¹ An intervention that some see as part of a wider process of colonization of the social sciences by economists, Fine, B., ‘A Question of Economics: Is it Colonising the Social Sciences?’, Economy and Society, 32: 1 (1999), pp. 10–36.Google Scholar

² M. Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1999, pp. 6–9.

³ M. Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars, London, Zed Press, 2001.

⁴ There are variants of the economic argument, of course, but these points are the key elements of one of the most influential contributions, that of Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, On Economic Causes of Civil War, Oxford Economic Papers 50 (1998), pp. 563–73; Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, Greed and Grievance in Civil War, Washington, DC, World Bank, 2001; and Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, Greed and Grievance in Civil War, Centre for the Study of African Economies. Working Paper, Oxford, Oxford University, 2002.

⁵ William Reno, ‘Shadow States and the Political Economy of Civil War’, in M. Berdal and D. M. Malone (eds), Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars, Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner, 2000, pp. 43–68.

⁶ The story of how BP came out of the ‘perimeter fence’ is the subject of another paper, see J. Pearce Beyond the Perimeter Fence: Oil and Armed Conflict in Casanare, Colombia, Centre for Global Governance Working Paper 32, London, London School of Economics, 2004.

⁷ E.g. Indra de Soysa, ‘The Resource Curse: Are Civil Wars Driven by Rapacity or Paucity’, in Berdal and Malone, Greed and Grievance, Economic Agendas, pp. 113–36; Ross, Michael L., ‘The Political Economy of the Resource Curse’, World Politics, 51 (January 1999), pp. 297–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ For example, Paul Collier, ‘Doing Well Out of War: An Economic Perspective’, in Berdal and Malone, Greed and Grievance, Economic Agendas, pp. 91–111, Collier and Hoeffler, Greed and Grievance in Civil War, 2001; M. Ross, ‘How Does Natural Resource Wealth Influence Civil War? Evidence from 13 Case Studies’, mimeo, 2002, pp. 1–50, available at mlross@polisci.ucla,edu; Philippe Le Billon, Fuelling War: Natural Resources and Armed Conflicts, Adelphi Paper 357, Oxford, IISS/Oxford University Press, 2003.

⁹ Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, Greed and Grievance in Civil War, Policy Research Working Paper 2355, Development Research Group, World Bank, May 2000, quoted in M. Ross, Extractive Sectors and the Poor, Washington, DC, Oxfam America, 2001, p. 14; see Collier and Hoeffller, On Economic Causes of Civil War, Greed and Grievance in Civil War, 2001 and Greed and Grievance in Civil War, 2002.

¹⁰ E.g. Fearon, J. D. and Laitin, D., ‘Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War’, American Political Science Review, 97: 1 (2003), pp. 75–90 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See review of these by Ross, M., ‘What Do We Know about Natural Resources and Civil War?’, Journal of Peace Research, 41 (May 2004), pp. 337–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ P. Le Billon, Fuelling War.

¹² Ross, ‘How Does Natural Resource Wealth Influence Civil War?’.

¹³ Collier and Hoeffler, On Economic Causes of Civil War.

¹⁴ CODEP Conference, June 1999.

¹⁵ Collier, ‘Doing Well Out of War’, pp. 100–1.

¹⁶ Cramer, C., ‘ Homo Economicus Goes to War: Methodological Individualism, Rational Choice and the Political Economy of War’, World Development, 30: 11 (2002), pp. 1845–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and K. Ballentine and J. Sherman, The Political Economy of Armed Conflict: Beyond Greed and Grievance, Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner, 2003, covering Burma, Colombia, Kosovo, Nepal, Papua New Guinea and Sri Lanka.

¹⁷ Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1965. Collier draws on Olson.

¹⁸ S. Tarrow, Power in Movement, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 16.

¹⁹ John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald, ‘Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory’, in John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald (eds), Social Movements in an Organizational Society, New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction, 1987, pp. 15–48.

²⁰ D. McAdam, John, D. McCarthy, Mayer N. Zald, ‘Introduction’, in D. McAdam, John, D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald (eds), Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 3–4, original emphasis.

²¹ Collier, ‘Doing Well Out of War’, p. 100.

²² Collier and Hoeffler, Greed and Grievance, 2001.

²³ McAdam, McCarthy and Zald, ‘Introduction’, p. 2.

²⁴ Cramer, ‘Homo Economicus Goes to War’, p. 1850.

²⁵ Ibid.

²⁶ Ballentine and Sherman, The Political Economy of Armed Conflict.

²⁷ Ibid., p. 263.

²⁸ Ibid., p. 280.

²⁹ An example is the following statement from Paul Collier: ‘The approach I take, which is the conventional one in social science, is to infer motivation from patterns of observed behaviour. If someone says “I don’t like chocolates” but keeps on eating them, we infer that she really likes them, and the question of why she says the opposite is usually relegated to being of secondary importance’, Collier, ‘Doing Well out of War’, quoted in Francisco Gutiérrez Sanin, ‘Criminal Rebels? A Discussion of War and Criminality from the Colombian Experience’, mimeo, London, LSE, Crisis States Working Papers, April 2003, p. 3. Any feminist who read such a statement would be incredulous at the naive analysis of women's relationship to chocolate!

³⁰ Cramer makes the point: ‘… fear and obeisance to de facto authority – as well as acquiescence with strong mobilizing ideologies not through acceptance but through desperate efforts to resist local structures of oppression – are motivations that might be more significant than either greed or grievance, individual choice or unambiguous coercion, in some circumstances’, ‘Homo Economicus Goes to War’, p. 1850.

³¹ See J. Pearce, Colombia: Inside the Labyrinth, London, Latin America Bureau, 1990.

³² On the historical role of the agrarian frontier and the violent struggle between large landowners and peasant colonizers, see C. Legrand, ‘Los Antecedentes Agrarios de la Violencia: El Conflicto Social en la frontera Colombiana, 1850–1936’, in G. Sánchez and Ricardo Penaranda, Pasado y Presente de la Violencia en Colombia, Bogota, CEREC, 1986. In the more recent violence since the late 1980s, an estimated 3 million people have been displaced. The land of those expelled is often handed in the case of the paramilitary right to its footsoldiers. But there is evidence also of a dynamic which began in the 1980s of land purchases by drug traffickers from landowners beleaguered by guerilla pressure, creating a class of mafia-linked large landowners anxious to legitimize their holdings. See A. Reyes Posada, ‘El Contexto Agrario del Narcotráfico: Conflicto Social, Guerrillas, Compra de Tierras por Narcotraficantes’, in F. Thoumi et al. (eds), Drogas Ilicitas en Colombia, Su Impacto Economico, Politico y Social, Bogota, Editorial Ariel, 1997, pp. 279–345.

³³ Rangel, A., ‘Parasites and Predators: Guerillas and the Insurrection Economy of Colombia’, Journal of International Affairs, 53: 2 (2000), pp. 577–8.Google Scholar

³⁴ Ibid., p. 585.

³⁵ Collier, ‘Doing Well Out of War’, p. 100. Michael Ross has also disputed claims that there is evidence that rebels fund their start-up costs through resources looting. The stronger evidence from 13 cases studied by Ross is that resource wealth has ‘made conflict more likely to occur, and last longer and produce more casualties when it does occur’, Ross, ‘How Does Natural Resource Wealth Influence Civil War?’.

³⁶ Collier and Hoeffler, Greed and Grievance in Civil War, 2001, have introduced two other relevant variables apart from finance through natural resources that account for opportunity to rebel. The first is low foregone earnings, i.e. the lack of good employment opportunities for potential rebels. Male secondary education enrolment, per capita income and the growth rate all have significant effects on armed conflict in this sense. Secondly, the military advantage which is gained from rebellions in areas of dispersed population. These have considerable relevance for Casanare and would be points of agreement, however, this paper focuses on the point of contention.

³⁷ Rangel, ‘Parasites and Predators’, p. 582.

³⁸ Carlos Medina Gallego, ‘Aproximación a la ideas políticas del ELN’, in Corporación Observatorio para la Paz, Las verdaderas intenciones del ELN, Bogota, Intermedio, 2001, pp. 120–58.

³⁹ W. Broderick, El Guerillero Invisible, Bogota, Intermedio, 2000, p. 395. This was based on the author's interview with ELN leader Manuel Perez in 1978. Richani states that the ELN had 500 men in arms by 1979, which suggests that the Nicaraguan revolution of 1979 might have had an impact on recruitment: N. Richani, Systems of Violence: The Political Economy of War and Peace in Colombia, New York, State University of New York Press, 2002, p. 85.

⁴⁰ Gallego, ‘Aproximación a la ideas políticas del ELN’, p. 137.

⁴¹ The case study of Arauca is drawn mostly from the MA dissertation of Andres Peñate, who visited the region in the late 1980s. The case study of Casanare is based on three field visits of my own in 1998, 2000 and 2001. During these visits I conducted over 80 individual interviews and a number of group interviews with major actors in the politics of the region. Given the intensity of the violence, this did not include the guerillas of the left or the paramilitary right. The narrative thus reflects the impact of their actions as experienced by local people rather than their own justifications. Many interviewees requested anonymity.

⁴² A. Peñate, ‘Arauca: Politics and Oil in a Colombian Province’, unpublished MPhil thesis, Oxford, University of Oxford, St Antony's College, 1991.

⁴³ Ibid p. 56.

⁴⁴ An estimated 4 million peasants migrated to urban centres between 1971 and 1985, this reflects, argues Alejandro Reyes Posada: ‘The failure of the national elites in the tasks of leading a dynamic and balanced development, as well as the failure of the popular movements to achieve these basic conquests of modernization’, Reyes Posada, ‘El Contexto Agrario del Narcotráfico’, p. 285.

⁴⁵ Gallego, ‘Aproximación a la ideas políticas del ELN’, p. 140.

⁴⁶ Camilio Echandia Castilla, ‘Evolución Reciente del Conflicto Armado en Colombia: La Guerilla’, in Jaime Arocha, Fernando Cubiles and Myriam Jimeno, Las Violencias: Incusión Creciente, Bogota, CES, 1998, pp. 35–65.

⁴⁷ Colombia is not a petrostate; but oil revenues came to make a major contribution to public finances in the 1990s, compensating for the decline in international coffee prices and reducing the public sector deficit. In 1999 alone they generated a US$2 billion net income for the country, around 25 per cent of government revenues, Ecopetrol, ‘Panorama de la Produccion en Colombia’, presentatición a la Industria Petrolera, Bogota, Enero 31 mimeo, 2001.

⁴⁸ Peñate ‘Arauca: Politics and Oil in a Colombian Province’. Peñate points out that journalists claim that Mannesmann paid the ELN around US$50 million, others suggest it was nearer US$3 million, pp. 38–9.

⁴⁹ Pearce, Colombia: Inside the Labyrinth, p. 283.

⁵⁰ Data from the Colombian Petroleum Association, Bogota, August 2001, mimeo.

⁵¹ Ibid.

⁵² Peñate, ‘Arauca: Politics and Oil in a Colombian Province’.

⁵³ Interview with former member of the ELN political command now in exile, Madrid, March 2004.

⁵⁴ DANE, Colombia 86, Bogota, DANE, 1986.

⁵⁵ A senior security adviser for BP operations in Casanare estimated in 1998 that there were only about 200 guerillas targeting the oil installations, author's interview, June 1998. By contrast the army presence in Casanare at the time was around 3,000 troops. Sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment strengthened BP's security enormously, enabling guerrillas movements around BP installations to be rapidly detected, interview with Defence Systems Colombia, June 1998.

⁵⁶ Corporación Excelencia en Justicia, ‘Estudio para Identificar las Necesidades de Justicia y la Viabilidad de un Programa de Justicia Alternativa en el Departamento de Casanare, Contratado por la BP Exploration Company (Colombia) Ltd’, Bogota, mimeo, 2001, p. 39.

⁵⁷ Interview with police commander, Yopal, August 2001.

⁵⁸ Las Asociaciones Casanare 2000, Una Vision del Futuro, Bogota, Las Asociaciones, 1996.

⁵⁹ Small farmers from Boyaca settled in Casanare spontaneously rather than through the INCORA programme in Arauca; they were fleeing the violence of the 1940s and 1950s in Colombia and seeking land and peace.

⁶⁰ Jane Rauch, La Frontera de los Llanos en la Historia de Colombia (1830–1930), Bogota, Banco de la Republica/El Ancora, 1999.

⁶¹ Gaviria et al., Petróleo y Región: El Caso de Casanare, Bogota, Fedesarrollo, 2002, p. 27.

⁶² Ibid.

⁶³ Interview with Gustavo Zarate, 8 June 1998.

⁶⁴ The relationship between the oil multinational and Casanare has been discussed in much greater depth in Pearce, Beyond the Perimeter Fence. This also traces the later evolution of BP policy in the region following negative media and NGO attention, in which the company has developed a much greater sophistication in terms of analysis of the region and a more strategic and ethical approach to its work there.

⁶⁵ Gaviria et al., Petróleo y Región, p. 53.

⁶⁶ One estimate calculates that 43 per cent of Casanare's municipalities have seen land purchased by drug traffickers. A. Reyes Posada, ‘Regionalización de los Conflictos Agrarios y la Violencia Política en Colombia’, in Libardo Sarmiento Anzola et al., Municipios y Regiones de Colombia: Una mirada desde la Sociedad Civil, Bogota, Fundación Social, 1998, p. 279 and Reyes Posada, ‘El Contexto Agrario del Narcotráfico’, pp. 279–345.

⁶⁷ C. Castano, Mi Confesión, Bogota, Editorial Oveja Negra, 2001, p. 199.

⁶⁸ Corporación Excelencia en la Justicia, ‘Estudio para Identificar las Necesidades de Justicia’, p. 16.

⁶⁹ Defensoria del Pueblo, ‘Informe’, private document, p, 10.

⁷⁰ Corporación Excelencia en la Justicia, ‘Estudio para Identificar las Necesidades de Justicia’, p. 39.

⁷¹ See for example Mark Duffield's argument in M. Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars, London, Zed Press, 2001.

⁷² Collier, ‘Doing Well Out of War’.

⁷³ Alezandra Guáqueta, ‘The Colombian Conflict: Political and Economic Dimensons’, in Ballentine and Sherman, The Political Economy of Armed Conflict, p. 93.