Colombia Without Wars

Next October 2, the final agreement will be countersigned if Yes wins

Colombia’s armed conflict ended, at least on paper and following the will of Juan Manuel Santos and Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces-People’s Army (FARC) when they signed, the final agreement of the negotiations initiated in 2012. Weapons were definitively silenced this Sunday, according to the sides.

The longest  armed conflict of Latin America – more than half a century of fight- left a trail of mourning with hundreds of dead, missing and stranded people. Peace advanced considerably this weekend when the sides announced the definitive ceasefire. Weapons were silenced and it will be difficult to get used to a life without ambushes, kidnapping, paramilitary assassinations, armed clashes.

With the last peace instruments coming into force, it’s for the sides in conflict to validate and guarantee the agreements countersigned and the next step to come, recognizing the rights of 50 million Colombians to the restoration of their human and political rights even when the next few years will not be a bed of roses in the institutional and political order.

The silence of weapons, the possibility of the guerrillas’ insertion in the national political process, in civil life, and the right to be respected is not down to the signing of a document but to a social concert demanding the compliance with the adopted agreements, and especially the respect to the result of the plebiscite.

Historically, the Colombian elites of power and even the State –which is not, Santos’ interest- have failed to comply with the previous peacemaker pacts. In this the acting paramilitary groups have blown agreements by killing revolutionary guerrilla men without legal involvement.

In this moment, those mercenary groups are present in 22 departments of Colombia and have 88 municipalities in extreme risk. In 2015, those mercenaries financed by the oligarchy committed 1 064 human right violations, among threats, executions, tortures and sexual offenses.

Peace has a price 

“It’s the moment to convince the Colombians that peace is not for free and we have to pay for it. That’s the alternative logic: drop the weapons and try to do through political channels what you seek with weapons”, Colombia’s former President Ernesto Samper stressed.

The Colombian political forces in support of definitive peace know that there are right-wingers trying to sabotage the peace process and threatening to boycott the steps the sides might adopt.

The government and its guerrilla counterpart have acted cautiously in the last four years so as to avoid holes for the right-wingers to take advantage from the documents signed, among them the conditions for FARC’s political participation, amnesty to the guerrilla fighters who have not committed serious  crimes, the reinstatement to civil life and the mechanisms for verification of the agreements.

The democratic and conservative elements are still pending, as well as the result of the forthcoming plebiscite called by the government for next October 2, which will countersign the final agreement if the YES wins.

Voting against the agreements in Havana is to support the internal armed struggle, which has taken away 280 000 lives just in the second half (1980-2015). And sabotaging peace will favor the landowners.

Enemies of peace          

High-flown voices try to counteract the peacemakers’ plans, and for this they lean on the media supporting the right-wing. Considered the founder of Para militarism former President Álvaro Uribe is the visible head of the antidemocratic plan with clear connections with drug trafficking.

Figures like President of the National Cattle-Breeders’ Federation is threatening to defend his ill-gotten lands at any cost, whose concentration in the hands of a few is one of the basis of the armed conflict.

It’s clear that FARC-EP has now electoral political power, which contradicts the right-wing aspirations which drew economic profits and power from the war, financed by the United States. If the NO wins, the old guerrilla forces will become an underground opposition force.

Peace is opposed by the traditional media at the service of parties, which daily reiterate their critics to the negotiations. Newspapers,  TV networks and radio stations like RCN. NTN and Caracol spread false news, distort images, decontextualize opinions trying to turn the Colombian group into enemy of peace.

In that smear campaign favoring war includes a considerable part of the Catholic Church and others aiming at a renegotiation of agreements –to which the signing parties oppose, since every step was rigorously studied- spreading ideas as absurd as that stating that the pacts of Havana are a maneuver to turn boys and girls into homosexuals, or taking individuals filed as criminals to the Senate. Everything is good for the reactionary forces.

Despite these obstacles, the most important for the former opposition forces is to comply the agreements and the established terms for the beginning of the demobilization, the destruction of the weaponry, the handover of recruit minors to UNICEF, the action of Transitional Justice and the celebration of the plebiscite.

The agreements of Havana comprised sensible topics of the Colombian reality, like the Comprehensive agrarian reform, political participation, Solution to the problem of illegal drugs, Victims and Transitional Justice, bilateral and definitive ceasefire.

Although magic does not exist in terms of policy, never before Colombia was as close to keep in peace, despite the obstacles the South American old-fashioned politicians are trying to impose.