A landmine-clearance deal brings Colombia a step closer to ending 50 years of war
“ARTURO” spent the better part of his life as a mid-level commander of Colombia’s FARC guerrillas before deciding six months ago to desert. Though he and his comrades were aware that their leaders were engaged in peace talks with the government of President Juan Manuel Santos, the negotiations were a distant and nebulous concept. In the jungles and mountains they still fled from bombing raids on their camps, planned ambushes on troops, recruited children and planted minefields. For civilians, too, the impact of the peace process had hardly been felt since the two sides began negotiating in 2012 in Havana.
That is starting to change. In the past month the government and the FARC have jointly and separately taken bold decisions that will produce the first tangible results of the promising but slow-moving negotiations. “The process is just now beginning to bear fruit,” says Arturo, who spent nearly 20 of his 49 years in the rebel ranks.
The two sides had already agreed on three of the five main points being hammered out in Havana. Plans regarding rural development, the political participation of former guerrillas and the cocaine trade (in which the FARC are active) have been drawn up. But those schemes are to be put in place some time in an indeterminate future. The latest decisions, while not part of the official agenda, are far more concrete.
In December the FARC announced a unilateral and indefinite ceasefire, which they have largely stuck to. Then in February they said they would stop forcibly recruiting minors, a promise that is hard to verify but welcomed nonetheless by families with children at risk of being pressganged. One-third of the 6,000 minors rescued from the guerrillas since 2000 have been between the ages of nine and 15.
On March 7th the FARC and the government announced a joint effort to clear landmines planted by the FARC (the “most prolific” non-governmental user of mines in the world, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines). Three days later, Mr Santos announced that the bombing of FARC camps would be suspended for a month, and perhaps longer.
Be less afraid
These decisions are meant to build confidence by addressing each side’s worst fears. The FARC consider landmines their most effective weapon against soldiers, who make up two-thirds of the victims. Meanwhile, air raids have given the armed forces some of their most resounding victories, including the killing in recent years of three senior FARC leaders. The bombs are “what guerrillas fear most”, according to Arturo.
The measures are also intended to build confidence among ordinary Colombians and rank-and-file guerrillas. A majority of citizens has been sceptical about the peace process from the start. The FARC fighters were doubtful, too. “We had little information and nothing out there really changed,” Arturo says. Now, opinion is shifting. On March 5th a Gallup poll found that 53% think the talks could lead to peace. For the FARC’s troops, a halt in bombings changes the game, Arturo believes.
For civilians, the mine-clearing could be the game changer. The war has left the countryside littered with improvised mines, often fashioned out of soda bottles, fertiliser, gunpowder and syringes. Of the country’s 32 provinces only one, the Caribbean archipelago of San Andrés, is mine-free. More than 11,000 Colombians have been killed or wounded by mines in the past quarter-century, a toll second only to that of Afghanistan. A week after the deal was announced, two children aged nine and ten were killed by a mine in the southwestern province of Nariño. Days later a soldier was killed and three others wounded in nearby Cauca.
Under the new deal, soldiers will be guided by unarmed, plain-clothed guerrillas to map minefields that pose a threat to civilians. The army will deactivate them. Álvaro Jiménez of the Colombian Campaign Against Landmines has pinpointed 57 priority areas. “They can choose one or all of them, but what’s important is to start,” he says. Efforts could begin in May.
Demining has been excruciatingly slow. The army conducts sweeps as it advances on guerrillas, and has a special battalion for “humanitarian” demining. The Halo Trust, a British NGO, is authorised to clear mines in conflict-free “green zones”. After surveying residents in La Quiebra, a village in the northwestern province of Antioquia, its team of 11 goes over a suspected minefield metre by metre, clearing the brush with garden shears and sweeping the ground with metal detectors. Where the detectors beep, they dig, carefully. After three months, and clearing 3,099 square metres in La Quiebra, they have found and deactivated three mines.
The new plan will target “red zones”, where the conflict still rages. “It will put the sticking-plaster where the wound is,” says Mr Jiménez. It will also put active guerrillas to work alongside soldiers. With help from those who planted the mines, things should be quicker. Officials say it could still take a decade to clear the 688 municipalities where mines are known to exist.
Although the FARC have agreed to help clear mines, they have not promised to stop planting them. The country’s second-largest rebel group, the ELN, has not joined the peace talks and continues to sow minefields. Still, Humberto de la Calle, the government’s chief negotiator, called the landmine agreement a “new and decisive step” towards peace.
The negotiations are now in their trickiest phase. Pablo Catatumbo, a FARC spokesman, has warned that it is too soon to talk about an irreversible process: “very complex issues” remain, he said on March 23rd. Among them are how much (if any) prison time guerrilla leaders will serve; how to compensate their victims; and how to demobilise the FARC’s fighters.
Doubting a deal would be reached, Arturo joined the government’s reintegration programme for fighters who desert. In the past 12 years, 57,000 former guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries have gone through the programme. Now it is preparing to take on up to 30,000 more if the FARC and government reach a deal to end the conflict. The army estimates that the FARC has around 8,000 fighters, plus 20,000 working in logistical support. “I beat my comrades to it,” says Arturo of his return to civilian life. There is a long way to go before a mass demobilisation and a definitive end to the conflict. But the recent decisions to turn down the intensity of the war bring it a step nearer.