ANALYSIS:Although there have been major security gains, huge challenges remain on the economy and unemployment
WHEN HE is sworn in as Colombia’s new president on August 7th Juan Manuel Santos will take charge of a country transformed during the eight years in power of his predecessor, Álvaro Uribe.
Security has improved dramatically. The country’s Marxist guerrillas have been placed on the defensive, right-wing paramilitaries demobilised and the cocaine production that financed these illegal groups has dropped significantly.
With increased security and the government’s open-door policy, foreign investment has poured into the country, centred on the oil and mining sectors. Regions too dangerous to visit a decade ago are now seeing foreigners rush to tap the country’s mineral wealth.
But there remain huge challenges to be confronted and major risks to the gains of recent years. Despite strong economic growth in recent years the country has the highest unemployment rate in the region and almost half the population is stuck in poverty.
As the economy attempts to modernise, companies say they are finding it hard to find suitably qualified technicians because of the poor quality of the public education system. The wider public sector is riddled with corruption which increased under Uribe. According to anti-corruption group Transparency International, Colombia slipped from its position as the world’s 57th least corrupt country when Uribe took power to 75th last year.
Perhaps Santos’s greatest challenge is preventing a return to the anarchy of a decade ago that led many observers to believe Colombia would become South America’s first failed state. Uribe’s “democratic security” policy has made important gains, but the country is far from pacified.
Though kidnappings and killings did drop dramatically, the number of people internally displaced each year by conflict was an average of 300,000 during Uribe’s presidency. In all, Colombia has more than three million internally displaced people, second only to Sudan.
And though the Farc guerrillas have been seriously weakened, they still have an estimated 9,000 fighters. Worryingly for Santos they show signs of adapting to the military’s new aggressive posture.
They have abandoned the large-scale military manoeuvres and returned to the classic guerrilla tactics of ambush and hit and run. Last year Farc attacks were up 30 per cent on 2008 and its leadership, isolated in the jungle for decades, shows no inclination to negotiate an end to the conflict.
The conditions that sustained the Farc for most of its 46-year history remain in place. Colombia’s countryside is one of the most unequal in the world with less than one per cent of the population controlling three- quarters of the best arable land. This concentration of wealth actually intensified during Uribe’s time in office and was frequently accompanied by violence.
Perhaps most worryingly for Santos is the re-emergence of Colombia’s murderous right-wing paramilitaries. These demobilised under Uribe but new groups have been formed to take their place, often involving many of the same figures who supposedly turned in their weapons.
Unlike their predecessors, these new groups are less interested in fighting the left-wing guerrillas than in seizing land in regions rich in oil, minerals and the palm oil used in biofuels. Many of the country’s internal refugees are peasants fleeing these new paramilitaries, who are also involved in the cocaine trade.
Killings in Colombia’s cities are once again on the increase, nowhere more dramatically than in Medellín.
Once ranked the world’s most violent city by the UN it became a symbol of the success of “democratic security” as it saw a dramatic fall in killings during the last decade. But last year new paramilitary groups stepped up their activities in the city, pushing the murder rate back near 2003 levels.
Santos takes power just as the hugely popular “democratic security” policy, to which he largely owes his landslide victory, faces its toughest test.