Colombia agrees to bilateral ceasefire with major armed groups

Colombia January 1 this year was the first day of a six-month truce agreed between the government and the five main armed groups operating in the country, as announced last night by the president, a leftist Gustavo Petro.

“We have agreed on a bilateral cessation with the ELN, Segunda Marquetalia, the Central General Staff, the AGC (Gaitanista Colombian Self-Defense Force) and the Sierra Nevada Self-Defense Force from January 1 to June 30, 2023, with the possibility of extension in accordance with the progress in negotiations,” wrote president on Twitter.

The biggest truce since the peace talks culminating in a peace agreement signed between the FARC and the government in 2016 was one of Petro’s main goals.

“A bilateral ceasefire obliges the armed organizations and the state to respect it. There will be a national and international verification mechanism,” the president added, calling the pact “a bold act.”

As part of its “full peace” policy, the government hopes to end the sixty-year-old armed conflict through dialogue with rebels, drug dealers, paramilitaries and gang members. The country’s last recognized insurgency, the National Liberation Army (ELN), has been in talks with the government since November.

For their part, the groups Segunda Marquetalia and Estado Mayor Central, which withdrew from the peace pact signed by FARC, held “exploratory dialogues” separately with Petro delegates.

Led by former thief in law Othoniel extradited to the US, the AGC is the largest drug gang in the country. Like the Sierra Nevada Self-Defense Force, it is made up of the remnants of far-right paramilitaries demobilized in the early 2000s.

ten thousand armed men

According to the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz), all these groups number more than 10,000 armed men clashing over the proceeds of drug trafficking and other illegal businesses.

In a statement this Sunday, the government announced that it will issue “a specific decree for each of the organizations that will determine the duration and conditions of the said ceasefire.”

The United Nations, the ombudsman’s office and the Catholic Church will verify that the truce is respected.

The Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Colombia, Carlos Ruiz Massier, welcomed on Twitter “efforts to reduce violence in the territories, protect communities affected by conflict and bring peace to Colombia”.

The “full peace” policy became law in November, after a ruling majority in Congress backed Petro’s ambitious proposal to negotiate the demobilization of the insurgents and agree on judicial benefits for drug traffickers and other illegal groups.

“We will vigilantly ensure that the cessation of hostilities of illegal armed groups is respected in different territories,” the ombudsman’s office said on Twitter.

While a 2016 peace deal with FARC turned the continent’s most powerful guerrilla into a political party, the conflict continues after six decades and more than nine million deaths.

full world

Petro, a former partisan who signed peace in 1990 before entering politics, came to power on August 7 and became the first left-wing president in the country’s history.

Parallel to his “full peace” policy, the president has also reversed what he sees as the “failed” war on drugs after decades of US support.

The government abandoned the forcible eradication of small crops of coca leaves and asked the social forces to focus on pursuing the most profitable links in the business, not the peasants. Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine, while the US is the largest consumer of the drug.

The opposition party Centro Democrático, led by former right-wing President Álvaro Uribe (2002–2010), described the “full peace” proposal as “propaganda for crime and impunity”.

The group’s congressman Andrés Forero assured that “the bilateral cessation is an unacceptable capitulation of the state to illegal armed groups” and a decision to “tie the hands of the public force.”

The defunct FARC was replaced by many new organizations that had no place for negotiations until the arrival Gustavo Petro.

Despite the rapprochement with various armed formations, so far Gustavo Petro he failed to contain the spiral of violence that swept the country. The independent research center Indepaz recorded almost a hundred massacres in 2022.

(AFP)