Armed Forces of Colombia

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Flag of Colombia.svg Armed Forces of Colombia
Fuerzas Militares de Colombia
Escudo Fuerzas Militares de Colombia.svg
guide
Commander in Chief
de jure :		 President , currently: Iván Duque Márquez
Commander in chief de facto : Guillermo Botero Nieto
Defense Minister: Guillermo Botero Nieto
Military Commander: General Alberto José Mejía Ferrero
Military leadership: General Luis Fernando Navarro Jiménez
Headquarters: Bogotá
Military strength
Active soldiers: 295,000 (2020)
Reservists: 35,000 (2020)
Conscription: Yes
Eligibility for military service: 18 years
household
Military budget: USD 10.6 billion (2018)
Share of gross domestic product : 3.2% (2018)
history
Founding: August 7, 1819
Factual foundation: September 7, 1821

The armed forces of Colombia ( Spanish Fuerzas Militares de Colombia ) are the armed forces of the Republic of Colombia .

organization

The armed forces of Colombia consist of the following armed forces :

The Policía Nacional de Colombia , the National Police of Colombia , and various paramilitary forces are also formally subordinate to the Ministry of Defense.

The Commander-in-Chief is the Colombian President . There is general conscription from the age of 18 . The duration is 18 months for the Army and Air Force, 24 months for the Navy and 12 months for the National Police. Women can voluntarily choose to work in arms. In practice, however, compulsory military service is often undermined (there are legal exceptions: "Bachilleres", students, only children, etc.), which is why the armed forces are almost exclusively recruited from the lower classes. Because of this social injustice, President Álvaro Uribe announced that he wanted to establish a professional army in the long term .

history

The founding of the armed forces of the Republic of Greater Colombia took place on September 7, 1821 by Simón Bolívar . Greater Colombia comprised the territories of the previously liberated provinces of Venezuela, Ecuador and New Granada . Under General Francisco de Paula Santander the victories in the battle of Carabobo (June 24, 1821) and on the Pichincha (1822) followed. General Antonio José de Sucre and the German Otto Philipp Braun won the battle of Junín on August 6, 1824 over the Spanish cavalry . In the Battle of Ayacucho (Peru) on December 9 of the same year, Sucre defeated the remaining - but nevertheless numerically superior - Spanish forces (in the absence of Bolívar) and thus finally forced the Spaniards to leave the South American continent.

Today's Colombia is one of the states created by the disintegration of Greater Colombia in 1830 (the others being Ecuador and Venezuela ). It continued to be known as New Granada until 1861, when it was renamed Colombia in honor of Christopher Columbus . After the US- backed secession of Panama in 1903, the armed forces of Colombia were reorganized under Rafael Reyes . In 1919 the Colombian Air Force ( Fuerza Aérea Colombiana ) was founded. The Colombian-Peruvian War was an armed conflict between the two South American states in the years 1932–1934 over an Amazon port. It ended in a Colombian victory and the restoration of the status quo.

1948-52 there was a civil war between conservatives and liberals, triggered by the murder of the liberal presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán and his announced agrarian reform and the subsequent bloody unrest in the capital (also known as Bogotazo ). The violence continued in more rural areas in the years that followed and is now known as La Violencia . The military Gustavo Rojas Pinilla became President of Colombia in a military coup on June 13, 1953 . He was overthrown by a "general strike" on May 10, 1957.

The armed forces have been involved in an armed conflict with the guerrilla groups Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP) and Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) since 1964 . After President Uribe took office in 2002, the number of soldiers has increased by more than half. In 2001 about 190,000 men were still working as soldiers, there are currently about 250,000 soldiers working in all areas of the armed forces. As part of the policy of “democratic security”, this number should increase to around 270,000 soldiers by 2010. In addition, about 150,000 police officers should come, but some of them work as military police . For 2008 the government of Colombia plans to spend 5% of GDP on the military sector, which would exceed the GDP share of US military spending (4.06%, 2005). With a budget of US $ 13.9 billion (6.3% of GDP) in 2007, Colombia ranked second in all of South America, behind the much larger Brazil, in terms of military spending, which is also reflected in the continued presence of aggressively acting guerrilla movements explained.

On October 30, 2009, the Colombian Foreign Minister Jaime Bermúdez and the US Ambassador William Brownfield signed a new agreement that allows the US to use seven military bases on Colombian territory for a (renewable) period of ten years - with the same goals as in Plan Colombia . The bases are located in Palanquero, Malambo, Apiay, Cartagena, Málaga, Larandia and Tolemaída. Even before it was signed, the new agreement met with a largely negative response at the summit of the Union of South American States ( Unasur ), especially from Venezuela . The tensions with Venezuela led to further armament efforts in Colombia in the following years.

Military equipment

Armored personnel carrier EE-9 Cascavel of the Army
Kfir C10 fighter aircraft

The Colombian armed forces are designed to fight left and right-wing extremist groups and therefore have relatively few heavy weapons at their disposal, despite high military spending. The following figures are taken from various sources.

infantry

Colombia is currently in negotiations with France to purchase 40 used Leclerc main battle tanks.

air force

Museum in Tocancipá with a Junkers Ju 52 / mde and a Junkers W34hi (opening of the outdoor area November 2016)

marine

Corvette Almirante Padilla ; 2006
Tender Buenaventura (BL 162) ; 2007

literature

  • Rafael David Uribe-Neira: Change in the Colombian Navy. The internationalization of the Armada Nacional . MarineForum 5-2019, pp. 31-33.

Web links

Commons : Armed Forces of Colombia  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
 Wikinews: Colombian Military  - In The News

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Colombia Military Strength (2020) globalfirepower.com. Accessed on May 2, 2020 (en)
  2. ↑ Colombia Military Strength (2020) globalfirepower.com. Accessed on May 2, 2020 (en)
  3. ↑ teleSUR: Informe revela que conflicto en Colombia es la excusa para desbordado gasto militar ( Memento of 23 August 2011 in the Internet Archive ), 18 January 2008
  4. ↑ Le Monde diplomatique: Advance Action Points (from February 12, 2010)
  5. ↑ a b BICC: Country portrait Colombia ( memento of October 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 299 kB), accessed on August 30, 2013.
  6. ↑ www.globaldefence.net: Colombia ( Memento of December 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on August 30, 2013.
  7. ↑ www.globalsecurity.org , accessed August 30, 2013.
  8. ↑ Entry in the World Factbook
  9. ↑ Germany is now also supplying Colombia with submarines , accessed on August 30, 2013.