March 17, 2020
March 16, 2020
Chapter 5, Article 1.2 of the 2016 Peace Accord created the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) as the justice component of the Comprehensive System of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Non-Repetition (Sistema Integral de Verdad, Justicia, Reparación y No Repetición, SIVJRNR). The Special Jurisdiction’s mandate, which cannot last for more than 20 years, is to administer transitional justice and uncover the crimes committed before December 1, 2016 in the context of the armed conflict. The JEP began operating after approval by the Senate on November 15, 2017 and was further strengthened on March 9, 2018 through the Acuerdo 001 of 2018, which regulated and structured its functioning.
Since it started operating and as of January 23, 2020, 12,493 individuals have come before the JEP—77.9% of them are former FARC members and 21.2% are members of the Armed Forces. It has held 96 hearings and has heard 249 individual testimonies. Notably, the JEP has granted 183 amnesties to former FARC combatants, one guarantee against extradition, 313 transitory, conditional, and anticipated parole to members of the Armed Forces or third actors, and 171 to former FARC combatants.
The JEP’s work is concentrated on seven macro-cases:
On July 4, 2018, the JEP opened case 001 to investigate the high number of kidnappings that took place throughout the armed conflict. The JEP is basing its preliminary investigations on a report by the Prosecutor’s Office that identified 8,163 victims, in cases allegedly committed by the FARC. During the case’s first stage: “recognition of truth, responsibility and determination of facts and conduct,” the JEP’s Sala de Reconocimiento has held multiple fact-finding and truth-telling sessions with former FARC members. Through these sessions, the JEP is seeking to expand the collective testimony that it received last September from 10 delegates of FARC’s former Estado Mayor. These sessions are organized territorially, based on the areas where the FARC’s Blocs operated, and held in the former Territorial Training and Reincorporation Spaces (Espacios Territoriales de Capacitación y Reincorporación, ETCRs). On December 3, 2019, former FARC members from the Occidental Bloc testified in Popayán (Cauca). Next on the list are the testimonies in Pondores (La Guajira) by the Caribe Bloc, and in Miravalle (Caquetá) by the South Bloc and the Teófilo Forero Mobile Column. Additional to these collective territorial testimonies, the JEP has also received 33 individual testimonies and will soon begin hearing from the victims. As of December 12, 2019, the JEP had accredited 1,709 victims in this case.
Opened on July 10, 2018, this case centers on investigating the human rights abuses and the violations to International Humanitarian Law (IHL) perpetrated by former FARC members and members of the Armed Forces in Nariño. Initially, the JEP is only investigating cases that occurred between January 1, 1990 and December 1, 2016. By restricting its attention to the Tumaco, Ricaurte, and Barbacoas municipalities, the JEP is taking unprecedented steps to acknowledge the environment as a victim of the armed conflict, especially in Afro-Colombian and Indigenous territories. As such, the JEP is investigating the “socio-environmental and territorial” harm that Afro-Colombian Community Councils (Consejos Comunitarios) and Awá and Eperara Siapiadaara Reservations suffered in the region. Along with these, the JEP is also investigating other crimes such as internal displacements, assassinations, sexual violence, torture, and forced recruitment. On November 2019, the JEP accredited Tumaco’s Campesino Association (Asociación Campesina de Tumaco)—a group of more than 5 thousand families—as collective victims. A week later, it recognized the Katsa Suterritory and 32 Awá cabildos as victims, more specifically as collective subjects of rights.
The JEP opened this case on July 17, 2018 to investigate the so-called false positive cases. Case 003 focuses on specific areas of the country: Cesar, Antioquia, Catatumbo (North Santander), Casanare, Meta and Huila. The evidentiary basis for the case came from a report by the Prosecutor’s Office, which identifies 2,248 victims in cases that occurred between 1988 and 2014. According to documents from the Ministry of Defense, 1,944 members of the Armed Forces have already expressed willingness to appear before the Special Jurisdiction. By December 5, 2019, the JEP had heard 156 testimonies of individuals involved in these crimes. Notably, in December 2019, the JEP ordered General Mario Montoya Uribe, former commander of the National Army, to testify. Various reports obtained by the JEP, as well as multiple testimonies by members of the Armed Forces, implicate General Montoya in cases of false positives. Also noteworthy, several testimonies in the past year led the JEP to a mass grave in Dabeiba, Antioquia apparently filled with victims of false positives. So far, the JEP has exhumed 54 bodies. The JEP’s Sala de Reconocimiento is expected to release its preliminary conclusions and begin the process of hearing from the victims later this semester.
On September 11, 2018, the JEP opened case 004. This case focuses on crimes against humanity and war crimes perpetrated in the Urabá region between January 1, 1986 and December 1, 2016. Ten municipalities are at the center of the investigations: Turbo, Apartadó, Carepa, Chigorodó, Mutatá and Dabeiba (Antioquia) and El Carmen del Darién, Riosucio, Unguía and Acandí (Chocó). Reports by the Prosecutor’s Office, the National Center of Historic Memory, and social organizations such as the Reiniciar Corporation and the Popular Research and Education Center (Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular, Cinep) cite 3,523 crimes relevant to case 004. These include cases of massacres, internal displacements, illegal land takings, gender-based violence, and sexual violence. Among the individual and collective victims identified by the JEP thus far are Unión Patriótica leaders, the Embera-Katío, Embera Chamí, and Tule o Kuna Peoples, the Afro-Colombian Community Councils (Consejos Comunitarios) of Jiguamiandó and Curvaradó, and San José de Apartadó’s Peace Community. As of February 21, 2019, the JEP had accredited more than 1,700 victims, including the most recent accreditation of 37 victims, for the “La Chinita” massacre. The JEP is expecting to hear the testimonies of 100 former members of the Armed Forces and 74 former FARC members who have some degree of responsibility for the crimes in case 004.
The JEP opened this case on November 8, 2018. Case 005 investigates 2,308 “victimizing acts” that occurred in seventeen municipalities in Northern Cauca and Southern Cauca Valley between January 1, 1993 and December 1, 2016. The significantly high number of victims that these acts produced makes this case notable. Among them are 344,333 victims of internal displacement, 1,038 victims of kidnappings, 828 victims of confinement, 260 victims of anti-personnel mines, 2,105 victims of forced disappearance, 26,861 victims of threats, 213 victims of forced recruitment, and 3,885 cases of attacks against the civilian population. On January 21, 2020, the JEP made history when it accredited the largest number of victims in any case related to the armed conflict— 124,785 victims. These victims comprise of the 31 Nasa Reservations and Cabildos part of Cauca’s Indigenous Regional Council (Consejo Regional Indígena del Cauca, CRIC) and of North Santander’s Association of Indigenous Cabildos (Asociación de Cabildos Indígenas del Norte del Cauca, ACIN). Additionally, the JEP also accredited 20,205 victims who are members of 47 Afro-descendant Community Councils (Consejos Comunitarios). Some of these Councils form the Association of North Cauca’s Community Councils (Asociación de Consejos Comunitarios del Norte del Cauca). Others are part of different organizations from Southern Cauca Valley.
The JEP opened this case on February 24, 2019 to investigate between 1,620 and 6,000 instances of victimization suffered by UP members. Among the cases are the 67 assassinations of UP leaders, which were declared crimes against humanity. Throughout last year, the JEP conducted multiple sessions to hear from UP victims in exile; it gathered 16 testimonies. By October 2019, 72 members of the Armed Forces and state agents had requested to be accepted in the JEP. These members claim to have knowledge relevant to case 006. Recently, on January 13, 2020, the JEP’s Appeals Section rejected requests from General and former DAS Director Miguel Maza Márquez to have his case taken up by the Special Jurisdiction. Maza Márquez is currently serving a 30-year sentence for the assassination of Luis Carlos Galán.
On March 1, 2019, the JEP opened case 007 to investigate cases of child recruitment from January 1, 1971 to December 1, 2016. The Prosecutor’s Office has identified 5,252 victims of child recruitment thus far. However, this phenomenon is notable for its high degree of impunity—there are only 10 convictions out of the 4,219 investigations opened by the Prosecutor’s Office. During the first stage of the investigation, the JEP applied the April 1997 Declaration of Cape Town Principles’ definition of child recruitment. The Declaration defines a child soldier as any individual under the age of 18 who forms part of an armed group in any capacity other than being a family member. According to reports received by the JEP, during the FARC’S Seventh National Guerilla Conference in 1982, the group adopted a policy that allowed recruitment of children starting at the age of 15. Moreover, the JEP has also found that such policy was not strictly applied and almost half of FARC’s child recruits were 15 years of age. These facts, according to the JEP, may suffice to attribute responsibility for these crimes to former FARC leaders. Indeed, between December 2, 2019 to January 30, 2020, the JEP summoned 14 former FARC-EP members to provide their version of the facts. Initially, the JEP only planned to summon former members of FARC’S Estado Mayor or Secretariat from 1978 to 2007.
March 13, 2020
Published by the State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor on March 11, 2020.
The Colombia section of the State Department’s annual worldwide overview of human rights. (Link at state.gov)
March 11, 2020
March 10, 2020
Publicado por la Fundación Ideas para la Paz el 8 de marzo de 2020.
An infographic responding to some of the concerns raised by victims and by the general public after the FARC’s initial testimonies about its practice of mass kidnapping during the conflict.
March 8, 2020
Published by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Colombia field office on February 26, 2020.
The annual report of the UN agency, which has maintained a strong reporting and technical assistance presence in Colombia since the 1990s. (Link to Spanish and English versions at hchr.org.co)
February 26, 2020
February 24, 2020
February 23, 2020
Publicado por Semana el 21 de febrero de 2020.
The Special Jurisdiction for Peace has been helping find bodies in Dabeiba, Antioquia, believed to be victims of “false positive” killings by the Colombian Army.
February 21, 2020
U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg and USAID Mission Director Larry Sacks visit the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, Colombia’s post-conflict transitional justice body.
February 19, 2020
February 18, 2020
The Truth Commission receives seven testimonies from former members of the FARC Secretariat.
February 18, 2020
Forensic investigators from the Special Jurisdiction for Peace at a mass grave in the town cemetery of Dabeiba, Antioquia, where they have uncovered more than 50 bodies. Many are believed to be victims of Army killings.
February 18, 2020
February 17, 2020
February 12, 2020
As former army chief Gen. Mario Montoya appears before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace in a hearing about “false positive” killings, victims hold a vigil outside.
February 12, 2020
January 27, 2020
The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) refuses to admit Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias “Jorge 40,” the former head of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC)’s northern bloc, currently imprisoned in the United States for narcotrafficking. The JEP notes that Tovar should have submitted to the Justice and Peace process set up for paramilitary leaders after 2006, but that he did not.
January 24, 2020
January 23, 2020
January 23, 2020
On March 11 Colombian President Iván Duque threw the country’s peace process into semi-paralysis. He formally “objected” to parts of the law underlying the transitional justice system that the accords had set up for judging ex-combatants’ human rights crimes. The “objections,” essentially a line-item veto, sent back to Colombia’s Congress a law that originally passed in November 2017. Today, Colombia’s Senate is to vote on the objections, a major milestone in this labyrinthine process.
Without an underlying “Statutory Law,” the transitional-justice system, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), can function but is badly hobbled. The JEP is a special tribunal, developed after 19 months of contentious negotiations between the government and the FARC guerrillas in Havana, to judge those on both sides who have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity. In exchange for full confessions and reparations to victims, the JEP sentences war criminals to up to eight years of “restricted liberty,” not quite prison. This was enough to convince 13,000 FARC guerrillas to demobilize, making the JEP the backbone of the 2016 peace accord. But the perception of leniency has made it unpopular and vulnerable to political attack.
For the 11,000 ex-guerrillas and 1,950 military personnel who have signed up to be tried in the JEP, President Duque’s “objections” cause more delay and more uncertainty. And more uncertainty—even the possibility that the JEP Statutory Law could collapse—raises concern among ex-combatants that they could be imprisoned or even extradited to the United States. That possibility could cause hundreds, or even thousands, of ex-combatants to take up arms again. This is serious.
For readers coming to this story late, a bit of chronology is in order.
Duque’s objections drew an outcry from peace accord supporters, both within Colombia and in the international community. Opposition legislators, led by former government peace negotiator Juanita Goebertus, used a newly won “right of rebuttal” to broadcast a video laying out the dangers posed by Duque’s move.
The only international government to support Duque’s actions was the Trump administration, in the person of Ambassador Kevin Whitaker, who went on national radio and met with members of Congress to argue for the objections that would ease extradition to the United States.
The JEP Statutory Law went to Colombia’s Congress, which is charged with voting to accept or reject President Duque’s objections. Colombia’s House and Senate vote separately. As we understand it, there are three possible outcomes:
On April 8, Colombia’s House of Representatives dealt President Duque a blistering defeat, voting 110-44 against his objections, with moderate and centrist parties joining the left. (This owed partly to concern about torpedoing the peace process, and partly to an unwillingness to hand Duque’s party a big political victory six months before nationwide gubernatorial and mayoral elections.) That eliminated option 1 above.
It is now up to the Senate to decide whether option 2 or option 3 will prevail. The vote will probably be closer there, not least because a senator from Duque’s party currently holds the body’s presidency. Analyses in Colombia’s media, though, indicate a majority of senators is likely to reject Duque’s objections, which would preserve the Statutory Law as is and deal an embarrassing blow to Iván Duque.
Duque’s supporters know this, and they have used gambits and delaying tactics to delay the Senate vote. Opposition observers worry that the governing party has been using the extra time making promises of patronage, like party positions in ministries, in order to turn the votes of enough moderate senators to gain a majority.
The vote is scheduled for today, Monday, April 29. Unless there are further delays, by Tuesday we should know whether President Duque’s objections have succeeded in keeping the JEP, and the peace process, in a state of semi-paralysis. This is an important vote.
April 29, 2019
Marino Córdoba called on the Colombian government to refocus the implementation of its 2016 peace deal on the victims of the country’s 50-year civil war. Córdoba presented his call to action during a Jan. 16 event marking the one-year anniversary of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP).
The JEP was established in 2016 as part of a peace deal between the Colombian government and the guerrilla insurgency Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC). Representing a compromise between the government and FARC leaders, the JEP implements a transitional justice model.
The agreement tasked the JEP with sanctioning the most grievous crimes committed during the 50-year conflict, while facilitating a sustainable peace by initiating a reconciliation process between victims and perpetrators.
“I was invited to present as a victim in order to represent [the victim’s] perspective of the JEP’s work,” said Córdoba, the founding director of the National Association of Displaced Afro-Colombians (AFRODES). The organization has been an important WOLA partner since and represents a coalition of 96 organizations in a network of 90,000 Afro-Colombians.
Córdoba is a survivor of Operation Genesis, a 1997 forced displacement of Afro-Colombian communities in the Cacarica river basin in Chocó. During the operation, Colombian soldiers collaborated with paramilitary groups to target social leaders and farmer’s unions.
“Before I die, I want to know what happened in Riosucio, and who was responsible for it all,” Córdoba said at the event, documented by W Radio Colombia.
Colombian General Rito Alejo del Río Rojas, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for ordering Operation Genesis, recently agreed to appear before the JEP in exchange for a reduced sentence.
“As victims, we want to know the truth and we want other Colombians to know the truth as well,” Córdoba said, in reference to del Río’s appearance. “The JEP has a great responsibility to document what happened, and we will do our utmost to support the institution.”
Córdoba pushed back against allegations by former president Álvaro Uribe that the JEP is a political tool of the left. “This country is very polarized,” he said. “Right now, we need one voice to ensure that the victims of the conflict are at the center of the peace process.”
The JEP’s first year in review
Judicial Progress
The JEP has begun 5 major investigations focusing on the actions of FARC ex-combatants and the Colombian military. The cases focus on kidnappings by the FARC; violence in the departments of Tumaco, Ricaurte and Barbacoas, and Nariño; extrajudicial killings by the Colombian military (infamously known as “false positives”); crimes committed in the department of Antioquia’s sub-region of Urabá; and violence in the northern region of the Cauca department.
Over 800,000 victims have registered with the JEP in the past year, while 11,675 have agreed to appear before the tribunal. The vast majority of those agreeing to testify, 9,687, are ex-combatants of the FARC. The remaining number is composed of 1,938 members of Colombia’s Armed Forces, 38 state operatives unaffiliated with the Armed Forces, and 12 who have self-identified as social protesters. Two Colombian generals and one senator are the most notable public figures involved in the process.
Remaining Challenges
The JEP has navigated a highly politicized and controversial implementation of the peace agreement. About 15% of the JEP’s 51 magistrates come from Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities, and over half of them are women. However, the Central Democratic Party (UD) founded by ex-president Álvaro Uribe has accused the JEP of carrying out a political agenda. While independently unsubstantiated, UD’s allegations have cast doubt on the JEP’s legitimacy.
The JEP has also faced criticism from the FARC, with high-profile cases involving two of the group’s former leaders. The first, known by his alias Jesús Santrich, has sought a JEP guarantee that he will not be extradited to the United States on drug trafficking charges. The second FARC ex-commander, Hernán Darío Velásquez, or “Paisa,” has not appeared before the JEP. The tribunal has yet to decide whether his failure to participate exempts him from the benefits of the transitional justice system.
The JEP’s most critical tool lies in its popular legitimacy. María Camila Moreno, director of the Colombia program for the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), emphasized the importance of transparency and legitimacy. Presenting on the JEP’s first year of operation, Moreno called for greater resources for implementing the peace agreement in post-conflict zones and a greater focus on the conflict’s victims. The JEP, she warned, must serve as an example that Colombia’s conflicts can be solved by institutions instead of violence.
Written by Julia Friedmann, Colombia Intern
January 23, 2019
On the afternoon of October 4 agents of Colombia’s Chief Prosecutor’s Office (Fiscalía, which investigates and prosecutes crimes in the regular criminal justice system) showed up at the offices of the new, separate transitional justice system created by the peace accords (Special Peace Jurisdiction or JEP, which investigates and prosecutes war crimes committed during the armed conflict). The agents, sent by the Fiscalía, demanded to be allowed to carry out a “judicial inspection” of the files in the new justice system’s first and largest case so far, numbered “case 001”: charges of mass kidnapping against 31 FARC leaders.
This action, which appeared to be a blatant interference in the new justice system’s workings, generated expressions of outrage against Prosecutor-General Néstor Humberto Martínez, a frequent critic of the JEP and other aspects of the FARC peace accord. Though Martínez quickly rescinded the order and called back the agents, JEP President Patricia Linares declared, “the Prosecutor’s Office obtained a digital copy of the casefile, due to the hasty manner in which the procedure was carried out.”
Linares “strongly and emphatically reject[ed]” what she called “the Fiscalía’s undue interference with the autonomy and judicial independence” of the JEP, adding that it was “openly violative of the judicial reserve that covers the investigations carried out by JEP judges.”
The UN Verification Mission and Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia issued a joint declaration following the incident:
The rights of victims and the legal security of participants in the armed conflict depend on strict respect of all public powers for the independence and autonomy of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace. We underline the importance that collaboration between jurisdictions be harmonious and fully respectful of their respective competences.
What Colombian media called a “train crash” between the old and new judicial bodies could have consequences for the peace process. It appeared to be a political move seeking to intimidate the JEP and demonstrate the Fiscalía’s relative power. It may have increased former FARC leaders’ fear of being arrested in a similar future show of political power, which risks causing more of them to abandon the process, either going into hiding or taking up arms again.
Two of the most prominent leaders who have already gone clandestine surfaced in a letter sent to the Peace Committee of Colombia’s Congress. Iván Márquez, the FARC’s chief negotiator during the Havana peace talks, and Óscar Montero alias “El Paisa,” once head of a powerful FARC mobile column, have been missing since June or July. Their letter, the first communication from them in months, had some very harsh words for a process they view as failing.
“The peace accord has been betrayed,” reads the letter, which laments having agreed to turn in weapons before reaching more specific agreement on the terms of ex-combatants’ reintegration. The letter outlines what, in the missing leaders’ view, are three “structural flaws” in the November 2016 accord.
First, they cite “judicial insecurity,” believing themselves vulnerable to arbitrary arrest and possible extradition. They allege that this is what happened to Jesús Santrich, a guerrilla negotiator close to Márquez who was arrested in April and faces an extradition request to the United States on charges of conspiring to transship cocaine. The two ex-guerrilla leaders write that these charges are a “judicial setup hatched by the Attorney General, the U.S. Ambassador, and the DEA.” Writing in La Silla Vacía, analyst Héctor Riveros notes that regardless of the truth behind the Santrich case, the “judicial insecurity” argument has served “hundreds of ex-guerrillas” as a pretext for exiting the process and joining armed dissident groups.
The second “flaw” noted in the letter are the changes made to the accord after it was narrowly rejected in an October 2016 plebiscite, which in their words “transfigured the Havana Accord into a horrific Frankenstein.” Third, they cite the Colombian Congress’s failure to pass all the legislation needed to implement the accord, especially reforms to the political system and the failure to create special temporary congressional districts to represent victims’ groups.
The FARC political party held a press conference in the Congress, with its legislators rejecting the arguments in Márquez and Montero’s letter. “They’re totally wrong,” said FARC Senator Carlos Antonio Lozada.
“I could hardly go and say that there are no conditions or guarantees while I’m sitting in the Senate press room leading a press conference. What we’re saying is that the process has difficulties, the implementation has not been consistent on the part of the state, but there are some spaces that have been won, we value them and they are very important to achieve progress in the implementation of the peace accords.”
Lozada called on the missing leaders to “understand” that the ex-guerrilla party has adopted a supportive but critical position on the accord’s implementation, and that they “reconsider their position.”
Meanwhile, Defense Minister Guillermo Botero told the Blu Radio network that “the police have intelligence reports” about Márquez and Montero’s current location. While refusing to reveal anything on the radio, Botero acknowledged that both are in Colombia.
The Jesús Santrich case remains a big test for Colombia’s new transitional justice system. The former guerrilla negotiator remains in prison awaiting a decision from the JEP about whether he may be extradited to face charges in a New York federal court of conspiring to send 10 tons of cocaine to the United States in 2017, after the peace accord was ratified.
“Extradition is a very strong tool for Colombia, for the United States, for the victims and for the peace agreement,” U.S. ambassador Kevin Whitaker said this week. “Jesus Santrich is accused in a United States Court of having violated U.S. law, that is why we are seeking his extradition and we will continue in that.” The ambassador added, “Any person or institution that can stop the extraditions affects the interests of the United States, affects the interests of Colombia and of all those who long for peace.”
The FARC insists that Santrich, a FARC ideologist who has poor eyesight and little apparent prior involvement in the guerrillas’ narcotrafficking, is innocent. They doubt the evidence made public so far, which appears to show Santrich offering approval to a plan, hatched by a nephew of Iván Márquez, to send coca to Mexican narcotraffickers who are, in fact, DEA agents or informants.
Farc Senator Victoria Sandino said, “It’s been more than six months since they captured Jesus Santrich, with the argument that U.S. justice has the evidence,” but “the Prosecutor-General’s office then goes out and says it does not have it. And now the Embassy persists in the extradition. What we say is show the evidence and present it to the JEP. And Santrich’s legal defense demands freedom, because no evidence has been shown.”
Sandino is referring to this chain of events:
“If everything keeps going like this,” Riveros wrote, “that Jurisdiction [JEP] can not say anything other than that there is no proof that Santrich has committed crimes after the accord’s signing.”
The UN Verification Mission in Colombia issued its latest quarterly Secretary General’s report to the Security Council on the demobilization and reintegration process. It covers July 21 to September 26. Some of its key findings:
The Ideas for Peace Foundation (FIP), a Bogotá-based think-tank founded by members of the business community, released an extensive report on October 3 about deteriorating security guarantees for practicing peaceful politics in post-conflict Colombia. “From a feeling of tranquility and expectation for the returns that the implementation of what was agreed with the FARC would bring,” the report reads, post-conflict regions “have passed into distrust and fear for the reactivation of violence.” It zooms in on four conflictive regions: Arauca, Catatumbo, Cauca, and southern Bolívar.
Among the report’s findings:
In the four regions it looked at, the FIP found common patterns:
The FIP calls for urgent measures to prevent further deterioration of post-conflict zones’ security situation. “Under these conditions, the implementation of the peace accord is at a critical moment. We still have time to prevent and contain the manifestations of violence and intimidation in the territories affected by the presence of illegal armed groups and armed confrontation.”
Two armed, motorcycle-mounted men kidnapped the five-year-old son of the mayor of El Carmen, a municipality in the violence-torn region of Catatumbo, in Norte de Santander department near the Venezuelan border. The mayor, Edwin Contreras, is part of a political dynasty in the 2,000-person municipality; his uncle had held the post before him. “Since he became mayor, he has received strong intimidations,” reports El Espectador.
The Catatumbo region, with 11 municipalities and a population of about 300,000, has suffered frequent fighting between the ELN and a local guerrilla group, the EPL, since March. The two groups previously had cordial relations, but the departure of the FARC from part of the zone, and a sharp rise in coca cultivation, undid the local power equilibrium. Violence has since shuttered schools at times and displaced thousands.
While the kidnappers’ identity is unknown, speculation points to the ELN. “In this municipality, even a needle can’t move without the ELN knowing about it,” local residents who asked to remain unnamed told El Espectador. “We’re so exposed that on any given day they can kidnap the mayor’s son,” the municipal ombudsman said. “There is no Army here. There is a police presence, but they can’t do their job. They can’t go out. We’ve reiterated this issue in all official security meetings. We are abandoned to our fate.”
October 13, 2018
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime published an executive summary of its 2017 estimate of coca cultivation and cocaine production in Colombia. The UN agency has usually produced this document, in complete form, in June or July of each year. Among the latest report’s most notable findings:
Asked whether the increase in coca-growing was “a failure of the peace agreement,” Mathiasen replied that Colombia’s government over-promised to coca-growing families.
It’s an agreement with promises that had no basis. They promised more than they could fulfill. The Government does not have the money to fulfill the prior commitments. There was a lack of realistic communication about the resources that were available and what could be delivered. This caused the campesinos to think that if they planted more coca, they could have subsidies and be part of the substitution program.
Mathiasen also criticized the simultaneous implementation of crop substitution and crop eradication, two strategies that “work with different timeframes.” He cautioned against relying too heavily on renewed fumigation of coca with the herbicide glyphosate.
The United Nations does not have an opinion either in favor or against the use of glyphosate, and I must add that it is widely used in agriculture in Colombia and in many countries. The effectiveness of forced eradication has limits. Yes, the plant is done away with, but replanting has historically been high in eradication zones where there is no program of social and economic intervention going hand-in-hand. If you want a more sustainable outcome over time you have to combine forced or voluntary eradication with investment programs to develop these territories.
President Iván Duque said that in coming days, “he would present a new plan to combat drugs that would ‘strengthen our air, sea and land interception capacity’ and ‘dismantle completely the supply chain, both precursors and product,’” the New York Times reported, adding that “so far, he has provided no details.”
Interviewed by El Tiempo, U.S. Ambassador Kevin Whitaker reiterated his support for glyphosate-spraying, despite a California jury’s August ruling that a gardener who contracted cancer was entitled to hundreds of millions of dollars in damages from Monsanto, the company that produces most glyphosate herbicide sold in the United States.
I have always said, and I maintain, that the use of glyphosate is safe and effective. It can be a very important tool in the fight against narcotics as part of eradication, which is only one aspect of a comprehensive program. Evidently there was a jury decision in California, and you have to respect that. But that decision does not change the science at all, and the science is clear.
In a statement, the ELN’s negotiators in Havana called on the government to re-start frozen peace talks, citing its release of nine captives during the first half of September. The Duque government announced that it would not name a new negotiating team until the ELN releases all hostages. The government has a list of ten individuals who remain in ELN captivity. It is unclear whether all are alive, and the guerrillas have not addressed their cases.
This week the ELN released Mayerly Cortés Rodríguez, a 16-year-old whom guerrillas had kidnapped in Chocó. By holding a minor, government High Commissioner for Peace Miguel Ceballos said, the ELN “broke all the rules.” The ELN’s Chocó-based Western War Front stated that it was holding Cortés not as a hostage, but “to clear up her collaboration with the Marines,” accusing her of providing intelligence to the local unit. The commander of Colombia’s Pacific Naval Force (Marines are part of the Navy) insisted that it does not seek intelligence from minors.
The ELN talks remain stalled. “It’s evident that neither the government nor the ELN wants to be seen as the one slamming the door on the peace process, but neither of the two parties wants to be the one that gives up the most to restart the dialogues,” El Tiempo’s Marisol Gómez observed.
Elsewhere in Chocó, combat between the ELN and Army displaced about 80 indigenous people from the Murindó River reserve.
A military offensive against FARC dissident groups has intensified in Nariño, along what may be Colombia’s busiest cocaine production and trafficking corridor. Last week, troops killed alias “David,” commander of the United Guerrillas of the Pacific dissident group. This week, special forces reported wounding his rival, Walter Arízala alias “Guacho,” commander of the Oliver Sinisterra Front dissident group.
Though born in Ecuador, Guacho rose through the FARC’s ranks in Narino over 15 years, becoming deeply involved in narcotrafficking. He refused to demobilize in 2017, then became one of the two or three most-wanted armed-group leaders in Colombia earlier this year, after he staged attacks on government forces in Nariño and across the border in Ecuador, and then kidnapped and killed two Ecuadorian reporters and their driver. The tragedy of the El Comercio journalists was front-page news in Ecuador for weeks.
On September 15, at a site in the northern part of Tumaco further from the border, a joint unit seeking to capture Guacho was closing in, but was detected by the dissident leader’s innermost security ring. During the resulting firefight, troops shot a fleeing Guacho twice in the back, but his men helped him to escape.
Though Colombian and Ecuadorian troops reportedly did not coordinate, Ecuador’s military and police strengthened security on their side of the border with the aim of preventing Guacho from crossing. There were no new reports about the guerrilla leader’s condition or whereabouts during the rest of the week.
Semana magazine, claiming that Guacho’s influence in Nariño had been declining, reported that the guerrilla leader “is fleeing with the last of his bodyguards, and the search continues.”
A group of armed men burst into a mining company camp in the predawn hours of September 20 in Yarumal, Antioquia, opening fire and killing Laura Alejandra Flórez Aguirre, Henry Mauricio Martínez Gómez, and Camilo Andrés Tirado Farak. The three were geologists carrying out explorations for Continental Gold Mines, a Canadian company.
No group has claimed responsibility. Colombian authorities told the media that dissident members of the FARC’s 36th Front are very active in Yarumal. Precious-metals mining has been a principal income stream for organized crime groups here and in many parts of the country.
In the nearby municipality of Buriticá, Continental Gold is building what El Espectador calls “the first large-scale subterranean gold mine in Colombia,” which is to begin operation in 2020 and produce an average of 253,000 ounces of gold per year over 14 years.
Colombia’s Comptroller-General’s Office (Contraloría) sent a new report to Congress on expenditures to implement the FARC peace accord. It concludes that, over the next 15 years, the government will need to come up with about US$25 billion to fulfill the commitments made in the accord. Most of the resources needed would go to the accord’s first chapter on rural development.
The Treasury Ministry has estimated a 15-year cost of accord implementation at 129.5 trillion pesos, or about US$43 billion. The Contraloría sees a need for an additional 76 trillion pesos, which
would represent 0.4% of annual GDP that would be added to the fiscal deficit projected for the coming years. These calculations could increase to up to 1.1% of GDP if we add the additional costs of covering all the municipalities with scattered rural territories as contemplated in the Final Agreement, and the reparation measures in the public policy of attention to victims.
The Contraloría report found that the government spent 6.9 trillion pesos (about US$2.3 billion) in 2017 on activities related to the FARC peace accord.
El Espectador meanwhile notes that Colombia’s defense budget has increased during the post-accord period, growing 8 percent from 2017 to 2018.
The U.S. Department of State released its annual report on international terrorism on September 19. This report includes and updates the Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. The FARC—recognized as a political party today in Colombia—remains on that list.
“Colombia experienced a continued decrease in terrorist activity in 2017, due in large part to the November 2016 peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC),” the report reads, citing the disarmament, demobilization, and reincorporation process that the ex-guerrillas underwent last year. Still, a footnote in the report explains that the FARC remains on the terrorist list because the party’s ties to increasingly active guerrilla dissident groups are “unclear”:
The FARC remains a Foreign Terrorist Organization under the Immigration and Nationality Act. However, the Colombian government classifies FARC dissidents as criminals. While the ideological motivations of such groups and ongoing connections with demobilized FARC are unclear, we have included acts of violence by FARC dissidents in this report.
Although the UN verification mission and other observers fault both the Colombian government and the FARC for the slow pace of ex-guerrillas’ reintegration programs, the State Department report places all the blame on the FARC. It essentially faults the ex-guerrillas for insisting on collective reintegration, instead of accepting the government’s standard individual reintegration offer:
The Agency for Reincorporation and Normalization (ARN), formerly the Colombian Reintegration Agency (ACR), is the implementing arm of this process. Delays in implementing the program, caused by the refusal of FARC leadership to permit members to actively and effectively participate, increased the prospects that some ex-combatants would return to engaging in criminal activities.
Asked by a reporter why the FARC party remains on the list, State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism Nathan Sales offered no specifics.
I’m not going to be in a position to comment on any internal deliberations that may or may not be taking place. What I can tell you is that the statutory standards for getting on the FTO list or getting off the FTO list are very clear, and it – we apply the standards that Congress has given us consistent with the evidence in front of us, and we do that regardless of the organization or country.
Interviewed by El Tiempo, U.S. Ambassador Kevin Whitaker insisted that Washington would push for the extradition of any wanted FARC members believed to have committed crimes after the peace accord’s December 2016 ratification. “Any effort, by any actor or institution, to limit extradition, affects U.S. interests.”
Whitaker criticized a Constitutional Court finding that appears to give the transitional justice system (JEP) the power to review evidence against those wanted in extradition for alleged post-accord crimes, like FARC negotiator Jesús Santrich. The way extradition works, he said, is that the requesting country evaluates the evidence.
The Ambassador also rejected the idea that wanted individuals should first remain in Colombia to provide victims with truth and reparations. “I don’t accept the mistaken idea that if there is extradition, then there can be no truth. In the case of the paramilitaries extradited a decade ago, we have set up 3,000 hearings, including victims, prosecutors, magistrates, etcetera. There has been every opportunity to clarify the truth. So both can be done.”
Jean Arnault, the chief of the UN verification mission that just had its mandate extended for another year, met with President Iván Duque. Arnault’s mission is overseeing the reintegration and security of FARC ex-combatants, which have moved forward but faced setbacks and obstacles over the past year.
Appearing publicly with the President, Arnault said, “I encourage you to continue with a difficult process, full of obstacles and still very fragile. We encourage you to continue not only for the sake of Colombia, but also for the sake of the international community.” Duque said that the government remains committed to “the people who have genuinely bet it all on demobilization, disarmament, reintegration and non-repetition, can make a transition to coexistence and a life of legality.”
Arnault said that Duque’s six-week-old government was in the midst of a “useful reflection” about its ex-combatant reincorporation policy. Duque and Arnault agreed that finding productive projects for ex-combatants was a priority. These projects, Duque said, “had to incorporate more than 10,000 people in the process, but today do not exceed 100 people.” The President and the mission chief agreed that future reintegration projects should benefit entire communities, not just the ex-guerrillas.
In response to a written request from FARC party leader Rodrigo Londoño, Duque’s government named its representatives to the Commission of Follow-up, Impulse and Verification (CSIVI), the government-FARC mechanism meant to oversee implementation of the peace accord. They are Emilio José Archila, the High Counselor for the Post-Conflict; High Commissioner for Peace Miguel Ceballos; and Interior Minister Nancy Patricia Gutiérrez.
Meanwhile, one of the highest-profile demobilized guerrilla leaders, Luciano Marín alias Iván Márquez—the guerrillas’ lead negotiator during the Havana peace process—remains missing. FARC leaders insist that Márquez has not abandoned the peace process, that he has “clandestinized” himself out of concern for his security.
Márquez is free to roam the country pending his eventual transitional-justice trial for war crimes. But he now faces calls to clarify his situation.
October 1, 2018
