From Caracas, the Colombian government and the National Liberation Army (ELN) announced the formal restart of the peace talks after the first week of November. The parties highlighted that the process begins with the progress made since March 2016, before the process was suspended by order of then President Iván Duque.
Peace talks between the government of Gustavo Petro and the former ELN guerrilla will resume in November.
From Caracas, Venezuela, this October 4, the parties announced a three-point agreement that consists of the reinstatement of the talks table, resume the progress made since the signing of a common agenda in March 2016 and the reestablishment of the process of dialogues after the first week of November of this year.
The commissions did not specify the exact date of the beginning of the process and highlighted that the venue of the meetings will be “rotating” among the guarantor countries, which will be Venezuela, Cuba and Norway. These last nations were already platforms for the peace agreement with the former FARC guerrilla, signed in 2016.
Resuming negotiations with the ELN, which began during the government of Juan Manuel Santos and were suspended during the administration of Iván Duque after the deadly attack on a police school in Bogotá, is part of the proposal dubbed “total peace” of the new Colombian President Gustavo Petro.
“Getting to total peace is our objective,” said President Gustavo Petro regarding the resumption of the talks.
From Caracas, the peace talks are officially resumed between our government and the ELN, together with the guarantor countries of Venezuela, Cuba and Norway. pic.twitter.com/FVZnyKJ8IX
– Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) October 4, 2022
The High Commissioner for Peace in Colombia, Iván Danilo Rueda, had already said in August that the Colombian government’s intention was to resume negotiations.
“The dialogue itself must express the changes and this peace delegation from the ELN has expressed it to us and has given us elements of deep confidence,” Rueda assured during his speech on Tuesday, according to the EFE agency.
Rueda took the opportunity to thank the ELN for having de-escalated its actions and for having avoided “armed confrontations.”
Representing the ELN, Commander Eliécer Chamorro, alias “Antonio García”, intervened in this announcement and stressed the importance of the new Colombian political conditions for the resumption of dialogue.
“We believe that, with this opportunity, the new political circumstances in Colombia have allowed negotiations to resume,” Garcia told reporters.
García also pointed out that the ELN is a “contracting” party to the negotiations and that it must give its approval to all the points that are negotiated so that they are valid, alluding to the 2016 Havana agreements that led to the Peace Agreement. -and that the ELN does not recognize for not having participated in them-.
Regarding the possibility of a bilateral ceasefire, both parties argued that they are still “confidence building”, but that what is agreed upon will be fulfilled.
Both Commanders García and Beltrán, as well as the Colombian High Commissioner for Peace, Danilo Rueda, signed the declaration to return to talks.
Failed attempts and stagnation: the governments of Juan Manuel Santos and Iván Duque
The peace process has a history that goes back years. Specifically, that of the ELN is a very particular case, since it has not been able to benefit from the process as other guerrillas have, such as the FARC.
“On August 22, 2012, the negotiation process began,” García said during his speech this Tuesday from Venezuela.
But, despite spending years paving the ground and in talks, the official negotiations between the State of Colombia and the ELN began with the Administration of Juan Manuel Santos, specifically on February 7, 2017 in Quito, Ecuador.
Both parties gave in. The Santos government granted several pardons to imprisoned guerrillas and the ELN released former congressman Odín Sánchez.
Up to four rounds of negotiations took place in Quito and, despite cross accusations of sabotaging the agreement, on September 4, 2017, they managed to reach a ceasefire until January 2018.
“Today, September 4, exactly five years after we announced the framework agreement with the FARC that led us to peace with that guerrilla organization, we are going to sign in Quito, after intense negotiations that ended this morning, an agreement to declare a ceasefire and bilateral hostilities with the ELN,” announced Santos about the agreement reached in Quito.
On January 9, a day after the ceasefire expired, the ELN resumed its attacks and the fifth round of negotiations stalled. Later, in March of that year, it was reactivated but Ecuador decided to withdraw as a guarantor country, after the murder of several Ecuadorians in Colombia.
This round ended in June 2018 in Cuba -the new guarantor country-, but without an agreement to cease hostilities. Santos started a sixth round but it never ended after the election of Iván Duque when he was elected as the new president.
And if with Santos the negotiations had stalled, with the Executive of Duque they would come to an end. The right-wing president had already warned that he would impose new conditions on the guerrillas: hand over the hostages without negotiating and immediately cease their terrorist and criminal actions.
Duque did not even manage to send a negotiating team to Havana, where the talks were supposed to continue. The ELN attack against the General Santander police school on January 17, 2019, which left at least 23 dead and more than 80 injured, marked the end of the negotiations.
Duque dissolved the peace process, reissued the arrest warrants for the guerrillas and asked Cuba for the extradition of Pablo Beltrán, the ELN’s deputy commander.
Critics of the Duque government maintain that the right-wing president never had the intention of negotiating from the outset. Without going any further, Cuba – one of the guarantor countries in the old and current negotiations – accused him of carrying out “hostile actions” against him, for harboring the ELN negotiators for almost three years.
Cuba played a crucial role in the peace process between the FARC and the Santos government, being one of the guarantor countries and the venue for the talks that culminated in a peace agreement in 2016.
What differentiates the ELN from other guerrillas such as the FARC?
The National Liberation Army (ELN) was founded in 1964 by radical Catholic priests, inspired by the Cuban Revolution. Unlike the peasant origin of the FARC, the ELN, a declared enemy of the oil and mining industry, initially had members with university education who have been more demanding when sitting down to negotiate.
According to the same alias Antonio García, the ELN – the second largest guerrilla group in the country behind the FARC – has “political and ethical motivations, a command structure and is responsible for its actions.”
“The other groups have a different story, some negotiated and others withdrew. Others are not part of organizations with a political base, they are criminal groups and drug trafficking networks,” said Commander García.
And, while it is true that the FARC and other guerrillas have had more links with drug trafficking, the ELN has stayed further away from this type of illegal activity.
Another fundamental point for the negotiations is his shared worldview with the leftist government of Gustavo Petro. Both the Executive and the guerrillas from Venezuela highlighted the importance of “popular participation” in the agreements.
“This is not a problem exclusively of weapons. We must attack the causes that originated the armed conflict, which are: inequality, lack of democracy or social inequity,” Garcia said.
Now it remains to be seen what remains of this intention to return to a “path that is based on international law and follows the March 30, 2016 Agenda.” An agreement that, if reached, would mark a before and after in the peace process in Colombia.
With EFE and local media
