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Different Resources, Different Conflicts? A Framework for Understanding the Political Economy of Armed Conflict and Criminality

in Colombian Regions

September 22nd, 2014

Angelika Rettberg, Ralf Leiteritz and Carlo Nasi1

I. Introduction An important concern in the ongoing peace talks between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) refers to the sustainability of an agreement for the disarmament and mass demobilization of combatants in a social and economic context marked by the presence of illicit markets and multiple incentives for crime. The widespread circulation of weapons, the existence of various criminal organizations other than the guerrillas, the persistence of drug trafficking, and, especially, the availability of natural resources and economic activities that have been affected for decades by armed groups’ extortion schemes all create a set of opportunities for criminal activity to continue, regrow, or transform itself even after guerrilla groups lay down their weapons. These factors constitute a critical challenge in terms of consolidating sustainable peace in such a way as to complement and foster Colombia’s progress in other respects. This book addresses the sources of risk for the Colombian post-conflict. It centers on the connections dating back several decades between legal natural resources and the dynamics of the armed conflict and criminal activity in different Colombian regions.2 It intentionally avoids the traditional emphasis on drug trafficking—which involves illegal natural resources—as an engine for war in Colombia (Angrist and Kugler 2008; Arias, Camacho, Ibañez, Mejía and Rodríguez 2014; y Holmes, Gutiérrez de Piñeres, and Curtin 2006) and

1 This is the introductory chapter to our edited book on Different Resources and Different Conflicts:

Varieties of Armed Conflict and Criminality in the Colombian Regions. We thank many colleagues for

reviewing previous versions of this chapter. Special thanks to the International Development Research

Centre (IDRC), the main funder of the studies included here, for its generous support. Angelika Rettberg

thanks the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, whose support made it possible to finish this chapter. We

gratefully acknowledge the support of several research assistants: Andrés Mauricio Ortiz-Riomalo, Juan

Felipe Ortiz-Riomalo, Juan Diego Prieto, and Daniel Quiroga. Juan Diego Prieto also translated this text

from its original version in Spanish into English. 2 We conceptualize the armed conflict as the violent confrontation between various illegal armed groups and

the Colombian state in the past several decades over issues such as land distribution, management and

ownership of natural resources. Criminal activity is understood as the phenomenon whereby individuals and

organizations appropriate goods and money for their own personal gain, without promoting a political

agenda. We base our characterization of the Colombian case as an armed conflict based on the definition put

forth by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), according to which a confrontation

must be violent, involve the state, have political objectives, and produce at least 1,000 annual deaths

attributable to the conflict (SIPRI 2012). In the actual experience of conflict-afflicted countries, the line

between the two phenomena is blurry, given that armed groups require funding and engage in criminal

activity, and criminal actors have developed political agendas to reshape the prevailing social order.

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instead focuses on exploring the links between war and the legal economic activities that have been the backbone of the country’s economy.3 The book posits that Colombia is a country of regions, not just culturally and economically as others have suggested (Gutiérrez de Pineda 1968, Zambrano Pantoja 1989, Martín Barbero, López de Rocha and Robledo 2000, Banco de la República 1952, Arango Cano 1956, Meyer y Villar Borda 2005), but also in terms of the character and intensity of the armed conflict and criminal activity. When disaggregated, national indicators on violence reveal stark differences across regions and over time. This speaks to the fact that, in the course of fifty years, the Colombian war has been dynamic, becoming more intense in some areas and weaker in others, and always changing its modes of operation. This book argues that studying the conflict at the subnational level, describing and analyzing the relationship between legal resources and war in different regions, and identifying some of the factors that have shaped this relationship over time can help to pinpoint the most crucial issues on which researchers and practitioners will need to focus their attention. Doing so can contribute to in preventing the upsurge of new forms of criminality. In short, it seeks to offer some lessons to prevent a peace agreement from becoming irrelevant in the face of criminal activity that persists beyond armed confrontation. If natural resources have played a role in the onset or duration of the conflict, peacebuilding efforts will necessarily have to address their impact and legacies. The chapters that make up this book set out to address the following questions: What have been the regional dynamics of the relationship between legal natural resources and war in Colombia? What are some of the sources of regional variation in the relationship between resources and war that might explain dissimilar war dynamics? Aside from armed actors’ national strategic concerns, in what way do the specific properties and production processes of different resources shape those actors’ behavior? On the other hand, to what extent does the armed conflict condition the structure of production processes and the strategies of economic actors toward their environment? What mechanisms connect the resources under study to the different regional dynamics of the Colombian armed conflict? Why do some regions—and some resources—appear to have developed the ability to shield themselves from war dynamics? Do any specific characteristics of some resources’ extraction and production processes mitigate the links between primary commodities and war? If so, what are they? To answer these questions, the book includes in-depth case studies of bananas (in Urabá and Magdalena), coffee (in Caldas, Risaralda, and Quindío), coal (in La Guajira and Cesar), emeralds (in Boyacá), ferronickel (in the municipality of Montelíbano, Córdoba), flowers (in various towns in the Sabana area near Bogotá and in Rionegro, Antioquia), and oil (in Arauca and Santander). None of these resources are manufactured goods and all fit under the rubric of primary commodities. They differ in the extent of their contribution to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and exports (see Tables 1 and 2). They are produced or extracted in

3 In a study published in 2005, the Financial Information and Analysis Unit (UIAF) of the Colombian

Ministry of Finance estimated that, in 2003, the FARC earned about US$ 600 million through kidnapping,

extortion, and drug trafficking. According to the study, drug trafficking accounted for 30 percent of the

organization’s income (Semana 2005).

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different regions of the country (see Map 1) and the geographical reach of their production varies. Despite their multiple differences, these resources share a fundamental trait: they contribute substantially to the economies of the regions where they are produced. As such, they constitute useful cases for addressing the questions posed earlier.4

(Map 1 about here) This map illustrates the municipalities and regions included in this study. With the exception of ferronickel and emeralds, it is not exhaustive in terms of all the places where the resources under study are produced in Colombia.

For each case, we examined the relationship between armed conflict dynamics (our dependent variable)—in terms of the kind of armed actors involved, the extent of their presence, the types of violent actions in which they engage (homicide, forced displacement, kidnappings, attacks on infrastructure, or extortion), and the intensity of the confrontation—on the one hand, and the characteristics of the extraction or production process of a given resource (our independent variable), on the other. Regarding the latter, we studied aspects such as the sector of the economy to which a resource belongs, the international price structure, the composition and structure of ownership of the companies involved, the origin of capital (whether it was domestic or foreign), and the intensity and organization of factors of production (land, labor, capital, and technology). We also looked into the extent to which production is regulated (either by state-enforced laws or by self-imposed standards of good behavior), and paid attention to historical and contextual factors such as the extent to which extraction occurs in enclave settings (Di John 2006) or involves patterns of demographic expansion and frontier expansion. The connections between the resources under study and other agrarian or extractive activities and their linkages with local communities’ traditional practices were also explored. Finally, we paid attention to geographical factors, such as whether production is concentrated in one location or diffused over large areas, and how distant production sites are from urban centers (Le Billon 2001). As intervening variables, we included information about the presence and role of state institutions and the national strategies of territorial expansion and consolidation by illegal armed groups. For all cases, we sought to bring to bear information about the organization and internal rules of the production or extraction process, as well as on the dynamic context (social, institutional, political, and economic) where the interaction between resources and conflict takes place. It was taken as a given that this context shapes actors’ preferences and strategic choices; accordingly, contextual factors help explain how illegal armed actors as well as actors involved in resource extraction adapt and respond to institutional incentives. Through these process-tracing exercises (Bennett and Checkel 2014), we were able to produce “thick descriptions” (Geertz 1973) of the relationship between resources and war in the regions under study. Based on these regional portraits, we were able to establish

4 This list of cases does not encompass every legal resource that has been permeated by the dynamics of war

in Colombia. Further studies could be added on timber in Chocó, coltan in the southeast of the country,

sugarcane in Valle del Cauca, oil palms, or cattle ranching. Still, we believe that the resources included here

offer an adequate view of the subject that allows us to capture both differences and similarities in the links

between resources and conflict.

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important associations that allowed us to develop an analytical framework: we posit that the relationship between the resources studied and the dynamics of the armed conflict can be one of motivation (when control of the rents that a resource generates constitutes the main motivating force for the presence of armed actors in a particular region), of complementarity (when control of a resource or its rents is not a central motivation for armed actors’ presence, but the opportunity to extract rents drags the resource into war dynamics), or of isolation (when a resource remains isolated or shielded from war dynamics). The following sections discuss the literature related to the research questions that guide this book. Next, we summarize the case studies and explain our analytical framework for categorizing them. The chapter concludes with a description of our methodological strategy and some clarifications about our data.

II. The State of the Literature That armed and criminal organizations require funding, and that this funding often derives from looting and controlling natural resources in war-torn societies, is already part of a broad consensus among students of the onset, duration, and transformation of civil wars (Ross 2003; Bannon and Collier 2003; Berdal and Malone 2000; Collier and Hoeffler 2004; Elbadawi and Sambanis 2002; Fearon 2005; Keen 1998). Starting with Keen’s (1998) seminal work and his call for addressing the economic functions of violence in war settings—that is, the use of violence as an instrument for reaching economic goals—the past few decades have seen the growth of a vast literature seeking to examine the relationships among resources, armed conflicts, crime, and development. In contrast with works that emphasize the political and cultural sources of rebellion (Galeano 1971, Kalyvas 2007, Gurr 1970, González Calleja 2002, Gutiérrez Sanín 2008, Boix 2008, Kaplan 1994), these works focus on the pragmatic viability of creating and maintaining an irregular armed group. Collier (2000) succinctly summarized the main conditions that facilitate the onset of conflicts involving resources in certain countries: high dependence on primary commodity exports, an abundance of unemployed and uneducated young men, and periods of economic downturn. In short, this literature has suggested that war is not just about winning: “War is not simply a breakdown in a particular system, but a way of creating an alternative system of profit, power and even protection” (Keen 1998: 11). In contrast to other approaches, this literature argued that wealth, not poverty, is an essential condition for rebellions to occur. Hence the popularity of the idea of the “resource curse” (De Soysa 2000), or the notion that natural wealth becomes a burden rather than a blessing for poor countries, for it leads them to political instability, looting, and corruption, rather than guiding them on a safe path to development. As a result, we know much more about the impact of natural resources on conflict dynamics. It is difficult to break or transform the relationship between resources and war, and even after war’s end it is difficult for countries to build effective states and rule-of-law institutions (Haggard and Tiede 2014).

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- Mechanisms

Beyond noting the link between resources and conflict, various scholars have sought to uncover the mechanisms that connect resources to conflict. How do resources impact countries’ political stability and influence the rise or survival of armed groups? One of the issues explored has been the type of resources involved in conflicts. Le Billon (2001) and Ross (2004) coined the term “lootability.” Lootable resources are those that can be easily transported and distributed, such as diamonds, which combine high value and limited volume. In contrast, resources such as timber, coal, and oil face high barriers to entry into markets, either because their production involves high levels of capital and technology, or because their profitability depends on high volumes of sales. Other key concepts are the financial and military feasibility of armed groups (Collier, Hoeffler and Rohner 2009), the “obstructability” of resources—which calls attention to illegal armed groups’ ability to affect distribution channels (or crucial infrastructure) for a resource—and their legality—referring to the existence of institutionalized and legal international markets and prices (Ross 2003, Le Billon 2009). Still other factors that set resources apart from each other are whether they are capital- or labor-intensive (Dube and Vargas 2006; Di John 2006) and spatial characteristics. The geographer Philippe Le Billon (2001), for example, argued that proximity to urban centers (offering greater security and access to institutional services) and whether production is diffuse or concentrated, urban or rural can help to predict the likelihood that resources will be involved in war dynamics. Di John (2006) added that high barriers to entry and whether resources are produced in enclave settings can also explain differences between resources in their linkages to conflict, for production enclaves often generate or deepen social conflicts that are permeated by illegal actors. Ross (2004: 35) found that “oil, non-fuel minerals, and drugs are causally linked to conflict, but legal agricultural commodities are not.” In contrast, Humphreys (2005) suggested that countries that are dependent on agricultural goods should be seen as being more prone to conflict and should therefore seek to diversify their economies.

- Institutions

The institutional context has become a fundamental explanatory factor in relation to wars for resources. State weakness or ineffectiveness—or the lack of working institutions—has become a recurring theme in explanations about why resources end up linked to political instability and corruption (Collier and Hoeffler 2005, Karl 1997). The lack of functioning state institutions—or their weakening over the course of an armed conflict—facilitates the looting of resources and allows illegal armed groups to avoid being brought to justice, which in turn keeps governments from managing resources within the framework of long-term economic planning.

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The centrality of institutions does not necessarily entail that highly institutionalized resources are always better protected from war. Some resources, such as oil, have very sophisticated legal and commercial infrastructures, both nationally and internationally, and yet they often become a source of rents for combatants and for corrupt actors (Dunning 2005, Karl 1997, Ross 2013, 2012, 2008, 2001; Bridge and Le Billon 2012). In view of this, researchers have turned their attention to the attributes that state and private institutions should have in order to maximize their effectiveness in preventing connections between resources and conflicts (Buhaug and Lujala 2005, Mähler, Shabafrouz and Strüver 2011, Lujala and Rustad 2011; Nichols, Lujala and Bruch 2011). On the one hand, Robinson, Torvik and Verdier (2006) argue that promoting accountability mechanisms and improving state capacity can protect countries from the resource curse. On the other hand, Snyder (2006) suggests that the relationship between lootable resources and political institutions does not have to lead to disorder, provided that state institutions (and not just private actors) can benefit from resource extraction (for instance, through taxation) and as long as rents are used to strengthen the state. Nichols, Lujala and Bruch (2011) and Clement (2010) call for adopting multi-level governance schemes to address the impacts of power asymmetries, actors’ interdependence, and their dissimilar risk perceptions. A central theme in this literature is that, if natural resources are linked to the origins or continuation of war, managing and controlling them must inevitably be part of any measure to end them or prevent them from reoccurring.

- Limitations After more than two decades of existence, the literature on natural resources and war has experienced many important changes and revisions. For example, Keen (2012) has questioned many of the literature’s central claims, labeling them as attractive oversimplifications of highly complex realities. Keen argues that, by focusing too much on greedy combatants, the literature has overlooked aspects such as the role of the international community and of some governments’ lack of transparency in inciting and fueling internal armed conflicts. Further, Berdal (2005) posited that the clear distinction between “greed” and “grievance” put forth by Collier and his colleagues was appealing from a policy point of view—given its simplicity and apparently straightforward translation into policy solutions (for instance, increasing military pressure on greedy organizations)—but problematic in its lack of empirical support in different societies. It has become increasingly clear that armed conflicts mutate and their intensity grows and wanes, which suggests that greed is only one among many factors that influence their dynamics. Even after a conflict ends, its consequences continue to permeate the social, political, and economic institutions of affected countries. Thus, critics of the early “greed” versus “grievance” literature call for overcoming its reductionism, cultural blindness, and lack of historical perspective. Authors such as Arnson and Zartman (2005) and Ballentine and Sherman (2003) stress the need for a more nuanced, multi-causal view of the different factors (economic, political, and cultural) that can play a role in the onset, duration, and

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transformation of war. They call attention to the fact that pillaging has been documented as a tool for war at least since the Middle Ages, and that cruelty in pursuit of resources is not new (Berdal 2005). Put simply, every war has elements of greed and grievances (Berdal and Malone 2000). Comparatively speaking, the world today is a more peaceful place than it was centuries ago (Pinker 2011, Hewitt, Wilkenfeld and Gurr 2012). Nevertheless, ongoing (as well as new) armed conflicts and wars continue to pose dilemmas for scholars and practitioners seeking to end them and understand their long-term consequences for societies (Ross 2013). Thus, after two decades, there is consensus around the notion that rebellions need to be financially and militarily feasible (Collier, Hoeffler, and Rohner 2009), but there are valid and deep critiques of one-dimensional analyses of their causes and important calls for studying the many connections between resources and conflict and their implications in greater depth. The field has opened up considerably. The following section outlines the work that remains to be done.

- The Road Ahead Subnational Variation Studies on the political economy of armed conflicts have tended to emphasize the national level. But as a budding literature has begun to underscore, there are important phenomena occurring at the subnational level which data aggregation at the national level obscures or distorts (Justino, Brück and Verwimp, 2013; Rettberg 2010b, 2012; Ross 2014; Snyder 2001). Often one finds particular histories, interests, practices, and actors in specific regions, which provide a more refined and complex understanding of the realities and histories of national-level conflict. The national level is best seen as a geographical convention rather than as the only pertinent unit of analysis (Libman 2010; Leiteritz, Nasi and Rettberg 2009; Rettberg, Leiteritz and Nasi 2011). As such, subnational variation in war-torn countries as regards the intensity and forms of violence as well as in terms of the natural resources involved represents a rich subject for scholarly inquiry and policymaking. Resilience (or Counter-Examples) Secondly, by focusing its attention on the connection between particular resources and conflict phenomena, the literature has not sufficiently problematized the existence of resources that do not tend to produce or lengthen conflicts. The connection between resources and war does not appear to be automatic or necessary, and it could even be reversible, so it is worth examining more carefully what factors of production or other traits make resources more resilient in ways that may prevent or attenuate perverse linkages. The Connection Between Resources, Conflict, and Crime

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Third, the search for generalizable, one-directional relationships between resources and war—largely for methodological reasons—has held back a more adequate study of the simultaneous interactions between resources, on the one hand, and conflict and crime, on the other. The broader context in which armed and criminal actors encounter opportunity structures and respond to the incentives given to them not just by one resource but also by different ones simultaneously has not been examined as extensively as a factor that may attenuate, accentuate or otherwise alter war dynamics. In practice, armed and criminal organizations appear to develop what we might call “resource portfolios” (Rettberg and Ortiz Riomalo, under review), in which all available resources are integrated interchangeably into war dynamics, depending on factors such as price structures and the intensity of state coercion. Institutional Inertia as a Mitigating or Aggravating Factor Fourth, an underexplored theme in discussions about extractive industries and their links to war has to do with institutional inertia and learning processes between actors and institutions, and with how these factors affect the relationship between resources and conflict. As is the case with all institutions, path-dependence (North 1990, Mahoney 2000, Pierson 2000), or the extent to which every choice determines and limits future decisions (in contrast with the idea that individuals always face a full repertoire of options), also applies to the relationship between resources and conflict. Insofar as actors and organizations act in contexts marked by institutional incentives, they adjust their strategies to those contexts and develop preferences for certain paths of action instead of others. This works both for and against war’s own inertias, as institutional path-dependence can act both as a mitigating or aggravating factor. Different Conflicts and Forms of Criminal Activity in Relation to the Same Resource Lastly, the literature has paid little attention to the way in which resources interact with changes in patterns of criminal activity. Much of the recent interest in questions about crime and urban security in post-conflict settings (Moser and McIlwaine 2001; Muggah 2009; Kunkeler and Peters 2011; Yassin 2008) can be attributed to the finding that, even after a war ends, the continued circulation of weapons, the accumulation of criminal expertise, and the uninterrupted operation of illicit markets continue to produce different forms of violence and crime. This explains in part why it is so difficult for countries afflicted by war to reduce their levels of violence in a sustainable manner, thus giving rise to new cycles of violence (Rettberg 2012). Relatedly, sudden price increases without sufficient institutional accompaniment can have an important effect on the production of some resources, leading to a rise in informality in extractive processes. This tends to attract illegal actors, who exploit regulatory vacuums and take advantage of producers’ lack of protection to impose licenses to operate and taxes on production. This sort of relationship between the behavior of markets, informality, and

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criminal activity—that is, the transformation of links between resources, war, and crime over time—has not been analyzed by the literature. These insights are examined throughout the studies that make up this book. They are also part of the analytical framework we present below. The following section complements this review with an examination of the scholarly literature on Colombia.

III. The Relationship between Legal and Illegal Resources and the Armed Conflict in Colombia

- First, a Brief Overview

The Colombian armed conflict is the longest-lasting active internal war in the Western Hemisphere. The two main insurgent groups—the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) were founded in 1964 (Aguilera 2006; Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica 2013b; Corporación Observatorio para la Paz 2001; Ferro and Uribe 2002; Medina 1996; Ortiz 2002, 2005; Pécaut 2008; Pizarro 1991, 1996). Some years later, other criminal and para-state organizations became involved in the war (Duncan 2006; Gutiérrez and Barón 2006; Rangel 2005; Reyes 1991; Romero 2003). Together, these groups are responsible for the loss of thousands of lives and for the serious impact that the conflict has had on the country’s economic performance (Valencia 2006, Echeverry, Salazar and Navas 2001, Álvarez and Rettberg 2008, Santamaría, Rojas and Hernández 2013) and political institutions (Bouvier 2009, Restrepo et al. 2004, Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica 2013a, García Villegas and Revelo 2011, Garay Salamanca 2008, Nasi 2012, Orjuela 2000, Pizarro Leongómez 2004). In contrast to civil wars in Central America, the Colombian conflict survived the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991 and the subsequent loss of financial and ideological support to guerrilla groups and to the state from the Soviet Union and the United States, respectively, which in other countries led to a sudden end to the confrontation. Moreover, even though the Colombian conflict has not been a secessionist one, nor has it involved demands for local autonomy, it has been marked by regional particularities as regards its intensity and the composition of its protagonists (Oquist 1978). Furthermore, the different illegal armed actors involved became economically dependent on the production and trafficking of illicit drugs and other resources at a much earlier stage than their counterparts in other conflicts, which gave them greater autonomy in relation to foreign powers. Thanks to this, they were able to grow their ranks by recruiting combatants (many of them underage) in the Colombian countryside and develop considerable offensive capabilities. Lastly, throughout its long trajectory, the Colombian armed conflict has undergone several transformations. First, the original armed groups, founded in the 1960s, were joined in the battlefield by others that later returned to civilian life. Some did so after multiple peace negotiations and within the framework of new institutional arrangements. For example, the M-19—which appeared in the 1970s after an alleged case of electoral fraud—and the Quintín

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Lame Movement—which took up the cause of indigenous communities in the Cauca department—lay down their weapons in the context of constitutional change, in 1991 (Villarraga 2010). Paramilitary groups, formed in the 1980s as a reaction by landowners and drug traffickers to guerrilla attacks—later growing into independent counterinsurgent armies with an expansionist agenda of their own and varying levels of coordination with state agents—demobilized under the 2005 Justice and Peace Law (No. 975) in a process that was facilitated and monitored by a delegation of the Organization of American States (MAPP-OEA). Secondly, the Colombian state has played different roles in relation to the conflict, moving between indifference and inaction, structuralist readings of the “objective causes” of violence, and the criminalization of armed activity. Over the past twenty years, its stances toward the armed conflict have shifted repeatedly. After experiencing multiple military setbacks in both rural and urban settings, during the Pastrana administration (1998-2002) the Colombian state adopted a defensive position and promoted peace negotiations. When these failed, it switched to an offensive strategy and strengthened its military apparatus, which allowed it to deal many heavy blows to illegal armed groups, including the killing of many of the FARC’s high commanders and a considerable increase in individual desertions (according to the Colombian Agency for Reintegration, between 2003 and 2013 there were 23,917 cases of individual demobilization; ACR 2014). Figure 1 illustrates changes in three key violence variables—homicide, forced displacement, and kidnapping. As this figure shows, 2002 marked an important breaking point in terms of these indicators. The homicide rate in Colombia fell from 80 homicides per 100,000 population in 1991 to 32 per 100,000 in 2012. This has made it possible for Colombia to become one of the most promising middle-income countries for investment (Financial Times June 4 2013; World Bank 2013, 26), and it can be attributed to the active role of the Colombian state. The strengthening of the state, despite being driven mainly by its military dimension at first, has also been reflected in areas such as education and healthcare (Barrera Osorio, Maldonado and Rodríguez 2012, Clavijo 2014, Ministerio de Educación 2012, Bernal and Gutiérrez 2012, Meléndez 2013, Gómez Sánchez 2013). Figure 1. Annual rates of homicide, forced displacement and kidnapping in Colombia, 1985 – 2012

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Source: Prepared by author based on data from Vicepresidencia de la República de Colombia(2013) and Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística (DANE, 2014b). Third, along with the other two factors, Colombia has experienced various forms of petty and organized crime, which have added to the violence that has plagued the country. According to Villa et al. (2013), between 1988 and 2008, about 12% of homicides are related to the armed conflict, and the rest have taken place in other contexts, including brawls and car accidents. The links between political armed activity and violent behavior with no clear political purpose have varied in intensity, but they have been a permanent phenomenon. This is reflected, for instance, in a thriving market for licit and illicit weapons—according to the Ministry of Defense, one in every 300 Colombians owns a firearm (see El Tiempo, 2014)–which involves different kinds of armed and criminal actors working together to obtain and distribute weapons. It is also reflected in urban crime, which, much like the armed conflict, is marked by the participation of unemployed youth and is linked to illicit markets. Finally, the porous borders between criminal and armed activity, marked by tensions between coexistence and collaboration, are also reflected in the advent of the so-called criminal gangs (bandas criminales, or BACRIM), which operate in 409 of the country’s municipalities (about one-third of the total) and 31 of its departments (Indepaz 2012). The BACRIM have taken over many illicit markets in different regions following the demobilization of paramilitary groups after the peace talks of Santa Fe de Ralito (Córdoba) under the 2005 Justice and Peace Law. Their ranks are made up by new, old, and rearmed combatants; they have absorbed deserters and demobilized fighters from every armed group and all ideological orientations, as well as new recruits, taking advantage of the criminal know-how acquired by many in the context of the armed conflict. The dividing line between

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armed groups and merely criminal organizations is real, but it is porous, and it calls attention to the likelihood that violent and criminal dynamics will continue to undergo many transformations, even in the absence of the armed groups that are active at present.

- The Political Economy of the Colombian Armed Conflict

The Colombian armed conflict has inspired a rich scholarly literature (Blair 2012, Rettberg 2010). Decades of political and social violence have made Colombia a model country for studying issues of armed conflict, insecurity, and crime. Studies of La Violencia—the period between 1948 and 1953, marked by harsh partisan confrontations (Guzmán Campos, Fals Borda and Umaña 1962)—gave origin to an important body of scientific inquiry. More than 700 academic books and articles on violence in Colombia were published between 1990 and 2007 (Peñaranda 2007). Some emblematic works include Sánchez et. al (1987) and Sánchez and Peñaranda (2007), according to whom the armed conflict must be seen not as a particular political juncture but as a structural component of the country’s political and social evolution, Pécaut (1987), who addresses the paradoxical coexistence of order and violence in Colombian history, and the Comisión de Estudios sobre la Violencia (Sánchez Gómez et al., 1987), which analyzed the relationship between the armed conflict and the shortcomings of the country’s democratic regime. Echoing what other authors had already posited about La Violencia—namely, that violence then had different regional manifestations, throwing some areas into quasi-anarchical situations and leaving others intact (Ortiz 1985 on Quindío; Uribe 1990, Guzmán Campos, Fals Borda and Umaña 1962, and Henderson 1985 on Tolima; and González Arias 2005 on Huila)—González, Bolívar and Vásquez (2003) found that the contemporary armed conflict is also marked by differences tied to macro-level (or national), meso-level (regional), and micro-level (municipal or sub-municipal) factors. The uneven presence of state institutions throughout Colombia’s territory leads these authors to conclude that a fundamental trait of the Colombian case is the prevalence of specific regional manifestations of the armed conflict. Thus, the authors corroborated the findings of earlier works by the Center for Research and Popular Education (CINEP), according to which Colombia is a “country of regions” (Zambrano 1998) also with regard to its armed conflict. More recently, the work of the Historical Memory Group—a precursor to an eventual Truth Commission for Colombia—posited a similar view in its reports by pointing to the existence of different regional “orders” (or sets of social, economic, and political rules) (Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica 2013a, 2010a, 2010b, 2008). Likewise, the Colombian Observatory for Integral Development, Citizen Coexistence, and Institutional Strengthening (ODECOFI) has carried out important studies about the social configuration of territories, various initiatives on development, peace, and civility, and the relationship between power, citizenry, and civility in multiple Colombian regions (González 2008; Vásquez, Vargas and Restrepo 2011). In general, for those who have adopted a regional perspective, it is clear that the conflict’s intensity, the strategies of armed actors, and the form and reach of its impact on victims of violence are marked by great regional and temporal variation.

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- Armed Conflict and Drug Trafficking The role of illicit drugs—farming of coca and poppies and trafficking of their byproducts to make drugs like cocaine and heroin—in the political economy of the Colombian armed conflict has been widely studied since the 1980s. There is broad consensus regarding the fact that illegal armed actors have been involved in the drug business at every step of the production chain, from coca leaf crops and the imposition of taxes to coca farmers to the distribution of cocaine in illegal international markets. Thus, along with the study of the effects of drug trafficking in the country’s economy (Caballero and Junguito, 1978, Thoumi 1993, 1995, Urrutia 1990, Steiner and Corchuelo 2000, Reina 1996, Sarmiento 1990), culture and society (Camacho Guizado 1992, Rincón 2009, Fernández Andrade 2002, Camacho Guizado 1989, Mejía Quintana, 2010a, 2010b), politics (Rangel 2005, Orjuela 1990, Thoumi 1999, Sánchez García 2011, Camacho 2011, Melo 1998), and crime (Guzmán 1999, Rubio 1999, Sánchez and Núñez 2001), there have been several studies about the relationship between drug trafficking and the armed conflict (Angrist and Kugler 2008, Bagley 2001, Camacho 2006, Echandía 2001, Holmes, Gutiérrez de Piñeres and Curtin 2006, IEPRI 2006, López 2008, Mejía and Gaviria 2011, Mejía and Restrepo 2013, Pardo 2000, Rangel 2005, Sánchez and Díaz 2004, Sánchez 2007). There continue to be many debates about the extent of illegal armed actors’ dependence on drug trafficking and the degree to which it has shaped their political agendas. But few would deny that illicit crops and drug trafficking have been powerful engines for the armed conflict and crime in Colombia (Arias et al. 2014, IEPRI 2006). For example, Mejía and Rico (2010) estimated that in 2008 the rents that illegal armed groups obtained from drug trafficking amounted to almost 2.5% of Colombia’s GDP. As a result, key concepts regarding the relationship between drugs and war in Colombia, the literature on the political economy of armed conflicts (such as lootability and greed), and the search for links between resources and war have become critical reference points for the study of the Colombian armed conflict (Gutiérrez 2004, 2008, Nasi and Rettberg 2006, IEPRI 2006). At the same time, this emphasis on the importance of drug trafficking—one among many resources—as a funding source for armed actors has hindered knowledge production about licit markets and their relationship with the Colombian conflict. Although the scholarly literature and public conversations continue to focus overwhelmingly on drug trafficking as the main source of funding for armed actors, a budding synthesis between regional perspectives on the Colombian armed conflict and the study of the relationship between resources and war has underscored the importance of de-narcotizing the research agenda on the Colombian armed conflict and fostering new approaches to its study. Thus, Massé and Camargo (2012) analyze the relationship between armed actors and the extractive sector. Rettberg, Leiteritz, and Nasi (2011) offer a panoramic view of the relationship between resources and war in different regions, Dube and Vargas (2013) analyze the relationship between price shocks and violence in coffee and oil regions, Idrobo, Mejía and Tribín (2014) identified the impact of illegal gold mining in the conflict, and Rettberg (2010, 2012) and Giraldo and Muñoz (2012) studied conflict dynamics in the coffee region and the relationship between gold, timber, and crime in Antioquia, respectively. Altogether,

14

these works confirm Klare’s (2002: 215) finding that the concentration of resources, more than political boundaries, is the most decisive factor in the geography of contemporary wars. In this book, we do not intend to dispute the substantial role that drug trafficking has played in the duration and transformations of the Colombian armed conflict. Yet we conscientiously choose to focus on the legal resources that dominate particular regional economies, building upon the growing literature on regional political economy. Thus, we seek to emphasize the fact that focusing solely on illegal resources offers an incomplete account of the complex dynamics of the criminal political economy fostered by the armed conflict, which has developed an ability of its own for compromising the stability of a definitive transition toward post-conflict.

IV. The Cases Studied in this Book Case selection for this book followed the literature’s call to study resources both from the extractive sector (coal, emeralds, ferronickel, gold, and oil) as well as the agrarian sector (bananas, coffee, and flowers). We sought to include resources that represent an important portion of the country’s GDP, such as oil and coal, as well as those that play an important role in the economies of specific regions, such as emeralds. Most of the resources under study are strongly linked to global markets (for example, coal and oil are the country’s main exports), which allowed us to trace the impact of fluctuations in the world economy on local dynamics. Figures 2, 3, and 4 and Table 1 provide comparative data regarding the contribution of resources to the country’s GDP and exports so as to illustrate their differences in terms of their weight in Colombia’s economy (more detailed information about each resource can be found in their respective chapters). Some resources such as gold, coal, and oil are highly dependent on foreign investment, expertise, and technology. Others such as bananas, coffee, emeralds, and flowers continue to be largely owned domestically. Altogether, the case studies offer unprecedented breadth, variety, and detail, all of it structured around a common analytical approach. Figure 2. Branches of economic activity, share of Colombian GDP (percentage), 2000-2013

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Source: Prepared by author based on data from DANE (2014a) Figure 3. Select resources, share of total Colombian exports (percentages), 1970 – 2013.

Source: Prepared by author based on data from Banco de la República de Colombia (2014).

0%

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Extractions of Mineral Coal

Agriculture (Other Products)

Agriculture (Coffee)

0

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16

Figure 4. Select resources, share of total Colombian exports (percentages), 1970 – 2013 (not including coffee or oil).

Source: Prepared by author based on data from Banco de la República de Colombia (2014). Table 1. Select resources, share of total Colombian exports (percentages), 1970 – 2013, in January of each year

Year Coffee Coal Oil Ferronickel Bananas Flowers Gold Emerald

1970 57% 0% 5% 0% 37% 0% 1% 10%

1980 45% 4% 15% 2% 35% 4% 3% 4%

1990 18% 8% 23% 2% 50% 5% 5% 3%

2000 6% 12% 28% 3% 50% 2% 4% 3%

2010 5% 15% 42% 2% 36% 2% 3% 1%

2011 5% 15% 50% 1% 29% 1% 2% 1%

2012 3% 13% 52% 1% 30% 1% 2% 1%

2013 3% 11% 55% 1% 29% 1% 2% 2%

(pr) = Preliminary Source: Prepared by author based on data from Banco de la República de Colombia (2014).

In terms of their geographical distribution, some resources—such as emeralds, flowers, and ferronickel—are concentrated in a small number of municipalities (see Map 1). Production and distribution of other resources such as coffee and oil are spread throughout the country. Resources also vary in terms of their history and presence in the national territory. Extraction of gold (as well as emeralds) was for many centuries the main engine for Spanish conquest, and it experienced a new boom in recent years as a result of the rise in prices. Coffee dominated Colombian exports for decades, and it continues to enjoy a positive image in producing regions and in Colombia’s advertising campaigns abroad. Bananas have been farmed in the north of the country for several decades, and they are firmly embedded into

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Coal Ferronickel Bananas Flowers Gold Emeralds

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the political and social history of producing regions. In contrast, production of coal, flowers, and ferronickel has a much shorter history. In the case of oil, its links to the armed conflict—in the form of armed groups’ theft of oil royalties and their use of extortive tactics such as bombing pipelines—are well known (Bebbington 2012, Le Billon 2012). Similarly, though less well documented, coal has also been the target of similar acts of sabotage against production infrastructure and the capture of royalty funds by armed actors. Likewise, wars amongst emerald producers (the so-called “green wars”) have grabbed the attention of the Colombian media. Recently, the death of the main owner of emerald mines—who had managed to regulate competition among owners and to prevent the incursion of guerrilla groups into emerald-producing areas—exposed the fragility of public order in these parts of the country. The “banana massacre”—a literary trope referring to the violent way in which a union strike was repressed by security forces in the 1920s (Bucheli 2005)—along with multiple massacres in the Urabá region in the 1980s have raised great concern about banana-producing regions. Recently, the global boom in gold prices led to violent competition for this resource, leading the former director of the Colombian National Police, Óscar Naranjo, to claim that gold would have even more devastating effects than drug trafficking (Rettberg and Ortiz-Riomalo, under review, Giraldo and Muñoz 2012, Idrobo, Mejía and Tribín 2014). As for other resources such as ferronickel and flowers, links to conflict are different and less well known. In the case of ferronickel, more attention has been paid to allegations of corruption and favoritism around the bidding process for the company that will run the mining operation than to the quiet means by which armed actors have co-opted royalty payments. In the case of flowers, as far as the evidence goes, their entanglement in the armed conflict is limited to widespread cases of extortion, though this phenomenon is mitigated by the proximity of producing areas to large cities, namely Bogotá and Medellín. Despite their differences, the resources included in this book share a fundamental trait, which served as the main criterion for case selection: they dominate and shape the regional economies in which they are produced. As such, they are ideal for examining their links to the regional dynamics of the Colombian armed conflict.

V. A Note on Methodology: Mechanisms Rather than Variables

Our research faced multiple methodological challenges. One of the main ones involved engaging in dialogue with a literature with a penchant toward econometric methods, rational-choice approaches, and the analysis of large-N quantitative data from different armed conflicts around the world. We derived many of our hypotheses and concepts from this literature. Nevertheless, we chose to follow a mostly qualitative approach for two reasons. On the one hand, the quality of economic and organizational data on the resources we set out to study was very uneven. With the exception of coffee and oil, which have been two of the main contributors to the country’s GDP, the other resources suffer from large information deficits, which complicate their study. As a result of this, oil and coffee have

18

been the focus of much scholarly inquiry and are covered in many secondary sources, whereas the rest have remained greatly understudied. In this regard, the most difficult case was that of emeralds, whose markets are largely informal and highly unmonitored, to the extent that production statistics are but rough estimates. On the other hand, we chose a qualitative approach not only because a quantitative one was not possible but also because the former was preferable overall. Our research questions and our interest in understanding processes rather than moments required detailed, in-depth studies with adequate empirical backing in order to unveil complex mechanisms and contextual factors—in other words, we set out to identify and analyze causal mechanisms rather than correlations among variables. We conducted fieldwork in every region we studied and interviewed numerous political, social, and economic actors. Our interviewees even included ex-combatants and demobilized leaders of armed groups. Altogether, we carried out more than 250 semi-structured interviews. We also ran four regional workshops (in Bogotá, Bucaramanga, Medellín, and Tunja) with key actors in order to learn about their views and opinions, as well as multiple academic and practitioner experts (for instance, members of the National Police). These one-day workshops were attended on average by 25 people, whose expertise (either due to their experiences or occupation) enriched our inquiry. Many of these research trips, interviews, and meetings were attended by every member of the research team—regardless of which resource they involved—and they provided thick accounts of the cases we present here, which we complemented with government statistics, judicial records, reports by state oversight bodies and other organizations, media information, and available secondary sources. Our preference for regional histories and for subnational units of analysis shields our study—and, in general, the study of the Colombian armed conflict—from what Rokkan (1970) called the “whole-nation bias,” referring to a dominant trend among comparativists of basing their work on aggregated data at the national level when studying countries that are internally quite heterogeneous (cited in Snyder 2001). Moreover, as we have illustrated already, and as will become clear in the development of this work, “[t]he use of subnational units is an especially effective strategy for increasing the number of observations and thus mitigating the problem of ‘many variables, small N’” (Snyder 2001: 94). We thus consider that our research brings different—but, in our view, complementary—methodologies in conversation with one another (Goertz and Mahoney 2012). On the one hand, it uses qualitative observations to complement an overwhelmingly quantitative literature, thus offering new insights and answers. On the other hand, it recognizes the heterogeneous nature of the Colombian armed conflict and the criminal activity associated with it without losing sight of national dimensions and agendas. This makes it possible to increase the number of observations within the same national context and to improve our understanding of the evolution and configuration of different trajectories in the relationship between resources and war. As such, ours is not an account that calls for regional particularism as a basis for public policymaking but uses it to achieve a better understanding of the multiple —and difficult—challenges arising from regional realities.

19

Evidently, our methodological choice comes at a cost. We lose the ability to generalize beyond Colombia’s borders. We also faced difficult situations related to the context of our research, such as the tight schedules of key actors we were not able to reach, or safety issues that limited our ability to access areas that could have been valuable to include in our study. Only for some cases were we able to include the views and accounts of armed actors themselves, who could have confirmed or complemented our explanations. Finally, as social scientists we always face the pitfalls of social desirability—the risk that our informants tell us what they believe we want to hear and observe, not to mention what they themselves want us to hear. To counterbalance this risk we always sought out multiple informants and different types of evidence in order to triangulate our findings. In spite of these limitations, our results constitute an important contribution to the construction of a more sophisticated portrait of the Colombian armed conflict and its interactions with different natural resources over the past few decades.

VI. An Analytical Model for Understanding the Relationship between Legal Resources, Conflict, and Crime in Colombia In Section IV above we described some broad differences and similarities among the cases that we studied, which are described in rich detail in each of the chapters. In this section, we offer an analytical model that deals exclusively with the links between resources, armed conflict, and crime. We propose that, depending on resources’ particular traits, the relationship between them and armed conflict dynamics can be one of motivation (when control of the rents that a resource generates constitutes the main motivating force for the presence of armed actors or of clashes between them in a particular region), of complementarity (when control of a resource or its rents is not the main reason for the presence of armed actors or for clashes between them, but the availability of that resource alongside other resources drags it into war dynamics), or of isolation (when a resource remains isolated or “shielded” from war dynamics). These different types of subnational relationships take place in a national context marked by a weak state, the uneven presence of drug trafficking, and armed actors’ national-level strategies (see Figure 3). Figure 3. Links between Legal Resources and Armed Conflict in Colombian Regions

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- Motivation Link Between Resources and War

In the case of a motivating relationship, the main reason for armed actors to be present in a given region is the availability of a resource that can be looted either directly (for example, by taxing or running gold mines) or indirectly (by extorting owners, local governments or peasants). A clear indicator that a resource is the main motivation for the presence of armed groups is when the most prevalent forms of violence are connected to opportunities offered by the process of production or extraction and to the competition among different actors for its control. In the absence of a resource—and in the absence of other motivations, such as a region’s strategic importance—armed actors would not be present in that area. The cases of gold (Ch. # by Angelika Rettberg, Juan Camilo Cárdenas, and Juan Felipe Ortiz-Riomalo) and oil (Ch. # by Angelika Rettberg) illustrate this situation. In these cases, the presence of armed actors can be attributed to their interest in controlling and distributing wealth from the resource at hand. In the case of gold, areas that have been historically devoted to its extraction in Chocó and Nariño experienced major increases in levels of violence once the price of gold rose in the context of the global financial crisis, which heightened expectations of high profits for all actors involved and thus created high incentives for them to join the dispute for gold-rich territories. As for oil, this is one of the most emblematic and most commonly studied cases in terms of the relationship between

21

war and resources, even beyond the Colombian case. In this case—as in the case of bananas—looting does not involve the resource directly, given that scale and technology barriers preclude direct theft of the product for sale. Instead, illegal armed actors have developed sophisticated systems to capture oil resources in producing regions and municipalities by controlling political parties, local governments, and local community organizations and through the use of selective coercion; this has been clearly documented in the department of Arauca. The motivation link between resources and war closely matches the hypotheses and conclusions from the literature on the political economy of armed conflict discussed earlier: in contexts marked by institutional weakness, opportunity structures for the looting of resources are common. As a result, the presence of armed actors maps on to the availability of abundant resource wealth and opportunities to loot it. External factors such as international market fluctuations (which make resources more or less lucrative) as well as domestic ones such as the presence of government forces in producing areas (which raises the costs of looting) can explain variation and transformations in the behavior of armed groups.

- Complementarity Link between Resources and War

In this type of link between resources and war, illegal actors loot a given resource and its related wealth, but this is not their main motivation to be present in the region, for they have other interests in it aside from that resource. Such interests may be strategic (when a region lies on a strategic corridor for the movement of weapons, people, or supplies, or is located near key municipalities or geographical markers such as rivers or mountains) or they may be related to the presence of another resource (such as illicit crops). Just as corporate actors horizontally diversify their economic activities in order to spread risk and maximize profit, this type of relationship between resources and war involves armed actors that capitalize on the opportunities offered to them by weak institutional contexts in order to consolidate and increase the flexibility of their income sources. This suggests that it may not be analytically fruitful to draw rigid distinctions between different resources when seeking to understand the configuration of criminal and conflict-related actors and dynamics, as they may interact and may be mutually dependent. Resources such as ferronickel (Ch. # by Alexandra Bernal), bananas (Ch. # by Carlo Nasi), coal (Ch. # by Daniel Quiroga), and, in some regions, gold (Ch. # by Angelika Rettberg, Juan Camilo Cárdenas, and Juan Felipe Ortiz-Riomalo) belong in this category. In the case of ferronickel, armed actors have been present in the municipality of Montelíbano (Córdoba) due to its location in an area where they exert territorial control (the region of the Paramillo Massif, an area marked by the presence of paramilitary groups and illicit crops). However, once they are there, they have found ways to capture mineral royalties through their ties to the region’s political elites, which control the distribution of royalty resources (for example, by issuing contracts for healthcare provision), mirroring the model of oil royalty theft. Hence ferronickel cannot be said to explain the presence of armed groups. Yet the wealth that it produces

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helps to perpetuate the armed conflict by (partially) funding armed actors in this area. In the case of the banana-producing region in the north of the country (see Map 1), Urabá had already served as a refuge for guerrilla groups before the development of the banana industry, given its proximity to the Panama border and the Gulf of Urabá, and plantation owners were targets of extortion from early on. Later, the presence of armed actors and much of the violence throughout the 1980s and early 1990s has been attributed to competition between armed actors for control of proceeds from the banana industry. Part of this competition involved struggles over the organizational forms of the production process—including the existence and character of trade unions—as well as systematic attempts to deviate funds to their coffers by kidnapping and extorting plantation owners and landholders. The case of coal in the departments of Cesar and La Guajira is similar to that of oil, but it has been understudied. Even though coal has not been the main cause for the presence of armed actors—which is explained by factors such as drug trafficking and smuggling activity—here, too, coal proceeds are channeled toward armed groups’ coffers by means of selective extortion via attacks on infrastructure, land price speculation, and the capture of coal royalties distributed to regional and local governments. The history of gold in the south of the country resembles this dynamic insofar as the links between the resource and armed activity have their origins in armed actors’ efforts to complement their income from other resources present in the region. Thus, gold production—an activity with historical roots in the region—only became embroiled in the armed conflict when illicit drug crops spread throughout the region starting in the 1990s. Its ties to illegal activity include the repurposing of labor from illicit crops to nearby gold mines when pressure on the former increased due to military operations and aerial spraying, along with sharing in the mines’ profits by taxing the use of machinery and entrance into the mines.

- Isolation

A third possible link between resources and conflict is what in Section II we described as “resilience”: the possibility that, in a national setting marked by widespread conflict and criminal activity, some resources might remain relatively isolated from war dynamics, in the sense that they are not systematically looted by illegal armed actors. This entails the possibility—one that is not given enough consideration by the existing literature—that, even in a national context marked by uneven state presence and rampant criminal activity, one might still find not only heterogeneous regional realities but also particular institutional arrangements tied to certain natural resources that make them more resistant than others to war dynamics. Simply put, some of the cases included in this book suggest that the propensity of natural resources to fall prey to violence can not only be limited but also prevented and even reverted. Three of the cases included in this book support such a claim: coffee (Ch. # by Angelika Rettberg), emeralds (Ch. # by Ralf Leiteritz and Manuel Riaño), and flowers (Ch. # by Carlo Nasi). In these three cases, different factors have protected resources from being taken over or co-opted by illegal armed actors. In the case of coffee, two related factors were effective in preventing the coffee region’s social and economic collapse when a drastic change in the

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international price regime lowered the sector’s income: a vast and comprehensive institutional framework for the regulation of coffee production from grain to cup, and the primacy of an ownership structure made up overwhelmingly by small and medium holders. Coffee was not immune to economic deterioration, but considering its location in strategic and fertile areas for illicit drug crops, only these two factors explain that the impact of the 1990s coffee crisis did not produce a worse outcome. As regards the case of flowers, farms’ geographical proximity to important urban centers and their institutional structure tied to global markets may explain the limited impact of the armed conflict on the industry. Likewise, the overwhelmingly female composition of the labor force—bearing in mind that women have been found to be less prone to becoming involved in armed and clandestine activity (Lara 2000, Herrera and Porch 2008)—added to the fact that most are heads of households with strong incentives to avoid jeopardizing their income sources, can also help explain why flowers have been able to remain safe from the violent dynamics that affect other resources. In the case of emeralds, the source of protection against armed actors was not a “virtuous” factor such as institutional quality or proximity to urban centers. In contrast to the cases of coffee and flowers, the firm grip and—when necessary—violent control of the region by emerald bosses (mine owners) linked by family and business ties formed a highly particular scheme for regional governance—one that was tacitly accepted by government forces. This scheme was capable of preventing illegal armed actors from maintaining a sustained presence in the area. These three cases underscore the importance of identifying buffers that a) prevent or mitigate the impact of conflict in regions dominated by particular resources, b) may stem either from the local context or from a resource’s structure of production, and c) may have either virtuous or less virtuous origins (as in Snyder 2006), which serve as sources of resilience. Table 3 summarizes the above paragraphs and categorizes the resources under study according to the type of relationship they have to conflict. It showcases that a) licit resources can have different kinds of links to conflict, b) there can also be relationships between resources, c) there can be intra-resource variation, and d) there are resources that have resisted capture by armed actors. Table 3. Links between Resources, Armed Conflict, and Crime Motivation Complementarity Isolation

Bananas (Cap. #, C. Nasi)

●

Coffee (Cap. #, A. Rettberg)

●

Coal (Cap. #, D. Quiroga) ● Emeralds (Cap. #, R. Leiteritz and M. Riaño)

●

Ferronickel (Cap. #, A. Bernal)

●

Flowers (Cap. #, C. Nasi) ●

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Gold (Cap. #, Rettberg, Cárdenas, Ortiz)

● ●

Oil (Cap. #, A. Rettberg) ●

- To Summarize… The studies that make up this book widen our analytical perspective on the links between resources and war in multiple ways and address many gaps in the literature on the subject (as noted in Section II). First, the units of analysis—at the subnational level—show that studies of armed conflicts that do not go deeper than the national level might be missing an important part of the history, trajectories, and dynamics of internal wars. The cases included in this book, some of which deal with resources that had not been studied before, emphasize this point from the perspective of the legal natural resources that drive subnational economies. The relationship between resources and war, according to these cases, is multifaceted and dynamic, and it can be motivating, of complementarity, or of isolation. Second, the distinctions we adopted made it apparent that it is not analytically fruitful to draw rigid distinctions between different resources when seeking to understand the configuration of criminal and conflict-related actors and dynamics, as they may interact and may be mutually dependent. As shown in some of the cases, resources and their links to armed conflict can be transformed throughout time. Not only in relation to drug trafficking but also to different legal resources, this book shows that it is more productive to look at resources as interchangeable and complementary in terms of the opportunity structures they offer armed groups as ways of obtaining funding; such an approach can offer a more adequate and complex portrayal of the multiple and overlapping links between resources and conflict in Colombia. Third, our approach also shows that there can be variation not only between different resources but also between different regions that produce the same resource (as in the case of gold). This suggests that, holding the national context and the market characteristics of a resource constant, factors related to the institutional baggage of particular regions can lead to the formation of different kinds of links to conflict for the same type of resource. More than calling for infinite disaggregation of the unit of analysis, this finding underscores the importance of identifying and typifying those institutional factors that turn the existence and extraction or production of a resource into a source of opportunities for illegal activity. Fourth, the book upholds the importance of de-narcotizing and broadening the research agenda on the political economy of the Colombian armed conflict. It is worth restating that, over and beyond drug trafficking, legal resources in the formal economy have been deeply affected by armed actors and have become important sources of funding for the armed conflict and criminal activity. Fifth, we also show that there are resources that remain isolated from the actions of illegal armed actors, despite being embedded in a national context of widespread conflict. This

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means, once again, that a subnational perspective makes valuable contributions to the study of the political economy of armed conflicts. Even more importantly, it suggests that the relationship between resources and war is not necessary but contingent. Finally, our research highlights the central role of institutions in determining whether resources, conflict, and crime become linked to each other as well as the type of link that develops. From the local to the national level, at the level of the production process, in terms of the political, social, and economic context that surrounds them, institutions—specifically, the way in which the production process and governance of a given resource are organized in the studied regions—are fundamental for the development or prevention of links between resources and war. Based on these findings, our work raises many questions and hypotheses that future research will have to address. In order to generalize more broadly, it would be worth applying our framework both within and beyond the Colombian case. One line of inquiry would be to assess the usefulness of our analytical framework for other contexts and countries. How pertinent is the subnational focus for elucidating conflict and criminal dynamics in other countries and regions of the world? How far can the three types of links we uncovered between resource and war (of motivation, complementarity, and isolation)— and their implications regarding situations of interdependence between different resources and of intra-resource variation—“travel” to describe other countries’ realities? Secondly, our findings point to the need to consider more carefully the links between resources, conflict, and crime in different regions. What kinds of interactions and what conditions are more prone to prolonging conflict and crime or limit opportunity structures for criminal behavior more easily and rapidly? Is it possible to build a disaggregated listing of the resources and regional resource combinations that are most vulnerable to war dynamics? Third, studies seeking to build on this one should strive to achieve greater historical depth, study a wider array of cases, and bring to bear new kinds of evidence through the use of complementary sources or data as well as different disciplinary approaches in order to consolidate and add robustness to our findings.

VII. Policy Implications

Far from adopting the colloquial reference to “cursed” resources (De Soysa 2000), the studies that make up this book illustrate, instead, that the historical, institutional, political, social, and economic contexts in which particular resources are extracted, produced, and traded produce opportunities and incentives that create links between resources and war. For this reason we call for substantially refining the study of the relationship between resources and war. From such an effort emanate many policy recommendations, which conclude this introductory chapter.

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First, our observations about legal resources and how they become entangled with armed conflict dynamics in Colombian regions should call attention to the way in which different economic activities other than drug trafficking have been connected to the armed conflict. This should help de-narcotize public conversations about the political economy of the armed conflict and crime as well as the repertoire of state and international responses dealing with the political economy of the Colombian armed conflict. Secondly, our findings point to the importance of keeping in mind that the links between resources, conflict, and crime may endure beyond the end of the armed conflict because they are entrenched in the country’s society and economy. Even after the confrontation with illegal armed groups ends, there will remain an opportunity structure and a great deal of expertise with regard to different ways of looting natural resource wealth in different regions of the country. This will pose challenges and risks to the stability and sustainability of any peace agreement and of any commitment made between the parties regarding ex-combatant reintegration and community reconstruction in war-torn areas. Third, insofar as our studies call attention to the regionally specific ways in which resources become entangled in war, they stress the importance of bearing in mind these regional realities when designing policies to overcome or prevent conflict and crime. Depending on the legal or illegal resources that dominate or interact in regional economies, policymakers will be able to glean clues or even predict the type of relationship between resources, conflict, and crime that is likely to result. Lastly, this book documents that, in the face of a national context of widespread conflict, some resources remain isolated from the actions of armed actors. This finding offers a crucial policy lesson in that it takes a step back from the apocalyptic view that new resource discoveries or windfalls from international markets often provoke among analysts. In this study, we suggest that different factors—such as a well-working and far-reaching institutional structure for extraction—can act as buffer mechanisms. Identifying the best ways to promote these sorts of conditions thus constitutes as a fundamental recommendation.

27

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