Anthony Colmenares would pick up some nappies for his newborn and be home soon, he told his mother in San Cristóbal, a city in Venezuela. That was on July 17th 2019. He did not return. “We started calling, calling, calling,” his mother, Zenaida Basto, recalls tearfully. No reply. Police tracked his phone; the last ping was from near the Colombian border. She says they concluded that he had been snatched by the National Liberation Army (ELN), a 6,000-strong Marxist-Leninist rebel group with a history of kidnappings. Ms Basto believes her son may be alive, held as a forced worker.
The ELN is one of dozens of armed groups that have been locked in six decades of conflict in Colombia which have left some 450,000 people dead. Almost exactly eight years ago Juan Manuel Santos, then the president, struck a historic peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), then the biggest rebel group, and scooped up the Nobel peace prize. That seemed, surely, to be the end of the fighting. Yet dozens of armed groups live on, and new ones have emerged.
In 2022 Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla, was elected president on a promise of paz total, total peace. The idea was to enter negotiations with almost every armed group at once, including criminal gangs, not just with political groups. That way no single group would feel reluctant to disarm for fear that those that did not would seize their assets or kill them. “Three months into my presidency, the ELN will be finished,” Mr Petro promised on the campaign trail. The prospect of negotiations gave Ms Basto “sweet hope” of seeing her son again, she says.
Alas, Mr Petro’s paz total is foundering. Start with the ELN rebels. The government agreed to a ceasefire in August 2023 and began talks. But little had been achieved by the time the agreement expired a year later. In September the ELN killed two soldiers. Mr Petro suspended the talks. The government tried to restart negotiations, but on November 21st another ELN attack killed five more soldiers. The results of the ELN talks will be “very small, very poor,” says Carlos Velandia, a former ELN negotiator who now advises the government.
Mr Petro also agreed to a ceasefire with the Central General Command (EMC), a group of dissident FARC fighters. But in March it was suspended in much of the country. Most of the group abandoned the talks. Another ceasefire, with the Clan del Golfo, a 9,000-strong criminal outfit that controls the lucrative migration route towards the United States via the Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama, collapsed in March 2023. The government is trying to resuscitate those talks, too.
It also pursued ceasefires with urban gangs in three cities. They have already collapsed in two. In one of those, Quibdó, gangs now circulate kill lists of women allegedly linked to rival gangsters. Jorge Acevedo, the mayor of Cúcuta, a city on the Venezuelan border, warns that urban ceasefires can lead to a “false peace”, in which gangs expand anyway but do their killing outside the city. Iván Cepeda, a senator and architect of paz total, waves away any worries: “Peace processes in Colombia are always full of difficulties.”
The impact on security has been mixed (see chart). The murder rate fell slightly last year, probably in part thanks to the temporary ceasefires. But kidnappings are up, and threats and extortions have soared since Mr Petro took office. Worse, armed groups seem to have used the ceasefires to expand. The government has lost control of territory, admits Iván Velásquez, the defence minister. Armed groups now have a foothold in almost half the country. They operate in areas in which some 8.4m Colombians live, an increase of 70% from 2021. Clashes between rival groups are up 40% on Mr Petro’s watch. The number of fighters in the main groups leapt last year and cultivation of coca-leaf, the raw ingredient for cocaine, hit a two-decade high. All of this augurs badly.
What is going wrong? One problem is that the government lacks credibility. Almost 70% of the stipulations in the peace agreement with the FARC have not been fully implemented. The previous president, Iván Duque, deserves much blame for that, but Mr Petro has been sluggish, too. Armed groups will not lay down their weapons in return for promises when governments do not tend to keep their word.
The government also failed to take charge in many areas that used to be controlled by the FARC. New men with guns took over instead. More than 400 former FARC members have been killed since 2016 to settle old scores or for refusing to join the new rebel groups. A stronger disincentive for disarming is hard to imagine. “We are not going to be so stupid, so idiotic as the FARC who gave up their weapons,” say ELN fighters, according to a well-placed source in an ELN-controlled area.
The approach also lacked muscle. During the negotiations with the FARC the rebels stopped attacking, but the army continued operations until just before the final deal was signed. Without that kind of military pressure there is little incentive to compromise. “Nowadays the carrot is very big and the stick very small,” admits Mr Velandia, the former ELN negotiator.
Pushed on whether the ceasefires were a mistake, Daniela Gómez, the deputy minister of defence, says “the search for peace is never a mistake.” That ignores trade-offs inherent in even the most effective ceasefires: they can build trust and reduce violence, but if they let armed groups expand, they reduce the likelihood of peace in the longer run. Ms Gómez says that, outside the ceasefires, the army has carried out more operations than ever. But it is precisely the many attempted ceasefires that have taken the pressure off armed groups. Often the operations that are conducted are not co-ordinated with peace negotiators, making them less effective at building up pressure for a settlement.
The government may also overestimate armed groups’ interest in peace, when there is money to be made through conflict. Even nominally political groups, such as the ELN, are deeply involved in criminal activities like cocaine- and people-trafficking. No group will be allowed to keep running drugs in a peace deal, but the state has nothing to offer that is similarly lucrative. That conundrum will exist for as long as cocaine remains illegal.
Some groups, like the Clan del Golfo, are designated criminal, not political. That presents another problem: the government lacks a legal basis for dealing with them. Last year it tried to pass a law to let gang leaders get reduced sentences and keep some assets if they turned themselves in. It sank in Congress. The public does not like cutting deals with violent men, especially when their only agenda is greed.
None of this means that negotiating is a mistake. “The policy of mano dura [iron fist] and the war on drugs has resoundingly failed,” points out Mr Cepeda. Conflicts often end through talks. But not all negotiations further the cause of peace. The manner in which they are pursued matters.
Mr Petro’s paz total is running out of time. Presidential elections are due in 18 months and he cannot stand again. Total peace is not popular; some two-thirds of Colombians say it is going badly. Mr Petro’s successor may well ditch it. To avoid that he needs big wins, fast. Sadly for him, for Colombians and for Ms Basto that looks unlikely. ■
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