ABSTRACT
By 2006 Colombia had been effectively in a state of civil war for at least 42 years and there are no signs that this will end soon. Rather the warring parties are constantly adjusting their state-making strategies to the dynamics of the ‘system of violence’, ‘war system’, and to the new or reconfigured tactics of their opponents in the context of a of long standing political setting best described as ‘fragmented sovereignty’. 1 The all-out war declared by the regime of President Alvaro Uribe Velez (2002 – 06; 2006 – present) encouraged the insurgency, particularly the main insurgent group, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), to return to guerrilla tactics, abandoning its mobile ‘war of position’. Thus far the military confrontation has revealed that there is no fundamental change in the correlation of forces; hence the conflict is likely to continue indefinitely. Against this wider backdrop this article seeks to address one question in particular: the decision of one of the key warring actors, the counterinsurgency group known as the United Auto Defenses of Colombia (AUC), to ceremoniously demobilise its army of some 31 000 people. This article will try to analyse the demobilisation decision and examine its significance. Before doing so the article sets out the historical context in an effort to explain the more general phenomenon of private armies. It then discusses the contemporary relationship between the AUC and the narcobourgeoisie and how this latter social grouping has managed to control the commanding structures of the AUC, in the process building a ‘reactionary configuration’ propelled by a rentier-based political economy grounded in labour repression. In this vein the article also examines the relationship between the state and the AUC in the wake of the new law that potentially legitimises the group’s political power and wealth, consolidating its position as new caudillos. In this fashion this article clarifies the social class composition of the counterinsurgency and the insurgency in an attempt to offer a better understanding of the political economy and social dynamics of the conflict. Thus the article assesses the latest phase of the civil war and its wider implications for the continuation and/or deepening of the ‘fragmentation of sovereignty’ of the Colombian nation-state, its endemic crisis of hegemony, and the resultant and ongoing, albeit changing, ‘war system’. 2
