WHO WANTS WAR?

WHO WANTS WAR?

“The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.” Winston Churchill

Who wants war? I could start this article with the conclusion and start of course to extrapolate the argument with the sole purpose of presenting solidity in my views on the matter, directing me to elaborate it under the old parameters of the literary construction of one more article.

A few days ago I presented an article called How do we avoid war? Where I went to political science to address the concepts of war, terrorism, civil population, among others and lay some assumptions on how we can avoid generating more violence, well; I believe that no one in Colombia and when I argue that nobody refers to Colombians as good, to those who are within the law, as well as you, they want peace.

And this article is born Prima Facie for the metaphor of some, within this imaginary political macondiano, who argue that the president of Colombia Ivan Duque wants the war, that Donald Trump wants the war, that everyone wants the war less who in this just hold the weapons.

Of course these statements for some slanders, are only the result of an impoverished debate in those who have not yet risen from the failure of the presidential elections and who exercise a perverse opposition and have made a Manichean speech exposed on the table of a left arrogant and arrogant, that attacks everything that this government presents.

In many ways war and terrorism are very similar. Both involve acts of extreme violence, are motivated by political considerations, ideological or strategic purposes, and are caused by one group of individuals against another. Its consequences are terrible for members of the population, whether intentionally or not. The war tends to be more widespread and the destruction is likely to be more devastating because it is often carried out by states with armies and large arsenals of weapons at their disposal. Terrorist groups rarely have the financial and professional resources of the states.

Apart from the methods used and the degree of violence, war and terrorism are also perceived differently in international law. The differences are not always clear and even experts can disagree about whether a violent campaign is considered terrorism, civil war, insurrection, self-defense, legitimate determination, or something else.

The General Assembly of the United Nations tends to use the following definition in its pronouncements on terrorism:

"Criminal acts conceived or planned to provoke a state of terror in the population in general, in a group of persons or in certain persons that are unjustifiable in all circumstances, regardless of political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or of any other nature that are enforced to justify them ".

TERRORISM: A CLASSIFICATION

Some of the following criteria have been considered important when deciding whether an act is "terrorism". Keep in mind that not all experts agree:

The act is politically inspired

An act of terrorism usually has a final goal that is "greater," and more strategic than the immediate effect of the act. For example, a bomb attack against civilians is meant to change public opinion in order to put pressure on the government.

The act must involve violence or threat of violence

Some think that the mere threat of violence, if it is really credible, can also be an act of terrorism, because it causes fear among those to whom it is directed, and it can be used for political purposes.

An act of terrorism is designed to have a strong psychological impact

Terrorist acts are often said to be arbitrary or random in nature, but in reality groups tend to select targets carefully in order to elicit maximum reaction, and also, as far as possible, achieve the symbols of the regime.

Terrorism is the act of sub-groups of the state, not of the states

This is probably the most widely discussed among the different experts and observers. Nation-states tend to use this as the essence of a terrorist act, but if we limit ourselves to acts of terrorism to sub-groups of the state, we have already decided that a violent act by a state can not be terrorism, for terrible that is.

Terrorism deliberately implicates civilians as targets

This criterion is also discussed by many experts, since it rules out the possibility of classifying as terrorist attacks those that go against military or other personnel, such as state officials, politicians or policemen.

Faced with these definitions that the Colombian state can make, kneel down, humiliate itself and ask these extremist groups to cease their actions that we reach a political negotiation, but of course a political negotiation is admissible, but not coming with a disadvantaged state, no Sir, the state is the state, he possesses and must thus be the only element of force.

ACTORS OF TERRORISM IN COLOMBIA

The main actors of the armed conflict in Colombia were two in the first phase (1964-1980) and three in the second (1980-2015), without neglecting other social and political actors who play important roles.

- Phase 1964-1980: the confrontation between the "first generation guerrillas" and the Armed Forces stands out and was characterized by the weakening of the guerrilla in the late sixties and early seventies.

- Phase 1980-2015: this phase has allowed the conflict to intensify after the appearance of the paramilitary groups and the "financial resources without antecedents from drug trafficking, kidnapping and extortion", which gave rise to what the Academics call them "opportunistic third parties," that is, criminal organizations or political agents who have sought to obtain particular benefits from the conflict.

Armed actors and political legitimacy:

In the Colombian public debate, it is common to hear formulations that emphasize the illegitimacy of armed action for resorting precisely to violence or for lacking ideological formulations or, in broader terms, ideals that sustain the struggle. In the first case, the liberal idea that political relations must come from consent and exclude physical coercion is at stake. In the second case, this idea is partially nuanced with the assumption that certain ideals -of communism, socialism or political reform- sustained in the past the use of violence but no longer have more reception or historical relevance.

For example, several investigators have shown that the FARC rebels counted and counts on important degrees of legitimacy and acceptance in local societies of recent settlement and in which the armed group as such, accompanied and defended the colonization processes of territories that Until then they were registered by the state as uncultivated or without clearly known owners. In these societies located in southern Colombia, the guerrillas favored a process that has been called "armed colonization" and that gave rise to the constitution of an "illicit peasantry". In these societies, the peasants grant legitimacy to guerrilla action not because they share with it the postulates of revolutionary action, but because the armed organization has denounced the economic and political exclusion of the peasants and has assumed functions of local political regulation. Several studies show, for example, that in these zones guerrilla groups regulate the exploitation of natural resources, organize settlements, distribute economic responsibilities among the new settlers, resolve territorial disputes, among other functions.

The rebel group's close association with these newly settled local societies in the 1960s and 1970s made these areas classified as "historical" guerrilla zones and in them the armed group established itself as a network of power and defined or contribute to the definition of local political hierarchies and pre-eminences. For this to be clear, it is worth remembering the processes described in other files prepared by Fernán González and Silvia Otero in which the differentiated presence of the Colombian state is characterized and it is recalled that in the territory of Colombia there coexist regions where the state makes presence through its agents with zones where it negotiates the domination with pre-established networks of power and with territories where the armed actors dispute precisely the establishment of such networks of domination.

It is therefore necessary to situate the questions by the legitimacy of the armed actors and in this concrete case of the Farc in a map that remembers the unequal incorporation of territories and social sectors to the state domination. Indeed, the creation of the FARC rebels is closely connected with the political radicalization of peasant sectors that were "abandoned" by the bipartisan liberal leaders during the period of the so-called Violencia (1948-1964). During those years, intense internal and inter-party conflicts, between the traditional Colombian parties, the Liberal and the Conservative expelled important population groups from the areas of former settlement and pressured the colonization and occupation of open agrarian borders in different regions of the country. Social research has shown that precisely in the regions where the peasants fleeing from the bipartisan confrontation of the fifties arrived, the guerrilla groups that are going to resort to communism to denounce political exclusion are born and consolidated.

Something similar happens with the political legitimacy provided by the self-defense or paramilitary groups. The guerrilla builds its legitimacy because it accompanies and favors the processes of colonization and political dispute of specific agrarian or social sectors. For its part, the self-defense groups derive their legitimacy from various and dissimilar forms of action. In some cases, the self-defense groups express or collect the interest of recently established political networks to connect or articulate with local and regional power centers. Several investigations show that the affinity of the guerrillas with newly colonized societies and with incipient political classes, is breaking down when the latter need, to consolidate as political classes and as dominant sectors at the local and subregional levels, to project themselves towards the capitals and the centers of regional power. The old guerrilla alliance with the families highlighted in the processes of colonization is broken and you are now converted into networks of merchants, public officials and local actors lending favoring the constitution or introduction of self-defense groups that limit guerrilla power and favor the articulation between the local societies of ancient colonization and the neighboring political and economic centers.

THE PUBLIC FORCE ... ACTOR OF THE CONFLICT?

The Constitution of Colombia describes the public force composed exclusively by the Military Forces (Army, Air Force, Navy) and the National Police; established for the defense of sovereignty, independence, integrity of the national territory and constitutional order; and the maintenance of the necessary conditions for the exercise of public rights and liberties, and to ensure that the inhabitants of Colombia live together in peace.

The public force is not, of course, as some suggest that they are actors of the war, the public force is a victim of this terrorism, and they are the ones called to defend the COLOMBIAN, they are not our enemies, nor can they be placed at the same level of the illegal armed groups, for more territory they have occupied.

A LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT

In political science, the concept of Legitimacy is linked to the ability of a power to obtain obedience without having to resort to the coercion that the threat of force implies, in such a way that a State is legitimate if there is a consensus among the members of the political community to accept the current authority. In this sense the term has its origins in private inheritance law and appears linked to politics in relation to the monarchical restoration after the French Revolution. This initial appeal to traditional criteria as an ethical justification of the personal exercise of power is accepted by Max Weber as one of the three types of legitimacy along with charismatic legitimization (subordinates accept power based on the holiness, heroism or exemplarity of those who exercise it). ) and rational legitimation (subordinates accept power in accordance with objective and impersonal motivations); making it practically synonymous with legality.

Well, in the face of this notion, we can say that our government, within a constitutional democracy, is legitimate, whether we have lost in the elections or not, it is the government that Colombians chose according to institutional legal rules and regulations; so the public force is precisely to maintain order and defend the legitimacy of the same state, a state that not only frames the government (Executive) but the other branches of public power.

We Colombians can not be enemies of the Public Force, and this does not imply that abuses and excesses should be tolerated, such as the scandalous situations of extrajudicial executions, a shameful episode for our history, but even with all those mistakes, because our democracy It is not perfect, we have to be on the side of order and the rule of law.

In recent times many have ended up becoming spokespersons of terrorism, of the true enemies of democracy, using the brutal errors of the public force, presenting a bitter hatred against our police and soldiers, who are precisely to safeguard life, honor and goods of the Colombians; and the most unfortunate thing is that these voices against the legitimacy of the public force arise from the very members of the institutions they represent, such as congressmen or public officials.

Our public force has been a victim of terrorism and in that sense has had to act with great mistakes, with murders of innocents, with Homicides and violations of Human Rights, but that certainly can not be an argument to ignore the institutionality and defense of the Legal order; that is why a military criminal justice has been proposed, a special justice for those who are there in the battle front who often have to act and there is no time in the mountain for strategies and studies and intelligence, because in the Law of the jungle many Sometimes the one who thinks dies.

It is the state, the only one that has the power over weapons because that is what the Colombians wanted, because in that social contract (Rousseau -Locke) we decided to cede a part of our rights in order to guarantee life, security ; and those who rebelled against this order, against this contract, are the ones who are generating terror, it is they who are against the same people to whom they turn into an instrument in manipulation of power.

The state must ensure peace and order and its armed forces are precisely for that, face those who rose up in arms, those who want anarchy and chaos, make no mistake some sectors pretending to hold the idea that it is the government that makes war, Manichean and perverse speech, to end up behind the door defending some murderous guerrillas, criminals against humanity.

I already held them in the previous article, neither armed conflict, nor belligerency, nor political status, because the guerrillas do not have any political ideology, all they want is to sow terror in the towns and regions, taking advantage of the absence of a state, which it is far from satisfying the demands of a society.

In this regard, it seems relevant to mention the scandal that exists regarding the possession of Darío Acevedo as director of the historical memory center; the social organizations and sectors of the left, believe with the sole right to write the History of Colombia, a narrative told from the hatred of the institutions; but no sir, the history of this country is built by all, and not from a single shore, our soldiers and police are also victims, and here we are not facing a historical absolutism, history is not absolute, so there is a diversity of currents in the Human Sciences.

And I want to end this article saying, it is not the state's strength that makes war, it is those that challenge the rule of law, day by day, casting bullets in the towns and villages of Colombia, they are the ones who make war and not our public force that immediately runs to defend hundreds of populations of vile terrorism.

We all want peace ... from different paths we all want peace ... there is no one of good who will queire the war, we must reach an agreement ... to a true agreement in society, a peace without impunity and guarantee of non-repetition , with the effective reparation to the victims.

Thank you.

written by:

Omar Colmenares Trujillo.