Are you a professional pillow fighter, or a 95 low-cost time travel agent, or maybe real estate sales on Mars is your profession? It doesn't matter. Whatever it is you do, however complex or intricate, Monday.com can help you organize, work a straight, and make it more efficient. Monday.com is the one centralized platform for everything work-related. And with Monday.com, work is just easier. Monday.com, for whatever you run, go to Monday.com to learn more. What do Mattel, Banana Republic, Butcherbox, and Glossier all have in common? They power their businesses with Shopify. Shopify is the most innovative and scaled commerce platform on the planet. That also happens to have the best converting checkout on the planet. And that's no industry secret. That's Shopify. Learn more at Shopify.com/Enterprise. Welcome to the new Books Network. Hello, and welcome to another episode on the new Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher. And I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Andreas Feldmann about his book titled Repotores of Terrorism, Organizational Identity and Violence in Columbia Civil War, published by Columbia University Press in 2024. This book examines a whole bunch of quite important questions around how and why armed groups employ terrorism in different ways in the context of civil war. Given the human consequences of both terrorism and civil wars, getting a better understanding of what actually is going on, how different groups operate differently, is obviously important both in terms of academic research but also in the real world as well. So Andreas, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast to tell us about your book. Thank you, Miranda. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. It's lovely to have you. Could you please start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and explain why you decided to write this book? Good. Well, I'm an associate professor at the University of Illinois in the Department of Political Science. I am Chilean by birth. I've been living in the States for probably 20 years now. And my interest in violence and my interest in Colombian violence in particular goes back probably 30 years to my graduate work at the University of Notre Dame. I was working under Gil Lauscher, who was a very famous and very prominent refugee scholar who actually was teaching at Notre Dame and at Oxford. And I did my graduate work on internally displaced persons. So to make a long story short, I kept on examining different aspects of the civil war in Colombia. I ended up marrying a Colombia, which is also a reason why I'm very interested in the country. And I started basically looking at issues of terrorism after I graduated. So this is a long gestation type of project that was the product of several trips and thinking and exchanging views with different actors. So that's what I can basically relate to in terms of the project per se. I would say it took me probably a decade to do the research, the writing. And as I pointed out several trips to Colombia for different in different parts of the country. And during different years during this decade. Yes, that's definitely a key component of this research and a useful understanding of kind of the motivations going into the project. I wonder if you can speak as well to the stakes for you of this research. Why is this important to examine. Well, it is important because as I pointed out, you know, I started off as someone looking at refugee flows and, you know, voice migration. And during my trajectory as a scholar, I also worked in different capacities in the human rights community. I was assistant to a special rapporteur on migrant workers at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. So, as you might imagine, the use of terrorism and basically the victimization of people at the hands of different foreign parties is something very important for me in the sense of, in a way, writing their stories and just conveying the horrors of war. And consequently, probably deep down, it's something that has to do with principled matters. And I should point out what it comes to this. So, my parents were refugees. Actually, we are Jewish family. My parents were refugees. They migrated to Chile in the 1940s. So, the whole thing about political violence and the whole thing about displacement and uprooting is very dear to me and it's very personal to me. So, I think it's a way of reconnecting with this particular experience. It's in some ways, I think, you know, my whole work, my whole experience as a scholar is in many ways influenced by this thinking. I just, you know, recognizing the difficulties, the perils that people basically confront. And trying in a sober way to find, well, I won't say solutions, but at least to give voice to the people who are being victimized. So, I think this is something that, in many ways, probably deep down or unconsciously were informing my approach to this particular project. And more generally to the research I conduct overall. This is definitely important to understand. So, thank you for sharing that with us. In terms of the kind of more specific pieces that go into this research within that larger motivation, can you tell us more about the kinds of sources you've used for this book? So, I use multiple sources. I use, first of all, like I compiled a database developed by or extracted basically from the work by a religious organization in Colombia CNIP that has been actually chronicling human rights abuses for almost 30 years in Colombia. So, Colombia has this particularity, which is that to the extent that civil society is quite sturdy and resourceful, they have been basically collecting information about what is going on in different parts of the country for a long period of time. So, I drew a lot of information about this particular source, and I systematized the kind of information that CNIP was piling up. In addition to that, as I pointed out, I spent in many months, probably all in all, probably 10 months in Colombia in different trips. So, during those trips are interviewed, a lot of people. Some of the most important people I interview were humanitarian workers, delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross, people working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, people working with the Norwegian Refugee Council, and many other local NGOs, actually were deployed and were trying to help people in what is in a more technical term in terms of humanitarian work, known as opening basically humanitarian space. And I was trying to establish a dialogue with the warring parties to remind them the obligations under international humanitarian law. So these people have been deployed for a long time. They are oftentimes foreigners, Swiss, French, European, some Latin American, and they have a very acute and very like, once understanding on the conflict. So I spoke to them extensively. I spoke to human rights officials. I spoke to government officials. I spoke to journalists. I spoke to scholars. So one particular set of actors I did not speak to were basically members of the armed parties. There were several reasons for that. But one of the reasons was that when it comes to terrorism studies, there's this great discrepancy or this great controversy as to whether the testimonies of groups that are carrying out this type of tactic should be taking into consideration when investigating this. Because this this general tendency on the part of groups utilizing this technique, or the static rather, to basically try to, to minimize what they're doing and to just like spin it at this they would be something different. So the kind of information you might collect from them is not always very reliable. And consequently, instead of doing that, what I did, because their voices was very important in order to try to establish exactly how the repertoire would work and why did they choose certain repertoire of action, certain repertoire of terrorism. So I relied on judicial records, the judicial system in Colombia has been undergoing or undertaking several very prominent cases in which they were basically looking at cases against paramilitary commanders guerrilla commanders and many members of the armed forces. During those proceedings during those trials, very interesting and important and revealing information about the things I was trying to investigate came to the fore and were legally sanctioned so it was a good way of actually dodging this problem of trying to interview people who are not being very candid about their answers when it comes to using this type of violence. That last part I think is so important given that to be difficulty constraints that we can often find for sources on these sorts of topics so thank you for telling us a bit more about the sources you've used to investigate this. And that lets us now talk about kind of the overview of the argument I suppose before we get into some details. So, on a big picture level, how do different organizational identities lead to different rapporteurs of terrorism. Well, so perhaps we should explain a little bit like the general framework of the project so as I was mentioning when I started researching this matter in Colombia, something that became very apparent in the interviews I did, especially to humanitarian workers was the fact that people knew exactly what type of organization was behind the given act. So that in some ways intrigued me, how is it possible that someone would know who was the culprit who was basically the one who committed a certain act of violence just by knowing what type of violence was committed. So, if you know a bombing incident or a kidnapping or a massacre with particular types of conditions in particular this idea of overkill and I don't want to spend too much time talking about it but it's this idea that people in some ways brutalize the remains of people to basically maximize levels of fear so that intrigued me and that led me to believe that there was something interesting in the sense that, simply put, different armed parties were using different types of violent terrorist attacks, and that in a way was needed to be investigated because oftentimes people have even scholars have these arguments that armed groups tend to act in similar ways that it doesn't really matter what actor it is. It's going to be deploying violence in similar ways, so I was trying to reconstruct inductively this puzzle, and you know it became apparent to me that you know parties had this repertoire of action this repertoire of terrorism. And by this I mean distinct and recognizable combination of particular types of terrorist attacks that are employed by an armed party over an extended period of time. And when I started looking at the data, this became apparent so what started basically as, you know, a hunch derived from a more in personistic account on the part of humanitarian worker became actually an empirical regular when I started looking at the data. And that's the reason why I compiled this massive database looking at different types of terrorism attacks, four types in particular massacres bombings summary executions and kidnappings. But that it was clear that paramilitary groups were more prone to using magic massacres and summary executions, and not really very prone to using either kidnapping sort bombings. Obviously, that guerrilla groups in particular, the far, were more prone to using, you know explosive devices and kidnappings as part of the report was of action. So, basically, this particular puzzle which is why armed parties are using different types of of repertoire, needed to be in a way it's flame. So, I came up with an argument that has to do with the groups identity. I am claiming in the book that what really in some ways determines this variation in the type of repertoire of action that groups have, are what I call organizational identities, which I define the central distinctive and enduring attributes distinguishing an armed party from other warring parties. So, the argument actually draws on two sets of literatures. On the one hand, work on organizational identity, looking at how different organizations actually shape particular modes of identity. Secondly, constructivism, which is an important and really intriguing theory in international relations that in a way is pointing out to the fact that oftentimes, actors or agents develop a certain identity. And that as opposed to, or rather than simple rational elements or rationalistic accounts, what really the rise behavior is, you know, these agents particular identity. So, I started building up my argument based on this, on this particular sort of conceptualization of what accounted for this different repertoire of terrorism. I don't know if this explains it, it's a complex argument that I tried to explain it in the best possible way in simple terms. What do Mattel, Banana Republic, Butcherbox, and Glossier all have in common? They power their businesses with Shopify. Shopify is the most innovative and scaled commerce platform on the planet that also happens to have the best converting checkout on the planet. And that's no industry secret. That's Shopify. Learn more at Shopify.com/enterprise Yeah, no, I think this gives us a lot then to talk about, right, that did definitely make sense and now I'd like to go into more detail. So, if we talk about some specific groups, right, the ELN and the FARC being kind of the two most famous ones when we're talking about Columbia, can you sort of draw for us the different repertoires of terrorism and motives that we see if we compare them? Well, this is quite intriguing because normally one of the things you would find is that people would consider, and perhaps I should preface by saying that both the FARC and the ELN are both insurgent organizations that came to be around the same time in the 1960s after the Cuban Revolution. And consequently, as a revolutionary organizations, they would presume that they were utilizing similar types of, you know, of repertoires of action that were, in essence, revolutionary. Interestingly, when you start like taking up the data, there are important differences between the two. So, for instance, the ELN was reluctant to use bombing attacks against the civilian population in ways that the FARC was not. And at the same time, the ELN was more prone to using summary execution than the FARC. This particular trend is not all that, you know, marked, but it's still like there. So you find, interestingly, not only differences between groups that are antagonistic. So the differences between, say, paramilitary organizations, which are self defense groups that came to be in the 1980s composed by different types of, you know, groups, landowners, members of the security forces and then members of organized crime, in particularly different Colombian cartels, in particular, the managing cartel, and they were utilizing violence in a different way. What is particularly interesting is that it is not only that you find differences between, as I mentioned, groups that are antagonistic, but you're going to find differences in groups that are relatively, you know, that are fighting for the same cause. In the case of guerrillas between the ELN and the FARC, and in the case of paramilitaries also distinctions in the way that state security forces were employing terrorism during the civil war. Interestingly, the state security forces, in other words, the Colombian state, the army intelligence services, in other sort of institutions of the Colombian state, were fighting alongside paramilitary organizations against guerrilla groups. And, interestingly, their repertoire of action there, they were not the same. For instance, when it comes to the use of overkill, state security forces never used overkill. They avoided that deliberately, whereas paramilitary groups on the contrary used it systematically to, in a way, maximize fear. But there's another interesting thing as well. It's not only that repertoire of action vary. It's that oftentimes the same type of attack may be used in a different way by different actors. So take, for instance, kidnapping, that was widely used by guerrilla groups. But a military groups were reluctant to using kidnappings. But when they used it, they basically avoided any kind of publicity, because in their view. And given their own basically objectives, utilizing kidnapping and basically, publicizing it would be seen, as in some ways, transforming them into something that is acting to this revolutionary insurgent goal that guerrilla has had. So they used it, but in a different way, in a much more supertitious way, or look at, you know, the use of massacre, which, especially in the case of fart was widely used. A fart for the most part was absolutely reluctant to utilizing any sort of overkill, because that was considered to be an act that would identify themselves that would identify the group as being operating in ways that were resembling, you know, paramilitary groups. So, one important thing that perhaps I did not mention, but I would like to end this, this particular explanation by, by, by explaining it. Groups utilize different manifestations of violence, in this case, you know, laboratories of terrorism as, you know, ways to signal the presence in a particular area. So, to convey to the population that they are the ones behind this particular form of violence. So in this way, they are clearly communicating to the population and communicating, of course, by threatening this particular, you know, group of individuals that they are present in this particular community. So these are like calling cards that groups are using to influence and to control different types of populations during, you know, context of civil war. Well, and this goes back to what you were saying right at the beginning that people on the ground could identify which group had done what just by the type of violence that had been enacted. This idea of a calling card and kind of make sense of that right that this knowledge, you know, that in fact shows that trying to use the violence as the calling card was working if people were able to make these identifications. You've just told us about the differences between the different groups, well, the FARC and the LN but also as you said the power militaries in the state. What about differences over time, have the repertoires of terrorism changed since the Peace Accord was signed in November 2016. Yeah, that's a really good question in some with which I wrestled a lot because the item that I'm using is actually a constructivist argument as I pointed out so that means that identities are not fixed. And they change over time as a result of a complex socialization process that involves different elements. It involves ideology. It involves basically the conditions that led to the creation of a given group. It involves basically the fact that oftentimes different types of individuals might be joining these groups and in particular in the case of paramilitary groups, members of organized crime. And then leadership also changes. So leadership plays a very important role in this whole process because in many ways leaders in particular commanders actually filter the information, filter this identity and transform this identity into repertoire of action are later basically socialized through the organization through different types of institutionalization mechanisms in particular military training. So let me give you an example. The FARC and the UN started incorporating, especially the FARC, explosive attacks into the repertoire of action. So leaders started basically developing this particular expertise by consulting with other groups, basically that we're utilizing this in different settings. So for instance, during the 1990 during the creation of this demilitarized song, where the Colombian, where the Colombian areas were basically stationed during the peace negotiations with the Colombian government. And between 1998 and 2002, several members of the IRA, the Irish Republican army travel to Colombia to basically train FARC operatives on the use of explosives. So this goes to show the way in which this socialization mechanisms and these identities being transformed into concrete ways of utilizing violence. Identities change, and there's a huge discussion, a huge controversy nowadays in Colombia about, you know, what people are calling the criminalization of some of these groups, in particular, former FARC members, the FARC, as you pointed out, Miranda negotiated a piece of code with the Colombian government and a fair share of the FARC actually demobilized. In the case of the UN, it has remained basically active. Well, many of these, many of the remaining members of the FARC were still basically fighting. They have actually gradually and increasingly become more and more involved with different shims or different schemes of organized crime and illicit types of businesses. So that leads you to think that probably, at some level, the identity of groups like the FARC and the UN have changed. And so they have so, interestingly, there's a certain degree of inertia in these groups, whereby, despite levels of despite changes in the ideological approach, despite changes in the leadership, they cling to certain repertoire of action. And they cling to certain, in this case, they cling to certain repertoire of terrorism that actually last over time. They have gradually changed. They are, in some ways, less stark. The differences between the groups that there's a certain level of continuity in the way they are deploying this kinds of violence and I need to keep on digging into this because I only looked at three years. And after the signing of the Peace Accord, so this warrants more investigation as to whether this change of identity is actually really creating a change in the repertoire or whether the original type of identity. And the repertoire that were created last over time as a result of inertia. It was definitely, I think, a really interesting part of the book because, of course, since the Peace Accord is a not that long ago, but also is a very big political change so to understand the impact it has on violence is definitely a contribution of the book. And links it as well very much to kind of what's still going on this, you know, this isn't just a historical piece of work. Can you talk us through some of the key implications of what you found out in terms of policy and in theory. Well, in terms of policy, and I think that's that I've told, I mentioned something I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, which is that my main objective with this other than just like tracing this interesting puzzle, this puzzle about how violence is being utilized in civil wars, how terrorism in particular is utilizing utilizing civil war. My main objective is to try to find ways in which this in which humanitarian space can be opened in ways that you can reach populations that are being victimized and try to basically carve out ways to protect them. And this goes as many humanitarian workers know it for a fact to basically understand the motivations that groups have and not only the motivations are also the behavior of groups. And how do they actually act over time. So knowing that they have certain repertoire that they have certain tendencies that might open this particular way of engagement of humanitarian engagement with this group. That's a particular element that is that is quite important. So how do you, how do you basically utilize this information to try to enhance the protection of civilians. It is extremely difficult, of course. But I think that the main element here is that the more you understand how far this thing, the more you understand how the ones leading these groups actually operate the more chance you have to carve out some sort. There is some measure of humanity that might help this that might help populations that are living under these groups to survive and to probably be on heart. That's one thing. On the other hand, I think it's important in the sense of trying to in a way illustrate an important element which is that not all armed parties are the same. They don't act in the same way. And so oftentimes something that is, I would say trivialized, but it's, it exists this idea that, for instance, all insurgent groups are the same that they all operate the same. And this is something I really wanted to dispel because I'm sure that that's a gross oversimplification about it. And I show it in the book, and which is something that any humanitarian worker, and probably any victim knows that it's not only that there are changes in the way this different groups act. There are differences in the way many units within this groups act. And these, in a way, derive from elements about leadership. It derives from, you know, the people who are deployed in certain areas. So, dispelling the idea that all groups operate in the same way. And this gross oversimplification thinking that they all are acting in a rational way that in a way mimics one another is probably an erroneous way of understanding the model. The more nuanced and the more textured and a more granular way of understanding how things look actually in a context of civil war. Lots of very important things therefore I think a bunch of different kinds of listeners to pick up on so thank you for kind of laying that out for us. Before I ask you what you might be working on now that the book is done is there anything further you'd like to share about this book. No, I think well I try to explain it in the most, you know, in the simplest way. It's not an easy book to read. I confess that some of the information is actually hard. But I think it's a reminder of the complexities of war. I think that's the, that's what I would try to underscore here. More than anything, it's a reminder about the intricacies of war. And the fact that we need to listen basically to the protagonist need to listen to victims to in a way get a more a deeper understanding of these conflicts. Yeah, I agree that's a good point to highlight as we close our discussion on the book. Maybe Miranda perhaps something I forgot, please. The last chapter we, one of the last chapters I did for the book was, you know, a chapter as you pointed out on the post, you know, 2016 period in Colombia, that has been, you know, important in the sense of saying there's a great controversy in Colombia as to whether the nature of the conflict has changed to the extent that many of these groups actually are engaging in more systematic levels with, you know, illicit industries. In more like, in a different way of saying it, they're becoming criminal in nature. So in other words, like following the seminal work by by Ben Lessing, we are basically in a context that is different, that is not the conventional type of civil world but rather what he coins that as criminal wars. These are wars in which different types of entities with criminal objectives and motivations are fighting one another, in which the state is actually fighting not for political purposes, but whether to constrain the action of these groups. So I analyze this through this particular lens and utilize Mexico as a shadow case to try to see whether this particular argument that I was laying out for Colombia also work in the case of Mexico that also has a very, very dramatically complex and in bloody violence going on. We don't know exactly what what the violence in Mexico is. That's the reason why I'm not using the word on conflict in Mexico. This controversy has to the political nature of violence in Mexico. But suffice is to say that people like Lessing or the excellent work by by Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Lee and others, having a way pointed out that Mexico is in the midst of a criminal war along the lines of what I just described. So when looking at, you know, the Mexican case and I also did field work in Mexico. It is, it is very interesting to find that just like in the case of Colombia, I found basically a wide variety of of repertoire on the part of actors. The Mexican security forces, self defense forces and different types of criminal groups. You found basically the commonalities in the Colombian and in the Mexican case. So which opens up or in some ways provide some, some measure of support to the argument and making on Colombia. So the shadow case that is preliminary, in a way support some of the findings, some of the more general findings in the Colombian case. So perhaps this is something I omitted, but I think it's an important way of in a way open up a discussion to what's what will come next, which is trying to find out the conditions under raging conflicts in countries like Mexico or Ecuador. This is also in the midst of this is very, very acute type of violence that is criminal in nature, or I could also add Haiti. That is in a really, really, really hard situation nowadays. So is that what you're researching next? Actually, I am doing some work on that and doing some work on the E.L.N. I'm looking at the E.L.N. and the National Liberation Army in Colombia, but I'm actually doing research on the transformation of the E.L.N. from a conventional guerrilla group into a bi-national criminal group operating in Venezuela that has become sort of the armed paramilitary force defending the Venezuelan regime from internal threats on the part of opposition groups and other groups challenging the Maduro administration. So I'm doing work on that. I'm a little bit tired about, you know, this particularly big type of research. So I'm doing two other projects that are a bit more uplifting. One is looking at transit migration in the Americas and the other one that I'm beginning, basically, is looking at the Norwegian involvement in peace accords in Latin America, and how that has basically created important conditions for the signature of peace accords in the region. The Norwegians have been involved in the region for a long period of time since Central America. They were very, very critical actors in the 2016 peace accords between the Colombian government and the FARC. And they have been also working very silently but very systematically in the Venezuelan context. So I'm beginning a research on that because it's something that interests me because in some ways is something a little bit more uplifting and more positive in the sense of trying to find ways in which we can ameliorate violence and we can sort of help to bring parties together and negotiate peace agreements and try to, in a way, do something concrete about these situations. Well, those all sound like very interesting projects and yes, some of them more uplifting so thank you for giving us a sneak peek of what you're working on next. And of course, while you're doing that listeners can read the book we've been talking about titled Repitors of Terrorism, Organizational Identity and Violence in Columbia Civil War, published by Columbia University Press in 2024. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. Thank you so much Meana. It was a pleasure talking to you. [music]
