Ejército de Liberación Nacional (Colombia)

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Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN)

Flag of ELN.svg

Flag of the ELN
active 1964 – today
Country ColombiaColombia Colombia
Strength about 3000
Origin of the soldiers ColombiaColombia Colombia
commander
Important
commanders


The National Liberation Army ( ELN , German  National Liberation Army ) is a Marxist -oriented guerrilla - movement in Colombia . A guerrilla group with the same name existed in Bolivia .

history

The ELN was founded in 1964 by Fabio Vasquez Castaño and is one of the oldest guerrilla organizations in Latin America that is still active . The group is mainly recruited from the urban and intellectual milieu and is said to have around 3,000 fighters under arms. The ELN should not have a tight command structure.

Initially it was based on the writings of Che Guevara , in particular on the theory of focusism , i.e. H. of the uprising, initially limited to a local area, which should ultimately expand as a nationwide revolution. In 1963, a group of 16 around the student Fabio Vázquez Castaño began in the Santander Department with the preparations for the establishment of a Colombian guerrilla focus. She familiarized herself with the terrain, organized the logistics and made contacts with the violencia veterans , especially the guerrillas Rafael Rangels from the region, who had led the popular uprising in Barrancabermeja in 1948 and was liberal there after his retreat to the mountains in 1950 influenced guerrilla groups active in the area between the Magdalena River and the Venezuelan border. Six months after the founding of the ELN, a first armed group consisting of half farmers and half students occupied the city of Simacota in January 1965 .

The ELN managed to anchor itself in the tradition of the peasant revolts. In the late 1960s, a significant portion of Colombian liberation theologians , including Camilo Torres , joined the ELN.

In 1973 the ELN suffered a decisive military defeat at Anorí (Dep. Antioquia ) and was almost completely destroyed. Around 200 guerrillas were killed, only a few dozen survived, including the later ELN commander Manuel Pérez Martínez . In 1978, not least as a result of the drastic military defeat of 1973, a rethink began: the ELN first introduced the right to freedom of expression (previously internal debates were prevented by shooting dissidents), decision-making bodies were democratized, and Fabio Vazquez was ousted excluded from his authoritarian leadership style. The organization thus managed to regenerate itself and within nine years it grew explosively from three to over thirty fronts. The people in charge of the organization, Manuel Pérez Martínez and his successor Nicolás Rodríguez Bautista , played a major role in preventing a return to the authoritarian style of the 1970s. In addition, under the influence of Gramsci's theories, the concept of poder popular , people's power, was developed. The guerrillas no longer understand this as the avant-garde and thus as the starting point for all social changes, but instead grants social movements generally a decisive share in these changes. Specifically, self-governing structures in municipalities, companies, etc. were supported by the ELN.

After its reorganization, the ELN was able to bring more and more areas under its control in the stretches of land between the Caribbean coast, the Venezuelan border and the northern Cordillera Central, so that the exercise of state power there was hardly possible. It installed its own administrative system, raised taxes and intervened in the conflict between large landowners and smallholders. Most of the ELN branches got involved in a variety of local aid projects and developed social welfare for the rural population as a non-military project of the guerrillas. The main demand of the ELN since the beginning of the 1980s was a nationalization of mineral resources. The rebels took action against multinational corporations and carried out sabotage attacks on oil pipelines. The group's main income came from protection and ransom money from extortion and kidnapping. The ELN rejected the taxation of coca cultivation at any time. In contrast to the FARC , which primarily operates in the southern parts of the country , the ELN banned sowing several times.

At the beginning of 1996, the ELN proposed the convening of a national convention on which the various social groups should work out concepts for changing Colombian society. Under the patronage of the German Bishops' Conference , a meeting between the ELN and leading personalities from Colombia took place in the Bavarian monastery Himmelspforten in June 1998 . It was agreed to carry out a national convention with the participation of all social groups - from ranchers and industrialists on the one hand to indigenous associations, student groups and trade unions on the other. However, the project failed due to the Colombian state's refusal to agree to the ELN's demand for a demilitarized zone in order to be able to hold the planned National Assembly there.

Exploratory talks between ELN leaders and government negotiators in Cuba began in November 2001, but ended after Álvaro Uribe's election victory in May 2002.

During the reign of Álvaro Uribe Vélez, the two rebel groups FARC and ELN fell heavily on the defensive. The government invested substantial sums of money in staffing the Colombian police and armed forces, and passed a law that allowed military commanders in disputed areas the extensive abolition of fundamental rights and, for example, allowed arrests without a judicial order. The Colombia Plan was adopted together with the USA in 2002 and replaced by the Patriota Plan in 2004. Due to the associated military aid from the USA and the stronger fight against the guerrillas, the ELN was pushed further on the defensive, the number of active fighters fell from 5,000 in the mid-1990s to between 2,000 and 3,000.

In October 2006 peace negotiations began in the Cuban capital Havana under the leadership of the government negotiator Luis Carlos Restrepo and the military commander of the ELN, Erlington de Jesús Chamorro alias Antonio García . They were accompanied by representatives from Spain, Norway and Switzerland. At the end of 2007 the peace negotiations were suspended.

Leader of the ELN from 1982 until his death in 1998 from was Spain originating excommunicated priest Manuel Pérez Martínez .

present

The European Union has put the ELN on the list of terrorist organizations.

After the ELN had been declared war on the part of the FARC in December 2006 and there had been armed conflicts between the two groups, the ELN announced in December 2009 that they had come to an agreement with the FARC on the hostilities between the two organizations and take steps to unite the two organizations.

In 2012 the ELN announced that it would like to hold peace talks with the government. According to her own statements, she wants to stop the terrorist attacks for the time being.

At the beginning of February 2013, the ELN announced that it had kidnapped two German citizens. According to their own statements, these are "secret agents" because they could not have justified their stay in the Catatumbo region. German and Colombian authorities did not initially confirm the kidnapping, but wanted to investigate the announcement. The kidnapping ended on March 8, 2013, and both German pensioners, aged 69 and 72, were handed over to the Red Cross. The ELN had mistaken the world travelers for spies.

At the end of 2013, secret negotiations began in Ecuador and Brazil between the Colombian government and the ELN, in which the basis for official peace negotiations should be laid, modeled on the negotiations between the government and the FARC. On June 10, 2014, President Juan Manuel Santos announced the agreement between the government and the ELN for the early start of peace negotiations. While a final ceasefire was agreed with the FARC on June 22, 2016, the ELN is seen as an obstacle to peace efforts in Colombia. Although there were secret peace negotiations between the government and the ELN in March, President Juan Manuel Santos demanded the release of all hostages as a prerequisite for real negotiations.

After one of the last hostages of the ELN was released on February 2, 2017, talks between the government and the ELN with the aim of disarming began on February 7, 2017 in the Ecuadorian capital Quito . On September 4, 2017, Santos and representatives of the ELN announced that both sides had agreed on a ceasefire in Ecuador . It is scheduled to come into force on October 1, 2017 and is initially limited to January 12, 2018. The ELN pledged to stop attacks against civilians, kidnappings and attacks on pipelines. There were a total of five rounds of negotiations from February 2017 to 2018, but the round was suspended at the beginning of 2018 due to an explosives attack. The ELN confessed to another bomb attack on January 27, 2018 and the talks were suspended indefinitely.

At the beginning of August 2018 a ceasefire had not been reached, but the delegations in Havana spoke of “intensive work on a new ceasefire”. In mid-August, the new President Duque took office , which is likely to make the talks more difficult compared to his predecessor.

On January 17, 2019, at least 21 people were killed in another attack, presumably carried out by the ELN, on the General Santander Police School in the south of the capital Bogotá. A car loaded with explosives was driven onto the school premises and immediately exploded. President Duque then broke off all talks with the ELN again. The assassin is said to be a member of the guerrilla organization ELN. Colombia then demanded that Havana extradite the negotiating delegation of the ELN, which was in Cuba. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic , the ELN announced a temporary ceasefire . This was preceded by an appeal by UN Secretary General António Guterres to all parties to the conflict worldwide.

See also

literature

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ Así es el ELN, la guerrilla con la que se quiere aliar la disidencia de las FARC cnnespanol.cnn.com. Accessed May 17, 2020 (Spanish)
  2. ↑ a b Maja Liebing: Colombia (ELN). Institute for Political Science: Research group on the causes of war at the University of Hamburg , November 5, 2006, archived from the original on June 11, 2007 ; accessed on January 19, 2019 .
  3. ↑ europa.eu EU terrorist list - Adoption of new consolidated list, December 20, 2007 (PDF)
  4. ^ Farc y ELN camino a la unidad. (No longer available online.) In: Anncol. Formerly in the original ; Retrieved December 21, 2009 (Spanish).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / anncol.eu
  5. ↑ Colombia: Rebel group offers ceasefire. In: wienerzeitung.at . February 21, 2012, accessed January 19, 2019 .
  6. ^ Rebels report kidnapping of two Germans. In: Welt Online . February 4, 2013, accessed January 19, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Colombia: German hostages are free. In: Spiegel Online . March 8, 2013, accessed January 19, 2019 .
  8. ^ Marisol Gómez Giraldo: Los details de cómo se gestó el diálogo con eln. In: El Tiempo . June 10, 2004, accessed January 19, 2019 (Spanish).
  9. ↑ Colombia's long road to peace. In: Euronews . July 1, 2016, accessed January 19, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Anne Herrberg: Exchange weapons for words. In: tagesschau.de . February 7, 2017, archived from the original on February 7, 2017 ; accessed on January 19, 2019 .
  11. ^ Before the Pope's visit: Colombia's government decides on a ceasefire with other rebels. In: Spiegel Online. September 4, 2017. Retrieved September 4, 2017 .
  12. ↑ Neue Zürcher Zeitung , January 12, 2018, page 2.
  13. ↑ Neue Zürcher Zeitung , January 30, 2018, page 4.
  14. ↑ Neue Zürcher Zeitung , August 2, 2018, page 2.
  15. ↑ Many dead in an attack on the police school in Bogotá. In: dw.com . January 17, 2019, accessed January 19, 2019 .
  16. ↑ Comment: Cuba - a traditional haven for terrorists , DW, January 23, 2019
  17. ↑ hf / se (dpa, kna): COVID-19. Colombian guerrilla group declares a ceasefire over corona. In: DW Online. Deutsche Welle, March 30, 2020, accessed on March 30, 2020 .