Targeted by Both Sides

Since the mid-1990s, the rightwing paramilitary AUC (Autodefensas Unidas de Córdoba—United Self-Defense Groups of Córdoba)—an umbrella organization that encompasses most of the paramilitary groups—has been responsible for most of the killing and forced displacement of civilians. According to the Colombian Ministry of Defense, "[They] generate terror and panic. They commit atrocities, and do so in public view, so that everyone in the community will flee in a stampede." The paramilitaries were responsible for 76 percent of the 671 massacres committed between January and October 2000. In the first three months of 2001, they massacred some 530 civilians.

The paramilitaries ostensibly depopulate towns and villages to deprive the guerrillas of support. However, their underlying objective is to drive peasants from the land for the benefit of their wealthy patrons—large landholders, business people, and narco traffickers.

Colombia’s two main guerrilla groups, the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Colombian Armed Revolutionary Forces) and the ELN (Ejército Nacional de Liberación-National Liberation Army) commonly target local officials, civic leaders, and business owners whom they perceive as opponents. Following these attacks and murders, other civilians flee to avoid a similar fate.

The FARC and the ELN fund their insurgencies through the kidnap for ransom of wealthy and middle-class civilians and taxes on coca growers and narco traffickers in areas under their control. The FARC frequently recruit minors, some as young as nine years old. Many families flee guerrilla-controlled areas to safeguard their children.

The Colombian army is seldom directly guilty of human rights abuse or forcible displacement of civilians, but many observers say that is because paramilitaries now do the dirty work. According to Human Rights Watch, in 2000 "there continued to be abundant, detailed, and continuing evidence of direct collaboration between the military and paramilitary groups."