February 7, 2005

Colombia’s Deteriorating Security Situation

by Garry Leech

During President Alvaro Uribe’s first year in office, officials in Washington and Bogotá, along with the mainstream media, repeatedly trumpeted the “successes” of the new administration’s democratic security strategies. They rushed to point out the decrease in killings, kidnappings and forced displacement, claiming that the military had seized the initiative and had the guerrillas on the run. In sharp contrast to last year’s public relations campaign, government officials and the mainstream media have been far less eager to discuss the most recent statistics pertaining to Colombia’s conflict, which show that the situation has deteriorated dramatically over the past year.

Two large-scale attacks against the Colombian military by Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas last week killed a total of 23 Colombian troops and made it clear that the rebels still pose a potent military threat. In fact, claims by officials in Washington and Bogotá that the FARC are on the defensive are also contradicted by figures that show the rebels launched more attacks during President Uribe’s first two years in office than during any two-year period of former President Andrés Pastrana’s term. According to the Bogotá-based defense think tank Fundación Seguridad y Democracia, the FARC attacked Colombia’s security forces an average of twice a day in 2004.

The level of conflict in rural Colombia is also evidenced by the increasing numbers of peasants being forcibly displaced by violence. The Bogotá-based Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES) recently announced that 287,581 Colombians were forcibly displaced in 2004, a startling 38 percent increase over the 207,607 forced from their homes the previous year. These statistics suggest that, while urban residents might feel more secure, the lives of rural Colombians continue to be ravaged by violence as an average of 780 people a day are forcibly displaced.

And while kidnappings continue their downward trend, something that Washington and Bogotá repeatedly point to as evidence that President Uribe’s policies are making the country safer, little attention has been paid to the dramatic increase in extortions. Government officials and the mainstream media were correct to note that kidnappings dropped to 2,200 in 2003 from 2,986 the previous year, a 26 percent decrease. However, they ignored the fact that this gain was largely offset by the 2,271 extortions reported in 2003, which represented a 22 percent increase over the year before, according to the Bogotá-based Fundación País Libre.

Criminal groups and rebels simply shifted their tactics from holding kidnap victims for ransom to threatening to kill those who refuse to meet extortion demands or, in the vernacular of the guerrillas, pay their “war taxes.” As Colonel Humberto Guatibonza of the Colombian National Police noted, “It’s much simpler than kidnapping. You pick up the phone, issue threats, sow fear, place your demands and hang up.”

Government officials and the mainstream media have also mostly-ignored Colombia’s disturbing upward trend in forced disappearances. More than 3,500 people were “disappeared” during President Uribe’s first two years in office, more than the total number of Colombians who disappeared during the previous seven years combined. According to the Association of Family Members of the Detained and Disappeared (ASFADDES), right-wing paramilitaries and state security forces are responsible for a huge majority of the disappearances.

ASFADDES spokesperson Gloria Gómez says it is much harder to focus international attention on Colombia’s growing problem of forced disappearance than it was in the more publicized cases from Argentina’s dirty war. “In Argentina,” she says, “their tragedy happened in a short space of time, and the image of the junta in their military uniforms made it easy to generate international antipathy. Our authoritarianism wears a suit and tie and was democratically elected.”

There appears to be little awareness of the fact that many of President Uribe’s early “successes” are now being reversed. Government officials in Washington and Bogotá, as did the mainstream media, bombarded the public with feel-good stories about the Colombian government gaining the upper hand in the country’s conflict during President Uribe’s first year in office. Those same voices are conspicuously silent now that Colombia’s security situation is deteriorating.

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