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• State of War. Political Violence and Counterinsurgency in Colombia [top]
  Report compiled and written by Human Rights Watch
  Human Rights Watch at this time was chaired by Peter D. Bell, with Stephen L. Kass and Marina Pinto as vice chairs; Juan E. Mendez was the executive director; Cynthia Arnson and Anne Manuel were associate directors; Robin Kirk was the Andean researcher; MaryJane Camejo and Gretta Tovar Siebentritt were research associates and Vanessa Jimenez and Ben Penglase were associates
  1st published in 1993 in the United States by Human Rights Watch in paperback, 149pp, ISBN 1564321185

About this book/synopsis: On November 8, 1992, Colombian President César Gaviria Trujillo adopted a series of emergency decrees restricting civil liberties, granting additional powers to the military, and punishing contact or dialogue with insurgent groups. The decrees marked a reversion to authoritarian patterns of rule supposedly left behind with the passage of the 1991 Constitution. And despite the adoption of emergency measures, the government has failed to achieve its central goal: winning a decisive upper hand in the thirty-year war against Colombia's 7,000 guerrillas. Colombia is Latin America's leading recipient of U.S. military aid, ostensibly provided for counter-narcotics measures, but the armed forces' priorities remain counterinsurgency tactics. The centrepiece of army strategy has been the creation of three Mobile Brigades, elite units of professional soldiers that receive special training and operate in areas of greatest insurgent activity.

The units have been implicated in a shocking number of abuses, including extra-judicial executions, disappearances, rapes, torture, the wanton burning of houses, crops and food, indiscriminate bombings and aerial strafing, beatings and death threats. For their part, guerilla forces have engaged in a disturbing pattern of violations of international humanitarian law, including the killing and torture of captured security force officers, selective assassinations of critics, attacks on civilian targets, and the destruction of the environment by repeated bombings of oil pipelines, putitng the civilian population in grave danger. The determination of the guerrillas to demonstrate their strength and the government's equal determination to incapacitate the insurgency, is sure to prolong the stalemate characterizing Latin America's longest-running war and increase the suffering of those civilians caught in the cross fire

Contents:
Acknowledgements; Introduction

PART 1:
A Panorama of Violence
The Declaration of the State of Internal Commotion
From State of Emergency to Total War

Impunity:
Uraba, Trujillo, El Nilo, Los Uvos, Fusagasuga, UNASE, Senior Military Involvement with Paramilitary Group

The Report of the Procuraduria

Irregular Use of the "Public Order" Courts

The Erosion of Constitutional Guarantees

The Law to Regulate States of Exception

Tutela

Attacks on Human Rights Monitors

The Drug War

PART II:
The Mobile Brigades
A Pattern of Violations
Mobile Brigade 2 and The Middle Magdalena

A Case Study: Meta
Climate of Violence
Impunity

Guerrilla Abuses in Conflict Zones:
The FARC
The ELN
The EPL

PART III:
United States Policy

Appendix 1
Appendix 2