Armed Conflict Survey 2019

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000764147
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Arms Control
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Armed Conflict Survey provides in-depth analysis of the political, military and humanitarian dimensions of all major armed conflicts, as well as data on fatalities, refugees and internally displaced persons. Compiled by the IISS, publisher of The Military Balance, it is the standard reference work on contemporary conflict.

The book assesses key developments in 36 high-, medium- and low-intensity conflicts, including those in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Israel–Palestine, Southern Thailand, Colombia and Ukraine.

The Armed Conflict Survey features essays by some of the world's leading experts on armed conflict, including Mats Berdal, Elisabeth Jean Wood, Julia Bleckner, Nelly Lahoud, William Reno and Carrie Manning. They write on:

• UN peacekeeping;

• conflict-related sexual violence;

• the Islamic State's shifting narrative;

• the changing foundations of governance by armed groups; and

• rebel-to-party transitions.

The authors' discussion of principal thematic and cross-national trends complements the detailed analysis of each conflict at the core of the book.

The Armed Conflict Survey also includes maps, infographics and multi-year data, as well as the IISS Chart of Conflict.

Conflict Reports

Destroyed buildings in the opposition-held southern city of Daraa, Syria, in August 2018

1
Americas

Brazil (Rio de Janeiro)

Colombia

El Salvador

Honduras

Mexico (Cartels)

MS–13 gang members at a detention centre in San Salvador, El Salvador

Regional Introduction

The five armed conflicts currently active on the American continent share various characteristics and one key driver. In Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico and Rio de Janeiro, organised criminal groups fight one another and the state to control the production, distribution routes and sale of illicit drugs, both within the countries where they operate and across their borders. Commonly referred to as drug-trafficking organisations (DTOs), criminal syndicates or cartels, the non-state armed actors in these conflicts are in fact neither monolithic nor hierarchical organisations. Instead, they compete and use armed violence to control territory rather than coordinating to fix market prices (as economic oligopolies do). They engage in various illicit activities, diversifying their portfolios beyond the drugs trade (including arms trafficking, people smuggling, kidnapping for ransom and protection rackets), or enter the narcotics business having evolved from their insurgent origins (as in the case of the National Liberation Army (ELN) in Colombia). Urban militias establish sophisticated extortion systems to exploit local resources and businesses (as in the case of Red Command (CV) in Rio de Janeiro’s slums).

Although the criminal bands (BACRIMs) in Colombia, the maras in Central America and the cartels in Mexico depend on international networks for their main sources of business and income, their activity is deeply rooted in local dynamics. The drivers and consequences of these armed conflicts are closely intertwined with local communities and institutions and shaped by specific national policies and politics. Crucially, while seeking to maxim-ise profit, Latin America’s criminal organisations establish sophisticated systems of social control and capture state structures. Armed groups recruit foot soldiers locally and exploit poverty, marginalisation and limited state reach. They also penetrate enforcement institutions at every level, through bribery, collusion, intimidation and violence.

The conflicts in Latin America also expose the limits of the analytical distinction between political and criminal wars. Rather than fighting the state to challenge, change, substitute it or secede from it, the armed groups in Colombia, Central America, Mexico and Rio – with the (mostly nominal) exception of the ELN – are criminal organisations without a political agenda. Instead, they seek profit, of which the international narcotics trade offers a virtually limitless source. If this key objective sets them apart from traditional, politically motivated insurgencies, it is their organisational capacity and willingness to engage the state in sustained armed confrontation that establishes them as parties to armed conflicts – if anything, ones with particularly formidable resources to fight their enemies. Similarly, just like ideologically or politically motivated groups, armed criminal groups distort social behaviour, hollow out democratic practices, erode the rule of law, disrupt local and national economies, hamper development in marginalised areas, force displacement and victimise civilians.

No official statistics exist on the casualties of these conflicts, yet there are indications that they are high. The Office of the Prosecutor General in Colombia estimates that around half of the homicides in 2018 were a result of clashes between criminal groups or were perpetrated by hitmen working for these organisations. In Mexico, media and civil-society organisations estimate cartels-mandated executions to be in the thousands. Approximately 1,000–1,500 people were killed in Rio de Janeiro this year during security operations. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) consistently ranks El Salvador’s and Honduras’s homicide rates among the highest in the world. Although intentional homicides form the basis of these statistics and are therefore not comparable as such to the metrics of conflict-related fatalities (including those used in this publication), they offer a sense of the magnitude of the problem and the impact of violence on the people living in the crossfire of criminal organisations.

Decades-long efforts to defeat these groups have failed and at times even escalated violence (as in the case of Mexico’s decapitation strategy to eliminate the cartel leaders, or Central America’s Mano Dura (‘Iron Fist’) policies). Law enforcement in the region faces two main challenges. Firstly, human-rights violations against the civilian populations are widespread. In Colombia’s rural districts, with the realisation that the demobilisation of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People’s Army (FARC–EP) would not bring the hoped-for peace dividends, dissident groups have returned to disappear civilians and tax the sale of coca paste. Secondly, throughout 2018, thousands of people from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras embarked on the perilous journey to the US border to escape rape and sex slavery, constant death threats, extortion and forced recruitment by the gangs. They reported, however, to be often more scared of the police back home. Lacking the capacity and viable intelligence to confront the gangs effectively, Honduran and Salvadoran security forces harass the small fish, targeting youth who fit the profile of gang recruits.

Criminal organisations seek to maximise profit and establish systems of social control

At the policy level, state responses have focused on increased militarisation and ever-harsher measures. In 2018, politicians who promised a strong approach to organised crime won the presidential elections in three of the region’s countries. In Brazil, presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro pledged to wage war on violent crime in Rio’s favelas and to grant immunity for crimes committed by on-duty police. President Iván Duque campaigned against a peace agreement with the ELN – Colombia’s last remaining Marxist–Leninist guerrilla group that controls much of the country’s coca-growing regions – cancelling talks a month after his inauguration. Duque also delivered on promises to roll back certain provisions of the peace agreement with the FARC–EP, including lenient judicial measures for former armed-group members who submit to the truth and reconciliation process. The campaign tone of Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) was different. Since his inauguration in December, however, he has proceeded to create a National Guard – an elite military police focused on combatting drug cartels. While hybrid forces and joint operations have shaped the responses to armed groups in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, and the armed forces have taken on an increasing number of national-security roles, police resources have been neglected. Positive results from military measures are still to materialise, but their potential to weaken the discredited law-enforcement institutions is easy to foresee.

Although not fully fledged armed conflicts, Guatemala and Venezuela are the situations to monitor in 2019. President Nicolás Maduro’s government has responded violently to peaceful demonstrations demanding an end to its rule, with the proportion of deaths due to police and military action on the rise in 2018, according to local organisations. The humanitarian crisis continues to deteriorate, with medicine and food shortages, spiralling child mortality and malnutrition, and increasing displacement to neighbouring countries. Civil militias have supported the recent military repression of anti-government protests, beating demonstrators while passing through the crowds on motorbikes. The opposition’s loose organisation and peaceful stance, and the armed forces’ cohesiveness, have so far prevented the situation from escalating into an armed conflict, but it is unclear how long they will continue to do so. Meanwhile, Guatemala faces many of the same challenges as El Salvador and Honduras: gang-dominated trafficking, weak security forces and dysfunctional judicial institutions. Although the maras operating there have not reached the organisational sophistication of those in the neighbouring countries, they may soon pose a similar threat to the Guatemalan state.

Brazil (Rio de Janeiro)

Source: IISS

Overview

The conflict in 2018

The metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro experienced another violent year in 2018, with a new military intervention and increased gunfights between gangs, militias and the state’s Military Police (PMERJ, or simply PM). The political aspiration of ‘pacifying’ and bringing socio-economic development to slum areas in order to prevent gang violence was abandoned in political discourse and significantly reduced in practice, with the closing of several Pacifying Police Units (UPPs). The policy known as ‘pacification’ had helped to significantly reduce criminal violence in the five years following its creation in 2008. Its decline from 2013 came at a time of political turmoil in Brazil, with rising support for security policies centred on lethal force against suspected criminals.

On 16 February 2018, President Michel Temer announced that the military would assume responsibility for security in the state of Rio. The president’s announcement was triggered by the wave of robberies and gunfights that occurred during Carnival (Rio’s main annual festival), but the gradual increase in homicides in recent years and the constant gunfights between criminal groups were also factors. The measure was supported by the governor of Rio de Janeiro state and placed all local security institutions under the command of Army General Walter Souza Braga Netto until 31 December 2018.

The initial months of the intervention saw no progress in security indicators such as robbery and homicides, while intentional homicide numbers increased. Overall security indicators improved in the second half of the year, but the intensity of the armed confrontation between rival criminal groups and between them and the security forces was still high at the end of the year.

Key statistics

The conflict to 2018

Armed violence in Rio de Janeiro is due to the clashes between organised criminal groups against each other and the security forces. Rival gangs fight to conquer territory or to gain control over illicit economies, including drugs, extortion and unlicensed services (such as public transportation, natural-gas provision and cable TV). Armed criminal groups publicly patrol the streets and violently oppose the arrival of rival groups or security forces, although they do not oppose the entrance of some government services such as schools and health facilities. Armed groups’ territorial control does not therefore equate to a complete absence of the state.

In 2008, then-security secretary José Mariano Beltrame announced a new policy, which became known as ‘pacification’. It centred on establishing a more permanent state presence in the slums, to be supported – but not entirely consisting of – police interventions. Part of Beltrame’s motivation was to create a stable environment in preparation for Rio’s staging of the football World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016. The policy envisioned an approach whereby the PM, sometimes with support from the armed forces, would enter gang-dominated territories, take control and establish a UPP base that would regularly patrol the area and build relations with the local communities. The next step of the strategy consisted of the arrival of other state institutions and infrastructure investment to provide better health, education, sanitation, transportation, financing and jobs – but this component fell short of expectations, hampered by political rivalries inside the state government and a long-standing silo mentality among public agencies.

The programme led to a significant reduction in violence (see Figure 1). According to state-government figures, from 2007 (the year before the beginning of the UPPs) to 2014, intentional homicides plunged by 65.5% in areas with UPP bases, whereas in the mu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Editor’s Introduction
• Notes on Methodology
• Global Trends
• Conflict Reports
• Index