Dr Clara Voyvodic
Author X: @cvoyvodic
“…corporations are not neutral actors – they are embedded in wartime dynamics, and we need to better understand their role and interactions with armed actors.”
In conflict zones, private interests may find it more convenient to make arrangements with non-state armed actors rather than avoid investing entirely. But if these arrangements are part of the cost of doing business in conflict zones, who ends up really paying?
In this blog post, I reflect on my research in Colombia on the relationship between armed actors and corporations, the price exacted on civilians, and dangers of stigmatisation in civil war and beyond.
Opaque arrangements
While plenty of attention is paid to how insurgents, rebels, terrorists, and militias all profit from illicit networks and black markets, they also receive a proportion of their funding from extortion or taxation of licit business, as Joshua Fawcett Weiner notes in a previous post in this series. In Colombia, whether presented as a ‘revolutionary tax’ by left-wing insurgents like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) or as a form of preventative insurance by other armed non-state actors, armed groups demand payments from almost any business that operates in areas they control. Often referred to as the vacuna (literally the vaccine), this practice is meant to ‘inoculate’ individuals and corporations from harm.
In June of 2024, the practice of the vacuna drew international attention when a US court handed down a historic ruling against the Chiquita corporation for paying paramilitary groups in Colombia. Chiquita insisted it was part of the ‘cost of doing business’, yet this also involved protection against leftwing groups and funded the AUC’s victimisation of civilians accused of being guerrilla supporters.
Wartime extortive arrangements, which often remain obscured due to the illegal nature of any payments, point to a queasy co-existence between economic development and armed conflict. Yet these arrangements create a perverse incentive: armed groups profit from both opposing and enabling corporate projects, while civilians bear the brunt, as they are often framed as mouthpieces or supporters of subversive actors.
The politics of naming
Michael Bhatia points out that the ‘politics of naming’ different movements as terrorists or other loaded terms can have real-life implications. In my research I show that when activists are targeted in conflict areas, they are framed as victims of conflict – even if the victims and those around them suspect the motive for the attack is to quash their opposition to development projects. When an attack is attributed to long-standing armed conflict, it reduces the need for further investigation into specific motives. This can affect and limit how journalists, human rights organisations, and even academics approach, frame and analyse these actors and events.
As Brian Philips writes, it is important for civil war studies to consider the implications of terrorism designation on civil war dynamics. I argue that it is also crucial to consider how this language extends to and implicates civilians and activists. In the Philippines, anti-dam activists were stigmatised as terrorist supporters and targeted by paramilitary actors. Colombia remains the most dangerous country for trade unionists in the world, who are accused by corporations and the state as supporters of revolutionary movements. In 2020 Salvador Mancuso, a former AUC commander, admitted that his persecution of the Embera indigenous people in 2001 was not for “supporting subversive armed groups in the area” as he had claimed at the time, but in the interests of advancing a major dam construction in the area that the community opposed.
Stifled voices
This opaque relationship between armed actors and corporations makes communities afraid to speak out for fear of violent responses but also undermines their trust in new development projects: in one meeting I attended in 2018 to discuss a new dam project in northern Antioquia in Colombia, residents were fearful of the stigma and violence they had seen engulf a nearby megadam project. As Henry Staples discusses, activists self-censor to avoid retaliation, entrenching uneven power relations.
While this limits the ability for companies to build trust with local communities, it also undermines the reputation of armed groups. Odebrecht, a Brazilian company, admitted to paying the FARC up to $100,000 a month to operate in areas of their control despite opposition by activists and local communities. The FARC claimed to stand with local communities against megaprojects, so their profits from these same ventures left a sour taste in the mouth of communities who accuse “the FARC of selling their territory to the multinationals.” Armed groups therefore weigh a legitimacy trade-off between local support against easy money as Francisco Gutiérrez-Sanín discusses in his book Clientelistic Warfare.
Conclusion
Chiquita was found liable for the crimes committed by the AUC against civilians as leftwing sympathisers. Yet last year’s case was the exception rather than the rule. A worrying trend of vilification of protest and terrorist designation of activists has been spreading to non-conflict zones across the Americas, Asia, and Europe that delegitimises and endangers civilians. Labels of ‘conflict’, ‘terrorism’, and ‘criminal’ are often weaponised both to criminalise dissent and to obscure accountability.
My research shows that corporations are not neutral actors – they are embedded in wartime dynamics, and we need to better understand their role and interactions with armed actors. Future research should examine how these dynamics can undermine trust in peacebuilding. The Chiquita verdict proves corporations can be held liable—but justice remains the exception. By naming these systems and their victims, this research invites scholars, policymakers, and corporations to confront an uncomfortable truth: the “cost of doing business” in conflict zones may sometimes be paid for in livelihoods and lives, not just dollars.
