Since the mid-1990s, scholars from different traditions have challenged standard assumptions about the nature of contemporary civil wars. On the one hand, they argue, armed organisations and combatants increasingly take part in criminal activities and behave as thugs rather than soldiers. Civilian collaboration, on the other hand, is less based in collective political action and more on individualism and opportunism. New findings from the Crisis States Research Centre challenge these claims based on the study of an episode of armed conflict and political mobilisation in a Colombian region during the late 1990s and early 2000s.