The recent killings of young people in two regions of Colombia have installed the feeling of a return to a past marked by violence in the Andean country. Although the Government of Iván Duque defends that there has been an 11% reduction in homicides so far this year compared to the same period in 2019, international organizations warn of multiple murders and attacks on social leaders in rural areas. The United Nations Office for Human Rights in Colombia has urged the Government to "take all necessary actions to eliminate this violence." According to the organization, so far in Duque's mandate there have been 69 massacres, in addition to seven pending documentation.
Jorge Restrepo, director of the Resource Center for Conflict Analysis (Cerac), highlights the nuances of the security scenario in the country. "In general, at the urban level there has been a substantial improvement, accelerated with the quarantine, and there are falls in homicides that we did not observe three years ago," says the analyst. The government sticks to these figures, as well as the reduction in kidnappings and extortion, but observers such as Restrepo point out that these are benefits of the post-conflict after the peace agreement signed between the FARC and the government of Juan Manuel Santos. However, he clarifies, "this improvement in citizen security contrasts with the increase in political violence, disputes and an intensification of the conflict with the National Liberation Army, ELN, (the last active guerrilla in Colombia)." It refers to the killings of human rights defenders and former FARC combatants, especially in towns left by the guerrillas.
The government's response to each attack or massacre has been to increase the force of force in towns such as Catatumbo, Cauca or Nariño, the most affected by the armed groups. But the appearance of dissidents and paramilitary gangs that dispute the routes of drug trafficking and other illegal businesses after the peace agreement makes the panorama more complex.
The situation is preceded by a decline in the image of the military forces that are in a pit they have not reached in the last two decades. A poll by the Invamer Gallup firm revealed last June that favorable opinion about them fell by 37 points and reached 48%, a striking figure for one of the most important institutions in a country that was more than five decades at war with the FARC. Successive scandals, allegations of corruption at the top, extrajudicial executions and, more recently, the recognition of 70 investigations into the military for sexual abuse of minors, have taken a toll on the institution headed by the president, as commander-in-chief of the military forces .
The lack of control of the military forces
The plot of illegal espionage and profiling of journalists and opposition politicians by the Army that became known in early 2020 have also taken international reach. Recently, US Congressman Jim McGovern presented a bill that seeks to condition aid to Colombia by the United States, due to illegal monitoring. While the Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez presented an amendment so that the Government of Donald Trump does not allocate money through the Department of Defense for aerial fumigation in Colombia “unless the Government (Colombian) demonstrates that it is adhering to the national and local laws and regulations ”.
For Senator Roy Barreras, who last November denounced that the Army concealed the death of eight minors in a bombardment against dissident guerrillas in an accusation that led to the resignation of then Defense Minister Guillermo Botero, the deterioration of the military forces has to do with the lack of presidential leadership, which has politicized them, distracted from their objective of controlling the territory. “The military forces are very large, half a million people, and they are apolitical, not belligerent. It is not their fault then, as a body, if they are misled by a ruler who leads them to war and not peace or by an inept ruler who makes them lose control of the territory, the responsibility lies with the Government that leads them wrongly. ”, He opines.
Barreras says that the decline has occurred in three stages in the last two years. The first, he says, when Duque received a military leadership that came from the Government of Juan Manuel Santos and was in a transition from war to peace. For a time, the head of government maintains it until he "gives in to pressure from his party," the Democratic Center. In the second, from 2018 to November 2019, in which, according to his theory, people who swear allegiance to Uribe are enthroned in command and begins “the greatest and worst effect of the Government on the military forces, which is the politicization of the same, with an ideology of vindication of the war ”, he values. Restrepo, on the other hand, does not consider that there is a politicization, but rather a revision of the doctrine that "reversed at least in 22 years many advances in the Army's security policy."
During 2019, as documented by various media, extrajudicial executions and the militarization of the fight against drug trafficking were denounced, which implied the change from the voluntary substitution of illicit crops for the forced eradication of coca crops, with the presence of military. “With the FARC disarmed, they need to return to the logic of internal and external terror and they fabricate two fronts: one international, with Venezuela and the imaginary government of Juan Guaidó in the face of the Maduro dictatorship; and internally, the denial of the agreement to say that there was never peace and that the proof of this is the proliferation of dissidents. It is the self-fulfilling prophecy, ”says the congressman. Thus, he believes, is how the third moment was reached, the current one, which he calls the loss of territorial control.
With the resignation of Defense Minister Guillermo Botero and the arrival of Carlos Homes Trujillo to the portfolio, the Government has announced reforms and in-depth investigations of the successive complaints against the military. "The message is clear: there is zero tolerance for any act that is outside the Constitution and the law and in that we are forceful," said the current minister.
José Miguel Vivanco, director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch, agrees that the head of government "had the opportunity to rethink the role and structure of military forces in accordance with the country's needs," after the disarmament of the FARC. Instead, the government insisted on the traditional model of military forces - and with some of its worst features. It deployed the military forces before each crisis but at the same time it made no greater efforts to promote local development initiatives and strengthen justice ”, he adds.
Vivanco points out that one of the critical moments of this model was the promotion of officers who, “according to credible evidence, would be associated with false positives, including the then Army Commander Nicacio Martínez, who as soon as he assumed office reestablished some of the policies of security that a decade ago led to the cold-blooded killings of thousands of civilians.
The prospects for change are not rosy. “The government has an opportunity to lower its security policy. But I fear that it will be a lost opportunity and that we will see continuity. In other words, persistence of violence that damages politics, especially at the territorial level, and gradual reductions in the matter of urban insecurity ”, considers Restrepo.
