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Ongoing armed conflict between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) has resulted in over 3 million Colombian citizens becoming internally displaced. On November 30th, 2016 Columbia’s congress finally approved an important peace deal with the FARC. This peace deal has been long awaited as the conflict, ongoing since 1964, has left 220,000 Colombians dead and made refugees of 7 million more. It has also destroyed many of the country’s rich, natural resources.
Who is the FARC? The group was founded by a peasant farmer named Pedro Antonio Marin aka “Sure Shot” to pursue redistribution of land that favoured farmers, as well as to protest multinational corporations. The need for this rebel group arose after a 10-year civil war known as La Violencia. The conflict was between the Liberal, Conservative, and Communist parties that were fighting for control over agricultural lands. In an effort to stop the conflict between the parties, La Violencia ended with a power-sharing agreement which balanced the power of each party, but left the complaints of the Colombian farmers largely unresolved. Partly due to the inadequacy of the agreement, the FARC drew recruits from many poor, rural, and indigenous communities. By the 1990s their numbers had swollen to 20,000 armed fighters.
The FARC’s deep rooted ties to Columbia’s peasantry resulted in many of these communities relying on the rebels for leadership and government. However after 1982, the FARC began to use kidnapping and drug trafficking to finance its military takeovers. This gave fighters better pay and the rebels greater control in rural areas. By the 1990s, the FARC managed to overrun several Colombian military bases, while taking hundreds of the military’s soldiers as hostage.
In 1999, President Andres Pastrana attempted to hold peace talks with the FARC, and even consented to demilitarized “clearance zones” in eastern Columbia during negotiations with the FARC rebels. Unfortunately, not much became of these negotiations and talks dwindled by 2002. However, the assassination of several top FARC leaders by the Colombian military had crippled the leadership structure within the rebel group, and so the group finally gave in and officially joined peace talks in 2012.
After five long decades, the FARC is slowly but surely turning from a violent revolutionary group into a political party – guaranteeing rebels 10 congressional seats for the next two terms and amnesty for certain crimes if they confess. As promising as this outcome may seem, many Colombians still have deep rooted wounds from the FARC and thus are divided over this peace deal. Columbia still needs to work on reinvesting in rural infrastructure, resettling displaced families, and protecting property rights for land owners. Nevertheless, President Juan Manuel Santos and Columbia’s congress have made considerable progress towards ending Latin America’s longest war.
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