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The National Liberation Army, or Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), constitutes the smaller of two main Marxist guerilla organizations involved in Colombia's 38-year-old civil war. In 1997, after a marked increase in aggressive action by the group, the State Department officially designated the ELN as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). The struggle among the ELN, the FARC, the Colombian government, and right wing paramilitaries such as the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), has in the past decade evolved from a localized peripheral conflict to one of pervasive violence. Of the roughly 3,500 lives lost annually, the majority are civilians.
In addition to those killed, another grave consequence of the war has been widespread internal displacement, which totaled over 2.5 million citizens at the end of 2001 according to the U.S. Committee for Refugees. With the mounting instability, the displacement numbers have grown steadily. Such statistics have earned Colombia a top-three ranking in numbers of internally displaced persons, behind Sudan and possibly Angola. Although all non-governmental groups, including the FARC and the ELN, have threatened and murdered local leaders and business owners who oppose their respective causes, most of the internal displacement is created primarily by the AUC's violent efforts to rout popular bases of support for the guerilla movements. Not only does the AUC aim to expel the ELN and the FARC from their areas of control, it is also interested in expanding its share of the drug trade by appropriating territory from small and medium landowners.
Beyond being the target of these actions aimed at the populace, direct encounters with the AUC and Colombian government forces have further eroded the ELN's military capabilities and spheres of influence. Though the self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist insurgent movement once boasted over 5000 fighters at its peak in the late 1990s, these recent clashes have severely decimated the ELN's numbers. Estimates of its present forces number around 3,500 combatants, compared to the 9,000 of the AUC and the 9,000 to 12,000 of the FARC.
A vast gap in resources between the FARC the ELN may be explained in large part by its choices of financing, which has in turn been influenced by the history of the group's leadership. Unlike FARC, which traces its origins to civil unrest before the Cuban Revolution, the ELN movement began in 1964 when a group of students, inspired by Che Guevara and led by Fabio Vasquez Castano, returned from their training in Cuba. Following the death of Vasquez, the ELN was led by a series of priests until the emergence of its present leader, Nicolas Rodriguez. This legacy of priestly influence, which strongly opposed drugs on moral grounds, partly explains the relatively small scale of the ELN's drug trafficking operations. Hence, the ELN's traditional reluctance or inability to tap the drug trade as a key source of income has prevented it from acquiring the same order of military capabilities possessed currently by the FARC.
Instead, the ELN has emphasized kidnapping and extortion for its funding. In the process, it has earned notoriety as the organization responsible for the most kidnappings in the country. In the year 2001 alone, it held over 800 hostages for ransom. Most of these "financing" actions have targeted employees of foreign petroleum corporations, which the guerillas view as exploitative apparatuses of hostile interests. Statements by the ELN blame foreign oil companies for weak domestic economies, endemic poverty, and severe income inequality.
The ELN has adopted these issues as ostensible justifications for its violent pursuits. On its official website, the group claims to represent the interests of a "politically constrained and marginalized" populace that is faced with "poverty and indigence." In contrast to the FARC, whose activities and internal structure exhibit a stronger military orientation, the ELN has divided its efforts between both social work and military functions. Nevertheless, the terrorist acts of the ELN have closely resembled those of the FARC. These acts have involved disruptions of general infrastructure such as the country's electrical grid, as well as bombing attacks on foreign petroleum assets. Conveniently for the ELN, a network of numerous oil wells and pipelines crisscrosses their area of influence near the northeast border of the country.
Despite these destructive tendencies, the ELN has also set itself apart from the FARC by its seemingly greater
willingness to negotiate for peace. Since the election of the current Columbian President Andres Pastrana in 1998, negotiations between the ELN and the Colombian government have been carried out intermittently. Most recently, late last month, the government broke off the talks again, citing a lack of sincerity on the part of the ELN. According to an article on BBC online, however, the Colombian government did not seriously consider ELN demands until its negotiations with the FARC broke down in February of this year.
This recent failure in the peace process may fall within a larger possible trend portending tougher times to come for the ELN and its demands. From the time that the FARC acquired a demilitarized "clearance zone," the ELN has clamored for a similar safe haven of its own from which it could conduct negotiations, but the group's diminished influence has made its chances of exacting such a concession from the government extraordinarily slim.
Other political developments, both domestic and international, should further weaken the ELN. Within the country, the rebel movements should be concerned by the unprecedented first-round presidential election of Alvaro Uribe, a hard-liner who has promised a more intensive military campaign against all insurgent guerillas. From abroad, the United States has been considering shifting the focus of its military aid to Colombia from combating narcotics trafficking to combating terrorism. Already, the U.S. budget proposal for 2003 includes an additional $89 million earmarked for increasing security along the Caño Limón oil pipeline, a favorite target of the ELN. In short, while much of the increased resolve against terrorism has perhaps been aimed at the larger and more drugs trade-dependent FARC, these developments should have profound implications for the future of both Colombian guerilla groups.
Sources:
Center for International Policy, Colombia Project, "Peace on the Table"
Center for International Policy, Colombia Project, "Information About the Combatants"
"Colombian rebels declare war on oil," BBC News Online, April 10, 2002.
McDermott, Jeremy. "Colombia's rebel kidnappers," BBC News Online, Jan. 7, 2002.
"Our Colombia," ELN Colombia Homepage.
Pastrana, Andres. "High Stakes in Colombia," The Washington Post, April 15, 2002.
"Peace talks collapse in Colombia" BBC News Online, June 1, 2002.
United States Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism 2000, April 2001.
United States Committee on Refugees, World Refugee Survey 2002, June 2002.
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