How to Get Colombia’s Peace Process Back on Track

On the morning of September 17, soldiers in a remote base in Puerto Jordán, Arauca, along Colombia’s border with Venezuela, were moving through a quiet Thursday routine when a large truck passed by on the highway. Militants from the 6,000-strong leftist guerrilla movement National Liberation Army (ELN) riding inside hurled improvised explosives into the base. Loud explosions collapsed the roof of a building, sending glass shattering and leaving the floor splattered with blood. Seven soldiers were badly wounded, two of whom died.

The attack was the latest in a series of recent ELN assaults on troops, pipelines, and infrastructure—and the last straw that finally broke the ongoing peace talks the group had been conducting with the Colombian government. The negotiations with the ELN had been the centerpiece of the government’s hallmark negotiation policy, known as Paz Total (Total Peace). But a day after the September 17 attack, government negotiators said that they were suspending dialogue until the guerrilla movement showed that it wanted peace and not more war.

Facing a daunting uptick in conflict and insecurity in Colombia, the country’s president, Gustavo Petro, now halfway through his four-year term, hopes to reboot Total Peace. The first leftist president in 80 years and a former rebel, Petro came into office in 2022 pledging to open talks with all remaining armed and criminal groups to end a half a century of violent civil conflict for good. In August 2024, his administration approved negotiations with the largest criminal group in the country, the Gaitanista Army (also known as the Gulf Clan), which has about 9,000 members. The government is now involved in ten sets of peace talks with more than a dozen armed groups, and Bogotá still hopes its talks with the ELN can be revived.

But after a string of setbacks, Petro’s initially maximalist vision has taken a pragmatic turn toward the incremental. Instead of seeking comprehensive peace deals to demobilize the remaining groups, Petro appears to understand that there is no national peace deal in the offing. Nor is there a military victory to be had against Colombia’s criminal enterprises. Instead, his administration is reaching for the possible: partial agreements, implemented as soon as they are signed, to reduce violence and return state governance to parts of the country that are presently under the control of armed groups.

To some veteran Latin America observers, this shift will be a disappointment. But hard realities forced Petro’s hand, and incrementalism may in fact have a better chance of successfully curbing Colombia’s violence. The South American country is beset by multiple local conflicts over economic interests: armed groups are fighting one another over illegal mines in the country’s mountainous center, drug trafficking routes along the Pacific coast, and cattle ranching land in the Amazon region. It is hard for the Colombian state to offer anything that these armed groups want enough to loosen their grip over territories that bring in ample profits.

Indeed, Colombia’s armed groups aren’t engaged in peace talks to win seats in Congress or achieve policy reform; they are interested in safeguarding their tactical positions in a war for the illicit economies. The vast majority of these groups have made it explicitly clear that they do not intend to lay down arms for good. Nor do they face the sort of military pressure that could force them to compromise. Yet the government cannot abandon peacemaking altogether: the millions of civilians whose lives are disrupted by conflict need relief now.

For incremental talks to have any chance of succeeding, the Petro administration needs to take two important steps. First, it must craft a military strategy to strengthen its leverage in talks. This means not only targeting armed groups’ leaders and finances but also offering local populations a viable alternative to living under illegal coercion. Second, partial agreements need to include protections for civilians, committing armed groups to desist from child recruitment, extortion, curfews, targeted assassinations, and other forms of violence. Improvements in security are not only urgent for communities; they are also the only way to convince the public that dialogue is not a fool’s errand.

If well executed, this incremental approach could rewrite how Colombia constructs peace—not in sweeping accords but in small victories that yield practical results. These could include, for example, seeing armed groups withdraw from populated areas, reopening state development projects, and curbing concrete abuses such as the planting of land mines. Should this latest attempt at peacemaking fail, however, dialogue itself may be discredited, and the country could find itself on an irreversible course back into cycles of war.

FUEL ON THE FIRE

The story of Colombia’s fragmenting conflict begins with a brief period of peace. For half a century, the country’s government fought a bitter war with the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (known by its Spanish acronym, FARC), a leftist guerilla movement that sought to overturn the state. That fighting killed nearly half a million people and displaced hundreds of thousands, particularly after violent right-wing paramilitaries also entered the fray. Then, in 2016, after suffering multiple military defeats and participating in four years of peace talks, FARC signed a peace accord. The demobilization of the FARC saw more than 13,000 rebels return to civilian life and liberated the 22 percent of Colombian territory that was under its control. Communities described the feeling as breathing for the first time in years. Some saw police officers for the first time in their lives. One indigenous leader in Cauca, along the Pacific coast, told me, “It was the first time we could walk outside at night and look at the stars without being afraid.”

Yet nearly as quickly as the guerrillas left their strongholds, a race to fill the power vacuums began. The 2016 peace agreement had included promises by the state to advance rural development, undertake land reform and reparations for victims of the half-century conflict, and offer crop substitutions for farmers of coca, the raw material for the production of cocaine. But Bogotá got a slow start to implementing those changes compared with the swift pace by which violent outfits moved into the territories relinquished by the FARC. The ELN was among the first to pounce on many of these areas, followed closely by the Gaitanistas in the country’s north. Then, in 2017, FARC dissident factions, led by former FARC members who either never demobilized or rearmed, began to appear. Filled with young new recruits, these groups inherited little of the discipline and ideological rigor that had characterized their namesake. Instead, they sought to retake control of former FARC drug trafficking routes and restart illegal mining operations from the Pacific coast to the country’s center and along Colombia’s border with Venezuela. In this chaotic scramble for control over territory, communities across Colombia’s peripheries told me that they did not even know which group the armed men they were seeing belonged to.

In past conflicts, heavy-handed military operations against armed groups alienated communities caught in the crossfire.

Security started to deteriorate yet more sharply during the right-wing administration of Iván Duque. A protégé of former president Álvaro Uribe, Duque came to power in 2018. He criticized the peace accord and slowed the implementation of some key provisions that could have helped the state claim control. Instead of prioritizing rural development, for example, he leaned on the military to secure the countryside, reactively deploying troops to control crises in hot zones. Without a long-term government strategy for territorial control, violence grew. Rural reform projects, such as a crop substitution program for coca and programs to help small farmers access land, moved at snail’s pace.

Meanwhile, heavy-handed military operations against armed groups alienated communities caught in the crossfire. Forced eradication of coca fields saw armed soldiers face down unarmed small farmers trying to protect their livelihoods, often under pressure from armed groups. The security forces used tactics honed over decades of war with the FARC. But this new generation of armed groups was different. They had no interest in combat. Instead, they hid among the population, punished alleged informants, compelled communities to protest against the military’s presence, and used civilians as human shields. “They found the best weapon against us,” one general told me at the time: “instrumentalizing the population.”

The pandemic threw fuel on the fire. Quarantines roped off parts of the countryside controlled by armed groups. Across the country, groups including the ELN, the FARC dissidents, and the Gaitanistas imposed curfews and limitations on movement. In rural areas, armed groups became a fallback option for the thousands of children who were out of school for as long as 18 months. The state offered only virtual education in regions such as rural Catatumbo and Cauca that barely have phone signals. Meanwhile, armed groups there founded soccer clubs, hosted parties, and started to pay (or at least promised to pay) new recruits. Many families whose livelihoods had been devastated in the pandemic needed that income. Child recruitment exploded. Between 2016 and 2022, the Colombian government’s child welfare agency documented 1,166 cases of child recruitment—a number that is almost certainly a significant undercount, as many families do not report the crime for fear of retaliation. By the time Duque left office, he was the first Colombian president in the twenty-first century to leave the country’s security situation worse than he found it.

GOOD INTENTIONS, COSTLY MISSTEPS

In 2022, Petro took the reins amid deep public frustration, particularly in the areas of Colombia most wracked by conflict, whose populations overwhelmingly voted for him. The idea behind his main initiative, Total Peace, stems from a lesson learned from years of government efforts to end conflict in Colombia: demobilizing just one group empowers others to grow. In light of this history, Petro concluded that talking to all armed groups simultaneously was vital, to eliminate spoilers from the process.

He also promised to rethink hard-handed security policies. “Peace is possible if we bring social dialogue to every region,” Petro pledged as he took office. A former member of the left-wing M-19 guerrilla movement, which agreed to a peace accord in 1990, he believed that his own credentials as a reincorporated rebel would help his administration make peace with the remaining armed organizations.

But two years later, he has shifted tactics and ambitions, not by choice but out of necessity. Many conflict-affected communities say that Petro’s efforts have not delivered results for them. Instead, armed groups have grown stronger and more numerous. The Gaitanistas have nearly doubled their territorial presence since 2019, and today are present in a third of all Colombian municipalities. Factions of FARC dissidents in the Amazon region, meanwhile, have consolidated their control over daily life, often charging taxes and mandating that residents acquire local ID cards. The ELN is perhaps the only group that has stagnated—not because of its participation in peace talks but because other armed groups’ offensives have forced it out of strongholds, for example in Chocó, along the Pacific Coast, and Bolívar, in the country’s north.

The challenges to implementing Total Peace were always going to be significant. Because of the Colombian government’s long history of fighting both leftist insurgencies and narcotrafficking cartels, Colombian law has strict rules to prevent the government from discussing political issues with criminal groups. A menagerie of laws and court decisions mean that legally Bogotá can negotiate only with groups that Colombia’s Congress has classified as political outfits, such as the former FARC, whose primary aim was to install a Marxist regime. Organized criminal enterprises, on the other hand, can only discuss their surrender. Yet today it is far from clear which group falls into which category. Guerilla political movements such as ELN, for example, are heavily involved in illicit gold mining, while the Gaitanistas—a group that the state considers strictly criminal—govern by imposing their own rules and local justice.

From the moment Petro was elected, in June 2022, fighting between the groups accelerated as armed and criminal organizations strove to enter negotiations from a position of strength. This meant boasting broad territorial control and at least the appearance of a political platform and local civilian support. Communities bore the brunt of the ensuing violence: some, for example, fell victim to a wave of forced confinements in which armed groups essentially trapped residents in their homes to solidify their control. Armed organizations across the country pressured local authorities and social leaders, seeking to co-opt, coerce, or replace them. Such maneuverings were particularly effective in areas where the state’s presence was weak or inattentive. As one Afro-Colombian community leader in a Gaitanista-controlled area told me: the armed group “was always here, but never like after that day when Petro announced Total Peace. The conflict changed.” The Gaitanistas, she said, were “exerting more pressure on social leaders and there is more recruitment, more politics, more presence, more extortion.”

In late 2022, the Petro administration reached out to more than half a dozen armed groups for dialogue. A series of well-intentioned but costly missteps followed. In early 2023, Bogotá sought to de-escalate violence by proclaiming cease-fires with six of the largest armed groups, who were surprised by the announcement and had promised nothing in return. Worse, with the exception of the ELN, which rejected the cease-fire, no armed group views the state as their main adversary. With a cease-fire in place, security forces stopped attacking, leaving armed groups with more energy and resources to fight one another. It was “a tactical gift” to illegal organizations, one government negotiator later admitted to me.

Bogotá learned from this error and did not extend these initial cease-fire agreements. Today, the Colombian government has just one cease-fire in place with a faction of approximately 3,500 FARC dissidents known as Estado Mayor Central (EMC), with which it had negotiated stricter protocols. The military has restarted military operations against the other armed groups, hoping to pressure their forces—and especially their leadership—to sit down for talks in good faith. These efforts are still in a nascent phase as Colombian security forces seek to recover some of the ground they have lost in recent years.

In the meantime, communities in many conflict-affected areas nationwide say that their lives have gotten worse in the last two years. Armed groups have continued to deepen their control over social life. And Bogotá’s national-level negotiations appear on uncertain footing, especially now that the ELN talks are indefinitely on ice. The EMC, for its part, has split in two—and those two halves are fighting with one another. Only a minority of its fighters remain in talks. Public opinion is turning fast on Total Peace. According to one 2023 poll, 63 percent of Colombians believed that the negotiation processes were moving in the wrong direction. If Bogotá hopes to breathe new life into negotiations, it must show that dialogue can enhance—rather than degrade—security.

THE PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF THE GOOD

After two difficult years, the Petro administration has an increasingly clear understanding of why armed and criminal groups want to sit at the negotiating table: to advance their own near-term interests, not to end conflict for good. That calculus could change if the government starts to increase its leverage. But for now, Bogotá’s aim is, correctly, to embrace realism. It is still possible to extract important concessions from armed groups through talks if the government keeps its eye on the target of bringing relief to civilians and steadily restoring the state’s presence and legitimacy.

One of Petro’s biggest missteps has been his failure to impose costs on the groups that either left the negotiations or used the talks to run the clock as they strengthened their hand. It is now clear that peace talks must be aligned with a well-calibrated defense strategy that is smart rather than hard-handed and ensures that civilians are not caught in the crossfire. The lack of coordination between security operations and peace talks has undermined the efficacy of both. Government negotiators complain that security forces undertake operations without notice, which saps trust at the negotiating table. Meanwhile, the Defense Ministry feels as if its hands are tied and it cannot undertake the kinds of patrols and seizures that form part of the military’s constitutional role.

If both sides hope to resolve these frustrations, they need to set shared priorities and commit to coordinating their efforts. They must decide together where and how to exert pressure. Security forces must also help ensure that officials from civilian ministries have unimpeded access to armed group-controlled areas to re-establish the state’s governance on the ground. Petro should be involved in this coordination process, as his political backing is crucial to its success.

The Petro administration must prioritize partial agreements that change facts on the ground. Negotiators should aim to secure specific and verifiable commitments from armed groups to end practices such as recruiting children, planting land mines, and assassinating community leaders. Bogotá has no illusion that it can fully dislodge armed groups from the areas they control. The goal of partial agreements is to bring much-needed relief to the population and to build a foundation of trust between the two negotiating parties so that they can eventually address currently intractable issues such as disarmament. In exchange for a reduction in violence, Bogotá has offered to implement local development projects such as infrastructure initiatives, which armed groups say they want in the territories where they operate. Before proceeding with these development plans, however, Bogotá must demand that state agencies be allowed safe and unimpeded access to the communities living under the control of armed groups.

Throughout Petro’s term, the United States has approached Total Peace with deep skepticism. The Biden administration, for example, has thus far declined an invitation from Bogotá to observe its negotiations with the ELN—a move that now seems prudent, since those talks are faltering. But Washington has good reason to try to influence the direction of peace talks, including or even especially those with groups it considers criminal. One example is the Colombian government’s ongoing dialogue with the Gaitanistas, who control the Darien Gap, through which migrants travel northward toward the U.S. southern border. This group is also Colombia’s largest exporter of cocaine.

Bogotá has no illusion that it can fully dislodge armed groups from the areas they control.

The group’s control of the Darien is uncontested, and state access to the region is limited. Bogotá would like to restore control of the area and monitor migration. Negotiators could seek guarantees that state officials will be allowed a stronger presence such that they can register migrants, regulate their flows, and provide them information, protection, and humanitarian support. Such a concession would cost the Gaitanistas little and would be a significant win not only for Bogotá but also for Washington. If the United States constructively engages with this and other processes by, for example, quietly coordinating on judicial cases and informally weighing in on viable policy options, it can help ensure that its own policy priorities are included in the talks’ agenda. Should Washington turn away, it will get little say in the outcomes—and it might not like the results.

True total peace may be out of reach for now. But important improvements to Colombia’s status quo are not. Dialogue, partial agreements, and a more targeted military response to armed groups that do not negotiate in good faith can help the country map a way out of its ongoing internal conflicts. Reducing violence against civilians can help restore public trust in the state and in negotiations. Coordination between negotiators and the military can ensure that state pressure is applied in a manner that benefits both.

The alternative to this pragmatic approach is a return to all-out war. The Colombian public, armed groups, the military, and many outside observers fear that this is the likeliest outcome. Petro has two years to change tack and prove them wrong.

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