Bogota, rebels clinch peace
Long-awaited deal signals end of 52-year civil war in Colombia
AFTER more than half a century of fighting and nearly four years of grinding negotiations, the Colombian government and the country’s FARC rebel group declared on Wednesday they had reached an agreement to end the longest-running armed conflict in the Americas.
“The war is over,” said Humberto de la Calle, the government’s lead negotiator, after signing the accord with his guerrilla counterparts.
The two sides made the announcement in Cuba, where the negotiations began in 2012 and where Fidel Castro launched a communist revolution that inspired guerrilla insurgencies across the hemisphere. Colombia, a nation of 50million which is among the closest US allies in Latin America, is the one place where war has yet to end.
“We have finished fighting with weapons and will now do battle with ideas,” said the FARC’s chief negotiator, Iván Márquez, a former member of Congress who took up arms after many other leftist Colombian politicians were assassinated by right-wing groups in the 1980s.
The two negotiators described the accord as a road map for the transformation of Colombia, ending a sordid history of political violence and creating a more democratic society in a country long dominated by a well-to-do elite.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos followed the announcement with a nationally televised address, summarising the deal’s main points for a Colombian public that retains a large measure of scepticism and confusion about the agreement.
“Today is the beginning of the end of suffering, pain and tragedy of the war,” he said.
Although the reaction to the accord was subdued in Colombia, images of some Colombians celebrating in the streets began circulating on social media.
More than 220000 Colombians have been killed in fighting over the past half-century, and nearly 7million have been driven from their homes. But one major obstacle remains for the peace deal to stick.
Colombian voters must ratify the accord in a vote that Santos said would take place October 2. That plebiscite is shaping up as a showdown between Santos and his biggest political rival. Santos will be campaigning for the accord’s approval. His nemesis, former president Álvaro Uribe, is leading the drive to sink the deal. He and other critics say it is too favourable to FARC leaders, whose guerrilla war tactics included kidnapping. – Washington Post