Building Peace in a Time of War

Virginia M. BouvierSenior Program Officer

United States Institute of Peace

Draft of a book being prepared for United States Institute of Press, Colombia:

Building Peace in a Time of War

In a recent talk at the U.S. Institute of Peace, I asked some fifty high school

teachers to list all the words and images they associate with Colombia.i Their

responses included a range of general and specific terms related to the theme of

violent conflict--war, violence, drugs, kidnapping, FARC (Colombia’s largest

guerrilla group), arms, paramilitaries, child soldiers, corruption, sexual

exploitation, and trafficking in women. Other terms mentioned—coffee, music--

were less obviously related to the conflict. The teachers did not propose a single

image linked to peace or the many efforts to pursue peace in Colombia.

Addressing this gap in public opinion and in the scholarly literature on this topic,

this book seeks to rectify some of the distortions created by the neglect of these

conflict actors, to consider how peace initiatives and their proponents might

contribute further to a resolution of the Colombian conflict, and to assess the

implications of this adjusted vision for the international community and policy

makers.

1

The lack of attention to Colombia’s peace efforts and actors, particularly in

the English-speaking world, is not all that surprising. Colombia claims relatively

little attention from the American media, the public, or the broader global

community; when it does appear in the news, drugs and violence frequently

dominate the headlines. Agendas of violence, power, drugs, and greed have by and

large eclipsed attention to the political partisanship and ideologies that provided

the backdrop for a guerrilla war kindled by socioeconomic inequities and political

exclusion some forty years ago. In recent decades, drugs have provided a steady

source of income that has fueled the conflict and contributed to its intractability.ii

Today more than ninety percent of the cocaine and about half of the heroin

consumed in the United States is produced in or transits through Colombia.iii

Increasingly, Colombia’s cocaine is finding markets in Brazil, Africa, and Europe

as well.iv Scholars, journalists, and others have produced a steady stream of books

with a wide readership in both Spanish and English on Colombian cartels and

drugtrafficking.v

In addition to its infamy as a leader in the drug trade, Colombia is also a

leader in statistics on violence. The longstanding internal armed conflict in

Colombia involves multiple armed actors (including guerrillas, paramilitary forces,

state armed forces, common criminals, and drug traffickers), has evolved over

time, and seems to defy resolution. Each day conflict-related violence claims the

lives of more than a dozen Colombians (usually civilians) and internally displaces

i United States Institute of Peace, Summer Institute for Secondary School Teachers on

International Peace, Security, and Conflict Management, August 1, 2006.

2

850 Colombians.vi After Sudan, Colombia has the second largest population of

internally displaced persons (IDPs) – estimated at between 2-3 million -- in the

world.vii Labor leaders, journalists, human rights workers, church leaders, elected

officials, and judicial authorities in Colombia are among the most threatened on the

face of the earth. In 2005, with more than 1,100 mine victims, Colombia took over

the record for the country with the most land mine accidents, surpassing Cambodia

and Afghanistan.viii Colombia has long been known as the “kidnap capital of the

ii Cynthia J. Arnson and Teresa Whitfield, “Third Parties and Intractable Conflicts: The Case of

Colombia,” in Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall, eds., Grasping the

Nettles: Analyzing Cases of Intractable Conflict (Washington, D.C.: USIP Press, 2005).

iii U.S. Department of State, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report-2005, March 2005;

at http://www.state.gov/g/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2005/vol1/html/42363.htm.

iv Juan Forero, “Colombia's coca survives U.S. plan to uproot it,” The New York Times, August

19, 2006, online at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/19/world/americas/19coca.html?

_r=1&n=Top%2fNews%2fWorld%2fCountries%20and%20Territories

%2fColombia&oref=slogin.

v See Grace Livingstone, Inside Colombia: Drugs, Democracy, and War (New Brunswick:

Rutgers University Press, 2004); Russell Crandall, Driven by Drugs: U.S. Policy Toward

Colombia (Boulder, Co.: Lynne Rienner, 2002); Robin Kirk, More Terrible than Death:

Massacres, Drugs, and America’s War in Colombia (N.Y.: Public Affairs, 2003); Mark Bowden,

3

world,” with more than 16,000 people-- including prominent legislators,

government ministers, presidential candidates, business people, and U.S.

contractors-- kidnapped in the past five years, and some 4,000 kidnap victims

currently being held.ix

A number of related factors contribute to the drug and violence prism

through which the world tends to view Colombia. News stories are usually shaped

by policy “hooks,” story angles that link events of the day to government policies

or to an explicit relationship with the news consumer. In the United States,

policymakers have promoted three sometimes-overlapping paradigms that have

shaped U.S. relations with Colombia: Beginning in the 1950s (and increasing

especially after Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba), counterinsurgency concerns

governed U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America; in the 1980s, the U.S. war on

drugs dominated U.S. policy directives in the Andean producer countries; and in

the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the

Pentagon building in Washington, D.C., the war on terror has driven U.S foreign

policy concerns around the globe.

These policy approaches have sometimes warranted coverage because they

carried a steep price tag or because they showcased U.S. interests abroad. With the

Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2001); Doug

Stokes, America's Other War: Terrorizing Colombia (Zed Books, 2005); Ron Chepasiuk, Drug

Lords: The Rise and Fall of the Cali Cartel (Milo Books, 2005); Ted Galen Carpenter, Bad

Neighbor Policy: Washington's Futile War on Drugs in Latin America, 1st ed. (New York:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

4

launching in 2000 of Plan Colombia, a multi-billion dollar plan to strengthen the

Colombian state, Colombia became one of the top U.S. aid recipients in the world,

surpassed at that the time only by Egypt and Israel. From 2000-2006, Colombia

received unprecedented levels of U.S. aid totaling some $4.7 billion, more than

three-quarters of which went to the Colombian military and police for counter-

insurgency, counter-narcotics, and oil pipeline protection.x Since most U.S.

foreign aid thus far has been earmarked for the prosecution of the war, other

vii United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, The State of the World’s Refugees 2006, at

http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/publ/opendoc.htm?tbl=PUBL&id=4444d3ce20. Last

accessed August 18, 2006.

viii Vinicius Souza and Maria Eugênia Sá, “In Colombia, Land Mines Claim Three Victims a

Day,” Folha de S. Paulo[São Paulo, Brazil], February 22, 2006; Toby Muse, “Colombia Tops

List of Land Mine Victims,” PDT, Bogota, at

www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=n/a/2006/04/04/internation...

vi Jorge Rojas, president of the Consultancy on Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES),

talk given at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., November 19, 2005.

ix Mexico surpassed Colombia for the title in 2005. See Larry Habegger, “Mexico: World's

Kidnap Capital,” World Travel Watch, August 9, 2005, at

http://www.worldtravelwatch.com/archives/2005/08/mexico-worlds-kidnap-capital.shtml;

Amnesty International, Annual Report 2006, at

http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/colombia/document.do?id=ar&yr=2006; and Letter from

5

agendas -- regional stability; democracy, human rights, and the rule of law; socio-

economic development and humanitarian needs;, and peace initiatives -- only

occasionally make headlines.xi More often than not, however--especially following

9/11 and the national preoccupation with war in Iraq--neither peace efforts in

Colombia or the conflict itself have gotten much print.

Nonetheless, U.S. involvement is far from negligible. The relative lack of

attention to the conflict in Colombia is all the more surprising given that the U.S.

Embassy in Bogota, with some 2,000 employees representing 32 agencies, is

second in size only to that in Iraq.xii Furthermore, the U.S. presence in Colombia

on the ground has grown rapidly since 2000. U.S. troops and advisors are now

Olga Lucia Gomez [Director, Pais Libre Foundation] to Jorge Enrique Botero, April 3, 2006,

Bogota, at http://www.paislibre.org/html/sitio/index.php?view=vistas/es_ES/pagina_108.php.

Last accessed August 17, 2006.

x Earlier levels of aid were significantly lower, reaching a high of 50 million dollars in FY2000.

Levels of aid to Colombia in 2006 and 2007, at about three-quarters of a billion dollars per year,

remain on a par with 2005 levels. For exact figures since 1997, see table at

www.ciponline.org/colombia/aidtable.htm. Last accessed August 15, 2006.

xi On U.S. policy interests, see Virginia M. Bouvier, “Evaluating U.S. Policy in Colombia,” A

Policy Report from the International Relations Center Americas Program, May 11, 2005, at

http://americas.irc-online.org/reports/2005/0505colombia.html.

xii Virginia M. Bouvier, “Evaluating U.S. Policy in Colombia,” Policy Report, IRC Americas

Program (Silver City, NM: International Relations Center, May 11, 2005),

6

legally capped at 800, and U.S. civilian government contractors are capped at 600

(plus foreign contractors).xiii About a dozen U.S. citizens have lost their lives in this

conflict.

If the war in Colombia has received little attention, journalists, academics,

human rights practitioners, and conflict resolution specialists alike have paid even

less attention to Colombia’s drive for peace and to those actors working for peace

and nonviolent change. On the scholarly front, only recently have political

scientists, sociologists, and other scholars even begun to analyze the role of civil

society and NGOs in policymaking.xiv Colombian scholars and their protégés are

known for their development of “violentology,” a sophisticated and influential

scholarly discipline that is dedicated to the study of violence in Colombia.xv With

a few exceptions, such literature as exists on peace initiatives has largely been in

Spanish and has tended to focus on the government’s repeated and largely

unsuccessful efforts to negotiate peace, or have tended toward autobiographical

http://www.americaspolicy.org/reports/2005/0505colombia.html; Virginia M. Bouvier, Civil

Society under Siege in Colombia, Special Report no. 114 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of

Peace, February 2004), online at http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr114.html.

xiii See Virginia M. Bouvier, “Colombia Quagmire: Time for U.S. Policy Overhaul,” Foreign

Policy in Focus, Americas Program (Silver City, NM: Interhemispheric Resource Center, Sept.

2003), at http://www.americaspolicy.org/briefs/2003/0309colombia.html; and Deborah Avant,

“Privatizing Military Training,” Foreign Policy in Focus 7, no. 6 (May 2002); at

http://www.fpif.org/papers/miltrain/box4.html.

7

accounts of these efforts.xvi Scholars have largely ignored local and regional

initiatives as a focus of study.

Human rights practitioners within Colombia and abroad, while aware of and

sometimes even participants in the construction of peace initiatives, have generally

focused their work on discerning the patterns of violence and abuse in the daily

manifestations of Colombia’s conflict. Their most pressing task is to document

and denounce human rights violations as well as violations of international

humanitarian laws and norms governing the conduct of the armed conflict.xvii Most

human rights practitioners lack the mandate or the time required to document or

analyze peace initiatives, although some groups are beginning to do just that.xviii

Ironically, within the conflict resolution field as well there is an inherent bias

against actors who have eschewed violence in the pursuit of peace. Conflict

analysis generally is performed with “conflict actors” in mind, and these “conflict

actors” are usually limited to those engaged in the armed struggle itself. The

resolution of international conflicts has traditionally been seen as a process

involving negotiations between the parties that hold the weapons.xix Thus,

mediation and “peacemaking” most frequently involve promoting negotiations and

accords between the government and the armed actors. They involve anticipating,

dissuading, persuading, and getting buy-in from would-be spoilers of a peace

process—usually, again, those with arms. Victims and proponents of non-violent

conflict resolution are frequently left outside of, or in some cases given only token

representation in, peace talks. Amnesties or other bargains that let known

murderers and “bad guys” off the hook, or DDR (demobilization, disarmament,

8

and reintegration) programs that provide incentives to the perpetrators of violence

to lay down their arms are frequently held up as the necessary cost for pursuing

peace. Subsequent truth commissions, sometimes established to air the claims of

victims, often fall prey to political considerations that favor reconciliation over

truth or justice as they seek to appease the illegal armed actors. And while these

initiatives may be important, more thought could be given to the potential role of

civil society in crafting alternative solutions.

In the development field, one finds that it is often the communities that are

experiencing the most violence that are the targets of intervention and assistance—

to the neglect of communities that may have been successful in preventing or

curtailing violence. While the most violent-prone communities are often judged to

be the most in need of external resources, the irony is that attention and increased

resources to these communities appears to reward or create incentives for violent

behaviors. This is also true with DDR programs that provide benefits to

combatants who agree to demobilize, but are not mandated to assist the

communities where reintegration will occur or the victims of the violence. These

programs create new tensions because the benefits privilege the perpetrators of

abuses while ignoring the urgent needs of the victims, including the displaced.

This book challenges some of these practices. It calls for greater attention to be

paid to the relationship between conflict and development, and suggests that

support for development needs is a critical step forward on the path to peace.

A final aspect of the relative invisibility of Colombian peace initiatives

stems from the general invisibility of those sectors of the population that are often

9

the protagonists behind peace initiatives. Women, the rural sectors in general and

the rural poor in particular, youth, Afro-Colombians, and the indigenous have a

history of political, social, and economic exclusion in Colombia, and much of the

nascent literature emerging about women, the rural and urban poor, youth, Afro-

Colombians, and indigenous focuses on their victimization by the war, by

economic policies, and by discriminatory practices. Of the approximately three

million internally displaced Colombians, one third are of African descent, more

than half are women, and half are under age fifteen.xx At least 13 percent of

Colombia’s rural population is now displaced, and rural poverty in Colombia

reached 69 percent in 2004, up from 64 percent the previous year.xxi Afro-

Colombians (the largest minority group in Colombia, constituting about 25%-30%

of the population) and indigenous communities (about 2% of the population) suffer

disproportionate poverty, displacement, environmental degradation, ill health, food

insecurity, and the absence of state infrastructures to promote and protect their

most basic human rights.

There is little scholarly research yet that focuses on the role of these groups

—or of the displaced-- in organizing to end the violence, to marginalize actors

advocating violence as a vehicle for change (sometimes by forming peace

communities), or to negotiate with armed actors to prevent or resolve violent

conflicts on the ground. These marginalized groups have high stakes in the

conflict’s resolution and, as will be seen throughout this book, are active in many

of the peace initiatives that are being carried out in the hottest conflict zones in

Colombia.xxii

10

Efforts to bring peace to Colombia have persisted nearly as long as the

conflict itself—with intermittent if impartial levels of success. National efforts,

including the Rojas Pinilla amnesty in 1953 and the pact that established the

National Front in 1957, led to a pause in the violence between Liberal and

Conservative partisans that took the lives of some 180,000 Colombians during La

Violencia (roughly from 1946-1965 and considered by some to mark the initiation

of the current conflict).xxiii Since the early 1980s, Colombian governments have

alternated between strategies of war and strategies of peace in their efforts to deal

with the many illegal armed actors that defy the State’s monopoly of force.

Several governments have engaged in negotiations with guerrilla groups, some of

which have led to the disarmament of at least five guerrilla groups or fractions

thereof. And successive governments have, albeit unsuccessfully, repeatedly

attempted to reach peace agreements with each of the two major guerrilla groups—

the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) and the National Liberation

Army (ELN).xxiv

Following the breakdown in 2002 of peace talks initiated in 1998 by the

government of President Andres Pastrana with the FARC, the oldest and largest of

the guerrilla groups, Alvaro Uribe was elected president based on his commitment

to all-out military victory over the guerrillas. And while security conditions during

Uribe’s first administration improved in many of the larger cities and towns and

secured Uribe re-election by a wide margin in 2006, the violence has continued,

particularly in the countryside, where the FARC continues to control vast stretches

of Colombian national territory.xxv

11

During his first term in office (2002-2006), President Alvaro Uribe invested

tremendous political capital in a controversial proposal to demobilize the right-

wing paramilitary forces known as the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia/Self-

Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). Following the demobilization of more than

30,000 combatants, High Commissioner for Peace Luis Carlos Restrepo announced

in April 2006 (somewhat prematurely perhaps given subsequent events), that the

xiv See for example, Mario Murillo and Jesus Rey Avirama, Colombia and the United States:

War, Unrest, and Destabilization (Seven Stories Press, September 2003); Geoff L. Simons,

Colombia: A Brutal History (London: Saqi, 2004).

xv See Daniel Pecaut, Cronica de cuatro decadas de politica colombiana (Bogota: Grupo

Editorial Norma, 2006); Ruben Ardila, “Violence in Colombia: Social and Psychological

Aspects,” in Florence Denmark and Leonore Loeb Adler, eds., International Perspectives on

Violence (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004): 59-67; G. Guzman Campos, O. Fals Borda, and E.

Umana Luna, La violencia en Colombia (Bogota: Tercer Mundo Ediciones, 1964); Charles

Bergquist, Ricardo Penaranda, and Gonzalo Sanchez G., Violence in Colombia: The

Contemporary Crisis in Historical Perspective (Wilmington: SR Books, 1992); Nazih Richani,

Systems of Violence: The Political Economy of War and Peace in Colombia (Albany: SUNY,

2002); Cristina Rojas and Judy Meltzer, Elusive Peace: International, National, and Local

Dimensions of Conflict in Colombia (N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Stephen Dudley,

Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia (New York: Routledge, 2004); and

12

largest demobilization in the history of Colombia had been successful and the

AUC was officially disbanded.

The paramilitary piece of the puzzle is far from resolved, however.

Dramatic revelations about pervasive links between paramilitary drugtraffickers

with Colombia’s elected authorities in the Congress, as well as paramilitary

infiltration at the highest levels of Colombia’s primary intelligence agency, the

Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS), have shaken the country, and

the demobilized AUC, like the famed Greek hydra serpent, has generated

unanticipated new configurations of criminal and drugtrafficking organizations and

networks.xxvi

Early on in Uribe’s second term, there was nonetheless hope that with the

AUC officially demobilized, Uribe might turn his attention to negotiating peace

the numerous World Bank published studies on conflict and economics including Andres

Solimano, ed., Colombia: Essays on Conflict, Peace, and Development (2000); and World Bank

Sector Study, Violence in Colombia: Toward Peace, Partnerships and Sustainable Development

(1998).

xvi See Socorro Ramirez V. and Luis Alberto Restrepo M., Actores en conflicto por la paz: El

proceso de paz durante el gobierno de Belisario Betancur 1982-1986 (Bogota: CINEP, 1989;

Miguel Eduardo Cárdenas Rivera, ed., La construcción del posconflicto en Colombia: enfoques

desde la pluralidad (Bogota: CEREC, 2002); Edgar Tellez, Oscar Montes, and Jorge Lesmes,

Diario intimo de un fracaso: Historia no contada del proceso de paz con las FARC (Bogota:

Planeta, 2002).

13

with the FARC and ELN guerrillas. The Colombian government accepted a

proposal by the governments of France, Spain, and Switzerland to create a small

demilitarized zone in the Valle del Cauca for a prisoner-for-hostages swap, and

initiated overtures to the FARC in 2006 through Senator Alvaro Leyva, a

negotiator during previous peace talks, for a humanitarian accord and prisoner

exchange.xxvii These hopes were dashed in October 2006, when a car bomb

xvii Some of the major groups documenting human rights and international humanitarian law

violations within Colombia include CODHES, CINEP, etc. International groups include

Amnesty International, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Crisis

Group, Pan American Health Organization, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human

Rights, and the Organization of American States, among others. See for example, Medicos sin

fronteras, Vivir con miedo: El ciclo de la violencia en Colombia, April 30, 2006, at

http://www.msf.org/source/countries/americas/colombia/2006/report/Vivir_Con_Miedo.pdf;

Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, Unseen Millions: The Catastrophe of

Internal Displacement in Colombia: Children and Adolescents at Risk, March 2002, at

http://www.rhrc.org/pdf/wc_colombia_04.02.pdf. Last accessed August 16, 2006.

xviii See the new database of peace initiatives compiled by the Jesuit Center for Research and

Popular Education (CINEP), available online at www.cinep.org.co/datapaz_resumenes.htm; and

United Nations Development Program (PNUD), National Database of Best Practices for

Overcoming the Conflict (Banco Nacional de Buenas Practicas para Superar el Conflicto), at

http://www.saliendodelcallejon.pnud.org.co/banco_bpracticas.shtml, last accessed August 21,

14

exploded at the war college in Bogota, injuring 23 people. Uribe immediately

blamed the FARC and the talks ground to a halt.xxviii Since then, despite mounting

pressures for movement on a humanitarian accord, the Uribe government has

refused to dialogue with the FARC. As 2006 came to a close, military clashes

continued between the FARC and the Colombian army, and Defense Minister Juan

2006.

xix See I. William Zartman and J. Lewis Rasmussen, eds., Peacemaking in International Conflict:

Method & Techniques (Washington, D.C. : United States Institute of Peace, 1997); Chester A.

Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall, Taming Intractable Conflicts: Mediation in the

Hardest Cases (Washington, D.C.: USIP Press, 2004); Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson,

and Pamela Aall, Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of Managing International Conflict

(Washington, D.C.: USIP Press, 2001); Crocker, Osler Hampson, and Aall, Grasping the Nettles.

xx One out of four illegal combatants are estimated to be under age 15. See Human Rights

Watch, “You’ll Learn Not to Cry”: Child Combatants in Colombia, Sept. 2003, at www.hrw.org;

HRW, Child Soldiers in Colombia, Sept. 2003, at

http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/colombia/childsoldiers/facts.htm; Child Soldiers Global Report

2004 at http://www.child-soldiers.org/document_get.php?id=820#search=%22colombia

%20child%20soldiers%22;

Yvonne Keairns, The Voices of Girl Child Soldiers (New York: Quaker United Nations Office,

Jan. 2003), at http://www.quno.org/newyork/Resources/girlSoldiersColombia.pdf#search=

15

Manuel Santos announced a new government military offensive called Plan

Victory to capture or kill guerrilla leaders.xxix

With regard to the ELN, progress has appeared more feasible, in part

because the ELN is considered to be militarily weaker and less beholden to

narcotrafficking interests. The ELN emerged in the 1960s in northeast Colombia

with the support of urban middle-class students, oil workers, and priests inspired

%22child%20soldiers%20colombia%22.

xxi NotiSur, Latin American Data Base 16, no. 9, March 3, 2006. http://ladb.unm.edu; see also

Edward E. Telles, “Incorporating Race and Ethnicity into the UN Millennium Development

Goals,” Race Report (Inter-American Dialogue, January 2007).

xxii See Esperanza Hernandez Delgado, Resistencia civil artesana de paz: Experiencias indigenas,

afrodescendientes y campesinas (Bogota: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2004).

xxiii See United Nations Development Program (UNDP/PNUD), Colombia’s Conflict: Pointers on

the Road to Peace, National Report on Human Development for Colombia – 2003 (Bogota:

PNUD, 2003), 25.

xxiv These have included the EPL (Ejército Popular de Liberación/Popular Liberation Army),

PRT (Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores/Workers’ Revolutionary Party), MAQL

(Movimiento Armado Quintín Lame), M-19 (Movimiento 19 de Abril), and later, the CRS

(Corriente de Renovación Socialista/Socialist Renewal Group), a splinter fraction of the ELN).

xxv Some 550 soldiers and police were killed in action in 2006. Chris Kraul, “Rebels Kill 14 in

Colombia,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 26, 2006, p. A4.

16

by Catholic liberation theology and the Cuban revolution, and its vision and

revolutionary project reflect these origins. There have been repeated attempts

spearheaded by civil society—most notably in Mainz, Germany in 1998 and in San

Jose, Costa Rica in 2000— to bring the ELN to the negotiating table. After

subsequent facilitation efforts lead by Mexican government officials stalled, a civil

society commission created the House of Peace (Casa de Paz) in late 2005 to

facilitate a consultation process between Colombian civil society and the ELN.xxx

This has led to a series of formal meetings of an exploratory nature between the

ELN and the Colombian government in Cuba mediated by international facilitators

(namely, Norway, Switzerland, and Spain).xxxi While these talks have yet to xxvi See “Se calcula que hay entre 30 y 60 ‘bandas emergentes’ surgidas de los grupos ‘paras’

desmovilizados,” El Tiempo, Dec. 10, 2006; Cynthia J. Arnson, Jaime Bermudez, Father Dario

Echeverri, David Henifin, Alredo Rangel Suarez, Leon Valencia, “Colombia’s Peace Processes:

Multiple Negotiations, Multiple Actors,” Latin American Program Special Report, December

2006.

xxvii Arnson et al., “Colombia’s Peace Processes,” 4.

xxviii Proof of FARC involvement was not forthcoming however, and there was some speculation,

based on a previous scandal, that the incident was another deception created by the military

itself. See Sam Logan, “Colombia’s Latest Problems with Corruption,” Power and Interest News

Report, Nov. 9, 2006, online at http://www.pinr.com/report.php?

ac=view_report&report_id=580&language_id=1.

xxix Kraul, “Rebels Kill 14 in Colombia,” A4.

17

address substantive issues such as forced displacement, a cease-fire, or amnesty for

imprisoned ELN combatants, in October 2006, ELN commanders offered to

cooperate on a de-mining initiative in Samaniego, Narino, and talks in Havana

continued in 2007.

As the reader of this book will discover, throughout Colombia, churches,

non-governmental groups, and local and regional authorities are actively seeking

peace, and they are registering success in a multitude of ways. They are designing

and implementing programs that offer alternatives to violence and promote

attitudes and structures that may help create a more inclusive political system

capable of managing conflict nonviolently. At a local level, they have carried out

delicate negotiations with armed actors—sometimes under the auspices of church

authorities—for the release of kidnap victims, to prevent the displacement of

communities, and to allow safe passage of foods and medicines past armed

blockades. Citizen initiatives have promoted electoral debates, addressed

corruption, and created institutional vehicles for local populations to contribute to

the formation of municipal and national economic development plans. Peace

communities, peace laboratories, zones of peace, no-conflict zones, humanitarian

zones, sanctuary churches, territories of non-violence (or peace or peaceful co-

existence) are flourishing in some of the most vulnerable conflict zones in

Colombia. Governors of the southern states of Tolima, Cauca, Nariño, Huila,

Caquetá, and Putumayo have developed proposals for a negotiated settlement to

the conflict, as well as an alternative development plan that proposes regional

alternatives to the current fumigation policies of the central government, including

18

crop substitution and the development of small micro-enterprises based on

traditional indigenous and Afro-Colombian agricultural practices. Mayors in

eastern Antioquia and in Montes de Maria are seeking paths to more participatory

governance and greater community input into development decisions. With the

assistance of UNICEF, the national civil registry office, and the civil society group

REDEPAZ (Red Nacional de Iniciativas por la Paz y Contra la Guerra), millions of

young people organized a Children’s Mandate for Peace, in which 2.7 million

youth cast votes for peace. Inspired by REDEPAZ, “100 Municipalities of Peace”

have been established that are increasing citizen engagement, deepening the nature

of democratic governance, and enhancing accountability in Colombia. These have

led in turn to a proliferation of constituent assemblies at the municipal and regional

levels.

An incipient, but growing, body of recent scholarship, of which this book

forms a part, is focusing attention on these and other peace initiatives.xxxii This

book, and the various conferences and panels which nourished it, brings together

the experiences and insights of twenty-five seasoned and emerging authors and

peace practitioners. Documenting and drawing lessons from Colombia’s long

history of peace initiatives, they yield new insights into how Colombia’s conflict

might be resolved, and provide a veritable encyclopedia of lessons in peacemaking

and peacebuilding for those seeking to transform violent conflicts in other parts of

the world. The authors of this volume hail from Latin America (especially

Colombia), the United States, and Europe. Contributors have been engaged in or

studied peace initiatives from a variety of historical, regional, and disciplinary

19

perspectives--including political science, anthropology, history, psychology,

education, and peace and conflict studies, and they include journalists, policy

analysts, church leaders, and human rights and development practitioners.

In analyzing the kinds of initiatives that have developed in the Colombian

context, I have chosen to separate the chapters into four major sections that focus

respectively on national, sectorial, local/regional, and international initiatives for

peace in Colombia. While these levels sometimes overlap and the divisions

between them may be rather porous, this arrangement of the material lends itself to

a variety of new analytical frameworks for thinking about peace initiatives, which I

explore in my concluding chapter.

Following this first introductory chapter, Part Two of this book begins with

several chapters that analyze the successes and failures of past national peace

efforts and processes. The first chapter begins with an assessment by Adam

Isacson and Jorge Rojas, civil society leaders in the United States and Colombia

respectively, of the evolution of a civil society movement for peace within

Colombia. They analyze the origins and evolution of groups and mechanisms to

promote a peaceful resolution to the conflict, the challenges the peace movement

has faced in establishing a national presence, future directions that might lead

toward peace, and the obstacles that remain.

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We then turn to official government peace initiatives. In his chapter,

political science professor Carlo Nasi outlines some of the lessons to be learned

from past negotiations and successful demobilizations as well as the relatively

unsuccessful attempts to negotiate peace with the FARC and the ELN. Marc

Chernick, also a political scientist and a USIP grantee, then considers the particular

challenges that Colombian governments have confronted in their dealings with the

FARC, the largest and most resistant of the guerrilla groups. Chernick analyzes

the demands of the FARC over time, with an eye toward understanding what might

bring the FARC back to the negotiating table and what might lead them to lay

down their arms. Then Leon Valencia, a political analyst, journalist, and ex-

guerrilla leader from one of the splinter groups of the ELN that demobilized in the

early 1990s, reviews the efforts to bring the ELN to the peace table over the last

decades and the prospects for the future.

In the next chapter, anthropologist Winifred Tate takes us through the maze

of issues surrounding the Colombian government’s initiative—at the behest of the

Catholic church-- to demobilize the right-wing paramilitary coalition known as the

United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).xxxiii Tate, a USIP Peace Scholar

whose work was supported by a dissertation fellowship from USIP, discusses the

evolution of paramilitary organizations into a political force in Colombian society,

and analyzes the ways in which the discourse of human rights and conflict

resolution has permeated their representation of themselves to the broader public.

Law professor and AID consultant Arturo Carrillo rounds out this section on

national initiatives with an examination of the legal mechanisms that have been

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established to deal with illegal armed actors in Colombia. He analyzes how

Colombian norms and laws relating to truth, justice, and reparations have evolved

in relation to changing international norms around issues of transitional justice and

human rights. His chapter sheds light on some of the complexities surrounding the

controversial Justice and Peace law approved to regulate the demobilization of the

paramilitaries, and discusses the implications of these shifts for future negotiations

with illegal armed actors.

The third section of the book focuses on regional and local initiatives for

peace that, like fragile orchids in a dark cellar, have persisted and blossomed in the

midst of conflict. Tremendous variations in natural and human resources have

shaped the evolution and nature of conflict in each region of Colombia. Peace

initiatives are likewise widely varied and highly context specific, and the regional

contours of the conflict shape peace-building efforts as communities seek to

address particular local manifestations of conflict. Leading off this section is an

overview by Christopher Mitchell and Sara Ramirez, conflict resolution specialists

at the International Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR) program at George

Mason University, who describe the emergence and nature of peace communities

throughout Colombia, and place Colombia’s local zones of peace within a broader

context of current definitions and assumptions of the conflict resolution field.

Their chapter and the USIP-supported research on which it is based, provides a

comparative study of three local peace initiatives—one in the department of

Narino, one in southwestern Antioquia, and one in eastern Antioquia. They

discuss the evolution of constituent assemblies in places like Tarso, Sonson,

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Mogotes, and Samaniego, where civil society has created new governance

arrangements that are allowing greater participation, accountability, and peaceful

coexistence in areas traditionally plagued by corruption, mismanagement,

clientelism, and violent conflict.

In the remaining chapters of this section, the authors continue to analyze the

particular inflections of peace initiatives in some of the most contested and violent

areas of the Colombian countryside--the Middle Magdalena Valley, the Montes de

Maria region of the northern coast, Eastern Antioquia, Norte de Santander, Macizo

Colombiano, Meta, and others (Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Darien Caribe, Eje

Cafetero, Arauca, Casanare, Valle del Cauca, and Narino). The first six of these

locations have been designated as home to official peace laboratories, funded by

the European Union and the World Bank and supported by the Colombian national

government among others. The first peace laboratory was established in 2002 in

the Magdalena River Valley, where civil society had developed a Program for

Development and Peace (PDPMM) in response to the high levels of violence in

that region. A second peace laboratory was established in Norte de Santander,

Oriente Antioqueno, and Macizo Colombiano/Alto Patia; and a third has recently

been created in Montes de Maria and Meta.xxxiv Although each of these initiatives

is different, they share a number of commonalities, namely that they all build on

already existing programs through the national Network of Regional Development

and Peace Programs (REDPRODEPAZ), they aim to create regional proposals for

peace and to support the implementation of specific accords between the conflict

actors, strengthen the local institutions, support civil society actors working for

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peace, and encourage social and economic development in the region as a means of

providing alternative livelihoods to the violence.xxxv This section examines the

variation of each of these models as they develop and are implemented on the

ground, and it also includes a chapter on Putumayo, a coca-growing region that has

been one of the primary targets of the U.S. coca eradication campaigns.

In his chapter, Javier Moncayo, leader of REDPRODEPAZ and a medical

doctor by profession, shares a series of vignettes based on the experiences of the

local Program for Development and Peace in Magdalena Medio (PDPMM), a civil

society initiative that paved the way for the designation of the zone as the first

Peace Laboratory. Moncayo underscores the contradictions, challenges, and

contributions of civil society groups working for peace in the Magdalena Medio

river valley region. This oil-producing zone has been contested by numerous

armed actors. It was the birthplace of the ELN guerrillas, and subsequently also

became a stronghold of the FARC (particularly in the south, in Barrancabermeja,

and in the valley on the western shores of the Cimitarra river where the FARC still

maintain a strong presence). It was also the birthplace of the first campesino

movement of paramilitary self-defense groups (in Carmen de Chucuri), which later

joined the AUC. In 2000-01, paramilitary groups violently took over the region.

As Moncayo discusses the impact of the PDPMM, he observes how individuals are

changing the collective culture from a culture of fear to one of greater engagement

and more pro-active citizenship, and underscores the importante of local ownership

of the process.

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We then turn to a case study by historian Mary Jean Roldan of the No-

Violence Movement established by 23 mayors in Eastern Antioquia and the second

so-called peace laboratory. Roldan discusses the challenges of the No-Violence

Movement, as it has negotiated humanitarian solutions to the repeated killings and

blockades of the region’s towns by the FARC, ELN, and AUC, and as it seeks

greater participation in policymaking on hydroelectric development, land tenure,

and resource use in the region. She teases out the inherent tensions and conflicts of

interest between local communities and their elected officials on the one hand, and

the central government authorities in Bogota and corporate interests on the other,

and ponders the benefits and liabilities of the peace laboratory model as it has

evolved in Eastern Antioquia.

Next Ricardo Esquivia, a Mennonite pastor actively involved in the peace

movement and a leader and representative of Colombia’s non-Catholic religious

minorities, reflects with U.S. United Church of Christ leader Barbara Gerlach on

the experiences of church people, particularly Protestant Evangelicals (as non-

Catholic Christians in Colombia are called), in the Montes de Maria region. Part

of the third designated “peace laboratory,” figures for forced displacement and

landmines in this area rank among the highest of any region in the country.

Montes de Maria and the northern coastal region have been a battleground for

many armed actors, including drug-traffickers vying for control of this important

transportation corridor with easy access to the Caribbean coast—and was one of

the areas where paramilitary-government collaboration aimed at liquidating

political opponents, social leaders, and communities occurred. In Montes de

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Maria, Esquivia and Gerlach tell us about a new movement that is afoot as people

of faith explore their call to be peacemakers amidst the violence.xxxvi They tell us

of how faith-based groups--including Protestants, a minority population of some

five million in a largely Catholic country of 43 million inhabitants--are creating

spaces for the transformation of Colombia’s conflict-ridden society.xxxvii Protestant

Evangelical churches working in the midst of such conflict zones have established

church sanctuaries of peace that have saved the lives of individuals who were

detained or threatened by armed groups; these churches are developing strong links

to U.S. partner churches.xxxviii They have created new institutions and organizations

to engage communities in productive, income-generating activities; and they are

working to nurture trust and build a culture of citizenship and accountability so that

the reigning “culture of favoritism” might be transformed into a “culture of rights.”

Like their Catholic counterparts, Protestant churches, supported by the

international community, are recognizing the need to open and sustain dialogues

with armed actors to diminish and prevent violence. Esquivia’s discussion of the

Montes de Maria Development and Peace Network Foundation suggests that

discussions within the faith communities and between faiths can open new

opportunities for collaboration in the quest for peace.

Finally, Maria Clemencia Ramirez, a Colombian anthropologist, brings us to

the southwestern state of Putumayo, where the conflict and civil society’s response

to it have been marked by the vagaries of coca cultivation and the war against

drugs. Even in this largely FARC-dominated region, where Plan Colombia had its

primary focus and the conflict was highly militarized, unarmed peasants, largely

26

marginalized and considered as criminals by the centers of power, have succeeded

in persuading the FARC to lift armed blockades (paros armados), and have

overcome FARC opposition to alternative development projects. Civil society’s

ability to hold the FARC accountable to its claim to represent the will of the people

has created a modicum of space for negotiating at the local level. In the Putumayo

region, local government authorities have joined forces with sectors of civil

society, forging a precarious coalition in opposition to all of the armed actors.

The fourth part of this book includes case studies of a sampling of particular

sectors of Colombian society -- namely, the Catholic church, the business sector,

the military, the education sector, women’s organizations, and indigenous

communities -- that have developed their own unique sets of peace initiatives. Msr.

Hector Fabio Henao, the General Secretary of the National Social Pastoral Office

and former head of the Colombian Conference of Bishops, opens this section with

an analysis of the complex and longstanding role of the Colombian church in

preparing the ground for peace and promoting reconciliation. With some 90% of

the Colombian population nominally Catholic, the church’s impact at every level

of society is pervasive. The Catholic Church, with its tremendous convening

power and moral authority, is a dominant force in the country and surveys have

shown it to be the most trusted national institution in Colombia.xxxix Msr. Henao

analyzes the institutional goals and structures that have emerged from within the

church in response to the need to transform the ongoing violence of the Colombian

conflict. Behind the scenes, the Catholic bishops have facilitated peace

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negotiations, engaged in “pastoral dialogues” with representatives of each of the

armed groups, and have sought negotiated solutions to the conflict.xl

In her chapter, Jennifer Schirmer, a USIP senior fellow and former grantee,

and a human rights and conflict resolution specialist, turns her attention to the

Colombian military. She analyzes the historical evolution of the military’s

attitudes toward peacemaking efforts by distinct governments and toward the

guerrillas and how they shape the likelihood that the military will be a spoiler in

any future peace process. Schirmer discusses an ongoing project of the Norwegian

government to “skill” Colombia’s security forces in international humanitarian

law, conflict resolution, and peace-building. Schirmer tells of carefully crafted,

highly structured, confidential meetings that she facilitated between demobilized

guerrillas, military leaders, and civil society. These spaces of dialogue were aimed

at breaking down barriers and preparing the ground for a sustainable peace by

anticipating and preventing the military from assuming its past role of “spoiler” in

future peace talks.

In the next chapter, Angelika Rettberg, a political science professor at the

Universidad de los Andes, analyzes the heterogeneous nature of the business sector

in Colombia, and analyzes the current and potential role of the domestic private

sector in peace-building there. While the business sector has often been seen as

contributing to conflict, particularly in relation to the exploitation of oil and other

natural resources, in her analysis of business-sponsored local peace initiatives in

four sites—the cities of Bogota and Medellin, and the regions around Cali and the

central Magdalena River Valley—Rettberg highlights cases where business leaders

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are engaging in conflict prevention and mitigation efforts in order to foster a more

stable business environment.

In the subsequent chapter, psychologist Ana Maria Velasquez Nino and

education specialist Enrique Chaux analyze the promotion of peace through

education in Colombia. The potential role of education in zones of conflict has

been a critical theme to peace-making and peacebuilding efforts around the globe.

As scholars have shown, education is not a neutral terrain and does not exist

xxx See Andres Valencia Benavides, “The Peace Process in Colombia with the ELN: The Role of

Mexico,” Cynthia J. Arnson, ed., Latin American Program Special Report, March 2006.

xxxi See Arnson et al., “Colombia’s Peace Processes,” 5.

xxxii See the new database of peace initiatives compiled by the Jesuit Center for Research and

Popular Education (CINEP), available online at www.cinep.org.co/datapaz_resumenes.htm; and

United Nations Development Program (PNUD), Banco Nacional de Buenas Practicas para

Superar el Conflicto, at http://www.saliendodelcallejon.pnud.org.co/banco_bpracticas.shtml, last

accessed August 21, 2006. Mauricio Garcia-Duran, “To What Extent is there a Peace Movement

in Colombia? An Assessment of the Country’s Peace Mobilization, 1978-2003” (Ph.D. diss.,

Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, 2005), provides an excellent theoretical

overview and mapping of the field, as does the special issue on Colombia of Accord edited by

Garcia-Duran. See “Alternatives to War: Colombia’s Peace Processes,” Special Issue, Accord

14 (London: Conciliation Resources, 2004), online at

http://www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/colombia/spanish/movilizacion.php. Likewise, the UNDP

29

independently of a broader social, economic, political context.xli Educational

institutions and classrooms are rather microcosms of society as a whole that can

promote elitism and exclusion. In the case of societies divided by class, religion or

ethnicity, schools can institutionalize and encourage prejudices that perpetuate

conflict, and exacerbate divisions.xlii On the other hand, education can also generate

changes that promote empathy and make possible attitudinal changes at a personal

level. Personal change in turn can lead to normative changes at a societal level,

and that can lead to structural change, transform violent conflict, and create

National Report on Human Development for Colombia – 2003, available in English as

Colombia’s Conflict: Pointers on the Road to Peace, http://www.pnud.org.co/indh2003, is a

masterful synthesis of the expertise of hundreds of individuals and institutions from different

regions of the country. Sara Cameron, Out of War: True Stories from the Front Lines of the

Children’s Movement for Peace in Colombia (N.Y.: Scholastic Press, 2001) provides poignant

narratives from children working for peace in the late 1990s in Colombia.

xxxiii Serious concerns remained about recidivism and the formation of new armed groups in some

areas. See Secretary-General [Jose Miguel Insulza] of the Organization of American States

(OAS), Fifth quarterly report to the Permanent Council on the Mission to Support the Peace

Process in Colombia (MAPP), March 2006.

xxxiv See Virginia M. Bouvier, Harbingers of Hope: Peace Initiatives in Colombia, Special

Report, no. 169 (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Institute of Peace, August 2006), online at

http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr169.html.

30

mechanisms and skills for conflict prevention and reconciliation. As Velasquez

and Chaux suggest, educators are in a key position to intervene with youth to

interrupt the culture of impunity and violence that perpetuates conflict across

generations. The authors discuss current governmental initiatives to promote

citizenship competencies as well as innovative active learning programs to train

students in non-violent conflict resolution and civic involvement.

xxxv See Lucy Amis, Adrian Hodges, Neil Jeffery, Development, Peace and Human Rights in

Colombia: A Business Agenda (London: The Prince of Wales International Business Leaders

Forum in association with Fundacion Ideas para la Paz and the Office of the UN Global

Compact, 2006), 37-45.

xxxvi See Cynthia Sampson and John Paul Lederach, ed., From the Ground Up: Mennonite

Contributions to International Peacebuilding (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

xxxvii Justapaz and the Commission for Restoration, Life and Peace, A Prophetic Call: Colombian

Protestant Churches Document Their Suffering and Their Hope (Bogota, August 2006), 3.

xxxviii For a discussion of the experiences of three Church Sanctuaries of Peace (ISPs) from

Colombia’s north coast, see El Desafio del Desarrollo en Zonas de Conflicto, Serie Construccion

de la Paz, no.3 (Bogota: JustaPaz and Lutheran World Relief, 2006); and Iniciativas

Humanitarias Locales en Contextos de Conflicto Armado, Serie Construccion de la Paz, no. 4

(Bogota: JustaPaz and Lutheran World Relief, 2006).

xxxix Jorge Londono de la Cuesta, “La opinion publica colombiana frente a la crisis: Una breve

descripcion,” in Colombia: Conflicto armado, perspectivas de paz y democracia (Miami:

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Catalina Rojas, a Colombian conflict resolution specialist trained at ICAR,

then analyzes the development of a women’s movement for peace in Colombia,

and examines the leadership roles women and women’s groups have taken in

negotiating accords with armed actors, and preparing the ground for peace at the

local level.

We next have a chapter on indigenous peace initiatives by Leslie Wirpsa, a

USIP Peace Scholar, former journalist of some 20 years in Colombia, and

international studies expert in natural resource studies. Working in collaboration

with David Rothschild, the former director of the NGO Amazon Alliance, and

Catalina Garzon, a Ph.D. student of environmental science, policy and

management, Wirpsa explores how ethnicity has shaped responses to conflict by

looking at indigenous traditions of resistance and mediation. The authors focus on

Summit of the Americas Center, Latin American and Caribbean Center, 2001), 13.

xl See Comision Vida, Justicia y Paz, Diocesis de Magangue, Dialogos Pastorales y

cumunitarios (Magangue, 2005).

xli See Marc Sommers, “Conflict, Education and Youth: Connections and Challenges,” Paper

presented at the annual Latin American Studies Association Meeting, San Juan, Puerto Rico,

March 17, 2006.

xlii Kenneth D. Bush and Diana Saltarelli, eds., The Two Faces of Education in Ethnic

Conflict:

Towards a Peacebuilding Education for Children (Florence: Innocenti Research Centre,

UNICEF, 2000), 33.

32

indigenous resistance and peace initiatives in the oil-rich and highly conflictive

Cauca department, a predominantly indigenous zone where communities have

mobilized around ethnic identities drawing on a long history of indigenous

resistance to Spanish domination and Nasa indigenous guards, wielding only their

ceremonial batons, have faced down paramilitary death squads and guerrillas, and

have forced drug traffickers to shut down their cocaine laboratories, and on the

Planes de Vida drawn up by the Cofan peoples in the Putumayo region.

In the fifth part of the book, policy analysts from both sides of the Atlantic

analyze international efforts to move Colombia toward a peaceful resolution of the

conflict. Until the government of Andres Pastrana (1998-2002), third party

involvement in peace initiatives in Colombia was rather limited. Both the Clinton

and Bush administrations have been more interested in strengthening the ability of

their Colombian counterparts to defeat the guerrillas and execute the war on drugs

than in supporting initiatives that would lead to a political solution to the conflict.

Jim Jones, an independent consultant formerly with the United Nations task force

on drugs, untangles the knotty relationship of drugs, war, and peace in Colombia as

a first step to understanding the kinds of Colombian and U.S. policies that have

supported and might support the path to peace—as well as those that have made

peace more elusive. Neil Jeffery, formerly head of the U.S. Office on Colombia

and one of the founders of Peace Brigades International in Colombia, then zeroes

in on some of the dilemmas facing U.S. policymakers and NGOs as they seek ways

to support peace in Colombia. German political scientist Sabine Kurtenbach then

analyzes the involvement of European actors in Colombian peace initiatives, the

33

instruments at their disposal, and perspectives for their future engagement in

Colombia.

Finally, development specialists Raul Rosende, Borja Paladini Adell, Juan

Chaves, and Gabriel Turriago pool their collective wisdom and on-the-ground

experiences working as consultants with the UNDP’s REDES program in Montes

de Maria to consider the international and local dimensions and dynamics of the

peacebuilding process in the Montes de Maria region. Their chapter analyzes how

the activities of international actors to support local and regional development

activities such as those described earlier in the chapter by Ricardo Esquivia can

promote—or undermine—the possibilities of sustainable peace.

The final concluding section by the editor analyzes the scope and texture of

peace initiatives presented in the volume and the variation in their goals. It

suggests how these initiatives might be evaluated, and discusses some of the

factors that appear to contribute to their success or failure, teases out lessons to be

learned from successes and challenges, and discusses the model of peacemaking

and peacebuilding represented by a greater integration of local, regional, sectoral,

national and international peace initiatives.

Overall, this volume offers an assessment of Colombia’s historic and current

experiences in peacemaking and peacebuilding. It explores some of the distinct

levels where civil society is engaged-- conflict prevention, management,

transformation, and reconstruction; human rights protection and promotion;

peacemaking (pre-negotiating); negotiating; and other peacebuilding activities—as

well as the nature of the armed conflict actors and what might bring them to opt for

34

a peaceful resolution to the conflict. The authors assess broadly the obstacles to

peace, how the factors facilitating a peaceful resolution to the conflict might be

supported, and what the broader applicability of the Colombian experience might

be for future paths to peace. The peace initiatives laid out in this book suggest that

efforts to transform the Colombian conflict are every bit as complex as the conflict

itself. To continue to ignore them, however, is foolhardy, as they are an untapped

resource and may contain the seeds for the conflict’s transformation.

35