Despite several attempted peace negotiations, Colombia’s civil war is one of the longest running conflicts in the world. The Colombian Truth Commission has reported that more than four hundred thousand civilians have lost their lives in the past sixty years of civil war. But there is some evidence that efforts towards building peace in Colombia following decades of conflict are bearing fruit. As Carlos Ruiz Massieu, the head of the UN Mission, famously underlined: “Colombia is at a critical juncture, a crossroads at which the decisive will of parties and the support of the international community can come together to buttress embryonic peace processes”. The announcing in Havana in June, of plans for a six-month nationwide cease-fire between the Colombian government and the National Liberation Army (ELN), is a step in that direction, but major difficulties lie ahead.

How it all begun
The conflict between the Colombian military and the rebel groups goes back in time. The 1920s and 1930s witnessed a process of slow modernization process as well as agrarian movements all over the world. Like most of the Latin American countries, in Colombia efforts were made to reform the agrarian system. The agrarian movement known as the “peasant movement” involved farmers or peasants, requesting ownership of their land. The key issues rose during the movement were compensation of a land, and better working conditions for the tenants. Reform-minded and land-hungry peasants and their allies were known as Liberals while the land owners and Church leaders, along with peasants under their control, were organized as the Conservative Party.

From 1930 to 1946, a series of Liberal Party-run administrations, referred to in Colombian history as the Liberal Republic, inaugurated land reform that restricted ancestral privileges and unleashed furious political opposition from the Conservatives. After the internally divided Liberals fell in 1946, a new Conservative government used political violence to regain the oligarchy's lands and remain in power. To subdue the Liberal uprisings, the government gave weapons to Conservative peasants throughout the country, as well as backing from the National Police. At the same time, thousands of Liberal peasants armed themselves against the Conservative government.

In 1953, an anti-Communist military strongman, General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, came to power by force, backed by elements within both traditional parties and—significantly—by Washington. The Colombian dictator began bombing guerrilla and opposition peasant positions. The guerrilla movement tried to dig in and hold out in the highlands, but was ultimately forced to retreat to the jungles of the Andean foothills.

1960s and 1970s continued witnessing the repression of the peasant movement, expulsion of small tenants from the lands they cultivated and, in general, expansion of commercial agriculture to less populated parts of the country, as well as colonization of unused lands. Many of the most popular destinations lay in the same remote areas where the guerrillas were strong and where they constituted the only authority. It was against this background that FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) was founded in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party (Partido Comunista de Colombia; or the PCC)

While the history of the FARC, since the 1980s, has been a history of peace negotiations, the security situation in the country deteriorated in parallel, and significantly in the 1990s due to drug trafficking and the rise of paramilitary factions that often worked in collusion with the military and politicians. While up until the 1950s political conflict was common, this was later replaced by different common crimes. Indeed, the FARC from 1980s onwards has carried out bombings, assassinations, hijackings, and other armed attacks against various political and economic targets in the country; it has also kidnapped foreigners for ransom, executing many of its captives. Organized crime committed by drug traffickers have also become common and these criminal groups have made connections with the ranks of the FARC, (and since 2016 with the “dissidents”) in order to secure protection, while the guerrilla group secures financial gains.

The ELN (Spanish acronym of the National Liberation Army) also chose violence, kidnappings, and extortion as sources of leverage and income. The group was initially formed around the same time as FARC as an ideological organization that combines Marxist-Leninist doctrine with Liberation theology. Some of the founding leaders of the group came direct from the Catholic Church and they aimed to defend citizens that thought to be the victims of political, economic and social injustice in the country. But since the late 1970s ELN has started to engage in criminal activities for additional income. The group was involved in targeting top oil corporation, as well as assassinating military members engaged the group in kidnapping, smuggling migrants, robbery, and even the hijacking of a commercial plane. This way the group was able to make millions out of ransoms. Although the group initially avoided involving in drug business and focused on its political movement, later on they started taxing coca and marijuana planters for their income. In June 2021, authorities found a massive cocaine processing complex run by the rebel group and seized six metric tons of cocaine from guerrillas in a jungle region in the southeast of the country

Talks so far
Several peace dialogues took place since 1975 that brought the government and the guerrillas together at the same table. The 2014 peace process initiated by the then Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos with the ELN was finalized in 2019, but ended the same year following an attack in the capital Bogota, on a police training school. In 2016, a peace agreement signed with FARC led the group to leave its weapons and form a political party. That agreement remains in place and makes the ENL the only remaining major rebel group still operating.

In late 2022 a resumed peace dialogue held in Caracas, with Venezuela acting as a guarantor, brought the ENL and the new Colombian president together. As a result of their dialogue, the warrants for arresting key ENL leaders were postponed.  Most recently, in July 2023, the group has agreed on a truce, following a decision to resume peace talks along with the current Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, with an aim to resolve the conflict to achieve “total peace”.

In recent talks, a key issue is the inclusion of civil society groups. The ENL has demanded that the peace talk should not be only between the Government and the rebel groups, but that they should also include the civil society. However, inclusion of civil society groups is challenging when deciding who are going to be included, how they will be included and the level of influence they will put on drafting the peace agreements. And a number of additional challenges, that have been observed in other cases, also persist.

Firstly, there is a lack of an effective mechanism for the inclusion of civil society at the national and regional negotiation levels. This may have an important impact on the legitimacy of the agreements and jeopardize their implementation.

Secondly, mediators must address the core dilemma of having too many people at the table. Civil society groups present at the table could increase the complexity of mediation to the point that they could reduce the possibility of reaching an agreement.

Thirdly, the parties in conflict may manipulate the civil society. Some observers believe that civil society’s participation is part of the strategic calculations of the parties and that the state and insurgents would attempt to involve civil society in their respective war logics. This seems to be especially true when there are no strong, representative civil society groups available. In these situations, mediators run the risk of including only groups that echo the positions of the conflict parties. As a result, civil society participants may not be representative and, instead, simply reinforce one (or more) of the conflict parties.

Finally, expectations concerning the participation of society should not be too great. Indeed, civil society may not always be able to sustain initiatives that have been started. A lthough the peace talks have so far shown some progress, it is in the ENL’s decision to remain committed to return to Colombia, withdraw its arms, and demobilize. Indeed, the ENL launched an attack in late March which resulted in the death of nine Colombian soldiers, and the peace negotiations came to the brink of collapse. When the attack at a police training facility took place in 2019, the peace talks were called off immediately. More tragically perhaps, the ELN’s territorial disputes with other armed groups remains an important sub-dynamic of the armed conflict.

In sum, while there are positive signs of progress, and a degree of political will on both sides — an important prerequisite that could further be honed with the inclusion of civil society — the most recent Colombian peace process can, in the best scenario, be described as only “a fragile peace in the making” with immense challenges ahead in ending of the long and painful cycle of violence.