SUFFERING OF CIVILIAN POPULATION DURING THE CIVIL WAR IN COLOMBIA

Abstract

The face of armed conflicts is changing dramatically. The shift from interstate to
intrastate conflicts produces large quantities of civilian victims and unusual connections
between conflict, terrorism, and organized crime. In this article we examine the long lasting
internal Colombian conflict in the context of globalization where security issues travel easily
from place to place, disregarding distance or national frontiers, and they contaminate other
areas, thus spreading not only to neighboring, but also to faraway countries. Some of the
strategies currently being used in Colombia by various warring parties could make its way to
other parts of the world currently plagued by (potential) armed conflicts, some of them being as
close to our borders as Ukraine or Kosovo. In this paper we primarily focus on these strategies
that generate immense human suffering, such as massacres, terrorist acts, forced recruitments,
population displacement, extortion and kidnapping. We also bring attention to predatory
methods of financing used by the actors to perpetuate violent conflicts for long periods of time.