
A key reason for the Colombian Conflict’s longevity is what Barbara F. Walter called the information problem. Relative power in civil conflicts is difficult to judge and information is closely guarded. This makes a deal between the two sides difficult, even when the large amount of money spent on war would make bargaining the most rational choice. The government does not want to concede to a weak group, thus motivating rebels to show strength. Power for any armed group is ultimately drawn from funding. The Colombian conflict is mired with rebel groups using drug sales, and illegal mining as a funding source. While useful for the rebels, these sources are ambiguous and true funding is constantly in flux. The Colombian government simply could not judge FARCs true strength, as Walters put, “The U.S. government, for example, collected far more information about the conventional Confederate Army in four years of war (US Civil War) than the Colombian government has collected on the FARC in >40 years”. Unsure information on rebel strength kept the government away from the negotiation table, thus prolonging conflict.
The style of warfare makes settlement difficult and increases the information problem, “Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, for example, has argued that ‘the guerrilla wins if he does not lose’, (quoted in Zartman 1995). Colombia’s thick jungles and tall mountains make it easy for FARC to conceal their true power. FARC has been one of the most out reaching non-state actors in history, engaging in diplomacy with Libya, the IRA, and other nations. Foreign funding makes differentiating between deep and shallow pocketed groups difficult. Government resolve over the stages of the Colombian conflict and their willingness to bring FARC to the bargaining table is interwoven with their perception of the groups power projection capabilities. When a deal was finally struck in 2017, it came when government resolve was highest, and FARC’s power was lowest.
The Commitment Problem
The Colombian Conflict post-2017 is representative of the commitment problem. In this commitment problem, rebels give up power through agreements, whilst the government gains strength. Thus as soon as commitments are made relative power shifts. This creates two problems: distrust of negotiated settlements leading dissident members to just continue fighting under new groups, and the government often reneges its promises and commits retribution against former rebels. Decisive military victories will lessen these commitment problems as it requires less cooperation on peace accords. Long low intensity conflicts present an information and commitment problem at their close. Retribution, banned under the peace deal, has taken place against former FARC rebels.
Besides retribution, the biggest component of the commitment problem is that insufficient bargaining between intrastate actors creates repeatable conflict. This is the reason the 2017 peace deal is not enough to fully stop the Colombian conflict. FARC dissidents easily disavowed the peace deal and continued fighting; left-wing ELN refused to even bargain, and the right-wing paramilitaries sprung up to fight FARC found themselves empowered. At this same time, Venezuela has been in the midst of state failure, transferring the overall conflict to a lowland jungle border region called Catatumbo. Venezuela has become a 3rd party enforcer of the peace agreement and a safe haven/new supporter for leftists with similar ideologies to the Maduro regime. The ideological motivation for fighting has not stopped, rebel funding methods not squashed, and a new front of instability opened for intrastate conflict. Actors with a different name can easily copy the same methods and reasons the original rebel group had, sidestepping any government agreement and the costly concessions the central government made.
The Resource Curse
A comparative approach to the Colombian Conflict would see the fundamental problem to be a resource curse. The resource curse explains why countries blessed with ample natural resources are troubled with poverty and instability. Natural resources provide easy funding for groups subverting the central government in the peripheral regions of a country. Funding is the most important factor for a rebel group, so easy funding from resources incentivizes rebellion. Colombia has mineral deposits which FARC and ELN use for funding. These mines can be taken with relative ease. Narcotics trafficking can be seen as a natural resource. The drug trade provides huge funding for all non-state groups in the Colombian Conflict. FARC, the idealistic `freedom fighters’ who once found the trade counterrevolutionary, trafficked 40% of all cocaine from Colombia with annual drug income at between $2.4 billion and $3.5 billion. Present battles at the Venezuelan border are for valuable trafficking routes. FARC’s main successor, the ELN is in a strong position to become the most powerful organized crime and rebel group in Colombia. The never-ending nature of the Colombian conflict can be explained by the ease of funding natural resources like minerals and drug trafficking provide. This is why even after the peace negotiations rebel groups swarm in the Catatumbo region.
Problem of Systemic Ineqaulities
The final lens which to view the Colombian conflict is through race and systemic oppression. Colombia has some of the highest wealth inequality in the world, with a huge rural-urban gap in terms of standards of living. Rural Colombians have been the most displaced and affected by civil conflict. Marginalized groups are far more likely to have been caught in the crossfires of the deadly conflict. Groups like Afro Colombians and Indigenous Colombians face huge disparities, in wealth, health, safety and housing. The recruitment pool of the guerilla groups is also disproportionately Indigenous and Afro Colombians. Demobilization has failed to address the systemic inequalities which fueled the conflict for so many years. To fully stop recruitment of rebels and heal the scars of the conflict; the government of Colombia must help those directly affected and disproportionately .
Conclusion
War as a social interaction between two rational actors is an incredibly costly endeavor, making one wonder why agreements cannot be made to prevent it. The examination of civil conflict in Colombia shows why two parties can fail to stop war at its onset and the causes prolonging it. Examination of this conflict also shows how the real victims of war are the citizens living amongst it and why helping them should be a necessity in any post war agreement.