By Nazih Richani*

Mural “Nostalgia” painted by the creative collective Deúniti at La Presidenta Park in Medellín, Colombia. Photo Credit: Deúniti, colectivo creativo / Flickr / Creative Commons

Amidst growing optimism at the prospects of achieving a peace agreement in Colombia after more than a half century of irregular warfare, predictions about whether the parties can reach an accord, and sustain it over the long term, should be informed by understanding the underlying logic that fueled the conflict and may now be bringing it to a close. Civil wars are complex social systems with peculiar properties, dynamics, and political economy.  Similar to other social systems, a war system—a set of violent interacting units—rests on a point of equilibrium, which can shift depending on the system’s inner dynamics and external stimuli.  The exponential growth in the 1990s of Colombia’s two main Marxist rebel groups—the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN)—prompted the emergence of right-wing paramilitaries, an instrument of the state’s counterinsurgency strategy.  An expansion of the radius of the war and surge in combat-related fatalities, massacres, land dispossession, and displacements followed.  The failure of peace talks between the FARC and the government of President Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002) indicated that the war system was largely unchanged despite the escalation.

The intervention of a new actor—the United States—disrupted the equilibrium of the war system.  Under “Plan Colombia,” Washington (committing about $10 billion) and Bogotá ($80-100 billion) modernized and restructured the Colombian armed forces.  This new phase in the war system marked a departure from the “comfortable stalemate” that characterized the conflict between 1964 and 2000.  New weapons, air power, tactical flexibility, and expanding mobile commando brigades with U.S. military and technical support, enabled the Colombian armed forces to put the FARC on the defensive.  It took the FARC leadership more than eight years to adjust, losing territory and, more importantly, three of its main leaders: Raul Reyes (2008), Mono Jojoy (2010), and Alfonso Cano (2011).  But the FARC’s “Plan Rebirth”—reverting from “mobile war of positions” to guerrilla warfare, creating more interdependent commando units, and using more snipers and mines—changed the balance anew.

The new equilibrium in the war system, in which the law of the diminishing returns of the war’s investment started kicking in, drove both sides to conclude that the time for peace was arriving.  Colombia’s ruling elites concluded that prosecuting the war would be too costly at a time that U.S. attention was shifting to other theaters and threats.  FARC commander Alfonso Cano, months before his targeted killing, communicated the intention of his movement to seek a negotiated settlement as well.  The cost of continued war had become too great for both sides, and external factors—the death of President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and the changing Andean regional political environment—were also factors.  FARC became convinced that trading bullets for ballots could help in achieving the remaining objectives of its armed rebellion.  As the two sides continue to make progress in peace talks in Havana, outsiders who want the accords to succeed would do well to remember that disruptions to the war system equilibrium could easily threaten both sides’ commitment to signing and implementing a final deal.

January 11, 2016

*  Nazih Richani is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of Latin American Studies at Kean University.  In 2014 the State University of New York Press  published a revised and updated version of his 2002 study entitled Systems of Violence: The Political Economy of War and Peace in Colombia.

By Aaron T. Bell

Americas Quarterly / Flickr / CC BY-NC 2.0

Recent events suggest that, as peace talks between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas resume in Cuba later this month, substantial progress toward an agreement is at hand.  Talks were suspended in November when a Colombian general and two lawyers were kidnapped under circumstances that remain unclear, but cooler heads prevailed and the three were quickly released.  The FARC announced an indefinite unilateral cease-fire in late December and, in the first such act taken by either side, acknowledged their responsibility for a 2002 civilian massacre in the town of Bojayá and asked for forgiveness from victims.  President Juan Manuel Santos has been reluctant to ease military pressure on the guerrillas, but the FARC’s show of good faith led him to call on government negotiators last week to prioritize the arrangement of a bilateral cease-fire.  Santos has encouraged negotiators to accelerate talks so that a public referendum on the peace accords can be held concurrent with October’s local elections.

A final agreement may still be several months off as negotiators work through the complexities of victim compensation and a transitional justice system, but the effects of negotiations are already being felt in Colombia.  Observers from the Centro de Recursos para el Análisis de Conflictos reported the lowest level of violence related to the armed conflict in 30 years during the first three weeks of the FARC’s cease-fire. This news was complemented by reports that Colombia’s murder rate hit a 30-year low in 2014, thanks in part to truces brokered among the country’s largest criminal gangs.  The success of the government’s negotiations with the FARC appears to be spilling over into the armed conflict with the ELN guerrillas as well.  At the beginning of 2015 the ELN announced willingness to enter into peace talks like those with the FARC, and they strongly implied that such talks would lead them to lay down their arms.  A six-point agenda for negotiations was publicly announced this past weekend, and a cease-fire may not be far behind.  In economic terms, an end to insurgent violence may spell much-needed relief for Colombia’s oil industry, a frequent target for guerrilla sabotage over the years, which is now reeling from falling oil prices.  Negotiations have also procured European political and financial support for Colombia.  Beginning this month, the European Union will begin funding a five-year, $86 million program to bolster small-scale producers and reduce rural inequality, and other potential funding may result from a European tour by Santos last fall.  Germany pledged $95 million in loans to follow peace agreements, and the EU and several member nations pledged funding for post-conflict reconstruction projects.

While the Santos government and the FARC appear to be entering the endgame of peace negotiations, the process of resolving the underlying conditions that have fueled decades of conflict in Colombia will be long and difficult.  The FARC was unhappy with the government’s unilateral decision to implement a peace referendum, preferring instead a constituent assembly that would give greater representation to traditionally marginalized groups in Colombian society.  Political inclusion is a substantial concern given both Colombia’s history and the attitude of right-wing opponents of negotiations.  Among the groups gearing up for a substantial run in the October elections is the Centro Democrático, the party of former president Álvaro Uribe, which took Santos to a second round of voting in last summer’s presidential elections.  Uribe claimed recently that the FARC – with Santos’s support – is using the threat of terrorism and the allure of peace to take power through elections in 2018 and even eventually establish a “totalitarian government.”  Land reform is another major concern.  Skewed land distribution has traditionally been a major source of social unrest and has worsened over the last 50 years of fighting.  Amnesty International and Oxfam have identified serious obstacles to resolving the problem and it will be difficult to ensure that large multinationals won’t benefit disproportionately from redistribution schemes.  The government and the guerrillas both deserve praise for their progress, but winning a lasting peace will require continued cooperation in reforming an ingrained system of inequality and exclusion.

January 20, 2015

By Aaron T. Bell

Number 10 / Flickr / CC BY-NC 2.0

The peace talks in Havana between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas have continued to show slow but steady progress since President Juan Manuel Santos, who has staked considerable political capital on ending the 50-year conflict, began his second term three months ago.  Two years of negotiations have produced preliminary agreements on agricultural development, political participation, and resolving the illicit drug trade.  In August, negotiators turned their attention to compensating victims of the conflict, while a sub-commission staffed by top military figures from both sides has been developing recommendations for implementing a bilateral ceasefire and disarming combatants.  A recent ruling by the Constitutional Court has paved the way for the government to hold a public referendum on the peace accords once a final agreement between the two sides has been reached.

The challenges facing the successful negotiation and implementation of peace accords are significant.  At home, former president Álvaro Uribe and his allies continue to harangue President Santos, accusing the government of showing too much leniency in negotiations and most recently denouncing the participation in Havana of the FARC commanders accused of human rights abuses as an affront to their victims. Santos clashed publicly with the Inspector General (procurador general) as well after the President secretly approved trips to Cuba by the FARC’s leader, “Timochenko.”  For its part, the FARC has expressed reservations over immediate disarmament, still haunted by the deaths of thousands of members of its mid-1980s political party.  Also at issue is the fate of those guerrilla leaders who face active arrest warrants or have been tried in absentia for humans right abuses; the FARC has adamantly resisted the possibility of jail time for its members.  The government is also concerned that 10-20 percent of the FARC members will shift loyalties to organized criminal gangs after the war ends.  Severing ties between drug trafficking and the FARC supporters will require, among other things, a serious commitment to rural development to foster social inclusion for farmers who rely on coca plants for their livelihood.

In spite of these challenges, both sides have displayed a serious commitment to negotiating an end to decades of war.  The FARC has used past ceasefires to rebuild and organize its military strength, hence the government’s delay this time in negotiating an end to hostilities.  But attacks on infrastructure and security services are down from 2013, and members of the FARC have by and large respected several self-imposed ceasefires announced by the central command, most recently during this summer’s elections.  Santos has gone out on a limb by allowing wanted criminals to travel to the negotiations, but that decision is consistent with other policies.  When war crimes victims were invited to tell their stories to negotiators, Santos brushed outside critics and ensured that victims of the FARC, state, and paramilitaries were all equally represented.  Public support for the peace process looked shaky in September but has rebounded, as new polls from Gallup released last week shows over 60 percent of Colombians favor talks.  The government public release in early October of the preliminary agreements appears to have helped, silence critics who accused the government of selling out to guerrilla demands behind closed doors.  There is still considerable work to do in reaching an agreement, selling it to the public, then putting it into practice, and public support may waver if the process drags on into next year.  But, the environment has never looked as favorable for peace in Colombia as it does today.

November 13, 2014