Indirect rule, intra-systemic actors and impasses: a review

Abstract

Paramilitarism in Colombia has a very specific meaning: we are referring to counterinsurgent groups, which typically have an openly right-wing and conservative agenda, often operating with the tolerance, if not the collusion, sectors of the State. It has been a massive phenomenon in Colombia: in 2005 some 30,000 members of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC -United Self-Defences of Colombia) demobilised. Though there is still debate over how many of those were real combatants, still it is a massive figure particularly for a country that already has around 500,000 men in its armed forces and police. As such, Colombian paramilitarism has been subject to much academic interest for a long time, as expressed in an ever-growing academic and grey literature on the subject (see for example, Grajales 2011, Grajales 2013, 2017, Medina 1990, Medina and Téllez 1994, HRW 2001, Duncan 2006, Piccoli 2008, Hristov 2009, 2014, López and Ávila 2010, Zelik 2015). Why another book on this matter then? The book of Gutiérrez-Sanín stands aside on a number of grounds that make it not only worth reading to anybody interested in the Colombian conflict, but also, in my humble opinion, the finest addition to date to this literature.