Drugs, Oil, and Insurgency in Colombia

• In Event: The Impact of Armed Groups on Civilians

Abstract

This paper compares the effects of licit and illicit commodity production on the nature of insurgent authority in frontier regions of Colombia between 1978 and 2004. Specifically, I focus on illicit drugs and oil as two commodities that are consistently linked to the onset, duration, and lethality of internal conflict. In Colombia, a puzzle arises wherein illicit drug production correlates with robust insurgent authority and cooperative exchanges of resources for public goods. In contrast, oil extraction correlates with more predatory insurgent-civilian relations. In coca growing regions, insurgents use less violence toward civilians in the short term, but in the long term there are greater obstacles for undermining insurgent control and establishing the authority of the state.

To explain the different effects of oil and illicit coca on insurgent strategies, my central thesis underscores the role of the state. I argue that state repression of illicit coca production in Colombia creates incentives for coca producers to cooperate with insurgents. In contrast, I argue that state protection of the oil industry incentivizes oil companies to resist insurgent control. Hence, insurgents extract resources with coercion, over time transforming into a predatory authority. I validate my hypothesis with a comparison of two Colombian departments, Arauca and Caquetá. In Arauca, the discovery of a major oil field in 1983 and the subsequent militarization of the region led to deteriorating relations between the civilian population and the increasingly predatory National Liberation Army (ELN). In Caquetá, the onset of illicit coca production in 1978 and ensuing state repression allowed for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to exercise robust authority based on mutually beneficial exchanges with the local population.

Author

• Susan V Norman, College of William and Mary