Global Borderlands

Chapter 8 discusses the implications of interactions among violent non-state groups for security dynamics in borderlands and elsewhere across the globe. It argues that these implications are contingent on an approach that transcends externally imposed categories, particularly those related to space, time, and agency. The chapter presents how the book’s findings help develop “second-best” policy interventions that target those security challenges arising from violent non-state groups that are mitigated most effectively. To stimulate further debate and research conducive to tackling these challenges, the chapter sketches out three lines of inquiry on which a borderland lens can shed new light: transnational borderlands (space), a changing security landscape (time), and the relations among people, violent non-state groups, and the state (agency).

The Border Effect

Chapter 7 argues that borderlands in vulnerable regions magnify security challenges of violence, crime, and governance that exist across the globe. It demonstrates that, in vulnerable regions, the transnationality of borderlands and their distance from state centers produce a “border effect,” the confluence of weak state governance, a low-risk/high-opportunity environment, and the propensity for impunity. The chapter explains the four ways in which the border effect influences security: as a facilitator, a deterrent, a magnet, and a stigmatized space. Overlaying a transnational borderland lens on the security dynamics of the borderlands shared by Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela reveals that the border effect intensifies the various forms of insecurity that arise from the interactions among armed actors. It also disguises them to state centers. The border effect holds regardless of asymmetries in border security policies and of country-specific historical and cultural contexts in the respective border zones.

Crime and Uncertainty

Chapter 5 discusses security dynamics in the context of unstable short-term arrangements among violent non-state groups. These arrangements cluster at illicit business hubs, including at strategic nodes where various illicit flows coalesce and at the starting points of international trafficking routes. In such contexts of inter-group mistrust, community members are exposed to selective killings carried out by violent non-state groups to preempt or retaliate cheating or betrayal. This engenders a constant presentiment of danger among community members. General distrust and uncertainty erodes the community’s social fabric. Depending on the specific type of arrangement, community members can adapt their behavior to various degrees to the logics of illicit economies or employ avoidance strategies to minimize exposure to violence. Impunity across the border conceals violence against those who are considered obstacles to the illicit business.

Violence and Survival

Chapter 4 discusses security dynamics in contexts where violent non-state groups do not have any arrangement with each other. Embedded in general mistrust, the groups engage in combat or armed disputes. The chapter argues that community members experience or expect to experience physical violence and fear but can partly adapt their behavior to the rules imposed by the opposing actors to maximize chances for survival. It shows how geography and the modus operandi of the groups involved influence the extent to which communities have clarity on behavioral rules. It also explains how, during periods of “tense calm” in between violent clashes, the anticipation of an outbreak of violence fuels perceptions of insecurity. The transnationality of borderlands makes these spaces prone to impunity, lowering the threshold for violent non-state groups to resort to violence.

The Borderland Lens

Chapter 3 explains how the gap between state-centric views on borderlines and transnational realities at the margins turn borderlands in vulnerable regions into extreme cases of complex security dynamics. First, it presents how state-centric views that stop at the borderline have historically shaped security policies toward the Colombia-Ecuador and Colombia-Venezuela borders. It then contrasts these with a transnational perspective that analyzes security dynamics from within the Colombian-Ecuadorian and Colombian-Venezuelan borderlands. Adopting such a transnational borderland lens, the chapter maps violent non-state group interactions in recent history across these borderlands and contextualizes them with the spatial distribution of the various cocaine supply chain stages and interconnected forms of transnational organized crime. Together with socioeconomic and cultural conditions that vary along and across the borders, the logic of these illicit cross-border flows informs the groups’ motives for cooperation, which in turn shape their interactions.

Governance and Consent

Chapter 6 discusses security dynamics in contexts where violent non-state groups engage in relatively stable long-term arrangements with each other. They coexist or ally on the same territory, or one group dominates and engages in stable interactions at the margins of that territory. It demonstrates how these groups complement each other in assuming governance functions. Depending on the specific arrangement type, community members have reasonable certainty about the prevailing rules and on how to avoid exposure to violence. When locals consent to the groups as governance providers, shadow citizenship and shadow citizen security arise. In such situations, security emerges from a mutually reinforcing relationship between violent non-state groups and the community in which armed actors provide public goods and services, and define the rules of appropriate behavior, while community members socially recognize their illicit authority. If shadow citizenship extends across the borderline, the transnationality of borderlands disguises the armed actors’ illicit authority.

Borderlands

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the book. It starts by arguing that borderlands magnify some of the most entrenched security challenges of the world. It then contextualizes the shared borderlands of Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela within the global security challenge of violent non-state group interactions. It explains how the author combines a bottom-up approach with a global outlook on security and presents the backdrop to the cases discussed in the book. It then provides summaries of the arguments made in each chapter and states the book’s transformative aspiration of depicting entry points for achieving positive change in settings of insecurity. Finally, the chapter outlines how this goal arises from critically examining violent non-state groups and security through a borderland lens “endowed” with ethnographic methods, bringing together three themes: borderlands and borders, interactions among violent non-state groups, and how these interactions matter for the security of local communities.

Non-State Order and Security

Chapter 2 presents a theoretical framework to systematically trace how interactions among violent non-state groups influence people’s security. The first part theorizes behavioral patterns among violent non-state groups as forms of non-state order. It offers a typology of violent non-state group interactions with eight types that fall into three clusters: the “enmity” cluster, in which groups fight each other; the “rivalry” cluster, involving unstable short-term arrangements among groups with unpredictable outbreaks of violence; and the “friendship” cluster that consists of relatively stable long-term arrangements. These clusters emerge from distinct distrust-reducing mechanisms employed by the groups. The second part of the chapter introduces the analytical lens of citizen security. This lens accounts for both observed and perceived insecurity, and for repercussions of these on the state-society relationship. It highlights why and how specific violent non-state group interactions are conducive to distinct security outcomes, including violence, the erosion of social fabric, and shadow citizenship.