Terrorism and organized crime in Colombia

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In this chapter, we analyze the nexus between organized crime and terror in Colombia. There, different armed actors (insurgents, paramilitaries and drug cartels) have engaged in organized crime activities, primarily drug production and trafficking, to either fund a higher cause or just to make money. We propose two variables to analyze the extent to which such armed actors have also resorted to terrorism: territorial control (inasmuch a group achieving control acts as a proto- or parallel state) and the relation with the state (confrontation or collaboration). We first present short case studies and then conduct a quantitative analysis. We find that the terrorism-organized crime nexus in Colombia followed a different logic depending on the armed actors’ relation to the state and their ability to control peripheral territories: although all actors resorted to organized crime activities, whether instrumentally or not, massacres were used for territorial control in the periphery and bombings in the main cities to pressure the government. Low territorial control and a tolerant relation with the state meant little to no use of terrorism.