Adios to all that?

The long-awaited treaty that may finally end Colombia’s 50-year civil conflict is a study in perseverance. The talks which led to the current agreement started nearly six years ago when President Juan Manuel Santos agreed to begin back-channel discussions with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - FARC). The painstaking nature of the process may be gauged by the fact that it took 16 rounds before the government agreed to let members of the FARC enter political life (the second of five main negotiating points.) The peace talks outlasted the demise of Alfonso Cano, Maximum Leader of the FARC, and also that of former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, a prominent supporter, and they benefited from the resignation of Fidel Castro, whose support helped to keep the process moving in Havana.

When President Santos announced that a final agreement had been reached he invited Colombians to “open the door together to a new stage in our history.” It is a portal that many will approach warily. Colombia’s war lasted 52 years, displaced more than six million people and cost 250,000 lives. During it the FARC assumed control of nearly 70 per cent of Colombia's coca crop, which effectively placed it in charge of 40 per cent of the world's cocaine trade. Although the peace deal enjoins the FARC to “break the link” with drugs trafficking, it is unclear what this amounts to in practical terms. For one thing, former commanders may simply transfer their support to National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN) the remaining rebel group. As one security analyst notes: “A series of signatures in Havana is not going to bring an end to [the drug] trade.” Nevertheless the new deal gives the state a chance of scaling back the operations of a huge transnational drug trafficking network, a goal that remained elusive throughout the conflict.

Colombia’s decision to hold a referendum on the treaty (scheduled for October) was a shrewd tactic which gave the government greater leverage with the FARC negotiators. But many fear that the public will baulk at the prospect of allowing guerrillas who enriched themselves for decades – often through kidnappings and drug trafficking – to enter politics unscathed by their criminal pasts. Two years ago the negotiators agreed to establish a Historical Commission on the Conflict and its Victims but it remains to be seen how far this "truth commission" will be allowed to roam, and whether it can assign responsibility for the conflict’s many outrages, or simply record them, as was the case with truth and reconciliation commissions in South Africa and elsewhere.

In a new book on the difficulty of what is often called “transitional justice” the philosopher Martha Nussbaum notes that at the end of Aeschylus’ the goddess Athena takes two slightly contradictory decisions. She introduces legal institutions that will “replace and terminate the seemingly endless cycle of blood vengeance” and she persuades the Furies to join the city. The Furies are not “simply dismissed” but given “a place of honour beneath the earth, in recognition of their importance for those same legal institutions and the future health of the city.” Nussbaum points out that Aeschylus harbours no illusions about the Furies – he depicts them as heartless, savage creatures that consume their victims pitilessly – but he nevertheless suggests that they can be made to change if they are incorporated into the life of the city. By honouring them, Athena imposes on them a condition “that they abandon their focus on retribution and adopt a new range of sentiments.” Nussbaum writes that: “The deal is that if they do good and have and express kindly sentiments, they will receive good treatment and be honoured. Perhaps most fundamentally transformative of all, they must listen to the voice of persuasion.” Crucially, this “is not just external containment: it is a profound inner reorientation, going to the very roots of their personality.”

The gamble that longstanding enemies can be talked into “benevolent sentiments” has delivered mixed results in the Americas. It has nudged several states towards democratic accountability but it

has also let perpetrators of massive human rights abuses – both military officials and guerrillas – to get off scot-free. Few transitions have taken place without regrettable compromises and none has been an unequivocal success. What Nussbaum describes as “transition anger” remains alive and well in places like Guatemala and Honduras where the institutions which oversaw the demilitarization of the society were never sufficiently strong to insist on genuine transparency and accountability. Nussbaum refers to unrequited anger at past injustices as “backward-looking and not transitional” but it also seems inevitable in fledgling democracies.

Colombians call the current phase of the peace process “swallowing toads.” It is a good image of the distasteful but necessary compromises that allow war-weary states to reach the threshold of a new future. While it is still too early to tell whether the treaty will last, it is a welcome change from decades of war to see that peace remains possible if it is pursued with enough patience and political will.