Security & Strategic Review - August 2003

Negotiations with the AUC were meant to be run parallel to talks with the ELN. The collapse of that second track could have serious consequences for Uribe's overall strategy. 

The government of President Alvaro Uribe has reached a demobilisation agreement with the largest paramilitary organisation, the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC). For all the spin coming out of Bogotá and Washington, what this signals is that Uribe has had to take a risky departure from his original strategy. This strategy foresaw the progressive 'removal of players' from the field, which is what is being emphasised now. The purpose of that approach was to ensure that the endgame would be confined only to dealing with the largest guerrilla force, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc). 

But the original strategy also envisaged parallel peace negotiations with the AUC and the second-largest of the guerrilla organisations, the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN). This was deemed necessary to convey an impression of symmetry, since dealing only with the AUC - infamous worldwide for its savagery and widely deemed an informal ally of the military - would suggest a bias which many abroad would find objectionable.
And this was not just a matter of looking good abroad: it was essential to secure the financial assistance needed to make the 'reinsertion' of thousands of fighters a credible proposition. [Another less known symmetry would have been present: for some time - since before Uribe's arrival on the scene - the military had concentrated mainly on fighting the Farc in the south, leaving it up to the paramilitaries to fight the ELN in the north.] 

That second pillar of the initial strategy has been all but abandoned. The main reason is the battering the ELN has taken at the hands of the AUC, which has reduced its strength, possibly to little more than 2,000, and greatly diminished its territorial influence. This was made manifest when the AUC was able to mobilise the support of the local population to resist the Pastrana government's plan to grant the ELN a demilitarised zone similar to that of the Farc. On the one hand this has made it militarily less important for the government to devote a huge negotiating effort to the ELN. On the other, within an ELN aware that it lacks the strength to back many of its demands, moves are afoot to seek survival through a strategic alliance with the Farc, however unequal such a partnership might be. There have already been instances of Farc and ELN 'fronts' conducting joint operations at local level.