Hopes Fade on Ending Colombia Violence : Government, Guerrillas Reach Impasse After 5 Years of Talks

After five years of peace negotiations, which once promised an end to decades of guerrilla warfare, Colombia’s government and leftist rebels have come to a bloody impasse.

A cease-fire that never worked very well has broken down almost completely. Talks between the government and rebels have stalled. Guerrilla activity, political as well as military, is on the increase.

The country’s main guerrilla forces have formed a new alliance, and they say they do not want war. But, as they declared in a statement establishing the alliance: “If the regime seeks to generalize it and deepen it, we accept the challenge for that confrontation.”

Some analysts say the government and the rebels have both hardened their positions since the peace process began in 1982.

“What has passed for a peace process in Colombia is going to dissolve,” a pessimistic foreign diplomat said. “Over the next year or two, the trappings of this peace process will become empty of meaning.”

Another diplomat said that although guerrilla activity does not by itself pose a threat to the democratic government, it could become economically pernicious by discouraging investment and commerce.

“It contributes to the overall sense of insecurity, which seems to have increased in the last several months,” the diplomat said.

In addition to the cease-fire, the peace process included an amnesty for guerrillas, an invitation for them to take part in electoral politics and promises of government reforms. It was hailed as a healing salve for a nation sick of war.

Nowhere else in Latin America have guerrillas been active for so long as in Colombia, one of the largest countries in the region. Colombia has a population of 29 million, covers an area nearly twice the size of France and is ideal guerrilla terrain: rough mountain ranges, dense rain forests, vast tropical savannas.

Violent Time

In the 1950s, during a bloody period known as La Violencia, regional factions of Colombia’s traditional Liberal Party formed guerrilla bands to fight against Conservative Party and government forces.

At the beginning of the 1960s, influenced by the success of Fidel Castro’s rebel movement in Cuba, new Marxist guerrilla groups formed in Colombia. These soon died out, but were replaced in the mid-1960s by some of the armed rebel organizations that exist today.

They include the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC after its initials in Spanish), with an estimated 4,500 to 5,000 armed combatants; the Army of National Liberation (ELN), with 1,000 to 1,500, and the Popular Liberation Army (EPL), also with 1,000 to 1,500. The April 19 Movement (M-19) was formed in 1972 and currently has a fighting strength of between 500 and 700 guerrillas.

The guerrillas are widely scattered, in small groups, and the army is forced to spread its 120,000 people around the country. As a result, neither side has the concentrated strength for a large-scale operation.

Conservative former President Belisario Betancur, elected in 1982, appointed a blue-ribbon Peace Commission in September of that year with the goal of negotiating a solution to the guerrilla war. Two months later, he declared an amnesty for guerrillas willing to stop fighting, but only a few hundred ever took advantage of it.

After intense negotiations, Betancur’s government signed cease-fire agreements in 1984 with the FARC, M-19 and EPL. Betancur agreed to a series of reforms aimed at broader participation in democracy and greater social justice.

From the beginning, the peace process was flawed. The army and some guerrilla units, never wholeheartedly in favor of the cease-fire, continued to clash. Guerrilla leaders, amnestied ex-guerrillas and other leftists were assassinated from time to time.

In mid-1985, all guerrilla organizations but the FARC withdrew from the cease-fire. Escalating warfare reached a climax in November, 1985, when elements of the M-19 assaulted the central justice building in Bogota. The army counterattacked and more than 100 people were killed.

Liberal Virgilio Barco succeeded Betancur as president in August, 1986. Barco immediately dismissed the Peace Commission and put guerrilla matters on the desk of special adviser Carlos Ossa, a young lawyer.

The main change of policy has been Barco’s refusal to negotiate with the guerrillas on any subject except a government demand that they disarm. The government also has begun a $1-billion program of road building, agricultural development and other aid for rural areas where guerrilla influence is strong.

“What the government seeks is to take political space away from the guerrillas,” adviser Ossa said in an interview. He said the FARC guerrillas realize that and have attempted to disrupt the program with further violations of the cease-fire. The guerrillas accuse the government of breaking the cease-fire by encroaching on the areas where they are camped.

The biggest clash between the FARC and the army came in June, when guerrillas ambushed an army column in the southern province of Caqueta, killing 27 soldiers and wounding more than 40.

Since then there have been at least half a dozen other important army-FARC battles, according to Ossa. He said guerrilla attacks have eroded the cease-fire to the point that “in practice, there no longer is one.”

Ossa said he has stayed in contact with the FARC through a special radio telephone, but he emphasized that the government will negotiate only on the condition that the rebels disarm and rejoin civilian society. The guerrillas have flatly rejected negotiations under that requirement.

“It is like an impasse,” Ossa said.

Church Offer

The Roman Catholic Church is offering to mediate. Guerrilla leaders have accepted the offer but the government has not.

“I wouldn’t say it has been rejected,” Ossa said. “It is on the table.”

When the guerrillas announced the formation in September of a new alliance called the Simon Bolivar Coordinator, they called the government’s condition for negotiations “a declaration of total war.” The statement recognized differences between the different guerrilla groups, but it emphasized their effort “to continue building unity.” It is the first formal alliance between the FARC and the other groups.

Some analysts, including Ossa, contend that the coordinator is a paper alliance, announced mainly for propaganda purposes.

But Eduardo Pizarro, a National University sociologist who monitors the guerrilla movement, said it is one of many signs that the rebel groups are overcoming their differences to build political and military unity.

Alvaro Salazar, an amnestied FARC commander who is now a leader of the Marxist-oriented Patriotic Union party, accused the Barco administration of allowing the peace process to wither. But another member of the Patriotic Union, a coalition party conceived as a vehicle for participation in peaceful politics by former guerrillas, said the rebels were also to blame. “They have a project of military insurrection, and they have never abandoned that project,” said Sen. Alberto Rojas Puyo, a Communist and member of the Patriotic Union directorate.

According to the Defense Ministry, 1,291 people were killed in the fighting from August, 1986, through August, 1987, including 605 guerrillas, 217 government fighters and 469 civilians.