プラン・コロンビアとコロンビアの民主主義

「民主化」以後のラテンアメリカ政治

抄録

In today's Colombia, more than ten thousand people, including many civilians, are killed every year as a result of intensive armed conflicts and terrorist attacks. Also there are about three thousand kidnaps per year, mostly civilians, politicians and journalists, committed by guerrillas and paramilitary squads. All this victimization has been brought about by the country's recent socio-political situation, which Colombians refer to simply as la violencia. The authors of la violencia are divided into three categories. First, the Marxist anti-government guerrilla groups which mainly consist of two organizations, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) with eighteen thousand soldiers and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) with three thousand soldiers. Second, the Colombia-based international drug trafficking cartels with hired gunmen and terrorists. Third, the ultra-rightist paramilitary squads integrated into an organization called the United Self-defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). All these groups are engaged in either attacking the national armed forces and police forces or fighting each other. This has resulted in the creation of a civil war-like situation throughout the country.
The main reasons why Colombia has fallen into such a desperate situation are above all the wide disparity in wealth between the rich and the poor, social injustice and corruption. In addition, however, we can point to the lack of governability to contain these illegal armed groups or the hardline policies designed to resolve the conflicts only through a show of a force during past two decades. In short, recent years have witnessed a paralysis of democracy in Colombian politics and society. Theoretically, a modern nation-state legitimizes its monopoly of violence via national military and police forces to secure national security and law and order and to maintain its ultimate power. But in Colombia's case, the existence of several forces in opposition to the national ones is challenging the sovereignty of the state. This sovereignty is further challenged by the 42, 000km² so-called “demilitarized zone” in the middle of the country which was established as a result of peace talks between the government and FARC in 1999. The existence of this demilitarized zone where no official army or police personnel can enter is evidence of Colombian sovereignty being at bay.
In 1999, the government led by President Pastrana launched a comprehensive policy package named “Plan Colombia” to ease this situation by putting an end to armed conflicts. The government requested the international community to provide a billion dollars of financial assistance to implement this plan. The aim of this paper is, firstly, to take a general view of the illegal armed groups; secondly, to assess past governments' policies toward la violencia; and finally, to critically analyze the “Plan Colombia”. The author concludes that the Plan is too simplistic and one-sided to resolve the armed conflicts and demonstrates per se the critical situation of Colombian democracy.