Negotiations For Peace in Colombia Commence
Pablo Beltran, representing ELN (left) shakes hands with Ivan Danilo Rueda, the high commissioner for peace on behalf of the Colombian government, as peace talks restart, at the Hotel Humboldt in Caracas, Venezuela, Nov 21, 2022. In the center is Carlos Martinez, a retired Venezuelan military official serving as guarantor. Photo: Ariana Cubillos/AP
On Nov 21, peace talks between the Colombian government and rebel group National Liberation Army (ELN) began in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. The ELN is a Marxist guerilla group founded in 1964 by priests, students, and union leaders. It is the largest, armed non-state actor remaining in the country, with around 2,500 combatants.
Colombia has been embroiled in conflict between the government, right-wing paramilitary troops, and left-wing rebels for six decades, resulting in 450,000 dead over the last six decades.
Talks could potentially be a crucial step forward to lasting peace.
The logistics of the negotiations reflect an optimistic tone on all sides. The government’s official negotiators are a varied group, including former guerilla fighters, active military personnel, and the conservative political opposition. The ELN’s representatives include the top of the command hierarchy. This first session is expected to last three weeks, with around 30 government delegates involved. Already there has been an agreement to restart humanitarian relief efforts.
The locations of the next sessions will rotate between the guarantor nations: Venezuela, Cuba, and Norway.
Brazil, Chile and Mexico have recently been invited to join, as well, and Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Spain are also candidates to facilitate the negotiations. The United States has been requested to send a special envoy.
It has been six years since a peace agreement was signed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). FARC was the largest guerrilla group in the country until it demobilized in 2016. Success of past peace talks with FARC garnered attention and anticipation for current negotiations.
Like FARC, the ELN has engaged in continuous drug trafficking, extortion, and terrorism. Many FARC combatants did not de-arm after the peace deal, with violence recently surging in the country as ELN spreads into the territory left behind by FARC’s power vacuum.
Talks between the Colombian government and the country's largest remaining rebel group, the National Liberation Army, come amid President Gustavo Petro's push for 'total peace.' Source: Luisa Gonzalez/Reuters
ELN already attempted peace talks with the Colombian government in the past, beginning in 2017 under former President Juan Manuel Santos, the architect of the deal with FARC. However, these talks were terminated in 2019 by Santos’ successor, Iván Duque, after 22 were killed in the car bombing of a police academy. In several attempts by the more extreme sections of the ELN to end the current talks in a similar manner, freight trucks were set on fire and explosives were found in a school.
Another element complicating the negotiations is the ELN’s presence in neighboring Venezuela. Much of the ELN’s territory is near the Colombia-Venezuela border, and the group is very active in both countries.
The Venezuelan military has struggled to control the spreading influence of the guerillas, but has found little success. Further, relations between left-wing Caracas and conservative Bogotá have been tense for years, although they have thawed somewhat since the Colombian presidential election of leftist Gustavo Petro.
President Petro, the country’s first leftist president, has been in office since August. His election was one step in a Colombian shift to the left, motivated by major 2021 protests. Petro was a former rebel of the M-19 movement, an urban guerilla group that demobilized in 2019. While he was not part of the military operations of the group, his background has legitimized the current talks, which are part of his ambitious policy of “total peace”.
Even if a deal is finalized, there is no guarantee that the rank and file of the ELN will respect it despite the generally hopeful outlook of negotiations. The group is more decentralized than FARC, with a central command and six regional fronts.
The men at the top involved in the peace talks are disconnected from active units. Many are older, and have been stuck in Venezuela since the 2019 peace talks failed. Moreover, regional blocs have diverse motivations and levels of militancy. Making everyone happy will be difficult, and if enough are not appeased, nothing on paper will translate to peace on the ground.