After several fits and starts, negotiators have just 11 weeks to bring peace to a country consumed by war, reports Ana Carrigan in Los Pozos
In his latest collection of essays, Lo que se gesta en Colombia (What is going on in Colombia), the poet William Ospina, the most lucid and profound diagnostician of Colombia's ills, reflects on his country's inability to confront "the curious relationship with war and with death that characterises us \", or to transform creatively the "incomprehensible \ talent for living dangerously".
Last Sunday week, waiting in the heat and dust of the little community of Los Pozos, Ospina's words resonated uncomfortably. Negotiators for the government and the guerrillas were engaged in their latest marathon while a midnight deadline for returning to war grew closer, and the Colombian army massed on the zone's borders, waiting to retake the rebels' safe haven.
The negotiators were accompanied by the united nations, the ambassadors from the group of 10 facilitating countries - six Europeans, three Latin Americans, and Canada - the Papal Nuncio, and the President of the Conference of Colombian Bishops.
When they finally agreed the terms for returning to talks, the Cuban ambassador produced rum and cigars and the sounds of popping corks and laughter reached the journalists assembled across a dusty no-man's land that had kept the press at a distance throughout the day. And that was how we learnt that the two-week drama, that had come within hours of burying the Colombian peace process several times, was over.
Just in time for the nine o'clock news, Colombian peace commissioner Camilo Gomez and chief guerrilla negotiator Raul Reyes presented the historic agreement that commits both sides to immediately start ceasefire talks according to a timetable designed to achieve a bilateral ceasefire by April 7th. The President subsequently extended the life of the zone until April 10th.
This means that within the next 11 weeks both sides must solve the most hardcore issues of their intractable conflict. For the guerrillas, it means ending kidnapping for ransom, extortion, and indiscriminate attacks on small rural towns that kill and maim civilians and leave the traumatised population to the mercy of undisciplined, murderous guerrilla militias. For the government, it means they must finally take concrete measures to get control over powerful paramilitaries who increasingly massacre and assassinate with the support of senior, active duty army officers.
For both sides, reaching a ceasefire will be a major problem. The FARC is divided.The leaders no longer control all 600 commandants. The discipline of the peasant army has, inevitably, been corrupted by drug trafficking. And yet the FARC have a great deal to gain. If they can force the government to carry out the profound political and economic reforms Colombia so desperately needs in return for abandoning kidnapping, they can recuperate some lost credibility.
For the government, things will be even more complicated. A western diplomat, speaking off the record, said it was wholly unrealistic to expect the government to tackle the paramilitaries without American help. "If anyone can control Colombia's 'dark forces'," he said, "it's the US. The military will not take orders from the President, but they will from the Americans." But recent history does not give one much confidence that the Pentagon will send the Delta Force to snatch paramilitary leader Carlos Castano. They could have done so many years ago if they wanted to.
Still, despite constant speculation in the Colombian press, the Bush administration has not interfered thus far, although congressional Republicans are pushing to accommodate the wishes of the Colombian generals. So far, however, the opposite has happened. The State Department has backed off its tough, post-September 11th statements comparing the FARC to al-Qaeda, and US Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell even welcomed President Andrés Pastrana's prolongation of dimilitarised zones.
Another crucial element in Sunday's agreement is the inclusion at the table of an international presence. The precise role has yet to be defined, but the recent crisis has shown that the permanent involvement of the international community will be crucial. "The really scary part," said a participant at the week-end marathon, "is that they came so close to going to war over quite trivial misunderstandings." The question is, trivial to whom? To someone who has studied the mentality of Colombia's guerrillas for many years, what might seem trivial to an urban middle-class Colombian, could, to a FARC leader, translate into a lack of respect."These people want respect," the observer explained, "and the other side won't give it to them, because they don't care to, because deep down, among all the other problems, this really is a class conflict."
Many moons ago, a wise and respected and senior member of the Colombian press was kidnapped. When he returned home some months later, he said: "What this peace process needs is a translator." Today it is ironic, given the FARC's narrow political culture and their historic rejection of any foreign "interference", that the first person who appears able to fulfil this role should be an American, and a member of the United Nations, an organisation FARC has consistently dismissed as a Washington lackey.
James LeMoyne, the stocky, red-haired American who is Kofi Annan's newly appointed representative in Colombia, is an unlikely figure to inspire hero worship, but last Sunday, when the moribund peace process was resurrected, many Colombians discovered a new hero.
LeMoyne has brought qualities to the peace effort that have been sorely lacking: gravity, vision, conviction, and sincerity. This week, when he re-emerged from the guerrilla camps where he has spent much of the last two weeks, he was besieged in Bogota by people who wanted to express their gratitude and their sympathy. "I've never been asked to kiss so many babies," he said ruefully, " and I've not been allowed to pay a single restaurant bill. And even when I had to go for a medical check-up, the hospital refused to let me pay." Beloved by middle-class Bogotanos and trusted by the FARC? That is a rare achievement.
The crisis that exploded almost without warning on the afternoon of January 8th, developed such momentum, so fast, and drew into its expanding vortex the prestige and reputation of such powerful international players, that even if the government, or the guerrillas, had wanted to go to war, it was near impossible for them to do so. It would have damaged their international standing on a scale that no government or revolutionary group could afford.
Now the challenge for the international community is to stay the course and keep raising the stakes so that neither side dare break away.
THE ROAD ahead is long and dangerous. There is still no mention in the current agreement of any commitment to a comprehensive human rights and international human rights law agreement, and no guarantee that either side will reform their appalling attitude to the civilian population. Until they do so, they will get no credibility from the Colombian population, and without it the likelihood of another crisis is inevitable.
At the press conference on Sunday night, LeMoyne reminded participants that Kofi Annan had called on them to sign a comprehensive humanitarian accord, and he challenged them to follow a basic human rights agenda. "Please," he pleaded, "stop assassinating, stop killing, stop displacing, stop kidnapping, stop massacring Colombians."
Soon, Colombians will find out whether either side, or both, are listening.
Ana Carrigan is a journalist who writes on Latin and South American affairs