1

Master’s Thesis in Peace and Conflict Studies

Autumn 2012

Department of Peace and Conflict Research

UPPSALA UNIVERSITY

Who "Builds" Peace for Whom?

A Comparative Analysis of Approaches for Implementation of Peacebuilding at Grassroots in

Contexts of War and Partial Post-War

Cases: Within Colombia

Soledad Granada C.

This work represents the end of a stage in my career, product of my years as a researcher in CERAC and the Historical Memory Group, institutions that I am thankful to have been part of, and without whom this work would have not been possible to achieve. Also, it is product of the rich knowledge and debate of the past two years within the Peace and Conflict Master program, where my tutors and classmates have contributed to shape my understanding of many topics of the field, and whom I thank for that, specially to Julia Wittig who has always supported my ideas and helped me through this tough process. Also to my supervisor Kristine Höglund who through the process of this research has giving me excellent ideas and feedback, as well as support and encouragement indispensable for me. In addition, I want to thank the support of my good friend Sara with whom I spent long working journeys; as well as to my mother Martha who has given me all she has unconditionally and without whom it would not have been possible for me to pursue this career. Last but not least, I want to dedicate this thesis to Thomas Olsson and Liana Lopes, who believed in me.

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"Colombia: build a society, not a state" (Galtung, 2004:86)

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to identify the conditions under which it is possible to achieve conflict resolution at the grassroots level given the traits of a war and post-war context and the approach for peacebuilding implementation. I argue that organic local ownership of peacebuilding initiatives bears social capital and human scale development, defined in this paper as key elements for grassroots conflict resolution. Nonetheless, it is also needed simultaneously to push forward statebuilding from above. Furthermore, to provide empirical support, two cases (Carare and Alto Patía) within Colombia are analyzed with a focused structured comparison, the cases were selected by the rationality of comparing the different approaches of peacebuilding within development based initiatives, as scholars agree upon development as the core objective of peacebuilding. Thus, this work proposes a new conception of local ownership, organic local ownership, in which the decision-making power lies with civil society and organically bred peacebuilding initiatives suitable and feasible for grassroots communities (elicitive approach). This stands in direct contrast to the idea that local ownership has to be delivered from above (prescriptive approach).

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Index

1. Introduction....................................................................................................................................5

2. Theoretical Framework: Who “builds” Peace for Whom? .......................................................8

2.1. Grassroots Conflict Resolution......................................................................................................8

2.1.1. Defining Conflict Resolution (the dependent variable) .............................................................9

2.1.2. Connecting Conflict Resolution with the Causes of War: the Need for Social Capital and Human Scale Development..................................................................................................................9

2.1.3. Scaling Down the Definition to the Grassroots Level..............................................................11

2.2.Peacebuilding (the independent variable) ....................................................................................15

2.2.1. What is Peacebuilding? ...........................................................................................................15

2.2.2. Prescriptive vs. Elicitive Approaches.......................................................................................16

2.3. Local Ownership of Peace...........................................................................................................18

2.3.1. What is understood by local ownership? .................................................................................19

2.3.2. Deciding upon Power, Legitimacy, and Norms and Culture: Who Should be the Local Owners? .............................................................................................................................................20

2.3.3. Organic Local Ownership.........................................................................................................22

2.4. How Organic Local Ownership of Peacebuilding Initiatives Generate the Conditions for Conflict Resolution at Grassroots Level? (Causal Mechanism) ........................................................24

3. Research Design............................................................................................................................26

3.1. Research Method.........................................................................................................................26

3.2. Cases and Time Frame Selection................................................................................................27

3.3. Operationalization.......................................................................................................................28

3.3.1. Grassroots Conflict Resolution (dependent variable)...............................................................29

3.3.2. Peacebuilding Initiative (independent variable).....................................................................30

3.4. Characteristics of the material and the sources...........................................................................32

4. Empirics.........................................................................................................................................34

4.1. Context........................................................................................................................................35

4.2. Case 1. Alto Patía: Prescriptive Approach..................................................................................38

4.2.1. Background (Geographic and Socioeconomic Conditions and Armed Conflict Situation).....38

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4.2.2. The Peacebuilding Initiative (History, Policy Frame and Implementation and Local

Ownership Configuration) .................................................................................................................41

4.2.3. Grassroots Conflict Resolution Outcomes...............................................................................44

4.3. Case 2. Carare: Elicitive Approach.............................................................................................46

4.3.1. Background (Geographic and Socioeconomic Conditions and Armed Conflict Situation).....46

4.3.2. The Peacebuilding Initiative (History, Policy Frame and Implementation and Local

Ownership Configuration) .................................................................................................................49

4.3.3. Grassroots Conflict Resolution Outcomes...............................................................................52

5. Analysis..........................................................................................................................................54

5.1. Overview of the Empirical Results..............................................................................................55

5.2. Armed Conflict Settlement and Contingency: Considerations With Regard to how the Macro-Political Framework affects Changes in Attitudes and Behaviour.....................................................56

5.3. Closing Gaps, Addressing Contradiction: Human Scale Development, Social Capital Creation and state building................................................................................................................................57

5.4. Final Remarks..............................................................................................................................60

5.4.1. Connecting the Approaches......................................................................................................60

5.4.2. Momentum for Peace?..............................................................................................................62

6. Summary and Conclusions..........................................................................................................63

7. References.....................................................................................................................................66

APPENDIX 1: MAPS.......................................................................................................................78

APPENDIX 2: TABLES..................................................................................................................86

APPENDIX 3: GRAPHS.................................................................................................................89

APPENDIX 4: PICTURES..............................................................................................................93

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1. Introduction

This study critically addresses the concept of local ownership of peacebuilding initiatives in

the context of war or partial post-war. The purpose of this work is to identify the conditions under

which it is possible to achieve conflict resolution at the grassroots level given the traits of such a

context and also regarding the approach for peacebuilding implementation. Thus, this work propose

a new conception of local ownership, organic local ownership, in which the decision-making power

lies with civil society and organically bred peacebuilding initiatives suitable and feasible for

grassroots communities. This stands in direct contrast to the idea that local ownership has to be

delivered from above.

This study analyses the following research question: Under what conditions does peacebuilding

contribute to conflict resolution at the grass-root level? The intuition, is that the processes that

enable grassroots conflict resolution (social capital creation and human scale development),

necessarily come from strong and organic local ownership of the initiatives, and that this organic

ownership of peace is only achievable with an elicitive approach for peacebuilding.

The literature on peacebuilding and conflict resolution is broad and diverse, commonly these two

terms are used indistinctively. This paper addresses the relation and differentiation between conflict

resolution and peacebuilding, understanding peacebuilding as a process and conflict resolution as an

outcome (Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall, 2005). Also, local ownership is identified as the

enabling mechanism for the processes that lead to desirable conditions for conflict resolution at the

grassroots level (social capital creation and human scale development) (Lederach, 2003;Galtung

and Webel, 2007; Putnam, 2000 and Max-Neef, 1994). In the peace and conflict literature local

ownership has in the recent years appeared as the key concept for implementation of peacebuilding

(Cooke and Kothari, 2002; Paris, 2004; Weiss, 2004; Chesterman 2007; Donais, 2009; Tschirgi,

2009; Sanz, 2010;Jarstad and Olsson, 2012), this idea has emerged mainly because of the increasing

evidence of the failure of the prescriptive (liberal/from above) approach (Aoi, De Coning and

Thakur, 2007; Paris, 2004; Weiss, 2004; Sanz, 2010; Mac Ginty and Williams, 2009) and also

because of the need of meeting the internationally conceived idea of peacebuilding and the local

realities (Tschirgi, 2009).

Little academic work has addressed the different types and levels of relations between interveners

(international community), main actor in peacebuilding, and the intervened upon (state and civil

society), which seems to be the damaged link in cases of complete and partial failure of

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peacebuilding initiatives (Donais, 2009). From the literature on local ownership, it is evident that

there is a lack of fluent relations and trust between state, civil society and international community.

These relations are even more complex when the armed conflict has not been terminated. Moreover,

there is a lack of tools to create durable impacts of peacebuilding due to the reluctance of the

international community to handover the responsibility of peacebuilding initiatives (Donais, 2009),

which, in turn, creates bigger asymmetries in the power relations among the actors involved. This

evidences a need to think of peacebuilding beyond and besides statebuilding (core instrument of the

prescriptive approach), for instance, which actors should be involved, the different dimensions and

levels that peacebuilding addresses and the time frames that peacebuilding initiatives have to

address in order to at least not create more conflict (Fjelde & Höglund, 2011).

Arguing from the point of view of the liberal peace critique, this work argues that grassroots

conflict resolution is the outcome of a process that entails primarily social capital creation and

human scale development, which together facilitate -from below- the process of statebuilding.

Working in parallel, these processes generate the necessary changes in Galtung's (1969) peace

triangle: addressing violent behaviour, attitudes towards stabilization and contradictions as root and

proximate causes of conflict, together the conditions for conflict resolution. In addition, this paper

argues that the peacebuilding approach chosen in order to drive these changes (in attitude,

behaviour and contradiction) determines the effectiveness of the peace initiatives to achieve

grassroots conflict resolution. Local ownership is found to be the key concept to link the

peacebuilding approach to successful peace initiatives.

However, the critical review of the literature of local ownership shows that it is still a concept

conceived and applied from above in the practice of the prescriptive approach rather than

originating from below, i.e. from those who are supposed to “own”. This demonstrates that there is

a gap between the discourse and the practice of peacebuilding. Building on these arguments, this

work elaborates on the concept of local ownership as the mechanism that allows closing the gap and

proposes the concept of organic local ownership, as a new type of ownership suitable for an

elicitive approach, in which peace initiatives are organically bred from inside the grassroots

communities.

For the analysis of the above presented arguments, this work studies two rural peacebuilding

initiatives in Colombia. Through a focused structured comparison, this work analyzes how different

approaches of peacebuilding have different outcomes in terms of grassroots conflict resolution. This

comparative study aims to show how these two approaches (prescriptive and elicitive) lead also to

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different types of local ownership, which consequently impact the effectiveness, suitability,

feasibility and durability of conflict resolution outcomes of peace initiatives. Moreover, Colombia

represents an adequate scenario for this work given a context of war in a partial post-war.

Colombia has experienced, for more than half a century, armed conflict within political and

economic stability. Simultaneously, huge resources of international cooperation of all kinds have

been employed with the purpose of ending violence, nonetheless, conflict resolution has not yet

been achieved. Furthermore, in the last decade, the armed conflict has reached historical levels of

violence and its complexity has grown due to its merging with the drug industry dynamic.

Moreover, although Colombia is considered one of the wealthiest countries experiencing deadly

conflict (Godnick and Klein, 2009), it is necessary to comprehend the grotesque contradictions in

terms of class and race that Colombian society has (Galtung, 2004). Nowadays the country lives

between an open war and a post-war scenario, and most recently an open war with peace ongoing

negotiations at national level. The complexity of the Colombian armed conflict allows at the same

time the visualization of many conflicts, several of which are able to be isolated for instance at the

regional level in order to understand the micro dynamics of violence. This context is a suitable

laboratory to assess theoretically and empirically the outcome and impact of different strategies for

peacebuilding.

It is necessary also to present the limitations and the scope of this work. While, there is evidence in

support of the elicitive approach in terms of its positive impacts on conflict resolution in contrast

with the prescriptive approach, these can only be deeply studied at the grassroots level and not at a

national scale. In light of this, this work does not deal with armed conflict termination. Furthermore

this work is contextualized in war and partial post-war settings in which it is possible to isolate, for

the sake of the analysis, conflicts at smaller scale given the micro-dynamics that feed civil war

(Kalyvas, 2006). This paper specifically focuses in the role of civil society affected directly by

armed conflict, and to some extent the role of international community. Three reasons justify this

decision: first, according to the elicitive approach peace can only be nurture for those suffering in

the midst of armed conflict (Lederach, 2003). Second, given the context of war and partial post-war

both state and armed groups are still part of the armed conflict, which disables them as actors of

peace. Third, situated in a civil war it is important to recall that the civil population represents the

most important element to tilt the balance of power between the parties involved, civilians have a

significant role in the production and reproduction of violence (Kalyvas, 2004), which entails that is

also in their hands to put an end to it.

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2. Theoretical Framework: Who “builds” Peace for Whom?

The aim of this section is to clarify the understanding of three main concepts relevant for the

research question “Under what conditions does peacebuilding contribute to conflict resolution at the

grassroots level?”.The concepts are grassroots conflict resolution, as the dependent variable,

peacebuilding as the independent and local ownership as the causal mechanism. It is relevant to

clarify and understand each one of these concepts within the context of a war and post-war scenario,

as well as to adapt the understanding of peacebuilding to the grassroots level of implementation

which is the focus of this text. To that end the concept of local ownership is introduced since it is

considered the hinge between the discourse and practice of peacebuilding. The study of these

concepts enables the development of a structured comparative analysis between the two case studies

of this work, in order to investigate the hypothesis that peacebuilding with an elicitive approach

generates the conditions for grassroots conflict resolution by enabling organic local ownership.

The theoretical argument is built deductively. Thus, this section first starts with a definition and

contextualization of the concept of grassroots conflict resolution. The section then introduces the

concept of peacebuilding, giving leverage to the importance of the grassroots level by arguing in

favor of the elicitive approach; finally, the concept of local ownership is introduced and critically

defined as the key element to achieve grassroots conflict resolution through peacebuilding.

2.1. Grassroots Conflict Resolution

In the literature the terms conflict resolution and peacebuilding are often used

indistinctively. Only a few authors have addressed explicitly the differences, for example

Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall (2005) argue that whereas peacebuilding can be viewed as a

process, conflict resolution is both a process and the outcome of that process within which

peacebuilding is one essential part of the process. The other processes are peacemaking and

peacekeeping, happening before and after peacebuilding respectively. However, in this paper the

focus is on conflict resolution as an (ideal) outcome based on Galtung's peace and conflict triangle.

In order to operationalize the concept for the analysis, two concepts are employed to build the

definition: social capital creation and human scale development. These will be explained in the

following sub-section.

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2.1.1. Defining Conflict Resolution (the dependent variable)

"Conflict is a relation of incompatibility between parties and not an attribute of one party.

Therefore the solution is a new relation" (Galtung, 2012:1). Galtung's model proposes that "conflict

is a dynamic process in which structure (contradiction), attitudes and behaviour [which constitute

the relation] are constantly changing and influencing one another" (Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and

Miall, 2005:14). Under this view, the transformation of the old relation into a new one happens

through change in the three elements that compose Galtung's peace and conflict triangle: attitudes,

behaviour and contradiction. Contradiction refers to the actual or perceived incompatibility

underlying the conflict; attitudes refers to the perceptions and misperceptions that parties have of

themselves and of each other; and behaviour refers to the different signs or gestures that represent

either hostility or conciliation as expressions of the attitudes (Ibid.:14).

Adopting this view, Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall (2005) define conflict resolution as "a

comprehensive term which implies that the deep-rooted sources of conflict are addressed and

transformed, guaranteeing that behaviour is no longer violent, attitudes are no longer hostile, and

the structure of conflict has been changed" (Ibid.:29). Thus, conflict resolution implies dealing with

different types of violence1: Direct conflict-related violence is ended by creating both a positive

ethos of conflicting parties and new kinds of relationships that provide non-violent civil dispute

settlement (Lederach, 2003); structural violence, for example related to poverty, is mitigated by

implementing human scale development (Gouley et al., 2008; Max-Neef, 1991; Escobar, 2003); and

criminal violence, which is due to lack of law enforcement, is reduced through education and other

public services that improve society-state relationships (Montenegro and Posada, 1994; García

Villegas et al, 2009)2.

2.1.2. Connecting Conflict Resolution with the Causes of War: the Need for Social Capital and

Human Scale Development

To be able to face a process of conflict resolution, conflict causes have to be understood

(Ohlson, 2008). In the case of civil wars one of the most important processes to understand in order

to track the causes of conflict is the statebuilding process as it guides the configuration of the social

and economic relations and, therefore, the institutional arrangement of a society (Tilly, 1985;

1As definedby Galtung (1969). 2 It is important to highlight that grassroots conflict resolution as conceived in this paper is not dependent upon official, state-level conflict termination (i.e. a peace agreement signed between the parties to an armed conflict).

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Ohlson, 2008). Holsti (1991) presents statebuilding as featuring at every level: governance,

legitimacy, assimilation of the new order, being a deterrent system, having conflict resolving

procedures and institutions, having a consensus on war, providing or creating procedures for

peaceful change and being able to anticipate future issues, equated to a peacebuilding process3.

However, in a context of civil war or partial post-war, the process of statebuilding stagnates at least

in the sense of expansion of the centralized state. There are two main processes that have been

conditioned by the path statebuilding has taken in postcolonial states: the fracture of the social

tissue by the imposition of class division; and, closely related, the unequal appropriation of

territory and resources by the elites, leaving the peasant and working class in poverty and a

situation of underdevelopment (Ohlson, 2008:136). The first has lead to rebellion and repression

and constitutes the grievances of the conflict, and the second has resulted in an economic structure

that provides the reasons and the resources for a war to be fought (Ibid.:142). These arguments

support the initial argument that in order to generate a social change needed to impact

constructively the three corners of the peace triangle, two processes need to be fomented: social

capital creation in order to create or reconstruct the social tissue (Putnam, 2000) and human scale

development in order to strike poverty and underdevelopment.

On the one hand, social capital is the natural process in which social relationship between the

individual and the social levels, it entails the specific forms of interaction and engagement with

each other. According to Putnam (2000) social capital denotes the expected collective social and/or

economic benefits that can be derived from the cooperation and preferential treatment within a

group. Its four main components are: civic engagement; political equality; solidarity, trust and

tolerance; and strong associational life. Putnam argues that this can only be achieved through

transformation of social relations from the bottom structures of society, which can be interpreted as

social change that foments institutional change through the re-signification of the relations between

civil society and the state (Ibid.). Moreover, Allen (2001:2) argues that "social capital not only can

enhance the community’s ability to manage resources", which is necessary to implement a

peacebuilding initiative, but furthermore he argues that as a consequence of the collective action

(product of a stronger associational life), the community can develop the ability to solve local

conflict, a capacity needed to replace justice provided by illegal armed groups in the absence of

legitimate justice institutions.

3In contradiction to Tilly's (1985) idea of war as statebuilding.

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On the other hand, human scale development is the process of how individuals organize themselves

within a social set (community) to produce and consume through autonomous (not necessarily

mediated by the market) and sustainable ways of relationship. According to Max-Neef (1991)

human scale development, is the attainment of the satisfaction of fundamental human needs (for

instance subsistence, protection, participation, leisure, identity, freedom) by building organic

interactions between people and the nature and technology, individuals and society as well as local

society and global activities. To achieve this, self-dependency and autonomous planning are needed

as well as the connection between society and the state (Max-Neef et at, 1991:8). Max-Neef (1991)

argues in favor of human scale development as an instrument to overcome poverty and dependency

closing from below the inequality gap, thereby mitigating structural violence associated with

poverty and inequality. It is an alternative to development oriented towards satisfaction of economic

wants4, which lead to dependency and unrestrained exploitation of resources, which are often parts

of the causes of conflict. Furthermore, Max-Neef recognizes the importance of the existence of

central planning and international trade, ergo, it is a realistic view of development focusing in the

human development and how it connects with the different social levels and structures, assisting the

statebuilding process from below as well.

In a context of on-going armed conflict, fragmented loyalty towards the state and alternative state

projects it is not very likely that these two changes occur at the state's initiatives (Tilly, 1985),

instead they can happen as part of the statebuilding process from below (Max-Neef, 1991). Thus,

one of the theoretical arguments underlying the hypothesis is as follows: in order to cause changes

in the three corners of the peace and conflict triangle (i.e. for conflict resolution to be achieved)

social capital creation (organic interaction and engagement among individuals in a community) and

human scale development (autonomous and sustainable economic relationship within the

community) are needed in order to move forward the change in the social and economic

relationships from below, which form the statebuilding process, whose precariousness (stagnation)

has been identified as the most common and deep rooted cause of conflict (Ohlson, 2008).

2.1.3. Scaling Down the Definition to the Grassroots Level

This section attempts to develop a more detailed understanding of how the changes

necessary for conflict resolution (i.e. social capital creation and human scale development) work at

the grassroots level. Therewith, it also seeks to explain how these two processes steer the changes in

the three corners of the peace/conflict triangle.

4 Wants in contrast to needs are infinite and insatiable.

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At the grassroots level changes are more flexible and permanent (Lederach and Moomaw, 2009).

Galtung (2012) argues that a change in the setting of relations within the conflict, which includes

the role of the civilian population, constitutes a vital part of conflict resolution. These changes

would be translated into means of community empowerment for development and institutional

change, through strengthening or creating social capital and human scale development.

Moreover, Lederach proposes (2003:1) an idea of conflict transformation where the conflict

resolution process follows a spiral structure with "multi-directional internal patterns that create a

common overall movement", which makes the corners of the triangle affect each other and "with

linearity and the feedback loops associated with circularity", meaning that different moments of the

process are interdependent and affect each other. Thus, based on Lederach (2003) I argue that at the

grassroots (communal) level, this process of conflict transformation happens within the stages of the

spiral and also backwards since the three corners of the peace/conflict triangle have to be addressed

continuously as they affect each other continuously, even more in the absence of a war termination,

a macro resolution of the conflict or at least a macro peace process.

Under this view, I argue that at the grassroots level (A)ttitudes have to be addressed first, by

reaching an agreement and achieve normalization of relations, which together represent a step

forward towards reconciliation (Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall, 2005:14). This is achieved

whether by exhaustion or proactivity of those affected directly by conflict as the ignition for civic

engagement (element of social capital), or by external enterprise assessing the negative impact of

violence and proposing an alternative which does not improve or weaken the status of the parties

involved in the armed conflict (Lederach, 2003).

Secondly, in order to achieve a change of (B)ehavior, to stop violence, it is necessary to translate

the changed A(ttitudes). How is violence affecting us (community)? And what other alternatives

exist to improve security? At this moment solidarity, trust and tolerance (elements of social capital)

play an important role in order to motivate the community to take a step back from the frontline and

stop participating in the logic of war. Conflict termination is not required for this, but the setting of

norms by regional structures of illegal armed groups, state authorities and the community. This

process of securing, can take the form of declaring a community’s territory free from arms, for

instance, or listing situations where it is not allowed for the community's members to interact with

combatants. The aim is to separate the civil from the uncivil, ending the stigmatization of a

community by armed groups and instrumentalization of armed groups by parts of the community

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(since there are other -peaceful and civil- dispute management instruments). For these mechanisms

to work, it is also necessary to create a space to liberate the tension between the different actors, this

is a physical and legalspace where it is possible to re-evaluate the terms of the agreements and to

assess the incentives for deviation (Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall, 2005).

Lastly, after having a tabula rasa on how and how much violence was affecting the community and

achieving a violence management scenario, (C)ontradiction -causes- must be addressed. It is first

by providing (from the state or the intervener) or creating (by the community) formal rules for

civildispute settlement (such as a "rulebook" or conciliation or court houses not necessarily part of

the state) that contradiction can start to be addressed. This is only possible thanks to the space

created in B(ehaviour) since it is a test that takes trust and tolerance into interaction with a strong

associational life. Additionally, it is also vital to cope with deviant incentives for sustaining oneself,

which bears autonomy and self-dependency (key elements to achieve human scale

development).That way, the community can assure livelihood also outside the dynamic of the war,

so that it can live in a war context without feeding it or being fed by it. The contradiction also lies

in the reproduction of what has caused or fuelled armed conflict. In many cases it is a local

economy based in extracting, producing or trafficking illegal commodities, which has to be replaced

by legal and sustainable activities that meet the needs in terms of food security, available labor

culture, traditions and climate (Max-Neef, 1991). Additionally, the performance of state institutions

needs to be improved in terms of public goods and services provision, facilitating the creation of

healthier social interactions (Putnam, 2000).

Figure 1. The peace and conflict triangle with changes occurring at the grassroots level.

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Summarizing, the figure 1. shows how the elements that constitute social capital creation (civic

engagement, trust, solidarity, tolerance, associational life) and human scale development

(autonomy, self-dependency) are the processes behind the changes in the three corners of the

triangle. Different elements play their role for different types of changes. Through these processes it

is possible to characterize the many changes that with the changing attitudes, behaviour and

contradictions and to differentiate whether they are reflected in the social or the economic

relationship. For instance, to change the attitudes an individual decision with regards to civic

engagement has to be taken from each member of the community as motivation for the change.

Further, in order to change behaviour, more social capital elements such as solidarity, trust and

tolerance come into play in a less personal/more social dimension. Lastly, for the contradictions to

be addressed more commitment is required, the exercise of solidarity, trust and tolerance through a

strong associational life is necessary, in order to find feasible solutions as well to facilitate self-

dependency and autonomy of the community.

In short, for conflict resolution to be achieved, constructive social change is needed to overcome the

causes of conflict, both root causes such as inequality and poverty and proximate causes such as

illegal economies (Lederach, 2005 and Ohlson, 2008). Moreover, this thesis argues that this social

change requires to be bred from inside the society in the shape of social capital creation and human

scale development, which are more easily fostered in small pockets of society such as rural

communities (the focus of this work), that assist the process of statebuilding from below needed to

consolidate the change. In the next section this work develops the different approaches for

15

implementation of peacebuilding as an essential part of the process of conflict resolution and

determinant of its outcome.

2.2.Peacebuilding (the independent variable)

As stated before this work addresses the grassroots level of the conflict resolution process, it

does not entail any kind of negotiation between the parties involved or finalization of war. This

paper addresses how at the grassroots level, peacebuilding initiatives can contribute to conflict

resolution by generating changes in attitudes, behaviour and contradictions. This section presents a

description of what peacebuilding is and the different approaches for its implementation and its

contextualization at the grassroots level.

2.2.1. What is Peacebuilding?

According to Lederach, in order to achieve conflict transformation (moving forward to the

resolution), a constructive social change is necessary and this social change is only achievable

through peacebuilding, which is the process that fosters changes in direct, structural and cultural

violence (Galtung 1981 in Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall, 2005). Notwithstanding the

common confusion between peacebuilding and conflict resolution, there is an understanding about

peacebuilding as the process (part of the more generic conflict resolution process) that fosters

structural changes in societies that experience armed conflict. Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall

(2005:56-57) define peacebuilding "as the attempt to overcome the structural, relational and cultural

contradictions which lie at the root of conflict in order to underpin the processes of peacemaking

and peacekeeping". Nevertheless, peacemaking and peacekeeping are not required as parts of this

study since they are conceived as part of the resolution of the conflict in its entirety and at the

national level, while this study focuses on how to build peace partially while national armed conflict

could still be active.

Furthermore, according to Lederach and Moomaw (2009) such social change needs to be bred from

below, the next section discusses the existence of two different approaches for the implementation

of peacebuilding (the independent variable of this study): prescriptive or elicitive, and the impact

peacebuilding may have on grassroots conflict resolution (dependent variable) depending on which

approach is used for its implementation.

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2.2.2. Prescriptive vs. Elicitive Approaches

Various scholars have identified different approaches for peacebuilding, roughly speaking

they can be classified as top-down (from above) or liberal and bottom-up (from below) or post-

liberal, in line with whether it is centrally planned by the state and/or international actors or self-

autonomous coming from the respective communities. Lederach calls these two approaches

prescriptive vs. elicitive (Lederach and Moomaw, 2002), referring to the allowance for social

capital creation (and used throughout this text) and individualist vs. collectivist (Ibid.), regarding

economic and social organization, Olsson and Jasrtad (2011) call them Leviathan vs. General Will,

with regards to the state's structure. Others refer to liberal peace vs. post-liberal peace (Paris, 2004,

Sanz, 2010), considering the political discourse; and liberal vs. communitarian (Donais, 2009),

referring to the levels of implementation.

The prescriptive approach (top-down) is characterized by the centrality of the state's role. Usually

the main actor is an outsider such as multilateral organizations or country cooperation agencies,

which seek to strengthen the capacity of state institutions (e.g. via security sector reform -SSR-), as

well as "relying heavily on 'democratic' institution building and economic recovery through free

market-oriented policies" (Jeong, 2005:2). The country’s government (i.e. the state) most often is

considered as a counterpart; the relevance of grassroots is almost marginal and subject to its relation

with state institutions. The approach consists in an intervention from the top down to all levels; at

the communal level it arrives mostly only at infrastructure building and agricultural coaching. The

length of these operations varies. However, the lack of commitment of the international community

in terms of the expected results has been criticized, the donors often impose very short term

evaluations periods and when results cannot be shown operations are aborted, which is commonly

the case in small projects in the midst of violent conflicts. Moreover, it is important to highlight that

these projects are usually strongly and strategically connected to bigger political and economic

interests of the international community or the donor countries (Jarstad and Olsson, 2012).

Nevertheless, there is a certain consensus regarding the problems associated with the prescriptive

approach. For instance, Sanz (2010) proposes the necessity to overcome the liberal peace paradigm

through the concept of post-liberal peace in which the focus is not on the representative individual

but on institutions and communities. Weiss (2004) also proposes not to rely on international

trusteeships, but instead to strengthen, (re)build the already existing state as weak, failed or

collapsed and depart from these endowments to not intervene so dramatically in the institutional

setting. Along this line, Jeong (2005:2), argues that analysis is needed to understand how

17

"institution building and political transition are undermined by the lack of social and economic

foundations". Moreover, Kurtenbach argues that "peace-building is an intermestic issue that can

only partly be influenced by external actors [..., and that...] the impact of economic or financial

globalization usually outweighs the possibilities of peace-building programs by far" (2007:8). Thus,

in response to all these criticisms the elicitive, bottom-up approach has been developed as an

alternative.

The perspective adopted by the elicitive approach (bottom up) is in line with what Max-Neef (1991)

proposed. It seeks to improve human needs satisfaction and to provide human security, leading into

the same direction as the liberal peace: deepening democracy (Max-Neef, 1991), translated into

"aggregation without burocratization" and "articulation without cooptation" (Ibid.:116). The

bottom-up, post-liberal peace or communitarian peace approach supports a "postwar" or a transition

scenario that involves building of state institutions on the one hand, as they are necessary "to

manage the profound changes a post-war country has to undergo to transit towards the status of

stable and developed country (Sanz, 2010:10), but without leaning necessarily on macro-processes.

Furthermore, the strategies of this approach, "must be geared toward modifying social structures

and processes associated with such power imbalances" (Jeong, 2005:3) and not focused only on

state institutions since they are part of the problem and the state in most cases is an active party in

the armed conflict. Consequently, the main actor must be located preferably at the grassroots level,

which enables the mode of livelihood ideally to emerge from their customary interaction with the

means of production (Oda,2007), seeking the satisfaction of their own needs and sustainability,

attacking the root and proximate causes of conflict (inequality between societal groups and

poverty).

In short, peacebuilding from the prescriptive approach is understood as "an effort to bring war-

shattered states into conformity with the international system's prevailing standards of domestic

governance [..., under] the core ideas underlying the liberal peace -democratization, economic

liberalization, neoliberal development, human rights, and the rule of law-" (Donais, 2009:5). All

these ideas are desirable from a more broad idea of conflict resolution, nonetheless, as this work

focuses on societies in war or partial post-war environments, it is relevant to spotlight the relevance

of the grassroots level, which is provided by means of an elicitive approach. The elicitive approach

has been theorized mostly from the field of practitioners, addressing the challenges of rebuilding

war-torn societies, from the experience of trying to nurture and create political, economic and social

space within the local actors, to stress the centrality of tradition and social context in determining

the legitimacy of a particular political order, justice or ethics (Donais, 2009:6).

18

2.3. Local Ownership of Peace

Taking these arguments one step further, the fact that peacebuilding has been an

internationally coined and promoted concept, that refers to the international community’s response

and that is its meeting-point with local reality (Tschirgi, 2009), it is important to elaborate how this

assembly occurs, how the rebuilding of war-torn societies is possible through peacebuilding

initiatives. From the sections above there are two arguments relevant to highlight at this point: First,

for Grassroots Conflict Resolution to be possible a social change is needed. That change consists of

social capital creation and human scale development, as well as a parallel process of statebuilding

(from below and from above). In addition, for those processes to move forward, it is necessary that

the ignition happens inside the society (Lederach and Moomaw, 2009; Putnam, 2000). Second, the

liberal peace paradigm needs to be overcome in order to improve the meeting point of the

internationally coined idea of peacebuilding with the local reality, especially with regards to the set

of conditions imposed by globalization of economics and politics (Paris, 2004; Sanz, 2010). In this

section the concept of local ownership is developed as the hinge that facilitates that course of action

in order to foster sustainable social change.

The relevance of this concept is given by the fact that it determines who implements peacebuilding,

in other words: who decides upon the resources and the path of development a certain

society/community will follow in order to satisfy certain needs (security, alimentation, public

services). In the peace and conflict literature local ownership has in recent years appeared as the

key concept for implementation, mainly because of the increasing evidence of the failure of the

prescriptive approach (Aoi, De Coning and Thakur, 2007; Paris, 2004; Weiss, 2004;Sanz, 2010;

Mac Ginty and Williams, 2009) and also because of the need of connecting the internationally

conceived idea of peacebuilding to the local realities (Tschirgi, 2009).

In this section a review of the concept of local ownership is provided together with a critical

analysis of the criteria used to define local ownership in the literature. It reveals that the indicators

used to signal who should implement the initiative in the context of war or partial post-war (as is the

focus of this paper) are problematic as they are influenced by the same phenomena that cause and

influence the dynamics of armed conflict such as legitimacy, power and cultural or traditional

structures.

19

2.3.1. What is understood by local ownership?

The debate about local ownership comes mainly from the liberal peace critique. However,

before the concept was brought to the peace and conflict research field, it was framed within the

study of development, particularly addressing this concept as key for understanding the transfer of

control over internationally driven initiatives (Chesterman, 2007). Notwithstanding, the impact of

this transference has been more deeply analyzed in the field of peace and conflict for two main

reasons: first, the intricate relation between development and both peace and conflict; and second,

the fact that in the last two decades there has been an accelerated increase of works criticizing

international intervention in war torn societies which has given leverage to the issue, too. Roughly

speaking, the concept has been widely conceived and too much relevance has been given to the idea

of a strong central state; the major efforts have been dedicated to study local ownership in Security

Sector Reform (SSR).

It is necessary to remark that the focus of the study of this concept has been on the macro level,

especially regarding how to hand the authority of peace operations to local government structures

(Donais, 2009).For instance, cases where the international community has taken over control of the

state at every level such as in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, as well as where the local state

has developed a dependency as in Afghanistan5. Most of the definitions of local ownership are

constructed from that perspective, for example Jarstad and Olsson (2012:108) say that "a

precondition for ownership is said to be a political system and administration capable to take over

the responsibility both at the central level and around the country". Under this view, the

international actor 'bickers' over which local actors should be supported in order to set in motion a

successful statebuilding process (ibid.:89).

Jarstad and Olsson (2012) present local ownership as strongly related with the top-down approach

for peacebuilding. It relies plentifully on the efficacy of statebuilding and neglects the need for

social capital for peace. In this regard, Donais (2009) defines local ownership as "the extent to

which domestic actors control both the design and implementation of political processes in post

conflict [war] contexts" (Ibid.:3). He also argues, like Lederach, that "the term conveys the

5 Afghanistan, represents a tipping point on the discussion on local ownership, the clear failure of the international community in building up the state has had a high cost in terms of lives and also in terms of social fabric (without mention the reputation and legitimacy of the international community). The intervention in Afghanistan has lead the country to a more complex and protracted civil war (Boot, 2000). Subsequently, the paradigm has change and after Afghanistan, the new views on local ownership have shift to analyze peacebuilding not from the perspective of the intervener but from the view of the intervened upon, and what these analyses have shown is that most of the failures depend more on the unwillingness of international actors to engage fully with the peacebuilding challenge than actually the local commitment with owning the initiative (Donais, 2009:21).

20

commonsense wisdom that any process not embraced by those who have live with it is likely to

fail" (Ibid.:3). Lederach argues that a process conceived in that perspective will not achieve conflict

resolution, since it does not address the root causes of conflict, and peace, as it cannot be decreed

and obeyed, it has to be knitted from the change in social relations (Lederach and Moomaw, 2009).

Donais (2009) definition is still laying in the macro-structures of society, but Lederach's

complement highlights the importance of changes from lower levels.

Jarstad and Olsson (2012), discuss the concept of local ownership in the Afghanistan case, where

they not just address the macro dimension of local ownership regarding SSR and democratization,

but also the dynamics of local ownership for smaller projects, grasping the regional and communal

dimensions of the concept. They define local ownership as the key concept to understand the power

relations between local and international actors, departing from the assumption that they are

asymmetric and consequently represent an obstacle for building trust, which turns into reluctance

from the international actor to handout resources under complete control of locals (Ibid, 2012). This

reluctance is explained by Donais (2009:8) as the reproduction of the idea that violent-conflicted

societies are "ill, traumatized, dysfunctional, irrational, or immature, thereby legitimizing a shift

towards therapeutic governance".

The term 'local ownership' itself comes from the liberal peace tradition (from above-outside) and

"means 'their' ownership of 'our' ideas" (Astri Surhke in Jarstad and Olsson, 2012). In other words,

it comes from the generally positive understanding of interventionism in crisis and (armed) conflict

environments that locals do not have the knowledge and commitment sufficient to create the

conditions for durable peace because they are biased or polarized6, which reinforces the idea that

insiders cannot be owners of peace.

2.3.2. Deciding upon Power, Legitimacy, and Norms and Culture: Who Should bethe Local

Owners?

Now it is relevant to discuss in regards to who "the local" is, since one of the aims of this

paper is to scale down the understanding of these topics to smaller structures of the society,

grassroots communities. It is important to consider that, especially in war and post-war

environments, "the local" is neither just one and nor representative given the strong divisions within

6 Hence, it is important to emphasize that neutrality (not being bias or polarized) is not necessarily a prerequisite for peacebuilding, nor undesirable.

21

society in internal armed conflicts. Furthermore, it is appropriate to disaggregate within "the locals"

who they are and what are their positions and roles within the armed conflict.

Jarstad and Olsson (2012) post three central questions to decide upon local ownership: what, when

and who. First, regarding what will be locally owned, there are two main aspects that the intervener

should decide upon: type of mandate and resources. Regarding the first, it is a matter of whether the

initiative is for development or stability. The second, implies whether it includes: funds, personnel,

equipment or training. Nonetheless, it is relevant to remark that these aspects are not necessarily

related to what is really needed but entail higher-level concerns. In short, what is offered to be

owned by the locals might not be what is needed, regardless of whether it carries good intentions

and universally positive values, it will not necessarily lead to any outcomes in terms of conflict

resolution (Aoi, De Coning and Thakur, 2007).

The second question refers to when, the authors propose three moments to handing the control of

the initiative: at the starting point; during the process, meaning the project will also represent a

process of allowing for a transfer that licenses the local for owning; or as a state (as a finished

'good') (Jarstad and Olsson, 2012:116). This decision depends on how much the intervener trusts the

'local' that was selected to be the owner to be capable of administrating the resources and

accomplish the mandate.

Concerning who should be the local owner, Jarstad and Olsson (2012) describe how international

donors choose into which hands to deliver the resources and the project itself. They argue that in

practice there are certain traits of these aspects in the intervened upon society (national or locally)

that allure the selection of the local owner by the intervener from a list of possible owners: regime

(political), state (political and administrative), traditional or religious or civil society (organized

civil society), communitarian (broad networks of cooperation among the population) or citizen

(vested individuals).

The first concept in this section, power, is evaluated in light of which of the local actors holds the

bigger political or economic power, understood as capacity for implementation, as "[']strong[']

actors are believed to have capacity both to secure stability and to implement development

programs" (Ibid.:116). Second, legitimacy, which is measured by formal recognition (whether the

group or person has recently been signatory of peace agreements) or popular support (based on

electoral results). And third, norms and culture refer to allowing already existing institutions -

hierarchies- to have more control over the implementation of the initiative. Regarding the latter,

22

they warn of the existence of a trade-off: when support is given to traditional or religious actors, the

statebuilding process based in central level institutions is weakened (Ibid.). These three concepts are

still part of the prescriptive approach, a view from above, and are critical in terms of treating the

causes of conflict.

A partial conclusion, considering that the context on which this paper is focused is war and partial

post-war settings, is that these three last indicators for deciding upon who is a

reliable/efficient/effective local owner are problematic 7 . They generate a consolidation of

asymmetric power relations and reinforce cleavages within society, which contradicts the goals of

peacebuilding in terms of addressing the contradiction that causes and fuels the armed conflict.

Under this view, it is relevant to consider an elicitive approach as well for enabling local ownership

in more organic ways (Galtung, 2007).

2.3.3. Organic Local Ownership

In the nineties, the actors commonly considered for peacebuilding were: states,

intergovernmental organizations and international financial institutions, non-governmental

organizations and the press (Mac Ginty and Williams, 2009). Notwithstanding, although the civil

society is somehow represented in the NGO sector, there is still a disconnection to the people in the

rural areas, who are the ones suffering directly from armed conflict. For instance Cooke and Kothari

(2002) point out that there is a 'tyranny of participation' which entails that the channels for civilian

participation are generally shaped by international organizations’ bureaucratic means, in which they

'shoehorned' communities into "superficial participation mechanisms that suit the requirements of

donors (allowing them to tick a box attesting to 'local participation'), but do not necessarily involve

local communities in meaningful and sustainable ways" (Mac Ginty and Williams, 2009:79).

Furthermore, given the traits of the context this paper addresses (civil war and partial post-war

scenarios) it is critical to understand the role of all the different actors involved in the armed

7Jarstad and Olsson (2012) recognize the problems with their indicators. Regarding to power, in conflict and post-conflict societies power structures are based on the division among society and is still determined by the capacity of monopolizing the use of force, hardly ever in held by the state, consequently based on corruption and lacking of legitimacy. The proxies the authors propose for this last indicator, legitimacy, are also problematic. On one hand, formal recognition of peace agreement signatories signals legitimacy in those who recently were violent actors. And conversely, popular support, is needed to be nuanced as electoral power in conflict and post-conflict societies is highly manipulated by power structures, and it could be product of corrupted institutions or threatened constituencies. Lastly, in related to norms and culture, it is problematic when those traditional structures have been distorted or destroyed by conflict or by interventions (such as colonization), therefore there are no authentic "traditional" legitimate authorities. Though, it is possible to create the social fabric that signals leadership from a more democratic basis and at the same time fulfills both, liberal peace standards and builds up its own autonomous authority.

23

conflict. The state, for instance, is still an active part of the armed conflict, the intergovernmental

organizations and financial institutions are placed on levels too far from the understanding of the

grassroots contexts, and non-governmental organizations -which represent the link with the

grassroots- are usually following their political agenda or the donor's agenda in order to guarantee

their financial survival, and still many of them are still highly attached to the prescriptive approach

for peacebuilding. In addition, in search for closing what Lederach calls the 'authenticity gap'

(2005:49), a more genuine local owner of peace is needed to implement peacebuilding at the

grassroots level. Those who are suffering in the armed conflict, forcibly recruited, displaced,

stigmatized, are the peasants in rural areas. "There should be ownership of the peace by those who

have to live with it" (Graf, Kramer and Nicolescou, 2007:126).

According to this view, and building on the arguments from the last sections on grassroots conflict

resolution, peacebuilding and local ownership of peace, I argue for a stronger and more authentic

sense of local ownership: organic local ownership. This denotes a sense of ownership that refers to

a more natural process of conception of the initiatives from the design to the implementation, and

evaluation; and that is characterized by harmonious relationships between all its components. This

new conception of local ownership does not come from outside, "it must be developed from within

as opposed to imported or imposed from without" (Graf, Kramer and Nicolescou in Galtung

2007:126). It represents the need for an authentic elicitive approach that breeds social capital and

human scale development and, thus, translates into sustainable social change through the changes in

attitudes, behaviour and contradiction.

Summarizing, from the definition of grassroots conflict resolution, it is possible to conclude that

conflict resolution entails a social change, and important processes for that social change are the

creation of social capital and the implementation of human scale development, and also a parallel

process of statebuilding (from below and from above) which is needed in order to consolidate such

change in the society. From the section on peacebuilding a partial conclusion was drawn regarding

the failure of the prescriptive approach in meeting the local realities, nonetheless there is still a

common support for the need of the top-down approach especially in terms of statebuilding, which

as mentioned above is needed to consolidate the social change. Lastly, from the section on local

ownership it is possible to conclude that the relevance of the concept comes from the need for an

elicitive approach for the design and implementation of peacebuilding initiatives, and that the

responsibility of such initiatives has to be handing over to "the locals". Notwithstanding, that

decision (what, how, when and who) is still taken by "the outsiders" upon a certain intervened

society or community based on criteria that are problematic. These three partial conclusions are the

24

baseline to argue for organic local ownership. The next part of this section explains in more detail

how this so-called organic local ownership is the causal mechanism through which peacebuilding

initiatives are effective in generating the conditions for conflict resolution at the grassroots level.

2.4. How Organic Local Ownership of Peacebuilding Initiatives Generate the Conditions for

Conflict Resolution at Grassroots Level? (Causal Mechanism)

This study investigates the causal link between peacebuilding implementation and conflict

resolution at the grassroots level. The theory supports the argument that organic local ownership of

elicitive peacebuilding initiatives bears social capital creation and human scale development,

thereby strikes the root and proximate causes of conflict and generates the conditions for grassroots

conflict resolution. Simultaneously, social capital helps to tilt the unbalance of power within society

towards civil society, allowing it to have more influence on state institutions, promote changes in

the state's performance accountability, helping statebuilding and bridging the state-civil society

fracture. Furthermore, as the means for development will be in local citizen’s hands, the initiative

will be locally regarded, according to their organic needs ensuring context awareness and

contingency, long term commitment and sustainable livelihood in the path of human scale

development. Therefore, the process will help closing the gaps in terms of economic dependency

and poverty, both causes of conflict.

In a more desegregated explanation, I identify that organic local ownership as a mechanism works

due to three main channels: fist regarding individual civic engagement, second associated to the

economic relationship/organization of the community and third related to the change in the social

relationship. The first channel, refers to is an individual decision of each member of the community,

civic engagement, this comes from exhaustion or proactivity, meaning that the community (its

members) is taking a step into the process. This requires that each member of the community

calculate the equation of peace vs. war for their own situation, and realize that war is always, in any

sense, more costly than peace8.

The second and third channels are interlink as they both are based on awareness of the local context.

This means that the initiative is resilient and contingent on it. As the process lies in the community's

responsibility, the complexity of the context is highly comprehended, consequently internalized in

8Lederach (2003) refers to this process in The Moral Imagination, as are only those affected by violence the ones that are capable f imagine their situation in absence of it.

25

the design of the initiative, making it contingent on security incidents and helping it to cope with

any type of deviant incentives, such as economic incentives for illegal activities or spoilers.

The second channel (economic) works due to the sense of responsiveness that comes together with

resources trusted to local grassroots communities or the fact that it is managing its own

endowments. Placing responsibility upon resources in their hands tilt the internal power geared to

community empowerment, the motivation comes from self-dependency and autonomy (elements of

human scale development). As the project is conceived from their associational life exercise and the

knowledge the community has about its own needs, capabilities and context, it guarantees meeting

their authentic needs, hence, at least at the community level, development will strike economic

dependency and poverty, by a change in economic relationship within community and of the

community with the market. Furthermore, this route generates solidarity, trust and strengthening

associational life through the decision-making process upon how to employ resources, which is the

connection with the third channel.

On the other hand, the third channel that refers to a change in the social relationship within the

community and of the community with outside, it works through what Lederach calls the capacity

of imagine their own situation in a peaceful scenario. It is motivated by solidarity of understanding

that what is affecting 'me' as individual is the mirror of rest of the member of the community, thus it

is motivated by solidarity. It allows emergency of customary and more democratic instruments to

participate in that process creating connections among those affected by the initiative. These

acquired organizational skills can also create institutions or improve the connections with existing

ones improving state-civil society relations, which represents a step forward in statebuilding. This is

a change in behaviour since it generates togetherness striking any division within the community

around their needs. Therefore a change in social relationship within the community and of the

community with the state institutions they interact.

Summarizing, the first channel addresses the Attitudes corner of Galtung peace/conflict triangle,

through a change in how each individual perceives the impact of violence on them and their

fellowman generating civil engagement. The second channel impacts mainly the Contradiction

corner, as it helps the emergency of feasible solutions for the community to cope with their needs,

in the direction of human scale development guided through the solidarity and trust that are

exercised within the strengthening of the associational life. The third channel addresses both a

change on Behaviour and helps to deal with part of the Contradictions as steers a change in social

interaction within and with outside, this means that is simultaneously coping with violence and

26

creating more fluid relations with e.g. state institutions, both creating social tissue and assisting the

statebuilding process from below.

3. Research Design

In order to investigate the relation described between peacebuilding and grassroots conflict

resolution and the relevance of organic local ownership, two cases are analyzed separately and

comparatively. The focus of the study is within country cases: Alto Patía and Carare, two rural sub-

regions in Colombia. A focused structured comparison is carried out addressing the approach for

designing and implementing the peacebuilding initiatives, their local ownership configuration and

their outcome in terms of grassroots conflict resolution.

The review of the literature of previous research regarding the role of local ownership within

peacebuilding, lead to one main hypothesis: in a context of war or partial post-war, peacebuilding

initiatives with an elicitive approach generate the conditions for conflict resolution at the

grassroots level by enabling organic local ownership. By extension, it can be argued that a

prescriptive approach for peacebuilding in such a context uproots the initiative and consequently

hinders the possible outcomes in terms of conflict resolution (at the grassroots level).

3.1. Research Method

In order to investigate the abovementioned hypothesis, two cases will be analyzed separately

and comparatively. The structured, focused comparison method will be used for this purpose. The

focus lies in the contextualization of the cases within the institutional, socioeconomic factors and

armed conflict patterns that can provide alternative explanations for the failure or success of the

peacebuilding initiatives, as well as provide control exogenous variables that keep the cases

comparable. Structured comparison accompanied with process tracing provides a separate

description of the cases in order to independently show them within the national context, their

common traits and their variability.

The method of structured, focused comparison employed in this study is applied as suggested by

George and Bennett (2005). It consists in asking questions upon the cases in line with the research

objective. This method also guides information gathering and presentation according to the

theoretical guidelines, providing focus throughout the analysis to highlight the aspects of the cases

which are truly relevant for the research objective (Ibid.:67).

27

Additionally, this study uses process tracing as a method to address exogenous variables

(background and contextual factors) within the cases that can have impact on the outcome of

grassroots conflict resolution. This method allows for objective measurements across the cases that

are related mainly with the variables depicted in the theory section (Ibid.:303).

3.2. Cases and Time Frame Selection

Seeking to understand how to achieve conflict resolution at the grassroots level, rural

peacebuilding initiatives in Colombia are investigated.

Colombia, my home country, has been in active armed conflict for more than half century,

moreover several peace processes have been carried out over the decades, albeit the war is still

ongoing: neither has the armed conflict itself been settled, nor have its root causes been addressed.

Furthermore, with time the panorama gets more complex and other phenomena hinder the

achievement of a peaceful settlement. These traits make Colombia a perfect scenario of war and

partial post-war in which the underlying theory has been framed.

The focus on the grassroots level is justified by two main reasons: first, Graf, Kramer and

Nicolescou (2007) argue that those who have to live with the armed conflict are the ones that have

to come up with solutions suitable for them. Accordingly, it is the peasant population in the rural

areas who survive in the midst of the violent conflict at the mercy of the armed groups, suffering

poverty and underdevelopment due to the sharp inequality (root cause of conflict).Consequently, the

peasants should organically bred the peace as they are aware of the context and their needs. Second,

Lederach (2005:94-100) points out the value of the "capacity to see, understand, and mobilize

relational spaces" (Ibid:94), giving leverage to the importance of having a visualization (moral

imagination) of the territory and the relations developing on it for peacebuilding. As the Colombian

conflict is very complex and it is strongly determined by geography, as well class and race

divisions, the focus on two small geographical and cultural sets within the macro-armed conflict

allows a better understanding of the conflict itself and its micro-dynamics.

The selection of the cases within the universe of peacebuilding initiatives in Colombia, was guided

by the rationality of comparing the different approaches of peacebuilding, since they are thought to

lead to different kinds of local ownership. Furthermore, there were selected development based

28

initiatives, as scholars agree upon development as the core objective of peacebuilding (Donais,

2009; Jarstad and Olsson, 2011). The main variations between the initiatives are:

- Each initiative has a different approach for design and implementation: prescriptive (case 1) vs.

elicitive (case 2), which implies different involvement of "the outsiders" and a different role of "the

locals";

- The notion of development is different for each case: while one has a clearly market-oriented

focus on economic growth (case 1) the other is human scale based (case 2);

- The emphasis given to the participation of locals is different: while incase 1 it is carried out

through state central institutions with superficial or any involvement of the communities, in case 2

the initiative emerges (is designed and implemented) from the community involving governmental

and international actors during the implementation.

On the other hand, the cases have also common aspects. Both involve the same type of actors and

have common traits in terms of geography, socioeconomic and conflict conditions, and similar size

of scope. In addition they share being deeply affected by coca production. Moreover, as both cases

are within rural Colombia they share macro traits such as conflict nature and institutional frame

although there are regional dynamics that differ, the main conflict division remains the same across

the national territory.

It is important to highlight the time frame of this work. During the period analyzed, 2000 to 2010,

two important processes in Colombia have affected the course of the initiatives: first, the strengthen

of the counterinsurgency struggle due to the spillover effects of the war on drugs led by the U.S.,

and second, the transitional process accompanying the paramilitary demobilization, disarmament

and reintegration (DDR) process. Another reason for choosing 2000-2010 is the availability of

statistical information regarding coca production and development among other socioeconomic

indicators.

3.3. Operationalization

In light of the research question, under what conditions does peacebuilding contribute to

conflict resolution at the grassroots level, two concepts are pertinent to operationalize: grassroots

conflict resolution and peacebuilding initiative.

29

3.3.1. Grassroots Conflict Resolution (dependent variable)

As defined in the theoretical framework, at the grassroots level conflict resolution entails a

social change founded in social capital creation and human scale development which steer the

necessary changes in the three corners of Galtung's peace/conflict triangle.

In order to identify the outcomes of the peacebuilding initiatives on conflict resolution and its

quality, this variable is operationalized in line with the three corners of Galtung's peace/conflict

triangle:

Table 1. Attitudes

Table 2. Behaviour

Table 3. Contradiction

Indicator Evaluation InterpretationEffective Conflict

Resolution Outcome

Type of armed

conflict settlement

Whether violence has stopped by military or negotiated means?

A negotiated settlement of the armed conflict guarantee a more stable and secure scenario for the initiative to take place. If the conflict is settled by military means it is more unstable, and it is needed that the population side with the "winner" actor, which in a conflict or partial post-conflict scenario represents risk for the security of the civilian population.

Negotiated means

Civic engagement To what extent those affected by the armed conflict participate or are involved in its settlement?

The more engagement from those affected directly by the armed conflict represents better understanding if the dynamics and the limitations of the settlement of the armed conflict, agreements (if exists), and the conditions and possibilities for the design of a feasible peacebuilding initiative.

The community affected by armed conflict participates fully in the design and implementation of the initiative.

Att

itu

des

Indicator Evaluation InterpretationEffective Conflict

Resolution Outcome

Conflict related

deaths and

homicides

How much direct conflict violence and other types of violence get influenced by the initiative?

The lower the levels of violence the more effective the initiative has been in changing behaviour, therefore in achieving conflict resolution.

Low levels of conflict related deaths and homicides

Security of the

initiative

There exist formal or informal instruments to secure the initiative (such as spaces to renegotiate the terms of agreements, if they exists)?

The existence of such instruments help to hold the agreements by renegotiating the terms and analyze deviant incentives.

Existence of neutral spaces to meet with the parties involved in the armed conflict, free arms zones, rulebooks.

Separating the

civil from the

uncivil

There exists formal or informal instruments to address quotidian interaction between armed groups and civilians?

The more clear is the difference between civilians and non-civilians or civil and uncivil activities, means that the initiative effectively helped the change in behaviour.

When there is no need for the civilians to side-with any of the actors for their protection.

Context

awareness

To what extent are these instruments (for securing and for address civil-uncivil interaction) are contingent to the local context?

Contingency entails in this case that in cases where the initial strategies to secure the environment of the initiative, to address civil-uncivil differences and to address deviant incentives.

The instrument fit the quotidian course of live of the community and the traits of the territory and existent infrastructure.

Beh

av

iou

r

30

3.3.2. Peacebuilding Initiative (independent variable)

Based on Lentfer and Yachkaschi (2009), this study provides a set of questions that helps to

evaluate from the practitioners view a peacebuilding initiative in terms of how it is executed. It also

provides hints for identifying the approach of peacebuilding the initiative has been designed and

implemented with.

These questions are complemented by Jarstad and Olsson’s (2012) questions for understanding

local ownership: what is to be locally owned, when the transfer should happen and who should be

the local owner. For the purpose of this study, those questions are integrated into the

methodological aspects of the analysis of peacebuilding initiative in order to identify the type of

local ownership.

Furthermore, the evaluation of the initiatives is guided by five aspects that are identified to be

involved in the design of peacebuilding initiatives: objectives and channels of action; dimensions to

Indicator Evaluation InterpretationEffective Conflict

Resolution Outcome

Treating

proximate causes

of conflict (not

feeding the armed

conflict)

Is there is an alternative (legal) economy feasible for the community to implement and suitable to their authentic needs? (human scale development)

- In this regard there is needed to evaluate to which extent is the community fulfilling their basic needs product of the implementation of the project, whether the particular project is feasible for the conditions and capabilities of the people, the territory, the infrastructure and security conditions. - Whether the initiative is coping with deviant incentives.

The development project suits community needs, generates a sustainable livelihood, allows autonomy from illegal economies and does not create economic dependency.

Treating root

causes of conflict:

inequality

(Improving

democracy)

Have the economic relations created by the initiative helped to emerge customary organizational and participatory instruments? (revision in power relations and social capital creation)

When the initiative responsibility is deposited in the community's hands (organic ownership), it is very likely that the community find mechanisms to decide upon the resources based in their needs, which they their own asses by the knowledge they have of the context. In this regard, the initiative has at certain degree successfully generated a change in the contradiction, favoring democracy and creating trust within civil society, empowering and strengthening their role. This represents a step forward reconciliation.

The design and implementation of the initiative has created organizational and participatory instruments organically within the community.

Whether the initiative is addressing the local reality in terms of meeting basic needs based on knowledge and relationship of the community with state institutions by communities enterprise (from below)

Here, ownership and the utilization of mechanism for assessing and planning in regards to the authentic needs and reality of the community generates associational life (element of social capital) which spreads through creating ties with other communities, organizations and institutions in order to design and implement the initiative. For this to successfully happen there has to an interest in inform the community with respect to the different tools tat different type of institutions provide.

The initiative has created -through associational life- channels of interaction with state institutions at the local, regional or national level. Or the initiative demands to some extent state institutions involvement.

Whether there is and improvement in the performance of the state in terms of basic needs and public goods and services provision (from above)

To gauge how much the performance of the state has improve due to the initiative, it can be analyze -in connection with the last indicator- the interaction between the community and state institution in which the last ones have proceed. To evaluate how all types of petitions or claims the community has taken to the authority have been attended.

As a product of the initiative petitions from the community have been delivered and attended by state authority in the way of public goods and services.

Treating root

causes of conflict:

poverty

(statebuilding)

Con

tra

dic

tion

31

deal with; type of livelihood provided; degree of context contingency; and funding. Those aspects

are key to evaluate the approach for implementation of peacebuilding and how much impact it

would have on what was defined above as conflict resolution.

Table 4. Peacebuilding

Regarding the approach, it can be said that an initiative driven by an elicitive approach would signal

objectives and channels of action with high participation of local population (especially those

directly affected by armed conflict) from the earliest phases of the initiative; the mechanisms of

interaction are closer to the community's daily relationships; the initiative addresses the real needs

and capabilities (by the locals), implying it is feasible and suitable for them; the initiative creates

alternatives for deviant incentives such as involvement in illegal economies and at the same time

provides self-dependency to ensure its sustainability. Moreover, as is been implemented by

themselves the imaginary of the peaceful situation appears plausible and helps to address the

impacts of the constant changes in that happen in the process within the community's idea for a

future. On the contrary, when the answers to those questions point to the opposite it can be said that

the initiative is driven by a prescriptive approach.

Methodological

AspectsEvaluation

Which actors are involved? And How?What are the mechanisms of interaction between them, how close are they?Does the initiative bring into play previews local initiatives as a departing point or uses existing organizational skills?If there is participation of the community, when it happens (at the start, as a process or when it is final a product)?Participation, partnership or ownership?Who is consider as "the local" for the implementation of the initiative (political regime, state, traditional, religious or civil society organizations, networks of communitarian cooperation or vested citizens)?Which criteria is used to select who has the merit to be trusted resources by the international: power (strength in capacity for implementation), legitimacy (formal recognition of popular support) or norms and culture (existing hierarchical traditional or religious institutions) or

context awareness and previews experience ?how the assessment of local needs/context is made?Does the community recognizes in the purposes of the initiative solutions to their problems?Does the initiative consider development projects or stability (purely political measures)?Does the project entails self-dependency?Does the initiative creates a local collective economy or it is about integrating the community in to bigger markets?Does the initiative impacts in a positive or negative manner community's wellbeing and living conditions?Is there an assessment of short and longer terms impacts on quotidian life in the community?Does the initiative contemplate realistic time frames between implementation and results?Which type of resources are provided (funds, personnel, equipment or training)?How are the resources distributed?

Objectives and

channels of

action

Dimensions to

deal with

Type of

livelihood

provided

Degree of

context

Funding

32

3.4. Characteristics of the material and the sources

The information used in this study is both quantitative and qualitative and it comes from

various sources. The statistical information allows for objective measures across the cases and

framing within the national context and background, in that sense this type of evidence "can

indicate relationships which may not be salient to the researcher" keeping them "from being carried

away by vivid, but false, impressions in qualitative data, and it can bolster findings when it

corroborates those findings from qualitative evidence" (Eisehnardt, 1989:538). In contrast, the

qualitative data allows a better comprehension of the local traits of the cases, this type of

information is "useful to understand the rationally or theory underlying relationships revealed in the

quantitative data or may suggest direct theory which can be strengthened by quantitative support”

(Eisehnardt, 1989:538).

Statistical data

This information comes from official and non-official sources. With regards to information

from official sources, this study uses data about economic growth (BANREP), municipal scale

development and poverty (DNP), inequality (DANE), public services coverage (CNJ, SSPD),

public goods provision (INVIAS); demographic indicators (DANE, RGN), and homicide (DANE

and PONAL); as well as general physical context information (IDEAM, IGAC). All of these

sources are central state institutions. This data, although guaranteeing objective measurements

across the cases, has to be critically analyzed. The potential limitations of the data lie in two

technical factors: coverage and methodology. Regarding coverage, state institutions face great

difficulties in getting through the whole territory whether by physical obstacles that the complex

geography represents or because there are territories where the state is not sovereign. Regarding

methods, there is a bias in the state measures of socioeconomic indicators towards financial

components.

In terms of information from non-official sources, this study uses data about conflict-related

violence from CERAC, which since 2004 has build up a database that is useful to describe armed

conflict activity by groups and impacts on victimization at the municipality level. The information

from this source comes mainly from press reports, NGOs denunciations and armed groups’ war

reports. The limitations of this source concern the precision and reliability of reporting sources

which is usually low. Moreover, the organizations that provide information on armed conflict

33

events do not have a complete and constant coverage in terms of time and territory or they are co-

opted by illegal armed groups or by the state (Granada, Restrepo and Sánchez, 2009).

Lastly, the information regarding coca crops cultivation comes from a mixed source composed by

UNODC and the Colombian government. This source offers disaggregated information on the

geographical position of coca crops at the municipal level, as well as more precise location on

maps. The limitation this information faces is purely technical, measurements are done by aerial and

satellite photos which have diminished accuracy given the harsh geographical locations of the crops

and the fact that the tropics are very cloudy (SIMCI).

Field Work Observations

The field work observations used in this study were gathered within different projects I

participated in as a researcher in CERAC and the Historical Memory Group. With regards to Case

1, in 2008 I had the opportunity to travel to the department of Nariño to investigate the local

historical dynamics and impacts of the presence of the ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional -

National Liberation Army), one of the main active guerrilla groups of Colombia. In that project I

also had the opportunity to interview several times an ELN ex-commander who nowadays works as

a peace worker/mediator. Regarding Case 2, in 2010, I participated as a researcher in the

reconstruction of memories of all peace initiatives the community of Carare had endeavored since

the 1980s. My personal focus was on investigating the socioeconomic developments. Nonetheless, I

participated in all types of workshops and focus groups from which I had a deeper understanding of

the case.

From both field visits, I gathered observations on the historical background, conflict nature, scale

and dynamics, political and economic context, as well as about the living conditions of the

communities. Furthermore, I did semi-structured interviews with strategic actors such as politicians

or leaders.

Admittedly, although providing more authentic information, field observations are a less objective

indicator. This information have three potential biases: first, the researcher’s own bias regarding

interest in topics, religious beliefs or political position; second, the impact of the environment and

the people from the community upon the researcher and his or her instruments for research; and

third, the fact that the information was gathered for other research works and different purposes.

Therefore the interviews were not performed thinking of this specific work. Nonetheless both

34

projects involved the analysis of the communities and the projects in terms of their impact on peace

and development, which makes them compatible with the purpose of this study.

Evaluation Assessments

For Case 1, three documents were used, the first: The challenges of supporting ‘alternative’

economic opportunities for peacebuilding from International Alert (Godnick and Klein, 2009); this

paper addresses a comparative view of the strategies that frame Case 1 and compares Colombia's

strategy with Uganda, Nepal and Sri Lanka. The second, Local Business, Local Peace: the

Peacebuilding Potential of the Domestic Private Sector. Case study: Colombia, as well sponsored

by International Alert (Guáqueta, N.A.), analyzes deeper the Colombian context and addresses the

role of private sector in the implementation of this type of initiatives. Third, a research report

provided by CERAC (not published), Conflicto armado, sustitución de cultivos ilícitos y economía

cafetera en Nariño, Colombia, from which the geographical delimitation of the case of study was

taken as well as a detailed description of the implementation process (Durán, López and Restrepo,

2008).

For case 2, the evaluation assessment is provided by the narrative of the historical memory of the

case the Group of Historical Memory from the CNRR published in 2011, El ordendesarmado. La

Resistencia de la Asociación de Trabajadores Campesinos del Carare (ATCC). The assessment of

the Case 2 initiative is a broad historical analysis of background and contextual narrative, besides it

provides an analytic information in regards with the factors that have allow or neglect achievement

of peace for the community (GMH, 2011).

4. Empirics

This section describes the present Colombian socioeconomic and political situation and a

historical perspective of the contemporary armed conflict. Within this context, the cases of study are

presented with a description of where the initiative is located within Colombia, as well as the

specific region's local history with regard to the conflict related and contextual factors. This level of

description will enable the exogenous phenomena that impacted the implementation and final

outcomes to be related. Details are also given concerning the implementation of initiatives and the

policy frame, the configuration in terms of local ownership, and the outcome in terms of grassroots

conflict resolution.

35

4.1. Context

Colombia, broadly speaking, is a country characterized by high inequality and social

exclusion, described by Galtung (2004:86) as "a grotesquely divided society, with sharp class and

race contradictions" .It is also known worldwide for its cocaine production and trafficking,

organized crime, and the ongoing socio-political armed conflict. These traits have hindered

collective civil action throughout postcolonial history as the state inherited from the Spanish was

fragmented in its social and economic relations. These traits were based on accumulation

(mercantilist), implying a constant fight for sovereignty over resources, labor and monopoly on

international trade (Chaparro, 2009:80). The state attempted to command the process of liberation

guided by personalism, parochialism, clientelism and corporatism, which over centuries has

weakened its institutional capacity to implement public policy and its capacity to build up

infrastructure (Serbín and Ugarte, 2007:10). Modern day Colombia is considered "one of the

wealthiest and most developed countries experiencing sustained levels of armed conflict" (Godnick

and Klein, 2009), though severe geography and social inequalities help to comprehend its conflict

complexity and the obstacles for its solution (Maps 3 and 4).

Colombia's civil war has lasted for more than half a century. The roots of the contemporary armed

conflict go back to 1958, when after an artificial dictatorship put in place by the elite a ten-year

national revolt ended and the conservative and liberal elites agreed to share power alternating for

the next sixteen years. The agreement, Frente Nacional, was a power sharing solution for a period

called La Violencia where the conservative and liberal guerrillas fought since 1948. Although, one

additional party involved in the struggle, the communist guerrilla, was excluded from the

agreement, years later it became the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People's Army

(FARC-EP). Afterwards several other guerrilla groups formed. The two main guerrillas, FARC and

the National Liberation Army (ELN), remain active today, albeit many political and military

attempts to put an end to the armed conflict. During the Frente Nacional(1958-1974) governments

fought a counterinsurgency war by “removing the water from the fish" (i.e. removing the people's

support from the guerrillas). Their main tactics were harassment and assassination of peasants

accused of being guerrilla collaborators, worsening stigmatization against civil society and

widening the division between the state and civil society9.

9 For further information see: 'Origins of the Violence in Colombia' by James D. Henderson. PhD Thesis, Texas Christian University Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1972.

36

In the seventies guerrillas financed themselves with marijuana production and taxing landowners,

but it was not until the eighties that Colombia started to play a bigger part in international drug

markets. In the early eighties, Colombian drug cartels grew as Colombia's geostrategic position and

weak corruptible institutions favored the fast development of the coca industry. It started first as

processing and trafficking coca from Peru and Bolivia but after 1986 coca was also cultivated

massively in Colombia10. That same industry engaged with private networks of counterinsurgency,

some loosely and some tightly connected to the state 11 . Simultaneously, in 1984 Belisario

Betancur's government (conservative) and FARC signed a peace agreement that included a

ceasefire and truce between FARC and state forces. The two parties also agreed to open a political

space for the guerrilla to form its political party -Unión Patriotica (UP)- and participate in the first

regional and local elections of Colombia in 198812. Nonetheless, the agreement did not address

disarmament and demobilization, and FARC continued 'combining all forms of struggle'. The

success of the UP in the elections was unprecedented, the richest and conservative sectors of the

society felt threatened; their power as ruling elites was challenged and another episode of the

counterinsurgency started. A majority of the UP candidates were assassinated either by

paramilitaries at the service of the state or directly by state agents (Cepeda, 2007). At the end of the

eighties the outlook for Colombia was not promising. The guerrilla had already started producing

coca and it became a hefty financial source for them. Moreover, after the Soviet Union collapsed,

guerrillas incorporated other financial resources such as extortive kidnapping (Ferro and Uribe,

2002).

Between 1990 and 1992 important changes took place; a broad peace process in which most of the

smaller guerrillas were demobilized, led to the drafting of a new Constitution(FIP, 2002).

Nonetheless, the Coordinadora Guerrillera Simón Bolívar (CGSB), a coalition of FARC and ELN,

opposed the process, claiming that the state did not have real intentions for peace after it bombed

Casa Verde, a designated location for meetings of high commanders of the guerrilla and deemed a

safe place for negotiations (Ferro and Uribe, 2002). In 1994 Colombia started a process of

economic liberalization, driven by the guidelines of the Washington Consensus, and carried out

during President Gaviria's (liberal) administration. This process greatly exacerbated the structural

causes of the conflict and broadened the gap between classes (peasant/worker and elite) within

Colombian society (Max-Neef, 1994). At the same time that the peace process occurred, the new

10 In Colombia, as well as in Peru and Bolivia, many indigenous families plant and use coca in their quotidian activities, but not as cocaine but only leaves without any chemical process. 11 In fact Pablo Escobar worldwide known as the biggest Drug Capo in history, was elected as deputy alternative to the Chamber of Representatives of the National Congress as part of the Liberal party in 1982 (Gómez and Sánchez, 2008). 12 Many scholars blame the rapid grow of guerrillas on the decentralization process, which gave more access by legal means to power positions within the state structure and to public resources (Sánchez and Chacón, 2005)

37

constitution was signed while key institutional and economic changes took place; the drug cartels

were in open war against the joint antagonism from D.E.A. and the Colombian Police, and in 1993

Pablo Escobar (head of the Medellín drug cartel) was killed.

Later, in the mid-nineties, self-defense groups that existed since the early eighties and groups

sponsored by large landowners formed a national federal army known as the United Self-Defense of

Colombia (AUC) (Romero, 2003). Together, in a ‘coordinated’ task force the AUC was performing

forced displacement, disappearances and massacres of citizens to "cleanse" potential guerrilla

cooperators from land important for the growing agro-industry project of the state in order to gain

new economic opportunities (López, 2010). State forces were growing and modernizing with the

cooperation of U.S. government through an initiative called Plan Colombia. This plan was

originally designed for fighting drug production, but had high spillover impacts on

counterinsurgency (Restrepo and Spagat, 2005).

Another important fact to highlight here is that in 1998, Colombia's president Andres Pastrana

(conservative), who implemented Plan Colombia, was also participating in peace dialogues with

FARC to establish a negotiation process, once again. During these dialogues FARC used the

demilitarized zone for illegal activities such as trafficking drugs and arms, and as a result no

ceasefire was agreed upon and the war continued in the rest of the territory (Restrepo and Spagat,

2005). Dialogues ended in 2002 with terrible consequences. At this time the massive number of

kidnappings of military personnel, police officers and politicians rose, and FARC nearly doubled its

size (Ferro and Uribe, 2002). Also in 2002, President Uribe (the nationalistic party Primero

Colombia) came to power, AUC signed a peace agreement, and the AUC demobilized. From this

time to the present state forces have engaged in a military offensive, which has cost many civilian

lives and deepened the fragmentation the social fabric (Granada and Sánchez, 2009).

After the paramilitary Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) process, the armed

conflict took on even more complexity. Many atomized armed groups related to drug production

and trafficking have emerged or rearmed, but now without a solid political backing, they have

become involved with the guerrillas in a scenario of territorial alliances and disputes around the

distribution of the territory for coca production and cocaine distribution markets (Ávila and Núñez,

2008).

Since 2010, the opportunities for peace have been more latent. President Santos (nationalistic party

Unidad Nacional), the former Defense Minister, came to power and has worked out a dual strategy;

38

while advocating reparation and reconciliation, he is at the same time fighting an open war. FARC,

on the other hand, has lost its historical leaders and faces lack of popular support. Nonetheless,

FARC continues to engage in fighting with the army, attacking police patrols, getting closer to

urban centers, but at the same time also demonstrates gestures of peace, such as unilaterally

liberating 'prisoners of war' (García Durán S.J., 2012). In parallel, civil society has undertaken

greater action with respect to moving negotiations forward. A high degree of polarization and

stigmatization remains, dividing Colombian civil society, which is one reason of society's failure in

sparking effective government and guerrilla dialogue. The complexity is furthered by the armed

industry behind cocaine, which maintains groups existing in a grey area between war and

criminality. For a better, recent picture of Colombia's armed conflict see Map 1. This figure shows

the coca crops and the distribution of armed groups by color and magnitude of manpower.

4.2. Case 1. Alto Patía: Prescriptive Approach13

Case 1 is an institutionally driven peacebuilding initiative based on the substitution of coca

crops for coffee crops in the southwest of Colombia (Maps 1 and 5). Both the Colombian state and

U.S. military are involved, along with European international cooperation. The traits of this case

are strongly linked with a dynamic guided by dissident, re-armed and emergent groups from the

paramilitary DDR process and the war on drugs.

4.2.1. Background

Geographic and Socioeconomic Conditions

Alto Patía is situated in the Andean mountains of the Nariño department in the southwest of

Colombia. The initiative influences the following municipalities: Ancuyá, El Peñól, El Rosario, El

Tambo, Leiva, Linares, Los Andes, Policarpa and Sandoná. This sub-region is named Alto Patía

after the river these municipalities share. This river also provides the primary means of transport in

the sub-region (Map 6). The position of the sub-region is strategically located for coca production

and cocaine traffic. From Alto Patía coca leaves are driven to the "kitchens"14 which are installed in

13 It is highly recommended to look at the Appendix 4 photos 1 to 8, in order to have a better idea of the narrative. 14 Kitchen, cocina in Spanish, is the name given to the place where the coca leaf is processed using gasoline to obtain the alkaloid, sulfuric acid, cement and caustic soda to obtain a paste or base. Then ammonium and limestone are added to sift it. Then acetone and ether are added to maintain the consistency during the cooking process after which afterwards the coca paste is obtained, that product is filtered with hydrochloric acid. After is dry the cocaine hydrochloride powder is ready. Most of the times this base powder is mixed with other products like baby powder or flower to soften it and commercialize it as cocaine (Cocaine Diary by Alex James, Panorama UK, 2008).

39

the jungle valleys. After the cocaine is processed, it is transported to the Pacific coast by river way,

where it is relatively easy to transport to the west coast of Central and North America by ship or in

some instances by submarine 15 . It is important to clarify that the area of influence for the

peacebuilding initiative is not continuous within the territory of Alto Patía. The program is analyzed

at the municipal level as this is the level of the available data(Map 5).

The population within the area of influence of the study is 122,884 inhabitants, where

approximately 72% is comprised of rural, ethnically plural citizenry that includes: indigenous,

palenqueros (escaped slaves), rom, mestizos, mulattos and blacks (Table 2). There is no majority of

a single ethnicity and the people of this region remain segregated from one another according to

where their families developed. Each ethnicity's livelihood activities typically remains segregated as

well. For example, mestizos dwell primarily in the mountains as farmers, while blacks in general

live near rivers since their main activities are fishing and timber commerce (Interview Ezequiel

Pedraza). The ethnic group primarily responsible for growing coca crops is mestizos, as they are

mainly smallholders (Durán, López and Restrepo, 2008:5-6).

Nariño is one of the poorest and most unequal regions of the country (Maps 3 and 4). The illiteracy

rate in the sub-region of Alto Patía is 23.57%, while 18% in Nariño and 9.6% nationally (Table 6).

This department in general, and the sub-region in particular, are characterized by lack of public

service provisions, especially water and sewerage. In 2005 only 18.81% of the households had

sewerage and 45.14% aqueduct (DNP, 2012). Basic Unsatisfied Needs (NBI Spanish acronym) also

exhibit high levels in this region and sub-region;55,83% for Alto Patía in total, and 61,75% for rural

areas, respectively (Table 3). This indicator represents the percentage of families living in such

conditions as a house constructed with inappropriate materials, critical overcrowding (more than

three persons per room), inadequate access to public services provisions, high economic

dependency (when there is more than three unoccupied persons for each occupied one) and/or

households that have children in schooling age but do not attend a formal school (DANE, 2012).

Although the land in this department has a relatively low concentration of inhabitants, Nariño has a

high concentration of wealth within Colombia and Alto Patía has the highest degree of wealth

within Nariño. In the year 2000 the Gini wealth coefficient16 was 0.51 in average for the sub-region

of Alto Patia and the Gini wealth coefficient for Nariño was 0.66 (Table 5).

15 "Farc's drug submarine seized in Colombia", BBC, September 25th 2011 in: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-15051108. 16 Ideally the Gini coefficient is 0 when the wealth or land is perfectly equally distributed within the population and 1 when is severely concentrated.

40

Nariño has advantages in terms of the quality of soil and diverse climate to cultivate different kinds

of products, but historically has only specialized in coffee and timber. Recently its economy has

focused on agro-industries such as African Palm oil. The second largest activity is mining which

has been the oldest activity since the colonial times (Durán, López and Restrepo, 2008:10). These

two activities, African Palm cultivation and mining, have been either in the hands of landowners or

multinational industries. These activities are deepening inequality as the wealth associated with

their production is not distributed among the people of the region but stays in private hands.

Another concern is that food security is threatened. For example, land and rivers are polluted by

mining waste, while indigenous flora are replaced with African Palm trees, instead of subsistence

crops (Indepaz, 2007). This scenario reflects the traits of development implemented by the state.

While the government emphasizes that the department's GDP has grown in the past years (Graph 1),

when looking closer to other factors pertaining to development/economic growth it is evident that

this economic growth is furthering in inequality, while its benefits are not observed in terms of

improvements in human scale development (Tables 3, 4, 6 and Graph 1).

Armed Conflict Situation

The southern departments, around the Amazonas jungle, represent the border of the state

within the country due to the initial colonization processes that took place mainly in the mountain

ranges (Vásquez, Vargas and Restrepo, 2011). Although, Nariño and its capital have existed since

colonial times17, the rural area has always been marginalized. The armed conflict in Nariño is

relatively recent when compared to the national one. Armed groups arrived in the mid eighties as a

result of a late colonization in the sixties, part of the expansion of the main guerrilla's area of

influence (Ibid.). The conflict between FARC and ELN remained latent until the late nineties. Low

levels of violence were associated with conflict and targeted primarily large landowners and

industries personnel (Interview a.k. Francísco Galán). At the same time there was a silent political

violence in urban areas against unionists and leftwing politicians (Interview Germán Obando). At

the end of the nineties there were two factors that acted as triggers worsening the armed conflict:

Plan Colombia, the joint war on drugs strategy from Colombian and US governments, and

paramilitary expansion from the northwest to the south and east of the country.

Plan Colombia, injected enormous resources that enlarged and modernized the armed forces, which

gave enough power to the state to seek a military victory activating the latent armed conflict,

therefore deteriorating security conditions for civilians. Fumigating coca crops with glyphosate,

17 In fact Nariño was royalist and refused to join to the Bolivar's independence army.

41

produced a relocation of the crops from Putumayo to Nariño. This relocation favored the coca

industry, as Nariño has geostrategic conditions that provided a better enclave for this activity (Maps

2 and 5; Durán, López and Restrepo, 2008). This also resulted in a scenario of alliances and

disputes between drug producers, processers and transporters (Ávila and Núñez, 2008). The coca

industry could easily settle in Nariño providing good economic incentives to peasant communities,

by the threat of violence, creating deep-rooted fear and dependency relations with the communities.

In addition, paramilitary expansion arrived to Nariño around 1999 (Graph 7), this new actor

generated both high levels of violence against the civilian population18 (Romero, 2003) and a

territorial reconfiguration around the coca control (Ávila and Núñez, 2008). Later, in 2005 the

paramilitaries were demobilized in Nariño, leading to adverse impacts on the armed conflict and

coca production. Before the DDR process, paramilitaries fought against guerrillas for the control of

the coca, however afterwards the same paramilitary groups changed their political label and remain

as a main controlling actor, creating an scenario of complex alliances with the guerrillas. This

situation forced guerrillas into alliances; while guerrillas were (and continue to be) in charge of

cultivating and sometimes processing coca, ex-paramilitaries were/are in charge of transportation

and networking with distribution cartels (Ibid.).

The merge of the two processes worsened the security situation for civilians and removed the

opportunities for peace in the short run. Additionally, as mentioned above, the socioeconomic and

institutional conditions of Nariño were generally extremely poor which aided the new configuration

of drug production and the failure of the war on drugs and the counterinsurgent struggle. Security in

the region is very vulnerable, as there are no formal instruments to address violent behaviour of

armed groups. War is still being fought and the peacebuilding initiative relies heavily on the

protective role of state forces (Guáquetá, N.A.).

4.2.2. The Peacebuilding Initiative

History and Policy Frame

As mentioned above this initiative is one piece of a bigger policy frame concerning the war

on drugs. Its history goes back to 1994 with U.S. guided policies that paralleled the economic

liberalization. In Colombia, the economic liberalization process also created an opportunity for

18 96% of the victims from unilateral attacks of paramilitary groups were civilians who were assassinated in massacres between 1997 and 2001 (Granada, Restrepo and Vargas, 2009:65)

42

industrial rural economic activity, which brought about adverse conditions for marketing of

agricultural products. Notwithstanding, the demand for coca leaf offered bigger rewards for small

peasants. The basic strategy was to start substituting coca crops (voluntarily) for agricultural

products (traditional exports) that were in line with the new chain of production (Guáquetá, N.A.).

In parallel, U.S. President Clinton started the promotion of the war on drugs, saying the U.S. was

facing historical rates of cocaine consumption in 1993 (Gorman and Weinberg, 2001). Meanwhile

in Colombia politicians and important state institutions were being exceptionally corrupted by the

influence of the drug cartels, after Pablo Escobar's assassination in 1993. The new government in

Colombia (Samper, liberal) proposed a change of strategy towards providing better economic

alternatives to peasants who planted coca (DNP, 1994). In 1994 the Colombian government started

the implementation of the National Program of Alternative Development (PLANTE), aiming to

strengthen the integral development in peasant and indigenous economic areas that were affected by

growing illegal crops. The end goal of PLANTE was to create a basis for sustainable and

autonomous social and economic development (Ibid.). Notwithstanding, it was a nationally

conceived program and its decentralization was not successful (Durán, López and Restrepo,

2008:13). Later between 1996 and 1997, the program started to be implemented regionally with the

Regional Alternative Development Plans (PRDA), whose objective was to integrate implementation

at all levels in order to disarticulate the structural causes of coca production (Ortiz, 2007:17 in

Ibid.).

PLANTE and PRDA continued to fail in their purpose as production of coca continued growing

(Camacho and López, 2000:153). In 1998 Plan Colombia was approved by the U.S. congress as

military counter-narcotics aid. Its primary purpose was to attack structural causes of conflict, fight

violence, and limit drug-trafficking (DNE, 1998). With the implementation of Plan Colombia

PLANTE experienced three main changes: penalization of planting coca crops, fumigations with

herbicides and substitution for products such as African palm, rubber, fruits and cattle farming. All

of these activities are intensive in land and endanger traditional food crops (Durán, López and

Restrepo, 2008). The model of production of these products is based in agro industrial structures,

which are owned by either elite groups or multinationals.

Implementation

After 2002, when negotiations between FARC-EP and the government failed and the war

had escalated to historical levels (Granada, Restrepo and Vargas, 2009) a new actor, the European

43

Cooperation, appeared on the scene. This cooperation agency established peace laboratories that

aimed to support the process of connecting with rural communities. It aims at establishing citizens'

coexistence through the defense of Human Rights and support to sustainable human development

by strengthening the peace dialogue and looking for effective ways to overcome conflict

(Laboratorio de Paz, 2012). The Peace Laboratories represented the link between central state

institutions such as Acción Social (the agency in charge of social policy and the management of

international cooperation) and rural civil society organizations. Implementation was not delivered to

existing peasant organizations but individually to each peasant family.

Peasants’ participation within the project has been voluntary for any peasant unit who wants to

substitute its coca crops for other alternative legal products such as African Palm or coffee19

(Durán, López and Restrepo, 2008). However, peasants have to pass through a process of

verification in order to access funding. The process consists of three steps: (1) to contact a state

institution connected to the program; (2) within the next 30 days verification of the complete

eradication of coca crops is done by authorities such as the police; and finally (3), the peasant starts

receiving the aid to replace the crops for legal products. The aid consists of 2,000 USD yearly,

disbursed monthly, which averages 169 USD per-month per family (Ibid.:36). The initial

endowments for these types of agricultural projects involve high costs in terms of preparing the

ground, buying certificate seeds or equipment needed. Furthermore, peasants have to transport their

production to the nearest thresher centre which increases the costs and reduces benefit margins. In

this regard, given the distance between institutions and peasants, there are no mechanisms in place

that facilitate access to resources such as cooperatives or associations. Moreover, support

institutions commonly have high financial and bureaucratic requirements which small peasant units

cannot fulfill and credits, where by subsidies and other types of aid in physical endowments end up

in industrial units which can be ensured by banks (Ibid.:36) (e.g. large land owners).

Local Ownership Configuration

The initiative is conceived from above (prescriptively), created as state policy and with

external involvement from the U.S. Its primary mandate has been 'alternative' development to

generate the conditions that bring down drug production. The initiative also has a hybrid mandate

because it seeks to fight violence, drug production and traffic directly (military and police

operations combined with fumigation) to strike the causes of conflict. The initiative consists mainly

19 In this particular project is for Starbucks.

44

in resources translated into funds, personnel, equipment and trade facilities, resources used to

produce while fighting a war.

In whose hands does the initiative rest? It is a mixture of heavy international military cooperation

with funding administrated through a central state institution, and with involvement of the Peace

Laboratory in order to make the program easier to understand for peasants and closer to their

organizations. Nonetheless, the legal framework of the initiative has neglected the capacity and the

work peasant organizations have done in the area of influence of the initiative. For instance the

Movimiento Social de la Cordillera Occidental del Alto Patía has undertaken since 1988

approaches with state institutions in order to improve their livelihood and bring state action in line

with their authentic needs in terms of education, health services, production support, but it was not

incorporated into the program.

4.2.3. Grassroots Conflict Resolution Outcomes

The evaluation assessment of the peacebuilding initiative described above is done in terms

of the variables indicated in the operationalization regarding: attitudes, behaviour and contradiction.

With regards to the attitudes, the two indicators were type of armed conflict settlement and levels

and types of violence. Respecting behaviour, here I address the existence of instruments contingent

to the context, which secure the process; and of formal or informal agreements to lay down rules for

civil-uncivil interactions. Lastly concerning contradiction, the assessment is focused on feasibility

of implementation, regarding the alternative economy to strike coca growing as a proximate cause

of conflict in the short run and in the longer run to analyze improvements in statebuilding with

reference to provision of basic needs, and public goods and services.

In the case of Alto Patía armed conflict has not been settled, as Graph 5 shows. Although the armed

conflict activity has decreased significantly, in 2010 the trend reversed to higher levels of activity

(conflict events: clashes and unilateral actions) and civilian casualties, mainly attributed to

paramilitaries and FARC (Graphs 6 and 7). Furthermore, there has been an increase in common

violence, measured by homicides, which is associated with the dynamic of drug production20

(Graph 4). With regards to coca production, it is relevant to say that Map 2 and Graph 5 provide

evidence to argue that the initiative has failed in fighting drug production in Alto Patía. The amount

of crops in Alto Patía has grown during the years of implementation of the initiative (Graph 3),

20 Conflict related homicides represent on average 11% of total homicides in Colombia (Aguirre in Granada, Restrepo and Vargas, 2009:67-71)

45

related with the transfer of the crops from Putumayo to Nariño (Map 2). It is also important to

remark that coca produced in Alto Patía passed from representing 0.04% of the national crops in

2000 to 1.47% in 2010, while within Nariño passed from 0.75% in 2000 to 5.48% in 2010, showing

not just an increment but a concentration within the area of study (Table 8).

Secondly with regards to behaviour, this initiative did not design instruments to secure the process

in terms of violence nor in terms of deviant economic incentives that are contingent upon the local

context. Concerning the mechanisms to secure the process from violence, as the armed conflict in

the region is still ongoing, agreements do not exist to establish arms-free territories. Furthermore,

civilians are required to 'side-with' state forces to guarantee their security with potential

counterproductive impacts in labeling population. On the other hand, regarding the economic

incentives, the initiative, within the national legal frame establishes the illegality of cultivating coca,

which implies there is no way around for communities that potentially are affected by the program.

Peasants eliminate coca crops and join the program or they face justice21. As mentioned above,

peasants have 30 days in order to pass through this process. Selection is not automatic and it

requires several bureaucratic procedures for eligible peasants in order to receive aid. One month of

not producing whether coffee or coca means a month without livelihood, a potential negative

economic incentive to keep growing coca.

Lastly, with reference to the contradiction it is evident that there has been a failure in stopping drug

production. However, there are two more aspects in this regard: development and statebuilding.

With regards to development (as the initiatives consider development as economic growth), the

GDP growth rate (Graph 1) shows a very poor performance in terms of this variable, especially

since 2006 and deepening in 2008 due to the national and international financial crisis. It can be

said that the initiative failed in terms of promoting regional economic growth through boosting

agro-industrial processes. With regards to the Municipal Development Index 22 (Graph 2), the

average for Alto Patía demonstrates an absence of major changes in terms of social indicators due

to a lack of action from national and local authorities, in addition to the lack of constant

measurements (the yearly value is based on estimations), and the big weight financial components

have. The index shows an increase since 2005, after the paramilitary DDR process and the

21 In this very moment is being discussed a project for a law to decriminalize this activity as well to ban the fumigations. See: http://www.semana.com/politica/aval-del-gobierno-aprueban-despenalizacion-cultivos-ilicitos/176919-3.aspx 22 The index measures in a synthetic manner social and financial performance of the municipalities. It takes into account the amount of population in urban areas, number of households without aqueduct, sewerage and electricity, the amount of population with NBI -unsatisfied basic needs- separating rural and urban areas, amount of illiterate population and school attendance, all of them with regards to the social dimension. For the financial dimension, the index includes per capita tax revenues (current prices), per capita municipal public investment and percentage of non-dependence on central government transfers (DNP).

46

implementation of the national Democratic Security Policy (since 2003) and its Consolidation in

(2007) securing the transport networks and (Granada, Restrepo and Vargas, 2009), but drops in

2008 -same year of the financial crisis (Graph 2). Only in Table 3 it is possible to see a change in

the Unsatisfied Basic Needs index, which shows a small reduction in less than one basic point of

households. Moreover, the numbers in Table 5 offer support to assert that regardless of the

improvement in the indicators, inequality remains with the same configuration. Sandoná continued

being the "more satisfied" municipality in 2005 with an actual increase in satisfied households of

10.35%, while El Rosario persisted with almost 100% of households with unsatisfied basic needs

within Alto Patía. The results indicate not just unaltered inequality but a widening gap between the

'richest' and the 'poorest'.

4.3. Case 2. Carare: Elicitive Approach23

In contrast to Case 1, Case 2 is a community based peacebuilding initiative grounded in

alternative development strategies, creating autonomous (not connected with the market economy)

livelihood, self-dependency. In this case it is also important to analyze the different roles of

international cooperation and international civil society engagement. The characteristics of the case

are connected to the counterinsurgent struggle since the seventies and to the origin of the

paramilitaries, as well as to coca production.

4.3.1. Background

Geographic and Socioeconomic Conditions

The sub-region of case 2, Carare, shares many geographic and socioeconomic traits with

Alto Patía (case 1), regardless of its different location. Carare is located north-east of Bogotá,

capital of Colombia, in the eastern mountain range. The municipalities of Carare share an important

river, from which the sub-region takes its name, and which is vital for the transportation. The

relevance of the region is the encounter of different armed groups’ historical areas of influence, in

addition to coca production. The municipalities that are part of this study are: Bolívar, Cimitarra, El

Peñón, La Belleza, Landázuri and Sucre, in the department of Santander24.

23 It is highly recommended to look at the Appendix 4 photos 9 to 16, in order to have a better idea of the narrative. 24It is important to highlight that, just like in Case 1, the whole territory of the municipalities is not part of the initiative’s area of influence, however data is just available at the municipal level (Map 7).

47

The population of Carare is also ethnically diverse. There is a majority mestizos and also big part

of the population is black (immigrated from the northwest and most of them Adventists) (García,

1996 and Table 2). As well as in Alto Patía, they remain segregated geographically respecting their

economic activities, blacks by the rivers fishing and trading with timber, mestizos are farmers in the

highlands, in this case as well is explained by the fact that "whites" (mestizos) are smallholders

while blacks rarely own land (Interviews Mauricio Hernández). This aspect is relevant because it is

precisely meztizos who are more likely to plant coca (Interview Ezequiel Pedraza). In recent years,

especially after the paramilitary DDR process, another different ethnic group has arrived to the

region: Amazonian indigenous. This immigration is composed of young males (between 15 and 20)

who were raspachines (coca leaf pickers) mainly from Putumayo25 (Interview Ezequiel Pedraza).

Regarding the socioeconomic conditions the department of Santander is also one of the richest in

terms of resources but at the same time highly unequal (Map 4). Due to its complex geography there

is a backwardness in terms of social and institutional development (García, 1996). It also lacks

secondary roads and even the main roads are in rather bad conditions (Table 3 and Photo 16). In the

Carare sub-region the public services coverage is very low, for instance in 2005 just 46.81% of the

households had electricity, 35.36% aqueduct and 15.4% sewerage (Table 3). Moreover, the average

NBI for the Carare is 56,8%, with the highest in the municipality of El Peñón with 73% of

households having Unsatisfied Basic Needs (Table 3).

Within the department the rural population makes up just 25.84%, nonetheless in Carare 69.67%

(66,053) of the population inhabit rural areas (Table 2). This fact in addition to state abandonment,

results in poor social and institutional conditions. This is reflected, for instance, in the high rates of

illiteracy: in 2005 it was 34.34% for Carare and 18.87% for Santander. Nonetheless, for instance in

the presidential elections for 2002 there as 40.98% voters (from the total population) (Tables 2 and

7).

The lack of institutional development, and consequently state provision of public goods and

services has two explanations for this specific region: first, due to the late colonization process,

which took place as a consequence of La Violencia (civil war period), the region was colonized by

internally displacement people that reconfigured the political map of Colombia and who, without

any institutional support, settled in areas not integrated, until then, into administrative influence of

state (García, 1996). This condition has complicated the integration of the region and has kept it at

the socioeconomic margins. Secondly, and also related to the colonization process, its condition of

25 Pilot department of Plan Colombia

48

physical un-connectedness (Map 7) has long made the region a passage way for "bandits" and later

for FARC, a fact that has resulted in the stigmatization of the population by the armed forces

(García, 1996).

Armed Conflict Situation

Although the initial configuration of the armed conflict in the region goes back to the times

of La Violencia, the contemporary history is more related with the national dynamics of the war. In

the region all different armed groups have been present (Map 1 and Graph 8). First, in the sixties,

guerrillas were the main actor; during the seventies, state forces adopted the counterinsurgency

manual from the U.S., turning the incipient conflict into war (García, 1996).

In the south of Carare, there have always been cattle ranchers who were being extorted and robbed

by guerrillas (Interview Mauricio Hernández). In the early eighties a group of these people from

Puerto Boyacá26 decided to found a small self-defense force with the connivance of state forces. In

1982, the Farmers Association of Ranchers and Farmers of the Middle Magdalena (ACDEGAM)27

was founded, which later would be part of the paramilitaries -AUC- (Verdad Abierta). Peasants

from Carare were subject of persecution accused of cooperating with the guerrillas. First it was

only the army asking for weekly registration in the nearest urban center 28 , later paramilitary

practiced interrogations, vigilance, curfew, accusations, torture, rape and murder while patrolling

the area (García, 1996 and Interview Ezequiel Pedraza). The region’s inhabitants frequently found

themselves in the middle of clashes between the different actors (García, 1996).

In 1987 the community, beleaguered by the escalation of conflict violence, decided to take a step

back from the armed conflict and regain control of their communal life. They decided to dialogue

with the three actors that were disputing the territory (army, paramilitaries and guerrilla) (García,

1996). The dialogues were successful and they agreed with the groups: members of the community

would remain neutral to their disputes and armed groups should not, by any means, force them to

cooperate. Nonetheless, there were times when there were incentives to break the agreement (for

both community and armed groups). In those cases leading members of the association were always

willing to dialogue again and reinforce the pacts (García, 1996).

26 Town known as Colombia's Antisubversive Capital (See Photo 13) 27 Asociación Campesina de Ganaderos y Agricultores del Magdalena Medio 28 Which for the peasant implied to travel hours back and forward from their villages and pay for the transportation expenses too (García, 1996).

49

The peace in the sub-region lasted around ten years (Interview Ezequiel Pedraza, Graph 5 and 6),

regardless the massacre of the leaders in 1990 and some internal mismanagement issues they

succeeded in keeping themselves neutral. Notwithstanding, in the mid-nineties when the "new"

paramilitaries who were now a national federal army, AUC, associated with drug-traffickers

convinced or forced many farmers to replace their food crops for coca, which was much more

profitable due the high prices of transportation of food production to the markets. Coca leaves

were/are picked by the same armed groups. The FARC, as they were still present in the region, also

requested peasants to plant coca for them (Interview Ezequiel Pedraza and Graph 8). A new

territorial dispute began and, since the community could not remain neutral anymore, given their

involvement in the illegal coca economy, war scaled again. The tough economic situation of many

families made them find incentives for having coca crops, which has helped the paramilitaries to

remain under relative control of the territory and consequently the community has been less

frequently threatened by guerrilla and paramilitary (Graph 8). Coca crops seem to have scaled

down, but still in 2010, 489 ha of coca were measured by the UNODC monitoring system -SIMCI-,

sporadic violence still affects the community (Graph 4).

4.3.2. The Peacebuilding Initiative

History and Policy Frame

In 1987 peasant colonos from Carare, got together and founded the Association of Peasant

Workers of Carare (ATCC), it was an initiative to bring peace to the community. They undertook

bilateral dialogues with each armed group (army, paramilitaries and guerrilla) requesting them to

develop the war outside their territory, to not involve the community at any level and stop

stigmatization. That was the first stone of the peacebuilding initiative which years later became a

whole plan to make the community a sustainable collective economy.

In light of the hard socioeconomic conditions, the idea was based on lowering the transportation

costs by joining their harvest and to increase their bargaining power at the closest peasant market

(ATCC, 1987). At the national level, President Barco (Liberal) had as a frame of action for his

government, a development plan called "National Rehabilitation Plan" (PNR), which was conceived

after several scholars identified the links between socioeconomic setting and armed conflict (Barco,

1988). The purpose of the plan was to improve the infrastructure in order to dry out the incentives

of the people to cooperate with insurgency, 'gaining hearts and minds' (Betancur, 1986). The ATCC

designed a development plan based on a census they implemented with the help of academic

50

experts from NGOs and public universities. They launched it as a proposal for the government to be

financed within the PNR. Their claim was,

"is and has been always to support [its] fundamental principles: face war, conflict resolution

through peaceful means; against rumor and syndication, neutrality; address poverty,

backwardness and marginality, by searching for a local model of sustainable development, as

independent as possible; against institutional indifference, the appropriation of territory; against

forgetfulness and ignorance, memory and history" (ATCC, 2003).

Their argument for the government to finance their plan was based on a cost analysis of the

outcome of peace and development versus war. They argued that by that time the cost of the

ATCC's development plan was 2,823 millions of pesos (in 1988) around US$1,594,91529 for six

years to benefit three thousand families, US$88 a year per family, amount that compared with the

cost of arming and sustaining a soldier, US$565 yearly, was affordable. They wanted to make the

point, "peace is significantly less expensive and more productive than war" (ATCC, 1987).

Implementation

Regardless the lack of support from the state, whose only response was to send soldiers to

build a road (Interview Mauricio Hernández), the peasants themselves continued with the

implementation of the plan. However it was a very hard task for which they had to find alternative

support through decentralized state institutions, NGOs, academia and later on the international

community. In 1990 they organized the First Peasants Forum for Peace for the region,

"they discussed with other peasant organizations in the region regarding the poor presence of the

state; the absence of control authorities; the lack of regulation of common violence; the impunity

levels; the fact that 70% of the useful land was on hands of only 5% of the landowners from the

biggest closest city; the harsh conditions of the market for agricultural production; among others. As

a result of the forum, they appealed for a more efficient judicial system, less petty politics,

improvements in the health service, land property certification, expropriation of land that is not being

used with social function, more and better presence of institutions for social services, education plans

that fit the needs of the rural areas, infrastructure and financial aid for small business and equipment"

(Memoirs Great Forum for the Peace in Cimitarra,1990)

After 1990 the character of the ATCC changed, two important events defined its future. First, was

the assassination of the founding leaders and second, the fact they were recognized with the Right

Livelihood Award (Alternative Peace Prize 1990). The first event, decreased the momentum forcing

29 Exchange rate 19/04/2012.

51

the ATCC to be less exposed and consequently to focus on their community and not on the region30.

Moreover, ties with some other organizations were weakened as distrust outside and within the

organization threatened the process. Notwithstanding, the second event helped to keep the ATCC

working for the implementation of the development plan and to uphold the peaceful conflict

resolution mechanisms to protect the community of being subject to violence. The financial aid they

received from the award lead to mismanagement (García, 1996). The following years, the ATCC

entered into a stagnation period due to the internal issues as it was harder to find consensus for

dialogue and keep people loyal to the organization (CMH, 2011). In addition, the government was

after several years still reluctant to support the initiative, the roads were not built, the houses had no

public services, there were no new courts, schools or hospitals. At the end of the nineties, the ATCC

lost legitimacy due to internal disputes and mismanagement, its members started to decentralize the

dialogues and make private concessions with the armed groups, specially with regards to the coca

crops cultivation (Interview Ezequiel Pedraza). The violence escalated again as a result of the new

incursion of paramilitaries and subsequently guerrilla (Graphs 5, 6 and 8).

In 2001, thanks to a second momentum, product of the escalation of violence against the

community, the ATCC passed through an internal reform and started addressing the growing

problem of coca cultivation. They tried to strengthen the sense of membership and the compromise

with the alternative economic model they had worked out during all those years (CMH, 2011).

They started again to do networking and to find strategic partners for the new stage of the initiative,

but it was not until 2003 when they could start new development projects. IOM (International

Organization for Migration), PCS (Project Counseling Services) and PDPMM31 (Magdalena Medio

Development and Peace Program) were the main partners. The concrete project of the association

was to build a sugar mill and to gradually substitute coca crops for sugar cane (Interview Mauricio

Hernández).

The relation with state institutions has been difficult to establish. First attempts did not turn out as

planned, and lately although the community and the association were chosen for a collective

reparation pilot within the frame of the 'Peace and Justice Law', in 2011 the new government

changed the institutional framework for reparation 'Victims Law' and those pilot projects were not

carried out completely. The specific actions included in what the pilot project achieved were: a

cover for the headquarters of the ATCC; equipment for the communitarian radio station; three

healthcare units (without doctor or nurse); two canoes, one for the ATCC transportation and the 30 Some analyst of the case attribute the overexposure of the initiative to the academia and the international community, it is dangerous to be visible in Colombia and even more to change things as they are. 31 UNDP and European Cooperation Agency are the donors of PDPMM.

52

other as an ambulance; and three 'professional' workers who helped in the design of the collective

reparation measures. These were achieved during three years of implementation of the pilot project

(CNRR, 2011).

The ATCC continues working in the midst of the threat of war, still struggling with the hard

economic conditions, but still preaches, believes and practices the same discourse:

"The peace and development we have built have not been the result of negotiation: both, in practice,

have been our own community decisions. Decisions that we have been able to take on our own

account because of the internal solidarity that unites us, because of the capacity we have developed

to understand others without passing judgment on them and because of the willingness of all of us to

die rather than to kill." (Acceptance speech Right Livelihood, 1990)

Local Ownership Configuration

This initiative belongs completely to the community, they had decision on all the aspects

and also the determination whether to include state and international community in search for

support. However the initiative has not receive support from the state in the terms they established

and the support from the international community has been sporadic and not sufficient to guarantee

financial sustainability. The initiative has a mixed purpose regarding development and stability: it

seeks sustainable livelihood for its members to strike poverty and coca cultivation, at the same time

it seeks security and to address violence within their territory of influence.

The process of designing and implementing the initiative by itself has allowed the community to

foster their associational life and improve their organizational skills, allowing networking and

opening channels to carry on projects with state institutions. Furthermore the sense of belonging to

the community (as I observed) created values of tolerance, trust and solidarity accordingly since

members must act in accordance with the values agreed as motto by the ATCC members.

4.3.3. Grassroots Conflict Resolution Outcomes

First, with regards to attitudes, in this case the armed conflict settlement was negotiated,

although it was not a formal peace process with signed agreement, it was an inclusive process that

involved all parties in the armed conflict and moreover included and emerged from civil society.

53

With regards to the levels of conflict violence Graphs 5, 6 and 7 show an important variation

between the two periods of implementation of the initiative. During the nineties there were lower

levels of violence with two cycles: 1988-1993 during the consolidation of the association that

coincide with national processes of conflict adjustment to the new realities after the amnesty of the

smaller guerrillas and the war declaration to FARC and ELN from the government. And the second,

around 1997 when paramilitaries consolidated their national federal army, AUC. However for the

period of analysis (2000-2010) Carare experienced historical high levels of violence, it increased

through two factors: the Democratic Security Policy32 which implied an increase in state forces

presence triggering clashes with guerrillas and thereby altering their geographical distribution (Map

1 and Graph 8), and the paramilitary DDR process which broke previous pacts given the loss of

command and control of these groups (Interview Ezequiel Pedraza). Nonetheless, when

disaggregating by actors it is relevant to say that although state forces showed more action (Graph

8), the types of actions were mainly characterized by seizure of guerrilla camps and confiscation of

arms and supplies (Granada, Restrepo and Vargas, 2009).

Regarding homicides, the nature of violence also changed due to major control from the

paramilitaries over coca production. There seems to be an inverse dynamic between homicide and

coca production (Graphs 3 and 4). In this regard, the initiative had only little impact on striking

coca production Map 2 and Graph 3 show the increase and concentration of coca crops within the

sub-region, but less rapidly than in Alto Patía, although since 2008 the trend has shifted to decrease.

Notwithstanding, between 2000 and 2010 the proportion of the crops in Carare as part of the

national production increased from 0.47% to 0.82% while within Santander it changed from 28.9%

to 72.6% (Table 8), which also indicates clustering.

Respecting behaviour, the initiative of case 2 has indeed created instruments to secure the process

and the community contingent to the local context. Also it has established and reinforced

continuously informal agreements with armed groups and within the community, laying down rules

for civil-armed actor interactions and established territorial limits for armed groups’ action.

However with the criminalization of regional-civil negotiations after President Uribe came to

power, the bargaining power of the community declined; and as armed conflict has escalated to

historical levels in the last decade it has been harder for the community to address local armed

actors’ behaviour.

32 The PSD also ban regional negotiations with illegal armed actors, fact that diminished community's bargaining power with all the armed groups.

54

Concerning contradiction, it is important to remember that the initiative was not originally intended

to contribute to regional economic growth. Consequently Graph 1 does not account for the impact

of the initiative due to the small area of implementation. In terms of municipal development (Graph

2), it shows the same trend as Alto Patía and the national level for reasons presented above

regarding the bias given by the financial components of the indicator. Nonetheless, Table 3 presents

evidence with regards to the improvement in the Unsatisfied Basic Needs Index: the indicator

shows an improvement of 9.19% for the sub-region, nonetheless the 'most' and the 'less' satisfied

remain almost unaltered.

With regards to state action, during the period of study the National Commission for Reparation and

Reconciliation (CNRR) provided specific goods for the association, however there was no

continuity in terms of maintenance (Interview Mauricio Hernández). Furthermore, the roads that

were requested by the community since 1988 still do not exist and the only infrastructure project

that the state has undertaken is a rail to transport by train coal from a mine recently discovered in a

natural reserve within the community's territory and given in concession to a multinational company

(Interview Mauricio Hernández).

5. Analysis

In this section the results described above will be assessed comparatively in order to provide

support to the theoretical framework by analyzing the variations between outcomes in conflict

resolution from the two cases. The analysis is guided by two main processes: armed conflict

settlement and closing gaps (addressing root and proximate causes), as the processes framing the

changes in attitudes, behaviour and contradiction through the channels that organic local ownership

enable when using an elicitive approach for peacebuilding. Throughout the subsections of this

analysis several alternative explanations are pointed out regarding each process such as the

patrimonial structure of the state, corruption, presence of strategic resources, the lack of political

will, the erosion of state vertical legitimacy due to external influence, among others; in order to deal

with background and contextual influences on grassroots conflict resolution rather than only the

configuration of local ownership. At the end of this section there is an analysis of the relevance of

the micro-processes within the context of macro political and economic processes currently ongoing

in Colombia in light of the new peace process with the guerrillas.

55

It is important to highlight that if the research method and the type of information selected for the

descriptions of the cases were only quantitative, the variation between the cases would not be as

strong as when background and context qualitative information is included. Therefore, a large

amount of the analysis also rests on the contextualization and description of the cases, where the

impact of international and national policies, armed conflict, and historical processes on the

similarities and variations between cases and their outcomes on conflict resolution can be

appreciated.

5.1. Overview of the Empirical Results

The socioeconomic and geographic conditions shared by the cases have hindered greater

impacts on development regardless the type of initiative. Furthermore, the fact that the state is an

active party in the armed conflict has lead to a lack of improvements in infrastructure, and public

goods and services provision in rural areas. Nevertheless, whether the approach of implementation

of the initiative (elicitive or prescriptive), the huge inequality in terms of class and race, due to the

patrimonial structure of the state, surpass the efforts to bring development to rural Colombia.

Moreover, the state focus on development only as economic growth masks authentic communities'

needs in rural contexts, by placing too much attention on the financial components of social

indicators.

On the other hand, central state military and political strategies have deeply influenced grassroots

armed conflict dynamics and thereby affected the implementation of the initiatives due to the lack

of stability and security guarantees. Besides, the nature of violence and the protractedness of the

armed conflict have intensified the divisions among civil society, resulting in disincentives for

social capital creation, essential for the reconstruction of this war-torn country and further

reconciliation process. The state disregarding civil society has situated civil society in the midst of

armed conflict as a target for violence, pushing down efforts to, at least partially, reach peace.

Furthermore, state priorities are organized in the direction of satisfying elite's needs in line with the

market and also international pressure within the fight against drugs and 'terrorism', in spite of the

claims of different sectors of opposition within the population.

Lastly, in terms of the impact the initiatives had on coca production, neither have been successful.

The complexity posed by the merging of drug mafias and armed groups within the armed conflict

has evaporated any further possible impact on diminishing the production (Ávila and Núñez, 2008).

Although, at national level, the production seems to be decreasing, within the cases of study the war

56

on drugs has only produced clustering in areas where armed groups still wield control over territory

(Maps 1 and 2). Nonetheless, the Democratic Security Policy, which attempted to recover

sovereignty on those territories, has come to an exhaustion, by the adaptation of the guerrillas and

'new' paramilitaries to the newer logic of war (Granada, Restrepo and Vargas, 2009). All these

factors call for the need to change the approach to treating this phenomenon.

5.2. Armed Conflict Settlement and Contingency: Considerations With Regard to how the

Macro-Political Framework affects Changes in Attitudes and Behaviour

According to Mason (2000) most of Colombian rural society lives in what can be called a

Hobbesian state of nature. The state in many of these territories represents a threat instead of a

higher instance for control, normativization and penalization of external actions -protection-

(Ibid.:3). In this regard, it is plausible to say that the state does not hold power nor legitimacy, and if

it does they lie only in its military capacity. Moreover, the social relations and accumulation forms

of the patrimonial state inherited from the Spanish has fragmented the sovereignty -and legitimacy-

that the new 'lords' hold (landowners, merchants and regional governmental authorities). They have

co-opted the state, while it has been in charge of the process of liberating land, labor hand and

external market monopoly (Chaparro, 2009:80). This panorama helps understanding the obstacles

the central state faces as local owner of rural community-based peacebuilding initiatives. The power

that in paper lies with the state is built upon violence and corruption, therefore it is fragmented and

is held in pragmatic terms by the 'lords'.

With powerful regional political and economic elites, external pressure due to economic enclaves

from multinational corporations and dependence of international trade on primary goods, the state

holds little power (maneuverability) beyond its own force, which implies that, so far, the only

possible armed conflict settlement achievable by this actor is through military means. Nonetheless,

the complex geography; the transforming panorama of disputes and alliances between guerrillas and

paramilitaries with regards to the drug production and traffic; and the rupture in state-civil society

relations (a product of the disruption in the chain of power that the 'lords' represent), are all

elements contributing to the detriment of any kind of resources the state tries to steward at the

municipal or lower levels directly.

Furthermore, the policies directing the armed conflict -the war on drugs of the U.S. together with

the Democratic Security Policy- have destroyed the civil regional and local informal agreements

with guerrillas, while, at the same time, the transitional justice process - product of the paramilitary

57

DDR process - has also destroyed the links between local, regional and national elites with the

paramilitaries (López, 2010). As a result, state legitimacy is undermined and the political order is

disrupted. This scenario is well abstracted in the concept of a Hobbesian state of nature, in which

people from rural areas are not able to access protection, nor basic needs or public services (health,

education, justice), at the same time as they are subject to constant harassment and accusation in

absence of a 'sovereign'. Additionally, the internal shift in the implementation of drug policy after

the transformation product of the paramilitary DDR process, from a military oriented to a more

police oriented one (Granada, Restrepo and Vargas, 2009), has promoted a transformation in the

nature of violence, and the criminalization of peasants who are only trying to survive in the midst of

violence, state abandonment, and poverty. In short, there has been a continuous and progressive

process of disempowering civil society and exacerbation of root and proximate causes of conflict.

With regards to the context awareness, the macro policy frame also represents a great obstacle in

both initiatives for address instruments contingent to contextual incidents or deviant incentives. In

case 1, for instance, the U.S. war on drugs and its negligence towards a different strategy, in

addition to the Democratic Security Policy, have generated an unsafe environment for the

implementation in the haze of war and risks for the community that is required to 'side-with' state

forces. In addition to criminalizing peasants who have no choice but to indebted in order to

accomplish the requirements of access to the project. On the other hand, in case 2, this policy frame

has weakened the community's security, as the armed conflict has been reconfigured and escalated,

as well as it has blocked their own instruments (dialogue and neutrality) to address the problematic

context.

5.3. Closing Gaps, Addressing Contradiction: Human Scale Development, Social Capital

Creation and state building.

Development and statebuilding

It is evident from the arguments and from the statistics presented above, that in Colombia a

model of primitive statebuilding through war persists, which has had adverse impacts on security

for the civilian population, undermining state legitimacy. On the other hand, the state's attempts to

provide public goods and services have dissipated beneath the detriment inflicted by the 'lords' in

limiting state power for redistribution by corrupting it. Furthermore, the attempts for development,

even when focused only on economic growth (Graph 1), have not helped to strike root and

proximate causes of conflict such as poverty and inequality. On the contrary, they have even had

58

adverse impacts by widening inequality (Maps 3 and 4), being unable to strike poverty and

increasing the asymmetry in the production relationships between peasants and exporters, thus in

general deepening economic dependency (Table 3). All these factors are translated into larger

incentives to participate in the illegal economy of drugs.

In this sense the prioritization of industrialization in production and the shift economic policy has

taken since the nineties towards promoting exports has, in Case 1, created a modernizing civil

society with homogeneous roles that encompass the liberal type of state, neglecting a revision in the

power balance within the production relationships. Therefore, it does not truly attempt to close

inequality gaps, but instead expands producer and consumer markets that are likely to have an

impact on indicators such as GDP, or development (through its financial components). On the other

hand, in Case 2, the state model has hindered positive outcomes on statebuilding and development

due to the lack of support from state institutions. What is more, given the negligence and sabotage

from regional 'lords' which have undermined the potential outcomes that ATCC project had and has

also by violent means. Nonetheless, the community in case 2 has overcome this obstacles and

promoted their collective economy which is an attempt for self-autonomy and economic

independency, striking on the root and proximate causes of conflict.

The implementation of the prescriptive approach for peacebuilding, relies deeply in the

achievement of statebuilding before the implementation is down-warding. However this is not

precisely the case of Colombia, in which the process of statebuilding is precarious and has been

historically co-opted by the 'lords. In contrast, with an elicitive approach, the acceptance of the role

of civil society in promoting processes such as social capital creation and human scale development

on one hand assist the statebuilding from below and do not neglect, but instead need, a parallel

process from above of statebuilding in terms of provision of public goods and services (Sanz,

2010:6) in which the prescriptive approach has much to provide. Furthermore, this work argue for a

new perspective of meeting the process for statebuilding from above and from below. In Case 2, for

instance, the organizational skills (element of social capital) achieved during the process have

impacted in opening communication channels with central state institutions and giving leverage to

the authentic needs the community accounts for via community projects in which state participation

and support is vital.

Social Capital and Statebuilding

59

Bobbio (1985) presents an idea of the state in which the state is an organizational link that

holds society together and serves as a bond that unites private and public spheres. Under this view,

it is necessary to highlight that the Colombian conflict represents a clear imbalance of power

between public and private spheres of society in favor of the latter, the 'lords'. A tilt in this

unbalance towards a more equitable scenario, would represent a step forward in statebuilding. This

work argues that this is only achievable through organic local ownership, which in turn generates a

change in production relationships from below and social interactions within the community and

with the outside, as economic interaction from above restricts the generation of natural (or

traditional) labor relationships and therefore the associational life and democratic participation33.

In Case 1, there is no further guarantee for security nor sustainable livelihood for the peasants that

decide to join to the initiative, which can be interpreted as a bias towards the private sphere, as no

change in the relations of production happened. Furthermore, no empowerment is brought to the

community and no associational life is fostered. Consequently authentic local needs are not

satisfied, and economic dependency due to debt and poverty are exacerbated. No positive outcome

in terms of social capital creation is promoted through this initiative, moreover, it has neglected

previous organizational efforts that communities in the area have endeavored. Additionally, the

rigid policy frame under which the initiative is designed promotes distrust (by criminalizing coca-

growing peasants), competence instead of solidarity and intolerance (by conditioning siding with

the state forces and discriminating against those who cooperate or grow for the guerrilla and

paramilitary groups).

Conversely, in Case 2, even though the outcomes in terms of statebuilding and development have

not flourished as planned, the process has resulted in very positive outcomes in terms of social

capital creation and to some extent in human scale development. Although, the initiative was not

conceived from the beginning as a part of international cooperation strategies or state projects but as

a stand against violence and poverty, slowly it turned into a bigger project involving these two

actors as well. The initiative generated a strong associational life since the idea was born and

implemented within the community as product of their exhaustion from violence and their need for

sustainable livelihood and economic self-dependency. Armed conflict settlement and instruments

33 It is relevant to bring to this analysis the schema Paffenholz (2009) presents for the role of civil society within peacebuilding. She describes society from a functional perspective as an instrument for the international community to implement its initiatives. In this regard, as the approach for Case 1 sees civil society as an instrument their role is addressed in line with project results and not in line with achieving peace and satisfying human needs. Consequently, the prescriptive approach seeks to ensure stability of production and continuity in consumption, meaning 'alien' peace and not organically bred and locally owned outcomes translated into 'inside' peace -grassroots conflict resolution- (Max-Neef, 1994).

60

contingent on the context were born from consensus, allowing the emergence of natural

organizational and participation forms, which in turn fostered values of trust, tolerance and

solidarity.

5.4. Final Remarks

As final considerations to this analysis, it is important to generate a common ground in order

to make the prescriptive and elicitive approaches for peacebuilding compatible; and to consider

these findings in light of the current political and economic situation in Colombia given the chance

for peace that the current negotiations have opened. In this section, although part of the arguments

are derived from the empirical analysis.

5.4.1. Connecting the Approaches

From the theoretical angle there is a need for tools to meet both approaches. While, the

prescriptive approach makes an important contribution by addressing the peacebuilding process as

statebuilding, which is needed, it is also clear that for an armed conflict to be resolved legitimacy

and sovereignty have to be restored into the hands of the state by negotiated participatory means.

Notwithstanding, to rely heavily on statebuilding for peacebuilding within an active armed conflict

strengthening the state by military means undermines the state’s faculty to relate with civil society

as an active party in an armed conflict. Moreover implementing initiatives steered by central state

institutions, given state co-optation by hegemonic elites, generates a detriment of the resources and

an instrumentalization of state institutions in favor of the 'lords' with adverse outcomes in terms of

'closing the gaps' (inequality, underdevelopment and fractured society). On the other hand, the

elicitive approach, which does not deny the centrality of statebuilding as an important factor for

peacebuilding, contributes by highlighting the importance of fostering social capital and human

scale development as key concepts for addressing root and proximate causes of conflict and, in

addition, building the state from the grassroots (bottom-up) in the form of connections of pseudo

organized civil society and local state institutions. Nonetheless, this approach lacks clear strategies

to implement these processes within a context of globalization and centrality of the liberal state.

From the empirical results, evidence has been provided in the direction of a failure of prescriptive

peacebuilding framed by the war on drugs and the Democratic Security Policy within a war and

partial post-war context. While the state is an actor involved in the armed conflict it cannot

represent an actor for peace. In addition, the prescriptive approach lacks instruments to address

61

security and deviant incentives contingent on the local context, hinders the formation of social

capital and human scale development, thereby widening the gap between the state and civil society

and tilting the power even more in favor of the private sphere of society, the 'lords'. Furthermore,

the rigidity that imposes a frame of action oriented by internationally imposed policies and

prioritization of productivity for the sake of the indicators, has given no support to civil society

attempts to shape processes of self-dependency and local and regional civil-state relationships.

Additionally, the role of the international community, although being extremely relevant in both

initiatives, still is deficient in connecting the international agenda to the authentic needs of the

communities. However, the role of this actor, regardless of the impositions of the agenda, has

contributed to restoring state-civil society relations somewhat and helped communities to deal with

national and international bureaucracy (e.g. Peace Laboratory for Case 1). In Case 2, the role of

international organizations has been more marginal, but still important in terms of guaranteeing

financial sustainability and international NGO have contributed in making the initiative visible

(Alternative Peace Nobel Price); in this case national academia and NGOs have fulfilled the role of

technical support.

In this fashion, the international community is identified as the linking actor in order to connect

both approaches. International civil society (such as NGO's) can potentially act more or less

agenda-free, fostering social capital and ensuring bigger impact of the initiatives on human scale

development. This can be done by facilitating "peer and experimental opportunities as a key

approach to capacity building for whole organizations, rather than individuals" (Lentfer and

Yachkaschi, 2009:N.A.). Thereby real 'demand-driven' projects are supported. Through this

involvement in networking, communal organizations can increase their stability and overcome

difficulties in terms of market size, geographic location and costs of transportation. By building

collectives with other organizations, small self-autonomous collective economies can be built and it

is possible to bridge a safe connection between community development projects and globalized

market economy. This is done by diversifying their sources of inputs and raw materials, as well as

increasing their access to credit or assistance programs from private and public institutions and

avoiding dependency within a monopsony (Max-Neef, 1994). Indeed, this new conception for

management of economic and social resources is needed in order to change the paradigm of

development as currently it continues to be based economic growth.

62

5.4.2. Momentum for Peace?

For Colombia, the discussion that this work brings up is extremely relevant right at this time

as in 2012 two processes are occurring. In the economic sphere, the FTA with the U.S. became

effective in May and the FTA with the EU was signed in June, both against strong criticism from

academia, unions, peasants, students, and other sectors. This course of action could potentially

impact negatively the causes of conflict by deepening inequality and poverty, for example.

On the other hand, in the political arena several changes are happening. The transitional justice

process product of the paramilitary DDR is still ongoing, unraveling links of political elites and

paramilitary groups, as well as many other corruption scandals. At the same time, albeit the low

popularity and legitimacy of the Santos government, whose education and justice reforms were

rejected by the public and consequently withdrawn from congress, a new institutional

restructuration is attempted to be implemented in the light of the new peace process with the

guerrilla, the "Legal Frame for Peace". The government has stated that the process must be fast and

effective. However this legal frame has not been discussed within different spheres of the society

and even less with the guerrillas. Furthermore the "Victims Law" for the reparation of the victims of

the armed conflict has proven to be improvised and not suitable for the actual condition of the state

institutions. Furthermore, the government has also stated that the economic model is not negotiable.

This may be the biggest obstacle to the peace process since most of the points on the agenda refer

directly to the change in economic relations between corporations and peasants and workers within

a globalized economy.

These processes have important impacts on human scale development and social capital creation, as

well as on statebuilding. With regards to the economic liberalization, if the information regarding

the socioeconomic indicators presented in this study is examined carefully, it is evident that

Colombia is not prepared to open the primary sectors of its economy to free trade with two of the

biggest and most protected markets in the world. As a consequence for statebuilding, the Colombian

state will lose even more political and economic maneuverability, undermining its legitimacy as the

economic measures attempt to favor the exporters (agro-industry) but not the national production

(non-industrialized peasant agriculture). Moreover, this deepening in prioritizing the 'lords’' needs

for growth over the poorest needs for livelihood, consequently reflect in wider inequality, thereby

poverty (El Espectador, May 14th 2012).

63

Regarding the political processes, which directly impact on a possible settlement of the armed

conflict, there is a struggle within the powers of the state in Colombia, which were expressed in the

debate of the 'Frame for Peace'. The most difficult points were: the possibility of a type of amnesty

(which the guerrilla has placed on the agenda of the negotiations); special powers to the congress to

suspend conviction of political crimes; differential treatment to different groups in the armed

conflict (members of the armed forces that committed human rights violations remain under

military jurisdiction); and political participation of ex-combatants. These aspects are especially

relevant in terms of the internal balance of power between different spheres of society and for a

future reconciliation process, which entirely depends on the 'fairness' and transparency of the

implementation of transitional justice.

The context created by the different political changes and the description of the armed conflict

above help to realize that the war is driven regardless of the moves of the political pendulum, and

both are determined without civil society participation. This accounts for a need to strengthen civil

society at all levels to connect the political decisions with what happens in reality, in order to

establish a coherent strategy to settle the armed conflict through peaceful negotiated mechanisms,

and allowing the implementation of joint peacebuilding initiatives by the international community,

the state and civil society.

6. Summary and Conclusions

Through the critical study of the concept of local ownership of peacebuilding initiatives in

contexts of war or partial post-war, this work attempted to identify the conditions under which it is

possible to achieve conflict resolution at the grassroots level given the traits of such a context and

also regarding the approach for peacebuilding implementation. Under this view, this work proposed

a new conception of local ownership, organic local ownership, in which the decision-making power

lies with society and organically bred peacebuilding initiatives suitable and feasible for grassroots

communities, opposite to the idea that local ownership has to be delivered from above. For this

purpose this work elaborated theoretically on the concept of local ownership by problematizing the

two main approaches for peacebuilding, prescriptive and elicitive, as each leads to different

configurations of local ownership and thereby different outcomes in term of grassroots conflict

resolution. Furthermore, to provide empirical support, two cases of rural peacebuilding initiatives

(Carare and Alto Patía) within Colombia were analyzed with a focused structured comparison.

64

Guided by the research question “Under what conditions does peacebuilding contribute to conflict

resolution at the grass-root level?” the analysis supports the argument that social capital creation

and human scale development -essential processes for grassroots conflict resolution- necessarily

come from strong and organic local ownership of the peacebuilding initiatives, and that this organic

ownership of peace is only achieved with an elicitive approach. The underlying theoretical claims

are that organic local ownership bears social capital creation and sustainable livelihood through

human scale development and, thereby, generates the conditions for grassroots conflict resolution

by addressing the causes of conflict.

Three channels (individual, social and economic) were outlined to explain how a certain

configuration of local ownership generates the conditions for grassroots conflict resolution:

statebuilding, human scale development and social capital creation, which are all deeply connected

with the root and proximate causes of conflict. The first channel addresses the Attitudes corner of

Galtung’s peace/conflict triangle, through a change in how each individual perceives the impact of

violence on them and their fellowmen generating civil engagement. The second channel impacts

mainly the Contradiction corner, as it helps the emergence of feasible solutions for the community

to cope with their needs, in the direction of human scale development guided through the solidarity

and trust that are exercised within the strengthening of the associational life. The third channel

addresses both a change in Behaviour and helps to deal with part of the Contradictions as it guides a

change in social interaction within and with the outside. This means that it is simultaneously coping

with violence and creating more fluid relations with state institutions, for example, thus creating

social tissue and assisting the statebuilding process from below.

With regards to the empiric support for these theoretical arguments, Colombia provides an active

war and post-war environment; this in addition to the grotesque class and race divisions, accounts

for the complexities peacebuilding implementation faces. Moreover, the two cases studies are

highly comparable regarding the context of armed conflict dynamics (both feature the presence of

different armed groups), their shared geographic and socioeconomic conditions, and the scope for

implementation. Nonetheless, the cases contrast in terms of the type of peacebuilding approach and,

therewith, the configuration of local ownership.

The results from the analysis point out that socioeconomic and geographic conditions can hinder

greater impacts on development regardless the type of local ownership. Also, the traits of the

Colombian state (post-colonial co-opted structure) neglect development at the grassroots level. In

addition the fact that the state is a party in the armed conflict, makes the statebuilding process

65

difficult and destroys or impedes social capital creation. Besides, the evidence from the cases shows

that the strategy of the war on drugs led by the U.S. has failed in its purpose, and furthermore, has

created more complexity in the armed conflict by a reconfiguration of the distribution of the drug

production among the armed groups.

Alternative explanations to cope with exogenous aspects, beyond local ownership configuration,

were provided. These are for example, the patrimonial structure of the state, corruption, the

presence of strategic resources, the lack of political will, and the erosion of vertical state legitimacy

due to external influence.

From the theoretical angle the need for tools to meet both approaches is evident. While, the

prescriptive approach makes an important contribution by addressing peacebuilding as

statebuilding, it is clear that for a conflict to be resolve legitimacy and sovereignty have to be

restored into the hands of the state. However for the sake of legitimacy strengthening it by military

means only creates bigger contradictions. On the other hand, the elicitive approach, contributes by

highlighting the importance of fostering social capital and human scale development as key

processes for addressing root and proximate causes of conflict. Nonetheless, this approach lacks

clear strategies to implement these processes within a context of globalization and centrality of the

liberal state.

As lessons from the discussions presented in this paper and for further research, the importance of

linking both approaches needs to be stressed. Simply denying formal mass production and

globalization and rejecting international efforts for peace is not a solution. However, the

international community and international civil society need to focus on setting up local networks of

solidarity in order to activate new actors into national civil society to encourage peacebuilding

initiatives from below. Local communities must be taken into account, their initiatives against the

armed conflict should be disseminated as training for the rest of civil society. This way, local

ownership will be endorsed and leaders and initiatives will not be uprooted. In addition, it is

important to give leverage to the study of civil society and its self-organization capacity for

peacebuilding, given the fact that war and post-war societies (or in this case a protracted armed

conflict society) "are inevitably in flux between old and new systems" (Donais, 2009:15).

Additionally, in light of these arguments, it is crucial to work towards the reduction of economic

dependency. Max-Neef (1994) argues that grassroots livelihood can be better protected from

national and international political and economic instability if it has more self-dependency. In turn,

66

inequality and poverty can be stricken, at least partially, addressing the incentives for the

communities to engage in illegal economies that fuel war.

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76

Statistical Data:

BANREP: Banco de la República de Colombia / Colombian Central Bank

Gross Domestic Product by year/department 2000-2010

in: http://www.banrep.gov.co/series-estadisticas/see_pib.htm

CERAC: Centro de Recursos para el Análisis de Conflictos/Resource Center for Conflict Analysis

Colombian Conflict Data Base V.11.2 private student access: events and casualties. By

year/municipality 1988-2010.

CNJ: Consejo Superior de la Judicatura/Supreme Judicial Council

Rate of tribunals by 100,000 inhabitants by year/municipality 2003

DANE: Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística / National Bureau of Statistics

Census 2005, available at: http://www.dane.gov.co/censo/.

Homicides by year/municipality 1988-2003

Unsatisfied Basic Needs Index 2000 and 2005

Gini wealth index by year/municipality 2000

DNP: Departamento Nacional de Planeación/Department of National Planning

Municipal Development Index by year/municipality 2000-2009

Poverty incidence and distribution maps

IDEAM: Instituto de Hidrología, Meteorología y Estudios Ambientales de Colombia/Institute of

Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies of Colombia

Measurement of temperature by municipality

INVIAS: Instituto Nacional de Vías / The National Institute of Roads

Departaments roads maps and number of kilometers of paved roads by municipality 2006.

IGAC: Instituto Geográfico Agustín Codazzi/Agustin Codazzi Geographic Institute

Measurement of elevation, total area by municipality

Gini Land Index by year/municipality 2000

77

PONAL: Policía Nacional / Colombian National Police

Homicides from Revista Criminalidad by year/municipality 2003-2010, in:

http://www.policia.gov.co/portal/page/portal/HOME/publicaciones/revista_criminalidad/identidad,p

ub

RGN: Registraduría General de la Nación/Registry General's Office

Number of voters for presidential elections 2002 by municipality

SIMCI: Sistema Integrado de Monitoreo de Cultivos / Integrated System for Crop Monitoring

form the United Nations Office against Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

Coca crops census reports by year/municipality 1999-2009

SSPD: Superintendencia Servicios Públicos Domiciliarios/Public Services Superintendent

Rural aqueduct coverage 2009

Interviews:

Obando Melo, Germán (Local politician from Movimiento Alianza Social Indígena), February,

2008, Pasto, Nariño

a.k. 'Francísco Galán' (Demobilized member of ELN, convicted with suspended sentence / peace

worker) , June 2008 in La Estrella, Medellín, Antioquia.

Pedraza, Ezequiel (ATCC board member), August 2010 in La India, Landázuri, Santander

Hernández, Mauricio (ATCC Vicepresident), August 2010, La India, Landázuri, Santander.

Websites:

DANE: www.dane.gov.co

DNP: http://www.dnp.gov.co/

Laboratorio de Paz: http://www.laboratoriodepaz.org/

78

Movimiento Social de la Cordillera Occidental del Alto Patía:

http://movimientosocialdelaltopatia.blogspot.se/2008_08_10_archive.html

SIMCI: http://www.biesimci.org/SIMCI/SIMCI.html

79

APPENDIX 1: MAPS

Map 1. Illegal Armed Groups and Coca Crops in Colombia, 2008

Source: SIMCI

80

Map 2. Change in the Density of Coca Crops, Colombia 2001-2006

Source: SIMCI

81

Map 3. Proportion of deprivation within poor population, Colombia 2005

Source: DNP

82

Map 4. Incidence of municipal poverty (percentage of poor population) in the urban (left) and rural (right) areas, Colombia 2005

Source: DNP

83

Alto Patía

Map 5. Alto Patía Subregion Location within Nariño

Source: CERAC

84

Map 6. Primary and Secondary Roads in Nariño

Source: Invias (2012)

85

Carare

Map. 7 Area of Influence of the ATCC

Source: ATCC archives

86

Map. 8 Primary and Secondary Roads in Santander

Source: Invias (2012)

87

APPENDIX 2: TABLES

Sources: IDEAM and IGAC

Source: DANE

Sources: DANE, IGAC and SSPD

88

Source: DNP

Sources: DANE and IGAC

Sources: CNJ, DANE and RGN

Source: CERAC

89

Source: SIMCI

90

APPENDIX 3: GRAPHS

Graph 1. Economic Growth, Departments 2001-2010

Source of data: Banrep

Graph 2. Average Subregional Municipal Development Index 2000-2009

Source of data: DNP

-2%

0%

2%

4%

6%

8%

10%

12%

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Nariño Santander

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Alto Patía Carare

91

Graph 3. Hectares Cultivated with Coca per Subregion 2000-2010

Source of data: SIMCI

Graph 4. Number of Homicide by year, Subregions 1988-2010

Source of DATA: DANE and PONAL

0

300

600

900

1200

1500

1800

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Alto Patía Carare

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Alto Patía Carare

92

Graph 5. Number of Conflict Events (Clashes and Unilateral Attacks) by year, Subregions 1988-2010

Source of data: CERAC

Graph 6. Civilian Casualties by year, Subregions 1988-2010

Source of data: CERAC

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

22

24

Alto Patía Carare

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

Alto Patía Carare

93

Graph 7. Number of Unilateral Actions by year/group, Alto Patía 1988-2010

Source of data: CERAC

Graph 8. Number of Unilateral Actions by year/group, Carare 1988-2010

Source of data: CERAC

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

FARC ELN Paramilitaries State Forces

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

FARC ELN Paramilitaries State Forces

94

APPENDIX 4: PICTURES

Alto Patía

Photo 1. Geography in Nariño: mountains and jungle valleys

Source: http://www.movimientosocialdelaltopatia.blogspot.se/

Photo 2. Geography and roads in Nariño

Source: http://www.movimientosocialdelaltopatia.blogspot.se/

95

Photo 3. Bridge part of a secondary road in Nariño

Source: http://www.movimientosocialdelaltopatia.blogspot.se/

Photo 4. Peasant Organization Movimiento Social de la Cordillera Occidental del Alto Patía during a cultural activity

Source: http://www.movimientosocialdelaltopatia.blogspot.se/

96

Photo 5. Meeting of members of Movimiento Social de la Cordillera Occidental del Alto Patía

Source: http://www.movimientosocialdelaltopatia.blogspot.se/

Photo 6. Coca 'Kitchen' (where coca leaves are processed to make coca paste and later cocaine)

Source: http://fronterad.com/sites/default/files/2010/48/galeria_N3_B1/

97

Photo 7. Coca Laboratory destroyed by Colombian Army

Source: El Tiempo

Photo 8. Crafted submarines confiscated by Colombian Armed Forces in rivers close to the Pacific Ocean in Nariño

Source: El Tiempo

98

Carare

Photo 9. Josué Vargas founder leader of the ATCC (Killed in a massacre in 1990)

Source: CMH

Photo 10. Orlando Gaitan and Excelino Ariza in Stockholm December 9th, 1990 receiving the Right Livelihood Award as leaders of the ATCC

Source: Right Livelihood Award

99

Photo 11. ATCC headquarters

Source: http://iniciativascivilesdepaz.blogspot.se/

Photo 12. ATCC leaders together with Horacio Serpa (Governor of Santander in pink shirt) and Francísco Santos (former Vicepresident and cousin of the current president in yellow

shirt)

Source: CNRR

100

Photo 13. Welcome banner to Puerto Boyacá, it says "Welcome to Puerto Boyacá. Land of peace and progress. Anti-insurgency Capital of Colombia"

Source: Revista Semana

Photo 14. Banner by the river in La Zarca one of the boroughs within ATCC area of influence with symbols and pictures of the ATCC

Source: http://iniciativascivilesdepaz.blogspot.se/

101

Photo 15. Social workers and members of the ATCC canoeing on the river Carare

Source: http://iniciativascivilesdepaz.blogspot.se/

Photo 16. Primary road in Santander destroyed by landslides due to heavy rains

Source: El Espectador