homepage / contents / part 1 / part 2 / back / next

Colombia: Zones of Peace in the Heart of a Bitter War

A series of communities of peace have been carved out recently in Colombia’s Urabá province. Bearing the stamp of ‘active neutrality’, they press for adherence to provisions in the Geneva Convention on human rights that armed actors have an obligation to ensure protection of the civilian population. Largely forgotten and ignored, this principle provides a raison d’être for the Colombian peace communities. The aim is to break the logic of war.

In 1998, one of Colombia’s various guerrilla movements, the FARC, shifted between 1,200 and 1,800 of its fighters from the south of the country into the north-west. Not long afterwards, on August 3, they launched a sustained offensive against a joint army-paramilitary base near Pavarandó, a town in the region of Urabá. The battle lasted 15 hours. The post was destroyed. After the guerrillas retreated, the army took over Pavarandó. It was rumoured that locals cooperated in the guerrilla offensive but when, at the end of August, the army withdrew, effectively abandoning the local population to the shadowy paramilitary who had already driven thousands of people from their land, there was no revengeful rampage.

The paras, by and large, left the civilians alone. With the help of the diocese, they had organised themselves and declared their ‘active neutrality’.

Every conflict has its civilian toll: non-combatants killed and injured by crossfire; women, children, even the aged. Schools and health centres closed. Damaged infrastructure. Economic growth stalled; unemployment on the rise. In Colombia, where the national army and guerrillas share combat zones with freelance paramilitary death squads, civilian populations are like ham in a sandwich. Who to trust in this three-pronged civil war? On which side should allegiance be bestowed? With what consequence?

In Urabá, a province close to the Panamanian border in the country’s north-west, choices can be deadly. The region has heavy guerrilla traffic. Fractured groups with trademark acronyms - ELN, FARC, EPL - fight a battle-fatigued army over territory. This cat-and-mouse game has gone on for two decades. Once the centre of the banana industry, Urabá has become a gigantic battlefield, its civilian population caught in an ever-tightening political pincer.

Civilians may see themselves as victims caught in the middle; others see them as key to guerrilla prospects. A whole series of metaphor-laden truisms have been utilised to illustrate the relationship between fighters and civilian populations who provide succour. ‘Guerrillas need the support of civilians like fish need water,’ is one. This by way of explaining why the army and shadowy paramilitary groups operating in the countryside murder accused guerrilla helpers and force villagers out of their homes. Somewhat indelicately, they call this action, ‘taking water from the fish’. Or, even more ominously, the ‘scorched earth’ strategy.

The concept of ‘active neutrality’ began taking root in Urabá in 1997. At San Jose de Apartadó, a village not far from the small provincial city of Apartadó, the principle got its first test, and reached its apogee. Violence between paramilitary and guerrillas had forced many residents to flee in 1996. Inhabitants from surrounding areas were concerned. On March 27, 1997, supported by the Apartadó diocese, a number of people from San Jose de Apartadó, joined 29 surrounding hamlets, in a public declaration of peace and neutrality. Before witnesses including a delegation from Pax Christi from The Netherlands, they proclaimed they would not cooperate with any of the parties involved in the civil war.

Pax Christi Netherlands has been actively present in Colombia for a good ten years; in the area of human rights and as mediator between parties involved in the conflict. This Catholic peace movement has organised several international delegations that visited Urabá. With its visit in March 1996, the international presence in Urabá was started.

Paramilitary groups and guerrilla have made an already difficult life for the civilian population in Urabá, into a veritable hell. Convinced the army could not combat the effective ‘hit and run’ strategy adopted by guerrillas, Urabá’s most notorious paras, the Castano brothers, known by the acronym ACCU -Peasant self-defence of Cordoba and Urabá- centred their offensive on depriving the guerrillas of civilian support - ‘scorching the earth’. In truth, the civilians were pawns for all combatants. Not only guerrillas, but also the army. Forced to provide information, food, medicine, and accommodation, they were left in no doubt as to what would result from failure to comply.

ACCU’s ‘scorched earth’ approach was brutally effective. A group of paramilitia would enter a village and openly identify themselves as members of the ACCU. Then they would arbitrarily slaughter people. A farmer would be shot in public to back up a demand that all members of the community leave the area. And if intimidation failed, the army would bomb the village. Later, paramilitary units would return and murder accused guerrilla helpers.

Dutchman Wim Westerbaan has seen evidence of the civilian hardships. Travelling by foot and horseback, and sometimes using the river as a young observer for Pax Christi Netherlands, he has had extensive contacts with people in the region. In his written account of the Urabá Peace Community, Westerbaan recounts the story of a woman he met while on his way to La Union. She had lost her husband and fourteen-year-old daughter at the hands of the paras, killed in trademark fashion.

‘First they tie them up and then beat them up,’ she says, talking of the way paramilitaries treat their victims. ‘After their death, they dress them in guerrilla uniforms and leave them lying on the ground.’ (Dressing victims in the clothes of guerrillas is a frequently used tactic of the paras. Official reports then say the victims died in a fight.)

Whole villages went on the move. Hiking, sometimes for months, seeking refuge in a variety of places - kids, the sick and old. Thus was the ‘water taken from the fish’.

When fighting first intensified in Urabá during 1996 and 1997, some 17,000 people were made homeless. More than 6,500 refugees fled towards Mutatá, a ‘neutral’ area. A similar number gathered in Pavarandó. In October of 1997, the diocese of Apartadó assisted them to form themselves into called peace community ‘San Francisco de Assis’, and to facilitate their safe return to their own land. Initial hesitancy over the repatriation, even by aid organisations concerned about armed activity in the areas, were overcome once it emerged there were cattle farmers, paramilitaries, or others, eager to snatch the property - after which return would be virtually impossible.

What interests triggered and sustained the conflict in this particular region? Was it a cover for drug smuggling? Or were the various offensives connected to plans for building a second Panama canal? Some thought people were being chased out of their homes to facilitate the exploitation of the region’s rich forests by business interests linked to powerful politicians. Was ‘scorched earth’ - removing people - a prelude to removing trees and preparing for extensive cattle farming activities? In Urabá, such activity had serious implications for the black community, who have occupied the region for generations.

In the end, Pavarandó residents freely established a total of eight peace settlements. A series of repatriation exercises resulted in people eventually returning to the 49 settlements from which they originally came. A Pax Christi delegation that visited all eight settlements, travelling along the river by fast boat, encountered a more optimistic mood than that which prevailed the previous March. Uncertainty had been replaced by a general air of confidence in the future. What had changed?

‘The concept of peace communities works,’ says Eric Laan, of the Pax Christi Latin America department. ‘Everyone was aware that without the methodology and adherence to the concept of ‘active neutrality’, they would never have the prospect of returning to their own land again. So many people who could have otherwise been murdered, or forced into the slums of big cities, where they would live in serious poverty, now had a new perspective of the future.

Colombia,October 19, 1998: first anniversary of the Peace Community of San Francisco de Asis. Photo Eric Laan

Peace commissions hold daily meetings. An outside person acts as supervisor, and offers advice. This role is critical to the process - the involvement of an international person offering protection, and being a guarantee of neutrality. That person engages in dialogue with various parties when conflicts arise. The role is more than advisory: ensuring rules of the peace community are kept by the displaced persons, is part of the mandate.