Colombia's quiet demobilization: A security dividend?

Paramilitaries are a routine feature of contemporary civil conflicts. Their involvement in persecuting violence as proxies of the state, however, is undergoing a qualitative transformation. Specifically, paramilitaries are increasingly distanced from state structures, operating in an intermediate area between public and private spheres. In many cases they are awake to the possibilities of accumulating private capital (see Duffield 2001, 2007). Moreover, in the wake of new human rights mechanisms such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), states are less inclined to invest in violence entrepreneurs than before.1 Thus unmoored, paramilitary techniques of violence are potentially more damaging for individuals and communities. In Colombia’s long-running civil war, paramilitaries are the main perpetrators of human rights violations.