Perspective: Hemispheric securityHow to Keep the Colombian Peace Deal Alive
Last week, several former commanders of Colombia’s largely demobilized rebel group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) released a video in which they announced a “new phase of armed struggle.” Only three years ago, those same men—known best by wartime aliases, Iván Márquez and Jesús Santrich—participated in negotiating the end of a decades-long conflict with the Colombian government. But in the video, their presence was a stark reminder of the fragility of the peace accords on the ground.
Last week, several former commanders of Colombia’s largely demobilized rebel group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) released a video in which they announced a “new phase of armed struggle.” Only three years ago, those same men—known best by wartime aliases, Iván Márquez and Jesús Santrich—participated in negotiating the end of a decadeslong conflict with the Colombian government. But in the video, their presence was a stark reminder of the fragility of the peace accords on the ground.
Megan Janetsky writes in Foreign Policy that almost three years on from the finalization of the peace agreement, Colombia’s implementation of the promises made in the accords has lagged significantly. Colombian President Iván Duque will likely face increased pressure from his own party’s leader, former President Álvaro Uribe, to respond to this latest salvo from the FARC with more aggressive action.
“In Colombia, there was this massive fire that was the armed conflict, and this fire almost totally went out, there was only a little bit left,” said Ariel Ávila, the deputy director of the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation, a Colombian research group. “President Duque has to decide what he’s going to throw on it: gasoline or water.”
Janetsky writes:
In response to the rearmament, Duque announced he would send a specialized military force in search of the rebels and offered a 3 billion-peso, or $882,000, reward for the capture of those in the 32-minute video announcement. But to prevent former fighters from potentially joining Márquez and Santrich, Duque should also commit to implementing the accords agreed to in 2016, experts say, although this would require a significant break from his political allies.
Under Duque, much of the implementation of the accords has frozen to a near standstill. Nearly one-third of the accord’s 578 provisions have not been implemented at all, and the implementation of another third has barely begun, according to an April report by the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.
