English Summary of the September 23 Government-FARC Communiqué on the Transitional Justice Accord

The communiqué’s Spanish text is here.

  • Special Jurisdiction for Peace: The accord creates a separate, presumably temporary body in Colombia’s justice system. It will have two sections, and each will have a minority number of foreign magistrates. “The essential function” of these two chambers, the Chambers of Justice and the Tribunal for Peace, “is to do away with impunity, obtain truth, contribute to victims’ reparations, and to judge and impose sanctions on those responsible for serious crimes committed during the armed conflict, particularly the most serious and representative ones.”

  • Political crimes will be amnestied: There will be the “broadest possible amnesty” for the crime of rebelling against the state. This amnesty will also extend to “connected crimes.” This is tricky, as narcotrafficking and extortion (and perhaps even some ransom kidnappings) may be defined as “connected” to political crimes—and thus amnestied—because they may have been committed in order to raise funds for the FARC’s “political” cause. “An amnesty law will specify the extent of this ‘connectedness.’”

  • What won’t be amnestied: The amnesty will not extend to crimes against humanity, genocide, serious war crimes, hostage-taking or other serious privation of liberty, torture, forced displacement, forced disappearance, extrajudicial executions, or sexual violence. “These crimes will be subject to investigation and trial by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace.”

  • Who must face justice: The Special Jurisdiction for Peace will cover everyone who, “whether directly or indirectly, may have participated in the internal armed conflict, including the FARC-EP and state agents, for crimes committed in the context and for the purpose of the conflict, with particular respect to the most serious and representative cases.”

    This may mean that crimes committed by armed actors outside the conflict—like the “false positive” extrajudicial executions—may have to remain in Colombia’s regular criminal justice system. It probably also means that civilians who participated in war crimes, such as landowners who generously sponsored paramilitary groups that committed mass atrocities, could be investigated and tried by this new judicial structure.

  • Penalties for “those who recognize truth and their responsibility”: These individuals’ confessions will be contrasted with Colombian authorities’ investigations and earlier verdicts, and with information from victims’ and human rights groups. If they are not found to be holding anything back, their punishment “will have a component of restriction of liberties and rights.” This will guarantee that they participate in “work, tasks, and activities” aimed at “the satisfaction of victims’ rights” by “compliance with reparative and restorative functions.” This punishment will last for five to eight years “of effective restriction of liberty, in special conditions.” (The 2005 “Justice and Peace” law, which governed demobilization of the AUC paramilitary group, foresaw similar five-to-eight-year terms for the most serious human rights abusers, which ex-paramilitaries spent in ordinary prisons.)

  • Penalties for those who deny “the truth and their responsibility,” or who recognize it later in the process: These individuals will be put on trial before the Tribunal for Peace. Those who recognize their guilt later will go to regular prisons for five to eight years, during which they will “contribute to their re-socialization through work, training, or study.” Those who persist in denying responsibility for serious crimes will be tried and, if found guilty, sentenced to up to 20 years in regular prisons.

  • Special Jurisdiction for Peace requirements: To receive reduced sentences and “special treatment,” the accused must “contribute full truth, provide reparations to victims, and guarantee non-repetition” of their acts.

  • Disarmament requirement: FARC members must cease to use weapons. (The text uses the phrase “dejación de armas,” which means “leaving behind” or “laying aside” weapons. This is different from an immediate handover or destruction of guerrilla weapons.) This disarmament or “laying aside” process must begin no later than 60 days after the signing of a final accord.

  • FARC future as a political movement: “The FARC-EP’s transformation into a legal political movement is a shared objective, which will receive all support from the government, in the terms that are agreed to.”

  • Deadline: While it is not in the text of the accord, President Juan Manuel Santos said that the sides have agreed to sign a final accord within the next six months.

Tags: Accords, Transitional Justice

September 23, 2015

Colombia and FARC to Make Crucial Announcement on Peace Process

Statement

September 23, 2015

Colombia and FARC to Make Crucial Announcement on Peace Process

Washington, D.C.—At about 5:00pm today in Havana, President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC guerrilla group leader Timoleón Jiménez are expected to announce an agreement on transitional justice, the most difficult item on their negotiating agenda.

The leaders may also announce a date for the signing of a final peace accord. The end of a 51-year-old armed conflict is now in sight.

The items that remain to be negotiated are not easy. The negotiators still must define what “disarmament” means, how fighters are to be demobilized, how to turn accords into law, and how to guarantee a ceasefire while all of that happens. But these issues will likely turn out to be less contentious than what is agreed today: a judicial framework to clear up the worst human rights crimes committed during the conflict, and probably to punish those responsible.

While we don’t know yet what is in this Transitional Justice accord, WOLA hopes that it includes real accountability for individuals on both sides who committed war crimes. Some basic human norms were violated, and even if the punishment is less severe than the crime, it is important that perpetrators face consequences. Nobody, meanwhile, should enjoy pardons or lighter sentences without first confessing fully to his or her crimes and making amends to his or her victims.

A final accord may come soon. The U.S. government and the international community will have to move quickly to help Colombia during the fragile post-accord phase. For Washington, that will mean an increase in assistance to Colombia, which has been slowly cut back nearly every year since 2007. As officials planning the U.S. foreign aid budget prepare their 2017 request, which gets sent to Congress in February, it is essential that they plan for a big increase for Colombia. It is essential that the post-conflict package guarantees restitution and support for the rights of Colombia’s diverse victims-Afro-Colombian, Indigenous, rural farmers, women and the displaced.

CERAC, a Colombian think-tank that monitors conflict events, reported this week that the past two months have been the most peaceful that Colombia has lived since 1975. A peace accord will bring uncertainty and new challenges as Colombia struggles to implement it. But for now, let’s enjoy today’s breakthrough and share in the hope that these gains might be permanent.

Tags: Transitional Justice, WOLA Statements

September 23, 2015

“Instead of making the puzzle pieces, we’re now putting them together”

The Colombian investigative website Verdad Abierta published an interview with legal expert Rodrigo Uprimny that has been getting a lot of attention on social media. Uprimny, director of Dejusticia, a Bogotá-based justice think-tank, is close to the peace negotiations going on in Havana.

His message here combines optimism and alarm. A peace accord could come sooner than we think, he says, because negotiations are advancing fast. However, Colombia’s legal system is not prepared either to ratify or to implement it, and the government has not won the fight for public opinion.

Here are excerpts in English; the whole interview in Spanish is at Verdad Abierta. Emphasis in blue boldface is ours.

Verdad Abierta: This isn’t the first time that the government has tried to put forward a mechanism for ratification [of a peace accord]. It had already done so in the bill that would have allowed a referendum alongside the [March 2014] congressional and presidential elections. What’s the hurry?

Rodrigo Uprimny: Contrary to what many people think, I believe an accord could come quickly because the discussions are now happening in parallel. Instead of making the puzzle pieces, we’re now putting them together and creating the pieces that are still missing. What would be very problematic is an accord being reached without a mechanism to ratify or implement it.

VA: Do you think time is being wasted?

RU: If everything is to have a solid legal underpinning, the foundation must be a prior reform. …The best outcome would have been for the people to vote this October [alongside scheduled local elections] in a referendum to say whether or not they approve of that reform. It’s a shame that it hasn’t been done because the problem now is one of timeframes. Now it may have to come through legislation, and that takes a year plus the time taken up by possible constitutionality challenges [in Colombia’s Constitutional Court]. That’s why I think the issue must start being discussed at the [negotiating] table and in society.

VA: But the response in Havana is that they still haven’t come to this point of the discussion, that it’s the last point.

RU: They have to discuss it. Just like they’ve started discussing at the same time the issue of victims along with that of justice and that of the end of the conflict, they should start with a subcommittee on ratification and implementation.

VA: What is the other option to gain time?

RU: Preparing a special mechanism [like a small congressional committee to handle constitutional reforms]. Something that should be flexible and open, foreseeing the options of the government and the FARC, but one that people can be assured is not a blank check. That is done by saying that the citizens will approve everything at the end.

VA: And if they disapprove it?

RU: I start with the assumption that if we don’t manage to win the peace politically, the peace is already lost. Colombian society is divided in three. Some are enemies of peace due to ideological stubbornness or specific interests. Others are very much in favor and are willing to do almost anything for peace. And in between are some skeptics who sometimes are more in favor and at other times more against. The point is that those of us in favor of peace must win over the skeptics with formulas that are appropriate for a negotiation. Peace will not materialize without 70 percent in favor of the final formula.

VA: How can those skeptics be convinced?

RU: It’s crucial that in a sensitive topic like justice, the government and FARC come out with an accord that Colombian society, and especially that skeptical 30 percent, considers to be acceptable. Another method is that, as the war’s de-escalation yields results, the dynamic in favor of peace could be expected to grow.

VA: You say that [peace accord] implementation should be in phases, and that it is important to leave the most difficult issues to be dealt with in a few years. Why?

RU: Let’s suppose that peace is approved, the accords are ratified, the legal formulas are defined for the FARC and the military. At that point, the atmosphere will become relaxed. But if the most radical points are voted on immediately, it’s likely to become polarized again. It’s better to wait three or four years for the benefits of peace to begin, to show that this isn’t “Castro-Chávezism” [a term often used by the rightist opposition] but a more robust democracy, that the non-repetition guarantees are functioning.

… VA: Beyond ratification and implementation, another point to discuss is how to guarantee that what was agreed doesn’t fall apart over the ensuing years. How can this process be hardened?

RU: The idea of ratification has three purposes. That the citizenry says yes or no in a democratically legitimate way, to generate agile implementation mechanisms, and finally to put a padlock on the peace process. The only thing that can give the peace process a padlock in a divided country with a long war, is the combination of: the maximum possible political accord, certain legal formulas, and international legitimacy. Without that, it’s possible that peace could be reversible.

VA: And how are those three pillars going?

RU: Pretty well with regard to international support and the construction of ideas for legal security, but only so-so with regard to political construction. The risk now is that of trying to use legal maneuvers as a way to avoid building political consensus around peace.

Tags: Implementation, Ratification

August 27, 2015

What Are They Thinking?

The last seven months have seen the pendulum of Colombia’s peace process swing back and forth rather wildly. The year began with optimism: the FARC was observing a unilateral ceasefire that began on December 20. Armed violence dropped to levels not seen since the early 1980s.

An April 15 FARC attack on a military column in Cauca, in southwestern Colombia, dashed this optimism. The three months that followed were marked by a dramatic re-escalation of the conflict, with June the most violent month since talks began in October 2012.

Then—almost as abruptly—the FARC declared a new unilateral ceasefire on July 8, for one month starting July 20 (Colombia’s independence day). Government and FARC negotiators went further four days later, signing an accord making the FARC ceasefire indefinite and committing the government to de-escalating its own military actions if the FARC maintains its ceasefire. The July 12 accord raises the priority of negotiating a bilateral ceasefire (something the government had resisted) and accelerating discussions of what remains to be negotiated, especially transitional justice for the worst human rights violators.

This is a positive development, though perhaps not a breakthrough. We can expect real progress in the next few months, but not miracles. There will likely be further setbacks as the pendulum inevitably swings back. As we contemplate the next few months, it’s worth looking at the volatile swings of 2015 from both sides’ on-the-record perspectives.

The December-May unilateral ceasefire
FARC: Government:

We want a bilateral ceasefire as soon as possible, so that the talks may proceed without battlefield distractions. To that end, we declared a unilateral ceasefire of our own in December. We warned that we would end our ceasefire if the government continued to attack us. Though the government called a halt to aerial bombings in March, ground attacks continued. During our truce, the heads of the 57th and 66th Fronts, and the number-two commander of the 17th Front, were killed in attacks.

We have been reluctant to enter into a bilateral ceasefire because we fear the FARC will use the respite from battlefield pressure to strengthen itself militarily. When the FARC declared its unilateral ceasefire in December, we took a “wait and see” attitude, with modest steps toward de-escalation. And in fact, though there was an important drop in FARC attacks, the guerrillas did not cease all hostilities or illegal activity. During their truce, they continued to traffic drugs, to extort legal businesses, and to lay landmines. We could not justify pulling back a military that is reluctant to be restrained.

The April 15 attack in Cauca
FARC: Government:

This action wan’t exactly something that we ordered our fighters to carry out, but it fits within the general orders we gave: the column that launched the attack was being pursued by the military unit it attacked, so we regard their response to be self-defense. (Alternatively: our fighters were finding the unilateral ceasefire intolerable because of the government’s continued attacks, and with this incident we provoked a massive response—a mid-May wave of aerial bombings that killed over 40 guerrillas—that served as a pretext for calling an end to our ceasefire.)

Though the military unit that suffered the attack may not have followed security protocols, the attack itself shows why a unilateral ceasefire with no credible verification was a bad idea. Incidents like this are why we won’t accept a bilateral ceasefire without real verification, some concentration of guerrilla forces in specific areas, and a cessation of all hostilities, not just offensive attacks.

The FARC counter-offensive: May 22-early July
FARC: Government:

After lifting our ceasefire, it was time to remind the Colombian government—and the Colombian people—what we are capable of. We chose to hit almost entirely military and economic targets: rather than kill civilians in populated areas, we turned their lights out. As oil is Colombia’s largest source of foreign exchange, we especially hit the oil sector. Our offensive did some damage to the peace process, but while we bent it, we did not break it. When serious cracks started to show, we declared a new ceasefire and won a government commitment to respond with promises of de-escalation and intensified bilateral ceasefire talks.

The FARC offensive was reckless and counter to the guerrillas’ own self-interest. It increased Colombians’ anger not just against the FARC, but against the whole idea of negotiating with them. After a month of FARC attacks dominating the headlines, political pressures on us are so great that one more serious incident, or one more long period with no progress to show, and—as chief government negotiator Humberto de la Calle said—“This could end. One day, it’s likely that they won’t find us at the table in Havana.”

The next four months (after which the parties agree to review whether to continue the peace talks)
FARC: Government:

We want a bilateral ceasefire and accept the involvement of the UN and UNASUR in verifying de-escalation, as agreed on July 12. We want that ceasefire to give us the maximum amount of freedom, mobility, and ability to remain funded and equipped in case the talks fail.

We do not intend to sign a peace accord only to see our leaders go straight to a prison for past human rights crimes: that has never happened in any peace process, only in surrender negotiations. However, if Colombia applies a similar punishment standard to military personnel, and to civilians who sponsored paramilitary groups, we could contemplate some form of confinement for a reduced period of time, along with confessions and reparations.

We would prefer a bilateral ceasefire at the very end of the talks, but if it allows the sensitive negotiations over transitional justice to proceed in a calmer atmosphere, we are open to negotiating that bilateral ceasefire now. This ceasefire must have credible, capable verification: while we would rather those verifiers be Colombian, we will allow some international role. The ceasefire must include some concentration of FARC forces in specific zones. In those zones—which must have little population and little economic importance—perhaps the FARC can remain armed and receive financial support to sustain its members. The ceasefire must include a halt to all illegal activity, including extortion, narcotrafficking, laying landmines, and child recruitment.

We are willing to consider lighter alternative sentences—perhaps not even confinement—for the worst FARC human rights violators, and we would prefer that Colombia’s justice system take charge of the prosecution and sentencing. Colombia’s justice system might issue similarly light penalties, including a requirement of confessions and reparations, to members of the military who ordered or committed serious human rights crimes.

Tags: Cease-Fire, Crises, De-escalation

July 16, 2015

Colombia’s Peace Process: Some Frequently Asked Questions

(1,754 words, approximate reading time 8 minutes, 46 seconds)

For over 25 years, the Washington Office on Latin America has closely tracked Colombia’s armed conflict and efforts to end it. With the U.S. House of Representatives holding a hearing about Colombia’s peace process tomorrow, here is our assessment of the current moment.

How would a peace accord benefit U.S. interests in Colombia?

In the 12 years between the launch of “Plan Colombia” (2000) and the relaunch of talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas (2012), Colombia tripled its defense budget and increased its armed forces by about 75 percent. A long offensive decreased the FARC’s size by about two-thirds. Today, this means that the FARC still has about 7,000 members and 15,000 support personnel. Though the FARC has no hope of taking power by force, the past 12 years’ rate of reduction promises years of continued conflict.

After 51 years of fighting, negotiation offers a quicker way to end the FARC’s status as a cause of violence and drug production. A peace accord would dissolve a group on the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations, as thousands of its members move into legality. This would ease efforts to reduce production and transshipment of U.S.-bound illegal drugs. And it would offer an opportunity for improved governance over historically lawless territories that provide safe haven to terror groups and traffickers.

Is a peace accord likely?

Yes, but getting there will be slow. Formal negotiations began two and a half years ago, and could easily take another year. Nonetheless, negotiators at the table are working in a disciplined way with international accompaniment, respecting the ground rules and generating hundreds of pages of proposals and dozens of pages of draft accords.

Negotiators have signed preliminary accords on rural development, political participation for the opposition, reforms to drug policy, and a truth commission. They have taken some steps toward de-escalating the conflict: the FARC is cooperating with the government on initial de-mining projects, and has agreed to turn over any minors in its ranks under the age of 15.


Negotiators announce agreement on a Truth Commission in June.

Still, some of the most difficult questions remain unresolved. Negotiators must find a way to hold human rights abusers accountable while also persuading them to disarm. They still must come to agreement on reparations to victims, the nature of combatants’ disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration, and the method of ratifying a final agreement.

The negotiations are going on without a ceasefire, amid frequently intense combat. This is a deliberate choice of the Colombian government, which is concerned that the FARC might use a ceasefire to regroup and reinforce itself. President Juan Manuel Santos insists that a bilateral cease-fire must wait until the end of the process. In the meantime, acts of violence undermine public support for the dialogues, and affect the climate at the negotiating table.

Are the talks in a rough patch?

Yes. The FARC had declared a unilateral cease-fire effective December 20, 2014, which brought an approximately 85 percent reduction in guerrilla offensive actions (though guerrilla “fundraising” activities, like extortion and narcotrafficking, continued). The ceasefire was not reciprocal: though the government halted aerial bombings of FARC targets in March, the guerrillas complained of frequent military ground attacks.

On April 15, FARC fighters attacked a military column encamped in a rural town in southwestern Colombia, killing 11 soldiers. The guerrillas refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing, and the government responded by resuming aerial bombings, including three raids in May that killed over 40 FARC members. The FARC revoked its cease-fire on May 22, and has since carried out a steady campaign of attacks on civilian economic infrastructure. Attacks on oil pipelines and power lines are causing environmental damage and blackouts.


The aftermath of the April 15 FARC attack.

What does public opinion say?

The guerrilla offensive has dangerously drained support for the talks. In late February, during the guerrillas’ unilateral cease-fire, Colombia’s bimonthly Gallup poll found 72 percent of respondents supporting the government’s decision to negotiate with the FARC. For only the second time since the talks started, Gallup found a majority—53 percent—optimistic that an accord might be reached. Two months later, those numbers fell to 57 percent and 40 percent, respectively.

Would a ceasefire help?

Some analysts contend that the guerrillas are deliberately seeking to anger Colombians, in the belief that President Santos might agree to a bilateral cease-fire to save the peace process. This is a miscalculation: public fatigue with the peace process makes it more likely that the government might walk away from the talks completely.

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Tags: Cease-Fire, Crises, U.S. Policy

June 23, 2015

What the “Truth Commission” Can, and Can’t, Do

(708 words, approximate reading time 3 minutes, 32 seconds)

Colombian government and FARC negotiators made a big announcement on June 4, at the end of their 37th round of talks in Havana. They had come to agreement on the nature and mandate of a Truth Commission, or “Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence, and Non-Repetition,” that would be charged with “clarifying and making known the truth about what happened in the conflict.”

This is the first point of agreement reached within the “Victims” agenda point, which the negotiators have been discussing for about a year. The announcement gives the peace process a badly needed shot of momentum at a time when, following the end of the FARC’s unilateral cease-fire, the pace of fighting has quickened.

According to the lengthy summary document both sides released on June 4, the “Clarification” Commission will have 11 members, 3 of whom can be foreigners. Upon the signing of a final peace accord, the Commission will have six months to establish itself, and the commissioners will have three years to perform their work. This is an appropriately long amount of time for a complex and politically charged task: the commissioners will not be rushed.

The Commission’s final report will not name the worst individual perpetrators. It will be limited to identifying “collective responsibilities.” The text explains that the commissioners will be directed to report on:

“The collective responsibilities of the State, including of the Government, and the other public powers, of the FARC-EP, of the paramilitaries, as well as of any other group, organization or institution, national or international, that has had any participation in the conflict, for the practices and acts referred to above.”

There will be no “naming names.” That will be the work of whatever transitional justice body that the negotiators agree to establish, which will operate independently of the Truth Commission.

The Commission’s report, though, can explore the responsibilities of a wide range of institutions and “collectivities,” including private corporations and foreign governments. Presumably, it could name the military units or FARC fronts that exhibited a pattern of committing the most serious violations.

An existing body, the Center for Historical Memory originally set up by the 2005 “Justice and Peace Law,” has already done this, to some extent, in its numerous published reports. One imagines that the “Clarification Commission” would have to be more explicit, detailed, and systematic than its predecessor in its naming of responsible institutions and groups.

The Commission will not recommend punishments, nor can it share evidence with the judicial system. The text reads:

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Tags: Truth Commission, Victims

June 8, 2015

What Now? De-Escalate. Consider a Bilateral Cease-Fire.

Poll data published in early May show 64% of Colombians favoring deadlines for peace talks, and 69% feeling pessimistic about the possibility of reaching an accord.

(2,008 words, approximate reading time 10 minutes, 2 seconds)

Colombia’s peace process with the FARC continues to wobble from the blow dealt by the April 15 guerrilla attack that killed 11 soldiers in southwestern Colombia. Just since May 21, Colombia’s military has launched retaliatory raids on FARC positions that have killed at least 40 guerrillas, including two who spent time as negotiators in Havana. The FARC has responded by revoking the unilateral cease-fire it had declared on December 20, and by launching attacks of its own.

On May 25, as negotiators sat down in Havana for a delayed start to their 37th round of talks, FARC negotiator Pablo Catatumbo told reporters, “The sorrowful events that occurred last week are a step backward in the advances made until now at the table.” Headlines in Colombia’s press now refer to “The Wounded Peace,” “A Return To Dialogue Amid War,” and (citing the Colombian government’s Inspector-General, a critic of the process) “Peace Process In Intensive Care.”

The fundamentals are sound, for now

The April 15 FARC attack was, for most Colombians, the unofficial end of the unilateral cease-fire that the guerrillas had declared on December 20 and canceled on May 22. Still, despite continued wobbles, this remains fundamentally the same peace process that it was on April 14, the day before the FARC attack.

  • On April 14, the negotiators were discussing transitional justice and disarmament, the last two substantive items (and likely the two most difficult) on their agenda. They were doing so in a disciplined manner, following agreed-upon ground rules, considering detailed proposals, working with international accompaniment, and respecting confidentiality. They are still doing that.
  • On April 14, a group of active-duty military personnel, part of an “end of conflict subcommittee,” was discussing the technical details of disarmament, as well as how to implement interim de-escalation measures, especially a joint de-mining program. They are still doing that. In fact, leading guerrilla negotiators quietly visited Antioquia and Meta departments recently to lay groundwork for the first landmine removal projects.
  • On April 14, outside observers and foreign governments were focusing not just on remaining negotiation items, but on preparation for post-conflict challenges. They remain focused on the post-conflict.

On the other hand:

  • On April 14, polls [PDF] were, for one the first times since talks began, showing a majority of Colombians believing that a peace accord with the FARC might be possible. Today, that is once again a minority view inside Colombia.
  • On April 14, the FARC was in its fourth month of a cease-fire that—though unilateral and barely verified, and thus fatally flawed—had brought measures of conflict-related violence down to lows not seen since 1984, according to CERAC, a Bogotá think-tank that closely monitors violence. The 153-day stoppage in guerrilla offensive actions may have prevented about 614 dead or wounded, estimated Bogotá’s Peace and Reconciliation Foundation. Still, CERAC points out, the temporary truce may have allowed FARC units “to maintain or improve their position in exploiting illegal income from illicit crops, narcotrafficking, illegal mining, illegal timber harvesting, and extortion.”

Either way, that flawed cease-fire is now over, and we are about to find out the extent to which events on the battlefield affect dynamics at the negotiating table. It is unclear how many more “wobbles” this process can sustain, yet the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation asserts that more are coming: “We have information that the FARC are ready to respond with actions against oil and energy infrastructure, which could end in confrontations in many zones of the country,” said the group’s director, León Valencia.

The push to “accelerate”

With no cease-fire in place and public opinion now skeptical, patience is wearing thin. A broad spectrum of actors—the Colombian government, the U.S. government, the United Nations, former FMLN and IRA fighters—are calling on both sides to speed the tempo of the dialogues, at a time when the negotiators are considering some of the most sensitive topics on the entire agenda.

At this moment, the negotiators in Havana face three options. All are very difficult.

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Tags: Cease-Fire, Crises, De-escalation

May 28, 2015

Getting the FARC Process Back on Track: Cease-Fire Talks, Not Deadlines

(1,242 words, approximate reading time 6 minutes, 12 seconds)

Colombia’s peace process is still reeling from the blow dealt by a FARC unit in rural Cauca department, in the country’s southwest, in the pre-dawn hours of April 15. Guerrillas surrounded, threw grenades at, and opened fire on a military detachment taking refuge from a rainstorm under the roof of a sports facility in the village of La Esperanza. The attack killed 11 soldiers and 2 guerrillas; 17 soldiers were wounded.

The incident has set back much of the progress that guerrilla and government negotiators in Havana have made since December in de-escalating the conflict, and in building public support for talks. President Juan Manuel Santos immediately lifted a month-old suspension of bomb attacks on FARC targets, a move the U.S. government quickly supported. While FARC negotiators insisted on characterizing the attack as a response to military aggression, lead government negotiator Humberto de la Calle lamented that “hope has been fractured” by the incident. Critics of the talks on Colombia’s political right, like former President Álvaro Uribe and Inspector-General Alejandro Ordóñez, went on the attack. President Santos was booed at two public events.

This is shaping up to be the most damaging crisis that the FARC talks have faced in their two and a half years. At the same time, it is typical—almost a textbook case—of the sort of crisis that hits just about every effort to negotiate an end to armed conflict. It is a foreseeable consequence of negotiating without a cease-fire in place, or—since the FARC declared a unilateral cease-fire in December—of negotiating with a unilateral, barely verified cease-fire in place.

This is a setback, but it need not be permanent. Restoring momentum to the negotiation and the de-escalation effort will require action.

First, figure out what happened in La Esperanza. The evidence—witness testimony, forensics and ballistics—points to a cold-blooded, disproportionate guerrilla attack. Still, this characterization needs to be ratified, nuanced, or disproved by an independent investigation of what happened.

It is virtually certain that a review of the evidence will find that the FARC patrol used excessive force and violated the dictates of its own cease-fire. Having an impartial body say that, though, can make it possible for the FARC leadership to admit publicly that its fighters acted in error.

Right now, the guerrilla negotiators in Havana can’t do that. They risk leaving the impression that they are internally divided or have lost control over their fighters. To admit wrongdoing would call into question their ability to “deliver” the FARC membership upon signature of a peace accord.

After contact with authorities and with both soldiers and FARC fighters present at the incident, investigators—perhaps, as the International Crisis Group has suggested, from the guarantor countries, Cuba and Norway—could offer conclusions about why the FARC assailants acted as they did. Were they dissidents acting out, or did they truly believe they were respecting the top leadership’s order to desist from offensive attacks?

We need to know the answer to that. If the attackers were dissidents trying to damage the process, the FARC should recognize that and hold them accountable. If the attack owed to a commander’s poor judgment of his duties, the FARC should acknowledge it.

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Tags: Cease-Fire, De-escalation

April 21, 2015

The Extradition Issue

FARC leader “Simón Trinidad” at the federal maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado.

(1,956 words, approximate reading time 9 minutes, 46 seconds)

“I don’t believe that any guerrilla is going to turn in his weapon only to go and die in a U.S. jail,” Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said in early March. “It will be up to me to propose to the U.S. authorities some solution to this issue, which is complex and difficult, but has to be resolved.”

President Santos has much to discuss. Outstanding requests to extradite FARC guerrilla leaders to the United States could stand in the way of a final peace accord.

We have never seen a full list of U.S. courts’ indictments of FARC leaders (some of them may still be sealed), nor have we ever spoken to a U.S. official who could cite an exact number of outstanding extradition requests. But the following indictments are in the public record, and the number is large: they involve at least 60 living, at-large FARC members.

  • Six were indicted in 2001 for the 1999 killing of three U.S. indigenous rights activists in Arauca. (At least one of these six is now dead.)
  • Three were indicted in 2002 for narcotics and for kidnapping two U.S. oil workers in Venezuela. (At least two of these three are now dead.)
  • One was indicted in 2002 for the 1998 kidnapping of four U.S. citizen birdwatchers. (This individual, Henry Castellanos alias “Romaña,” is now a FARC negotiator in Havana.)
  • Two were indicted in 2004 for a 2003 grenade attack on a Bogotá bar, which injured five U.S. citizen customers.
  • Fifty were indicted in 2006 to face narcotics charges. (Several—we don’t know how many—are now dead, or captured and extradited. Some are on the guerrilla negotiating team in Havana.) This mass indictment was made possible by the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005, which established the federal crime of “narco-terrorism,” or trafficking drugs to fund terrorist activity. This change in the law now applies worldwide: U.S. officials no longer need to prove that an individual intended to traffic drugs to the United States.
  • Eighteen were indicted in 2010 for their role in holding three U.S. defense contractors hostage between 2003 and 2008, and murdering their plane’s U.S. citizen pilot. (At least one of them, Dutch-born Tanja Nijmeijer, is part of the FARC delegation in Havana. Some others have been captured and extradited.)

U.S. authorities have also sought to extradite leaders of Colombia’s pro-government paramilitary groups to face narcotrafficking charges. In May 2008, then-President Álvaro Uribe extradited 14 of them at once, although all were participating in a negotiated demobilization and transitional justice process. As of February 2010, 30 ex-paramiltaries had been extradited to the United States.

FARC leaders have made clear that they will not let that happen to them. They will not agree to demobilize without a solid guarantee that the Colombian government will not extradite them to the United States for crimes committed before the signing of a peace accord.

The U.S. government cannot offer this guarantee. Once extradition requests are issued, it is almost impossible to call them back. The indictments listed above come from grand juries, presided by judges, and the U.S. government’s executive branch cannot interfere in the actions of the judicial branch. (While the President has the constitutional power to pardon individuals before a case goes to trial—as President Gerald Ford did for Richard Nixon after Watergate—such pre-trial pardons are exceedingly rare.)

The prosecutors in these cases may technically be part of the executive branch, working for the President, but they have wide-ranging independence to avoid any appearance that their work is politicized. (Witness the political firestorm that raged in 2007 when the Bush administration sought to fire and replace several U.S. attorneys.) Their superiors cannot force them to drop their cases for the good of “peace in Colombia.”

Extradition requests are issued by the Department of Justice Office of International Affairs. This Office’s mandate doesn’t include bringing peace to Colombia or achieving general U.S. foreign policy objectives. Its job is to bring perpetrators of crimes to justice. So these indictments and extradition requests aren’t going anywhere.

Within these constraints, it’s up to another part of the U.S. government—the Department of State, and if necessary the President—to decide whether a country’s non-fulfillment of an extradition request affects its relations with the United States.

Often, when U.S. diplomats consider the larger context, non-fulfillment of extradition requests has no effect at all on the bilateral relationship. This was the case when Colombia’s Supreme Court held up the extradition of paramilitary leader Daniel Rendón alias “Don Mario” in 2010. Nor did the U.S.-Colombia relationship suffer in 2011, when the Santos government extradited wanted Venezuelan drug trafficker Walid Makled to his home country—with which President Santos was seeking to repair troubled relations—instead of to the United States.

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Tags: Extradition, U.S. Policy

March 20, 2015

Suspending Bombings, a Common-Sense Step

“I have decided to give the order to the Minister of Defense and the commanders of the armed forces to cease bombings over the FARC’s encampments during one month,” Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos announced on the evening of March 10.

Santos based this decision on the “advances” of peace talks with the FARC, which are “entering in a definitive phase.” He also cited the guerrilla group’s compliance with a unilateral cease-fire that it declared on December 20.

This is the first time that the Colombian government has suspended aerial bombings since 1984. With U.S. support, Colombia’s military has relied on its “air superiority” to kill top FARC leaders, and in general to make conditions intolerable for FARC fighters. “For fear of being located and targeted, units no longer sleep in the same place two days in a row, so camps must be sparser,” noted an extensive 2013 Washington Post report on Colombia’s air campaign.

This campaign is now on hold. And that makes sense now, for five reasons.

  • It eases the de-escalation of Colombia’s conflict. In early December, after the FARC released a general whom it had captured two weeks earlier, negotiators agreed to begin discussing “the issue of the conflict’s de-escalation.” Since then, the FARC have declared a unilateral suspension of offensive attacks, modestly limited their recruitment of minors, and agreed to participate in a humanitarian demining project. The government has been unwilling to declare an immediate bilateral cease-fire, but has been quietly reducing the intensity of its military actions against the FARC. The halt to bombings announced on March 10 is the Colombian government’s first explicitly declared reciprocation. It gives fresh momentum to the drive to de-escalate.
  • It probably formalizes a de facto situation. President Santos’s announcement was the “formalization of the virtual bilateral cease-fire that has already existed since mid-December,” Jorge Restrepo of the conflict-monitoring group CERAC told Colombia’s El Tiempo newspaper. The guerrillas periodically issue statements listing military attacks on FARC targets during the cease-fire period; none have mentioned an aerial attack since early January. A de facto halt to aerial bombings may already exist.
  • It may have saved the FARC truce after a big Colombian military strike. On Sunday, Colombia’s army gave the FARC what El Tiempo called “the hardest blow against them of the past two years.” Troops killed José David Suárez, alias “Becerro,” the leader of the FARC’s 57th Front in northern Chocó, a strategic trafficking zone along the border with Panama. It was not an aerial attack: troops acting on a tip from police intelligence ambushed Becerro after “spending almost eight days camouflaged in the swamp” awaiting him. Last year, a report by the organized-crime monitoring group InsightCrime called the 57th “one of the FARC’s richest units.” This week, InsightCrime asked whether Becerro’s killing would “rock Colombia’s peace talks.”

    When the FARC declared its cease-fire in December, its statement warned that it would abandon it if the government kept attacking FARC targets. The Santos government’s decision to cease aerial bombings—announced two days after Becerro’s killing—should prevent the FARC from deciding to do that.

  • It eases FARC negotiators’ efforts to keep their rank and file supportive of peace talks. We don’t know to what extent FARC fighters in rural Colombia have actually bought into the Havana negotiations. It’s not hard to imagine them envying the safety that the negotiators enjoy; disagreeing with peace accords they view as insufficiently radical; or feeling constrained by the cease-fire. For them to continue going along with the peace process, the rank-and-file needs to see some benefits. The government moratorium on bombing gives guerrilla fighters a big psychological benefit: it is a guarantee that, if they remain on their encampments, they need not live under constant alert for the sound of approaching aircraft.

  • The FARC was adjusting to the aerial bombing strategy anyway. That, anyway, is the contention of an article in the Medellín daily El Colombiano that contends, “The regularity of this type of offensive has been diminished by the change in the guerrilla strategy in response to the state’s pursuit.” The FARC “changed its way of operating and its encampment culture,” explains Ariel Ávila of Bogotá’s Peace and Reconciliation Foundation think-tank.

Tags: Cease-Fire, De-escalation

March 12, 2015

The “Transitional Justice” Debate Heats Up

César Gaviria’s “transitional justice for all” proposal has generated a lot of discussion.

The Colombian government-FARC peace talks have begun to tackle what could be their most difficult subject. Transitional justice, especially the question of what to do with the armed conflict’s worst human rights violators, dominated coverage of the talks in Colombia’s media during the break between their 32nd and 33rd rounds (February 13–24).

This period was punctuated by two statements, both publicized on February 22.

  • The FARC’s lead negotiator, Iván Márquez, told an interviewer, “For the guerrillas, zero jail. No peace process in the world has ended with the insurgency’s leaders behind bars.” Márquez has said almost the same thing before, but his words hit harder now because the talks have now begun tackling this issue. The Colombian government’s high commissioner for peace, Sergio Jaramillo, responded, “The guerrillas think that if we don’t guarantee them impunity, they won’t put down their weapons. If that is their thinking, there won’t be an agreement, there won’t be peace.”
  • Cesar Gaviria, Colombia’s president from 1990 to 1994 and later secretary-general of the Organization of American States, issued a proposal to impose “transitional justice for all.” Gaviria suggests requiring not just guerrillas and soldiers, but also politicians, businesspople, landowners, and civilian officials, to confess their involvement in the most serious human rights abuses committed during the conflict. In exchange for such confessions and efforts to make amends to victims, Gaviria’s proposal would exempt non-combatants from serving prison sentences (it is vaguer about combatants). Among the Colombian military, the proposal would exempt lower-ranking officers, as well as those who committed crimes by “omission” (deliberate failure to prevent a human rights abuse committed by others).

Let’s look at these two statements.

Iván Márquez may technically be right when he says FARC members won’t spend a day in “jail.” The worst human rights violators among its members might not end up in regular prisons administered by Colombia’s National Prisons Institute. Nonetheless, guerrillas most responsible for the most serious abuses may end up in some sort of facility that deprives them of liberty. This facility might not be administered solely by the Colombian government: in order to avoid the appearance of “surrender,” some international involvement could be involved. While FARC leaders held there would be confined to the facility, the length and austerity of their detention would probably be significantly shorter than a normal criminal prison sentence for such serious crimes.

Last week, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan visited Colombia and spoke to the FARC negotiators in Cuba. Rodrigo Pardo of Semana magazine asked him whether he thought the International Criminal Court would require prison for guerrilla leaders responsible for the worst human rights crimes. Annan more or less said yes:

“I think the determination here—obviously, judges will have to make it—but the determination will be to bring to account all those who are most responsible for the most serious crimes. So it will not be for the organization you belong to, but have you committed a crime or not? Obviously one is not going to be able to bring everyone to trial, but those most responsible will have to be held to account.”

Former President Gaviria’s proposal, meanwhile, made big waves in Colombia: it’s highly unusual for a heavyweight of the country’s political class to recognize that civilian elites bear some judicial responsibility for crimes committed during the conflict. (“My surprise was enormous,” wrote León Valencia, a demobilized ELN guerrilla leader who is now one of Colombia’s most-cited conflict analysts.) FARC leaders “hailed” the proposal as a good starting point.

Gaviria deserves praise for seeking to extend accountability to Colombia’s ruling elite. Civilian non-combatants played a large role—often larger than that of combatants—in ordering, planning, funding, and preparing some of the worst abuses committed during Colombia’s conflict, and they shouldn’t avoid accountability. Their participation in confessions, amends, reparations, and truth-telling could help Colombia make a historic break with generations of political violence.

Gaviria’s “transitional justice for all” proposal raises three questions, though:

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Tags: Transitional Justice

March 2, 2015

Washington Names a Special Envoy. What Can He Do?

On February 20, Secretary of State John Kerry presented Bernard Aronson, the United States’ first special envoy to the Colombian peace process. This is a welcome move.

Since talks between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas began in 2012, U.S. support has been consistent, but distant. Its usual manifestation has been public declarations of U.S. backing—a general statement every two months or so—from a high-ranking official. But with Aronson’s appointment, a senior official will be engaged with the process on a full-time basis. U.S. support for the talks is likely to take a qualitative leap forward.

A Colombian Request

The move, Secretary Kerry said, is the result of a direct request from Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.

“In December I met with President Santos in Bogota, and he asked me directly whether or not the time had come for the United States to perhaps take a more direct role, and be more directly supportive of the peace process.”

What prompted President Santos to make this request in December is unclear. Timing was a likely factor: the FARC’s quick November 30 release of a captured Colombian general, and its mid-December declaration of a unilateral ceasefire, gave fresh momentum to the talks, leaving a clear impression that they had moved to a more advanced phase. President Santos no doubt calculated that a more explicit show of U.S. backing was appropriate at this stage. But it is uncertain what additional roles or duties he wishes U.S. diplomats to fulfill at this time.

A change in U.S. posture

Even six months ago, in our interactions with U.S. officials, the idea of a special envoy to the peace talks didn’t quite fail the “laugh test,” but was certainly viewed as premature. A series of recent events—Santos’s reelection victory, the captured general’s release, the ceasefire, steps toward de-escalation of the conflict—changed that calculation.

Changed U.S.-Cuban relations

The December 2014 diplomatic opening to Cuba also likely made the idea of a special envoy more practical. It eased, both politically and diplomatically, the presence of a U.S. government representative in Havana on a mission unrelated to the bilateral relationship with Cuba.

A qualified envoy

Bernard Aronson served as assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs during the George H.W. Bush (41) administration. There, he oversaw a shift away from the Reagan administration’s opposition to negotiations in El Salvador, toward a stance of support for UN-brokered peace talks.

The choice of Aronson is, on balance, smart. He is experienced with U.S. support for peace negotiations in Latin America. And, since he served in a Republican administration (though himself active in Democratic politics), he has more credibility with Republican legislators, whose support is important as they now control both houses of Congress.

Aronson’s efforts were vital to encouraging El Salvador’s rightist government to stay at the negotiating table. But he is not a reserved, conciliatory career diplomat. Álvaro de Soto, the UN official who mediated the El Salvador peace talks, described Aronson as “browbeating me” about issues like negotiation deadlines and imposing a cease-fire, and criticized his State Department for the impatience with which it approached the talks and occasionally undercut his work. Investigative journalist Juanita León, meanwhile, points out that Aronson’s private-equity firm, which he founded in 1996, has investments in oil extraction projects in Putumayo and Meta, two conflictive zones with a heavy FARC presence.

The FARC is delighted

In Havana, guerrilla negotiators quickly issued a statement “hailing” Aronson’s appointment as U.S. special envoy. They voiced a view that more direct U.S. involvement in the peace process is “a necessity, given the permanent presence and impact that the United States has in Colombia’s political, economic, and social life.”

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Tags: U.S. Policy

February 23, 2015

Prison, or “Deprivation of Liberty,” for Human Rights Violators

International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has warned Colombia against amnesties or suspended sentences for serious guerrilla human rights violators.

In December, FARC peace negotiators met in Havana with representatives of Bojayá, a town in northwestern Colombia. There, during a 2002 confrontation with paramilitary fighters, the FARC had catapulted a homemade bomb into a church where much of the population was hiding, killing 119 of them. Following the Havana meeting, the guerrilla negotiators issued a humbly worded apology, in which they committed to

“seeking ways we can possibly compensate, not just by recognizing the damage caused then, but by developing a series of proposals directed toward dialogue, acts of reparations, and to offer and agree on non-repetition measures.”

The December document was important, not only as the FARC’s most explicit expression of contrition to date, but because in it the guerrillas recognized their responsibility to tell victims the truth about their own human rights abuses and to contribute to reparations.

The statement said nothing, though, about punishment. The FARC continues to insist that it not be, in President Juan Manuel Santos’s words, “the first [guerrillas] in history to hand in their weapons only to go to a prison.”

An Emerging Consensus on “Deprivation of Liberty”

However, the FARC—or at least some of its members—may end up having that distinction. Those in the group most responsible for serious human rights violations could end up spending some time in prison, or in something like prison.

A few possibilities have been tossed about for how to hold demobilized guerrillas accountable for their human rights crimes. Virtually all agree that ex-guerrillas must engage in truth-telling or confession, usually as part of a formal trial or tribunal, along with amends or reparations to victims, and guarantees of non-repetition.

On punishment, though, a variety of views exist. The FARC continues to insist on its leaders avoiding punishment. “We haven’t fought our entire lives for peace with social justice and the dignity of Colombians only to end up locked up in the victimizers’ jails,” chief negotiator Iván Márquez said in 2013.

For his part, Colombia’s prosecutor-general (fiscal general), Eduardo Montealegre, has floated the idea of suspended sentences or “substitution of sentences that deprive liberty for other types of alternative penalties, like clearing landmines.” Communications from the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor have suggested that Montealegre’s proposals would not satisfy Colombia’s international human rights commitments.

Away from the negotiating table, though, a consensus is emerging that crimes against humanity and serious war crimes can neither be amnestied nor pardoned following a trial. The length and severity of punitive detention can be reduced after truth-telling, reparations, and non-repetition guarantees. But there must be some “deprivation of liberty.”

“The particularities of the Colombian case suggest that those maximally responsible for the most serious and representative crimes should have a dose of punishment that implies an effective deprivation of liberty,” reads a 2013 monograph from DeJusticia, a Bogotá-based legal think-tank that has extensively explored this question.

“From the philosophical perspective, specifically with respect to reflections about the purposes of the punishment, it becomes necessary to have a minimum of retribution as a recognition of the suffering of the victims, and as an affirmation of the values that were negated by the serious human rights violations.”

Even if consensus is emerging around the “deprivation of liberty” issue, though, at least four questions remain.

1. How to select cases?

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Tags: Human Rights, Transitional Justice, Victims

February 15, 2015

Interview on Colombia’s Peace Process with Danny Ramirez of the National Conference of Afro-Colombian Organizations

(Versión en español)

There are few Colombians whose lives have not been directly or indirectly unaffected by the armed conflict between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). However, throughout more than 50 years of conflict, the damages have disproportionately affected a particular segment of the Colombian population, as national and international human rights organizations frequently indicate in reports. These reports unanimously agree that it is Afro-Colombians who have borne the greatest cost of Colombia’s bloodiest war. To illustrate, two million out of the six million people who are currently internally displaced by the conflict are Afro-Colombian. This statistic is especially troubling considering that Afro-Colombians compose only 10 percent of Colombia’s total population. Given the magnitude of this disproportion, it is vital that the concerns and interests of this historically marginalized people are taken into consideration at the peace negotiations that are currently occurring between the government of President Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC in Havana, Cuba if lasting peace is to be achieved.

For this reason, WOLA interviewed Danny Maria Torres Ramirez, Coordinator of Women and Gender component of the National Conference of Afro-Colombian Organizations (Conferencia Nacional de Organizaciones Afrocolombianas, CNOA), a social organization working to protect human rights and to further the collective interests of Afro-Colombians. We had the opportunity to talk with Ramirez after her presentation, “Women and the Peace Process in Colombia”, at the United States Institute of Peace on 25 June 2014 in which she discussed the importance of addressing gender issues during the peace process. As a person with extensive knowledge of the problems affecting Afro-Colombian people, we interviewed Ramirez to learn more about the interests of Afro-Colombian communities in the peace process, the strategies that the CNOA is using to prepare communities to face the challenges of post-conflict, and the organization’s recommendations to President Santos’s administration to successfully overcome the major challenges facing Afro-Colombians.

Could you tell us about CNOA’s mission, and of the women’s component in particular?

The CNOA is the coming together of 246 organizations, which form a series of national support networks. Its members include organizations of women, youth, displaced persons, community councils, and urban organizations. Our mission is to protect the human rights of the Afro-Colombian people and to further their collective interests. We articulate these organizations’ proposals into political and legislative advocacy, organizational strengthening, advising on strategic communications, and territorial strengthening. All of these efforts are done with particular attention to gender issues (women’s rights) and generational issues (children and youth). In that sense, the women’s component focuses on constructing public policies that attempt to transform the adverse reality of Afro-Colombian women. Afro-Colombian women are a population that has been historically impoverished and marginalized; even by the armed conflict. CNOA’s work strategies vary widely, but its advocacy role in the executive and legislative levels of government is of high importance. Through advocacy, we seek to promote positive policies that help us solve structural problems such as political exclusion, lack of education and discrimination. We also work closely with our Afro-Colombian population base to help them develop their own proposals for local government and thereby bring about positive change.

As an organization that works with some one of the most vulnerable people to the conflict’s violence, what is the role of CNOA in building a sustainable peace process?

One of the most important roles of CNOA is to act as a bridge between Afro-Colombians and the state in order to establish a positive and constructive dialogue aimed at overcoming inequality gaps. We must continue to inform the government about many of the issues that affect our communities. A signed agreement will resolve a major social problem that has disproportionately affected our communities; we understand that a ceasefire between the government and the FARC will not end all problems, but it will lift a large burden of oppression and subjugation from our communities’ shoulders. CNOA continues to work to prepare communities to face some of the challenges what will arise in the post-conflict. If these challenges are not addressed adequately, their damage can be as bad as the war itself. In order to achieve this goal, we must conduct the relevant contextual and territorial assessments. For example, we have to be able to handle the reintegration of former combatants into civilian life. Similarly, we must prepare for the countersignature of the negotiation points because it is important to know, in the territories is where the war has been fought, how the final agreements have been established established. These are some of the challenges on which we must focus if the agreement is to be an actually framework for a sustainable and lasting peace, from this point onwards other challenges will unfold with time. Of course we must also continue to educate the general public on issues affecting Afro-Colombian communities and address the lack of economic and social opportunities that strip away our livelihoods and that continue to push us into the systematic violence that we have faced for many years.

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Tags: Afro-Descendant Communities, Civil Society Peace Movement

January 29, 2015

Colombia’s Military and the Peace Process

President Santos and government peace negotiators meet with the high military and police command on January 23.

“Fifty-one years of war and we’re going to reach peace, a peace that is your victory,” President Juan Manuel Santos told Colombia’s army in a pre-Christmas speech. “That courage, that determination, have been responsible for us talking about peace, because the enemy finally noticed that you are invincible, and today we have the best Army in our history.”

President Santos, who served as defense minister in the previous administration, regularly offers effusive praise to the armed forces. Except on December 2, when he appeared on the TV station of Bogotá’s left-leaning city government and warned, “People who aren’t acting with loyalty are coming out, and any officer, no matter how important, showing the slightest sign of disloyalty or lack of discipline will be out of the military.”

This comment, which came a day after the resignation of an Army general who had been captured and released by the FARC guerrillas, raised eyebrows in Colombia and reportedly angered the military.

Santos’s words drew attention to a concern brewing below the surface of Colombia’s peace process: that a significant sector of the armed forces and its leadership disagrees with the civilian government’s handling of negotiations with the FARC.

It is impossible to know how large this sector is, as active-duty officers usually respect their constitutional mandate to be “non-deliberative,” avoiding public criticism of civilian leaders. We must rely on off-the-record comments, some of them made to us and some of them reported by a small number of Colombian investigative journalists, as well as the public words of retired officers and of politicians believed to be close to the military.

These comments indicate that military leaders and rank-and-file who are unhappy about the Havana talks aren’t opposed to “peace” or agitating to prolong the conflict. Their likely concerns, listed below, have more to do with the design of the process, or its implications for their institution.

Military discontent is important. Colombia’s armed forces have grown rapidly in this century: today, about 450,000 Colombians wear a military or police uniform, up from less than 300,000 in 2000. While the possibility of a military coup is near zero, opposition from the armed forces could manifest itself in ways that make peace negotiations, or subsequent accord implementation, inviable. Analysts cite military resistance as a key factor in the failure of a 1980s attempt to negotiate with the FARC and mid–1990s efforts to get negotiations started.

Elements in the armed forces can hinder or derail peace talks through what longtime Semana magazine columnist Antonio Caballero called “sometimes quiet and sometimes open opposition, sometimes almost en bloc and sometimes, like now, in the form of surreptitious ‘loose wheels’” within the institution. Methods can include private communications to politicians opposed to the process, incomplete compliance with orders, filtration of damaging allegations (true or invented) by military intelligence, or politically damaging public statements which, as they are rare, often come with high officers’ resignations. In extreme cases, some officers’ opposition could even be expressed through uncredited threats or intimidation against civilians involved in, or supportive of, negotiations.

Evidence of Military Unease

Military commanders insist, and some analysts agree, that the armed forces have stolidly supported President Santos’s peace effort. “The Army’s support for the peace process is proved, clearly, by our work,” Gen. Jaime Lasprilla, the chief of Colombia’s army, told El Espectador journalist Cecilia Orozco in November. “The fact that the transfer of 30 terrorists to Havana has occurred without any incident is a concrete and forceful piece of evidence.”

While the institution as a whole has gone along with the talks, there have been troubling incidents.

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Tags: Civil-Military Relations

January 24, 2015