After the signing of the peace agreement between the Government and the defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in 2016, there were those who believed in the possibility of the Latin American country once and for all leaving its long history of violence behind. Not in vain, it was the strongest insurgent group with the greatest capacity to inflict pain.
But as soon as the process of guerrilla dissolution began, there was a rout of dissident and dissatisfied groups with the agreement that emerged under names such as Second Marquetalia or the Central General Staff, among others. Furthermore, it was necessary to dismantle the National Liberation Army (ELN), with Castroist roots and second in size and seniority. At this point, the first left-wing president in the country’s history came to power, in mid-2022: Gustavo Petro. And with it, an ambitious dialogue plan that sought to encompass all the armed gangs under the same scheme.
Your name? The ‘total peace’. The idea is to break with the tradition of group-by-group negotiations. But with less than a year and a half left in his term, the results have been modest. This December, a 180-day truce agreement was reached in the southwest of the country with an organization called the Comuneros del Sur front (ELN dissident). And in Medellín, the second largest city in the country, a five-point roadmap was achieved with the city’s 12 main organized crime gangs.
Swarm of armed groups
The historian Gonzalo Sánchez, doctor from the School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences in Paris, classifies it as a “chaotic” and disorderly process. Maybe like war itself. ”We entered a point with several obstacles to moving forward. Working with an actor [armado]nullifies the possibility of negotiation with another,” he says.
Journalist Juanita Vélez has been on the trail of the swarm of new armed groups for years and has published a book on the subject titled A war later. He says that at this moment there are nine active trading desks. “’Total peace’ lacked method from the beginning. A clear route in the intention to negotiate with everyone at the same time and the challenges that this simultaneity would generate. The Government’s negotiators, in addition, have had different moments with different bets that have implied that many of these groups have fragmented at the local level,” says the author of the podcast. Dissidents Inside.
Some criticism comes from former negotiators of the Government of former President Juan Manuel Santos with the FARC; like the philosopher Sergio Jaramillo, who has expressed his objections in various interviews. Remember that this is an instrument of dialogue that does not yet contemplate legal solutions to move forward with some bands that lack political status. In his opinion, the disparity in speeches devoid of marked cards leads these processes to failure. It is not possible, he adds, to achieve an orderly demobilization when it is agreed with structures whose command over their men is usually weak. Juanita Vélez completes the portrait: “We are talking about groups that are very degraded. It is very difficult to find a political direction for them.”
These are criminals involved in illegal mining and drug trafficking businesses. Experts still refrain from talking about armies. “All groups need illicit finance to supply themselves. But in these cases, one does not see that they have any incentive to lay down their weapons in the short term,” says Vélez. Its power is revealed in the capacity to coerce vulnerable rural populations. And while it is true that homicides have decreased, the numbers of extortions and threats are on the rise. “This comes from behind,” Gonzalo Sánchez details, “but the war has become more sophisticated and produces a larger international crime market.”
Other knots
A great knot added. There is no possible negotiation strategy, the expert argues, that does not include the drawbacks of a globalization process enhanced by networks. “The reins of the discussions are increasingly outside the governments, or the national political forces. This makes it much more difficult to foresee how a way out of our war can be found.” He affirms that it is increasingly difficult to find incentives for extremely wealthy illegal groups to demobilize. “Their criminal niche is so promising, in economic terms, that there is nothing that can drag them out of the war,” he says.
Another obstacle is the limitations or omissions of the Colombian State when it comes to complying with the points of the Havana peace process. Since 2016, 400 FARC guerrillas have been murdered. The development of plans in the territories affected by the war is uneven. And the Kroc Institute at the University of Notre Dame has estimated a 50% delay in implementation. With this background, the combatants of the ELN, an irregular army that has had up to 6,000 men under arms, have navigated a phase of dialogue full of setbacks with attacks against the army and the civilian population. In Colombia, few doubt that the search for peace is a mission that is not only laudable but also unavoidable. But the discredit of the Executive has led to a catalog of criticism from various sectors.
“There has been a lot of discussion about whether the Government’s strategy was to fragment the groups from the beginning,” says Vélez. A plan to further atomize the trail of existing gangs and pacify their areas of predominance; a thesis that Vélez does not rule out. However, other analysts of the conflict, such as Sergio Jaramillo, assure that their empowerment and territorial control have actually been facilitated. For this reason, Jaramillo believes, the collective bargaining process runs the risk of leaving the communities that are victims of all this violence out of its center of gravity.
There is a point that other analysts have elaborated on. The tradition in past dialogue tables mixed a certain political realism without neglecting the military board. During the Santos Administration, the thesis that “nothing has been agreed until everything is agreed” was repeated like a mantra. As those talks progressed, and depending on the circumstances, a ceasefire could be reached. With ‘total peace’ there is a high degree of consensus on removing military pressure from groups whose objective is to consolidate their dominance. “This is not a failure of the Government,” warns Sánchez, “but a failure of the country itself because we have already tried various negotiation models and no one has found the magic wand to resolve the conflict.”
The prolonged internal war of more than six decades has left some 450,000 victims along the way. The hope of resolving the various phenomena of violence remains alive. And Vélez tries to extract some light 18 months before the country’s next presidential elections: “It seems positive to me that specific points of agreement are reached in some of the tables that are being developed. If these proposals are strong, and function as an axis of no return so that the incoming government does not dismantle them, it would seem very important to me so that the effort is not lost. I predict that some areas can be pacified. But, without a doubt, it will not be the total peace that Petro promised.”
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