The ceasefire and FARC’s laying down arms hinge on how the transition takes shape at the grassroots.
If the 2 October plebiscite to approve the peace accords fails, Colombia will most likely suffer political convulsions and a return to war.Įven if the plebiscite succeeds, the relief in government quarters may be brief. Trading heavily on the unpopularity of President Juan Manuel Santos’s government, opposition has surged under the influence of ex-President Álvaro Uribe, the principal antagonist of the peace process. The next six to nine months pose major tests that, unless dealt with effectively, threaten to derail the agreement, narrow its impact on guerrilla combatants or fail to prevent the chronic reproduction of violence in the outback.
The deal finalised in Havana has the blessing of the government and guerrilla leadership but not yet full support from the broader public or the entirety of FARC. A final peace deal, unveiled on 24 August, resolved the last disputes and brought together earlier agreements to initiate an ambitious scheme of transitional justice rescue rural Colombia from stark inequalities further open up the country’s democracy and begin, with FARC help, a program to replace coca cultivation with licit crops and off-farm economic opportunities. The insurgency’s 15,000 combatants and militia members are then soon to resume civilian life, while it seeks to convert its radical ideology into a force able to compete in a democratic system. On 23 June, the parties announced a detailed plan to gather FARC fighters in 28 zones to lay down arms.
Over half a century of armed conflict, leaving over 220,000 dead, displacing six million and imprinting poorer regions and the central state with deep divisions and lingering grudges, appears close to an end. Painstaking negotiations have brought Colombia to the verge of peace with its main insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
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