The legacy of rebel order: local (in)security in Colombia

ABSTRACT In the aftermath of a peace agreement, the demobilisation of armed combatants from the field of war is taken as an indication of improved security. However, in many contexts, the withdrawal of armed groups also represents the dismantling of informal sources of order for local communities. Drawing from work on rebel governance and the local turn in peace-building, I argue that rebel orders shape security experiences even after a rebel group demobilises. In Colombia, following demobilisation of the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC), local communities framed their insecurity in the face of other armed groups – including government forces – by invoking features of order previously provided by the FARC. I introduce the concept of relational security indicators, building on Mac Ginty’s everyday peace indicators, to incorporate the influence of rebel order on subjective evaluations of security. Through an inductive qualitative approach in the Departments of Antioquia and Nariño, I identified two features of FARC order, protection and structure, that framed communities’ experience of insecurity in their absence. Communities had to address the dual legacies of rebel order and violence in order to make sense of the uncertainty they faced after the FARC’s demobilisaton. Work on rebel governance has largely excluded the legacy of rebel order post-demobilisation, while local peace-building studies rarely consider the experience of local communities through the lens of rebel order. The recent demobilisation of a long-standing example of ‘rebel ruler’ such as the FARC offers an insight into how communities invoke the legacy of rebel order to evaluate and understand their insecurity during conflict transitions.