After so many years of attacks and counter-attacks, the civil war that has ravaged the Republic of Colombia for half a century appears to be coming to an end as the Colombian parliament yesterday approved an amended peace deal to put an immediate end to the strife. The armed rebel group, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, had earlier in June signed an agreement with the government of President Juan Manuel Santos to relinquish all arms in their possession. The peace treaty has now been ratified, and the agreement formalised.
The war civil started in 1964 when the FARC took arms to fight for equality, inclusion and rights reform. The war has since claimed the lives of at least 200,000 Colombians with over a million people displaced.
Between 1982 and 2002, three presidents made three different attempts to negotiate a peace deal which will ultimately put an end to FARC as an armed group, but they were unsuccessful on each occasion. The over-50-year-old war has outlasted 10 Colombian presidents to become one of the world’s longest civil wars.
The agreement reached in June has it that once the final treaty is signed, the rebel group, with about 7,000 troops and another 8,600 civilian militia, would begin gathering their arms in 31 concentration camps across the country. With the deal ratified by the assembly, the exercise is expected to commence soon. The agreement also prescribed only minimal jail time for rebels accused of war crimes, a part of the agreement which has attracted angry reactions from some Colombians of which ex-president Álvaro Uribe is prominent.
The newly ratified accord introduces about fifty amendments that were taken from the reactions and comments of critics who spearheaded the anti-agreement campaign that defeated the original accord in a referendum last month. The amendments include a prohibition of foreign magistrates charging government troops or the rebel troops to court for war crimes, and elimination of jail sentences for rebel leaders found guilty of war crimes. They also kicked against the placement of stricter limits on the participation rebel leader in future politics. As regards the commencement of the amnesty program, the rebels insist that they won’t start demobilising until lawmakers pass an amnesty law freeing the 2,000 rebels in jail.
However, locals are reported to be worried about a possible recurrent bloodshed that had trailed each of previous agreements. Following the initial signing ceremony in September, at least seventy people have been killed.
