Peace In Colombia, And What Comes Next
How do you disentangle a cultural animus where the lines were so sharply drawn?
Colombia and FARC have signed a peace deal, thereby ending a fifty year war. A plebiscite on the agreement is coming up on October 2nd. It’s polling well and is expected to pass.
But just because it’s expected to pass doesn’t mean that the story ends there. A “day in which there is no news” is not on the horizon.
The peace deal is taking place in the context of an opposition campaign being led by former President Alvaro Uribe, and even though Uribe’s campaign is expected to fail, the context of what that represents is worth bearing in mind.
There is evidence that suggests that Alvaro Uribe colluded with the AUC over the years. Per The New York Review Of Books —
The AUC was a network of right-wing paramilitary groups that had wrested control of large stretches of the country from the guerrillas using a simple but effective strategy: causing communities to fear them more than they already feared the FARC. They massacred civilians by the dozen in town squares. They quartered people with chainsaws, cut off tongues and testicles. They often made sport of the slaughter — sometimes literally, as when they played soccer with the decapitated heads of their victims.
So for someone who seems to have at least implicitly colluded with one terrorist group to come out against peace with another terrorist group is certainly something of a tell, especially when it comes to talking about FARC committing crimes that aren’t worthy of a peace deal.
So that’s one thing to bear in mind heading into the future: how do you disentangle a cultural animus where the lines were once as seemingly sharply drawn as during La Guerra Civil Española? How do you reach that point where a doctor no longer has to wear a bulletproof vest to work? Or where a young girl doesn’t have to worry being kidnapped from the playground by FARC and forced to join their team?
Part of the answer here is through integration, social spending, and investment. Studies suggest that this will partly depend on how effective integration will be. That will — in turn — have an impact on international investment. Though the country’s seen growth and runs small deficits, peace could very well require an investment of somewhere between 30 to 90 billion dollars over the next decade. Though USAID is investing in demobilization and has provided money to assist with IDPs, that isn’t all the country needs.
The country needs peace. Peace has an impact on investment. One day after the signing ceremony, for instance, President Santos proposed that another terrorist group, the ELN, release all their hostages and begin the public phase of their talks this coming Tuesday. ELN has issued no comment on their hostages.
And there is still the open question as to whether or not new gangs will move into the theater of operations soon to be left vacant by FARC. The area of Tumaco has — per Insight Crime — “seen a rise in extortion, drug trafficking,” and more.
There is also a question as to how well the Special Court for Peace will serve victims of the conflict between Colombia and FARC. A court previously established to deal with the aftermath of the conflict between Colombia and AUC was seen to be widely ineffective.
But that’s an aspect of the long term future. In the near future, the vote on Sunday awaits. “I’m going to vote ‘Yes’ [in the plebiscite],” the writer Héctor Abad wrote on twitter, “because FARC will be a party I can vote for, so I can go never vote for them.”
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