After almost 50 years of armed conflict, the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) met in Havana, Cuba this November to initiate a new peace process.
Both the guerilla groups as well as the state and the paramilitary groups are responsible for more than 50,000 crimes against civilians, according to the Center for Research and Popular Investigation (CINEP).
The Colombian armed conflict is “the last great Latin American conflict, the last of the Cold War,” said Héctor Perla, professor of the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies at U.C. Santa Cruz.
FARC emerged in 1964 as a reaction to the country’s repression of a Communist-influenced area in the Tolima province. According to its founding platform, their struggle began as a response to the landowner monopoly and the intervention of the United States in Colombia. The government has accused FARC of losing its original ideological purpose and of drug trafficking and extortion.
The agenda for the talks
The first point of the negotiation’s agenda is the development of a “comprehensive agricultural development policy.” As in other Latin American countries, the inequality of land possession has been one of the most important aspects of the conflict in Colombia, and has always been present in FARC’s discourse.
After the first round of talks in Havana on Nov. 25, representatives from the guerillas and the government announced the implementation of the Comprehensive Agricultural Development Policy Forum, in order to gather proposals from the civil society. The forum will be held Dec. 17-19 in Bogota, and will be organized by the United Nations and the Center of Thought for Peace and Post-conflict (affiliated with the National University of Columbia).
Other points in the agenda involve political participation by guerilla members and the reincorporation of FARC into civilian life. The agenda agreed upon by each side emphasizes the need to combat criminal organizations inherited from the paramilitary groups who still control territory in various parts of the country and are financed by drug traffickers. These groups have given security guarantees to the guerillas, taking into account the violent persecution of the Patriotic Union, a political party created by members of FARC and other leftist forces amid the failed peace process of the 1980s.
The problem of illicit drugs will also be a crucial point in order to guarantee the stability of an eventual agreement, given the role of drug trafficking in the revenue of FARC and other armed gangs, as well as in the country’s regional economies. According to Dana Brown, executive director of the U.S. Office on Colombia, a non-governmental organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., addressing this issue will most likely require an agreement with the United States government, since various members of FARC are involved in judicial proceedings for drug trafficking in this country.
An elusive peace
The current talks seek to avoid repeating the failure of the two earlier peace processes. In 1984 the government and the guerillas signed a bilateral truce, however neither of the sides fully complied. That same year, paramilitary groups began assassinating members of the Patriotic Union. The negotiations ended at the beginning of 1986.
In 1998, during a second negotiation attempt, the government demilitarized an extensive area in the Caqueta and Meta provinces of southern Colombia, but at the same time signed an anti-drug agreement with the United States involving counterinsurgency elements. FARC ended up using the demilitarized zone as a rearguard to attack the State and to hold captive hundreds of hostages. The talks collapsed in February of 2002 and that same year, Alvaro Uribe became president, promising a crackdown against the guerillas.
Ten years later under the presidency of Juan Manuel Santos, FARC came to the discussion table significantly weakened, having lost various leaders as a result of government attacks and increased government pressure. FARC issued a unilateral truce until the middle of January 2013 while the government announced that it will not suspend its operations. On Dec. 1 of this year, a military operation in the Nariño province left 20 guerillas dead. Furthermore, the government has established November 2013 as a deadline for negotiations.
A road full of obstacles
According to Brown, human rights organizations in Colombia are calling for justice and reparations on behalf of the victims: “they are asking for some sort of Truth Commission to eventually be set up.” In past processes in Colombia (such as the demobilization of the M19 guerillas in 1990) and other countries (such as El Salvador and Guatemala), widespread pardons were granted in order to achieve peace, but these days international law does not allow for this possibility.
Angelika Rettberg, director of the political science department at the University of the Andes (Bogota) said that “this subject of jail: when, how much, and who, could be all-important,” but it is highly unlikely that the guerilla leaders will agree to peace while remaining behind bars.
The negotiations are facing the opposition of various sectors of Colombian society, such as former president Uribe, who is still very popular.
Likewise, unions such as the Columbian Federation of Livestock (Fedegán) and the Columbia Farmer’s Society (SAC), have strongly criticized the process. According to a survey administered by the company Ipsos Napoleón Franco between Nov. 23-25, support for the talks by the general public is weak.
The implementation and verification of an eventual agreement will be problematic. “It’s necessary that someone makes this verification in order to give credibility to the process, whether it be the United Nations or the Organization of American States (OEA),” Perla said.
Even if the process is successful, many questions remain about what comes next because at this moment, the National Liberation Army (ELN)—another insurgency group that is weakened but still active—has remained on the sidelines of the negotiations.
Rettberg explained, “The task of peace-building takes resources and energy for about ten years before an agreement is reached.” The disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of ex-combatants, transitional justice, strengthening of democracy and economic development, among other aspects, are long-term processes.
“This was where the Central American peace processes failed. They didn’t get to the bottom of the economic injustice situation,” declared Professor Perla. In any case, Perla warned, the end of the confrontation “would open up a new phase for Columbia to deal with serious social, economic and political problems in a setting that is no longer military but democratic.”
[Juan Diego Prieto (jdprieto@ucsc.edu) is a doctorate student in Political Science at U.C. Santa Cruz and recently published the book Guerras, paces y vidas entrelazadas: coexistencia y relaciones locales entre víctimas, excombatientes y comunidades en Colombia (Ediciones Uniandes, Bogotá).]
—Translation Damon Bennett