Colombia agrees to a bilateral ceasefire with the main armed groups

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

“We have agreed to a bilateral cessation with the ELNthe Second Marquetaliathe Central Staffthe AGC (Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) and the Sierra Nevada Self-Defense Forces from January 1 to June 30, 2023, extendable depending on progress in the negotiations,” the president said in a tweet.

The biggest truce since the peace negotiations that ended with the peace agreement signed between the FARC and the Government in 2016 was one of the main objectives of Petro.

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

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Under its “total peace” policy, the government hopes to extinguish six decades of armed conflict through dialogue with rebels, drug traffickers, paramilitaries and gang members. The country’s last recognized insurgency, the National Liberation Army (ELN)has been negotiating with the government since November.

For their part, the groups Second Marquetalia and Central Staff (who broke away from the peace pact signed by the FARC) they held separate “exploratory talks” with Petro delegates.

Led in the past by the kingpin Otoniel, extradited to the United States, the AGC is the largest drug gang in the country. Like the Self-Defense Forces of the Sierra Nevada, they are made up of remnants of the far-right paramilitaries that demobilized in the early 2000s.

ten thousand armed men

All these groups add up to more than 10,000 armed men, confronted in disputes over income from drug trafficking and other illegal businesses, according to the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz).

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

United Nationsthe Ombudsman and the Catholic Church They will verify compliance with the truce.

The representative of the UN Secretary General in Colombia, Carlos Ruiz Massieu, welcomed on Twitter “the efforts aimed at reducing violence in the territories, protecting the communities affected by the conflict and building peace in Colombia.”

The “total peace” policy became law in November, after the pro-government majority Congress backed the ambitious proposal to Petro to negotiate the demobilization of rebels and agree judicial benefits for drug traffickers and other illegal groups.

“We will be vigilant to verify, in the different territories, that the cessation of armed actions by illegal armed groups is complied with,” the Ombudsman’s Office said on Twitter.

Although the peace agreement signed in 2016 with the FARC transformed the most powerful guerrilla on the continent into a political party, the conflict continues after six decades and more than nine million victims.

complete peace

Petro, a former guerrilla who signed peace in 1990 before jumping into politics, came to power on Aug. 7 as the first left-wing president in the country’s history.

Parallel to his “total peace” policy, the president also turned around what he considers a “failed” war on drugs after decades of US support.

The government abandoned the forced eradication of small coca leaf crops and asked the public forces to concentrate on persecuting the most lucrative links in the business instead of the peasants. Colombia is the largest producer of cocaine in the world and the United States the largest consumer of this drug.

The opposition party Centro Democrático, of the former right-wing president alvaro uribe (2002-2010), has described the “total peace” proposal as “an apology for crime and impunity.”

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

The defunct FARC were replaced by a proliferation of new organizations, with no room for negotiation until the arrival of Petro.

Despite the rapprochement with the different armed groups, Petro has so far failed to contain the spiral of violence that engulfs the country. The independent study center Indepaz registered almost a hundred massacres in 2022.

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