Indeed, dispossession of land has been a strategic objective of many actors for a variety of reasons, including economic and political motives. And the military operations of the different guerrilla groups have generated internal displacement as well in certain cases, there are clear indications that some of these groups have used displacement as a tactic of war within a strategy of controlling regions with military or economic value.Īrmed actors with military objectives are not the only ones who employ tactics of forced displacement in Colombia’s conflict. The displacement of civilians has also been part of the paramilitary strategy of dispossession and usurpation of land.
Along these lines, the army has used displacement as a tactic of war within a military strategy of “draining the water to catch the fish”: removing populations from regions it considers to be the social base of the guerrilla groups. as well as threatening the “insurgent civilian population” with expulsion from their regions. These manuals order the creation of paramilitary groups to combat the “internal enemy,”. Several of the Colombian army’s manuals on counterinsurgency operations classify the “internal enemy” or “subversive forces” as “armed groups” and “insurgent civilian populations.” The practice involves expelling people considered to be an actual or potential part of the social base of the enemy, in order to ensure control of territories and populations. The armed actors in the Colombian armed conflict-the army and its paramilitary groups, on one hand, and the guerrilla groups, on the other-have used the practice of forced displacement of civilian populations as part of their military strategies to take control of or maintain a presence in certain territories. However, forced internal displacement cannot be reduced to an inherent or unintended effect of the conflict. 
It has been a widespread practice in the country’s internal armed conflict for several decades.
The crime of forced internal displacement is not a new phenomenon in Colombia. International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ)
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