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Six-Month Truce Begins Between Colombian Gov't, National Liberation Army Insurgent Group

Sputnik News

20230803
Fantine Gardinier

Gustavo Petro, Colombia's first leftist president, ran for office on a platform of reversing many of the country's most hated policies, including the decadeslong war against Marxist rebel groups that left hundreds of thousands dead.

A six-month truce between the Colombian government and the National Liberation Army (ELN) began on Thursday that could lead to a more permanent peace agreement. The deal allows the group to defend itself if attacked.

Colombian Defense Minister Ivan Velasquez said on Wednesday that the deal will protect the "civilian population that has been so affected by the actions of the illegal armed organizations."

"Hopefully it will bear fruit," said Petro, himself a former guerrilla fighter with the now-defunct 19th of April Movement militia. "It will depend more on them than on us."

Indeed, top ELN commander Antonio García urged his roughly 5,800 fighters to abide by the ceasefire in a video circulated earlier this week, explaining that further discussion with the "participation of society" would push ahead, aiming "to make Colombia a fairer, more democratic and inclusive country."

The ELN is the country's second-largest rebel group after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which is in its own ongoing peace talks with Bogota. It is designated a terrorist group by the United States, which is a close ally of the Colombian government and has supported its counterinsurgency efforts.

The Marxist-Leninist ELN and FARC were both founded in 1964, part of the ongoing fallout of the period of political violence known in Colombian history as La Violencia. Decades of warfare have flared since, not just between the communist groups and the government, but also a plethora of right-wing militias as well.

A Colombian effort to register the victims of this civil war had recorded 9.2 million as of April 2022, including 220,000 deaths - 177,307 civilians and 40,787 fighters. According to the United Nations, just 12% of the civilian deaths are attributed to the FARC and ELN, while 80% were caused by right-wing paramilitary groups; the remaining 8% are attributed to the Colombian military and police, the latter of whom are also paramilitarized.

Various efforts at peace talks and demobilizations have been attempted over the years, with various degrees of success. One attempt to reach a deal with the ELN collapsed in 2018 after the newly-elected President Ivan Duque rejected the efforts of his predecessor, Juan Manuel Santos, and canceled the talks being hosted by Cuba.

After the war resumed, the ELN delegation remained in Havana over fears about their ability to safely return to Colombia, and the United States used the opportunity to claim Cuba was harboring terrorists and put the socialist state on the State Department's List of State Sponsors of Terrorism.

After Petro won the 2022 presidential elections and Duque left office in early 2023, the peace talks were relaunched, with Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela and Norway acting as guarantor countries in the negotiations.

© Sputnik