Can Colombia’s President Achieve ‘Total Peace’?

Riding a wave of optimism and high favorability ratings in his first three months in office, Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president, wants to solve 70-odd years of conflict in his four-year term. At least, this is his high-risk, high-reward plan of paz total, or total peace.

Petro, an economist and former guerrilla fighter, has set his sights on signing peace agreements with as many of the 26 armed groups active in Colombia as possible. For many Colombians, the idea of lasting peace in a country so accustomed to conflict is unthinkable. But now that the National Liberation Army (ELN), one of the country’s oldest and largest guerrilla groups, has announced that peace dialogues with the Colombian government will commence as early as November, total peace may not seem as outlandish as it once did.

On Oct. 26, Colombia’s Congress approved the Petro’s administration’s plan for total peace, allowing the government to negotiate with illegal armed groups. Petro’s plan, which rests on the premise that peace should be state policy, aims to address the interrelated problems of armed groups, drug trafficking, coca cultivation, illegal mining, land ownership, and environmental degradation. Among the plan’s minutiae are promises that the government will suspend the capture of members of armed groups and offer benefits, such as reduced sentences and a guarantee of no extradition, to members who reveal information on narcotrafficking routes and hand over earnings from illegal sources, such as cocaine trafficking.

Riding a wave of optimism and high favorability ratings in his first three months in office, Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president, wants to solve 70-odd years of conflict in his four-year term. At least, this is his high-risk, high-reward plan of paz total, or total peace.

Petro, an economist and former guerrilla fighter, has set his sights on signing peace agreements with as many of the 26 armed groups active in Colombia as possible. For many Colombians, the idea of lasting peace in a country so accustomed to conflict is unthinkable. But now that the National Liberation Army (ELN), one of the country’s oldest and largest guerrilla groups, has announced that peace dialogues with the Colombian government will commence as early as November, total peace may not seem as outlandish as it once did.

On Oct. 26, Colombia’s Congress approved the Petro’s administration’s plan for total peace, allowing the government to negotiate with illegal armed groups. Petro’s plan, which rests on the premise that peace should be state policy, aims to address the interrelated problems of armed groups, drug trafficking, coca cultivation, illegal mining, land ownership, and environmental degradation. Among the plan’s minutiae are promises that the government will suspend the capture of members of armed groups and offer benefits, such as reduced sentences and a guarantee of no extradition, to members who reveal information on narcotrafficking routes and hand over earnings from illegal sources, such as cocaine trafficking.

Similar to the 2016 peace accords with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Petro plans to put the communities most affected by the conflict and the presence of armed groups at the center of negotiations. His administration has proposed a “fund for peace” to ensure there is lasting and sustainable investment in those regions—something noticeably absent during the term of former President Ivan Duque, who was elected in 2018 on the premise of “ripping the 2016 peace accords to shreds.”

Duque’s plan was to pursue “peace with legality,” ramping up militarization to secure peace. His government was not able to tear up the accords, but it did make them less effective. As data collected by the Institute for Development and Peace Studies, a Colombian think tank, shows, insecurity and violence in the country increased over his term. In 2018, Duque inherited a Colombia that had seen 95 percent of the FARC’s 13,000 combatants sign the peace agreement, turn over their weapons, and reintegrate into society; when he left office, 30 different FARC dissident groups—made up of former FARC guerrillas who declined to sign the agreement—had spread across the country, controlling much more territory than they had at the start of his term.

The question now is whether Petro’s government, unlike his predecessor’s, can achieve cease-fires with all groups involved. Analysts have their reservations. “It’s extremely ambitious,” said Kyle Johnson, a co-founder and researcher at the Conflict Responses Foundation, a research organization in Bogotá. While local armed groups might get involved, he said, it’s unlikely the big ones, such as the ELN, or FARC dissidents will completely demobilize. “You can come to agreements with the leadership, and they’ll bring along a large chunk [of members] but not everyone,” he said. Likewise, Sergio Guzmán, the director of the consultancy Colombia Risk Analysis, worries about Petro “overpromising and underdelivering.”

Domestically, Petro’s government will face three major challenges in reaching total peace. First, it will need to guarantee that the most at-risk sectors of Colombian society, such as the inhabitants of territories controlled by armed groups, can gain access to basic human rights such as health care, running water, and education. Investing in these communities would reduce the number of Colombians joining armed groups out of desperation from a lack of opportunities. But an implementation of this size across Colombia’s complex topography and poor infrastructure would require a huge budget and political will, which will be tough for a coalition government.

Second, the government will have to negotiate with all armed actors, including ELN guerrillas, dissident FARC guerrillas, drug cartels, and post-paramilitary groups (offshoots from the paramilitary groups formed in the 1990s and 2000s) such as the Clan del Golfo. The government will have to offer a variety of different concessions, such as political participation, to the politically minded ELN, as well as guarantees of no extradition to groups heavily involved in contraband.

Already, Petro’s many detractors, such as the opposition Democratic Center party, doubt the motives of the 10 groups that have so far announced intentions to negotiate, suggesting that the government’s plan rewards criminals with impunity and will lead to further lawlessness. The opposition points to the ELN as a perfect example of this, since the guerrilla group has negotiated unsuccessfully with as many as seven different presidents.

Third, the government will need to reform the police and the armed forces. For years, Colombians have associated both institutions with human rights abuses and brutality. Public perception of security forces worsened after police killed 47 civilians during nationwide protests in 2021, as the nongovernmental organization Temblores reported. But it’s the military, in particular, that is in desperate need of an overhaul. The armed forces have continued to remain bogged down in the metrics of the past, measuring success by captured guerrillas, kills, and hectares of coca plantations eradicated.

Petro has made it clear that the military’s successes will now be measured by “lives saved.” He wants to transform the military into a force that keeps Colombians safer from exploitation and harm, reduces assassinations by mafias and armed groups, and protects and supports the families that grow coca but have signed up to switch to growing legal crops.

Yet there is considerable skepticism that Petro can make significant changes to the country’s security forces, which are suspicious of the president’s past. “Look at who Petro is. He has the burden of being a former combatant,” Guzmán said, referring to Petro’s time as a member of the M-19 guerrilla movement.

Petro’s pick for defense minister, the jurist Iván Velásquez, has only set off more alarm bells within the police and the military. Velásquez, who is tasked with restructuring both institutions, is known in Colombia for coordinating investigations into links between paramilitary groups and members of the Colombian Congress between 2006 and 2012 and then later heading the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala. It’s only natural that the military and police eye him with suspicion. Yet, in a press conference on Oct. 31, Velásquez stated that active military members should be involved in peace negotiations since they understand the nature of the conflict on the ground. This olive branch suggests that the government may have a chance at assuaging the concerns of high-ranking members of the armed forces, but it will be an uphill battle.

Outside of Colombia, there’s the issue of neighboring Venezuela. Under President Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan government has given ELN guerrillas tacit approval to control vast swaths of land inside Venezuela, since they provide security for the regime in those regions, and to oversee lucrative illegal mining projects in the country. If an ELN demobilization includes forces on Venezuelan soil—which would be necessary for its success—Bogotá will need the support of Caracas to negotiate with those forces and verify that they are sticking to the agreement.

Last week, a meeting between Petro and Maduro—the first high-level meeting between the two countries in six years—resulted in a joint statement to work together on peace, commercial interests, the shared border, and environmental security. Yet, after years of distrust and the countries not having a diplomatic relationship, this declaration can only be seen as a starting point for reconciliation between the two.

Furthermore, any negotiation with Venezuela raises suspicions in international circles. As Guzmán put it, “Venezuela has no place in the international community.” In October, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Petro on a visit to Colombia. Ostensibly, the visit was to express U.S. support for a more complete fulfillment of the 2016 peace agreement, but the “failed” war on drugs, as Petro has called it, and the issue of Venezuela were at the fore behind closed doors.

Certainly, achieving total peace will be difficult. As Jorge Mantilla, an expert on organized crime and conflict at the Bogotá-based Ideas for Peace Foundation, said, “Perhaps we should call it ‘paz posible’ and not ‘paz total’?”

But even if it turns out to be a total failure, there is inherent value in the fact that, after four years of a security policy so often limited to militarization, Colombia is once again banking and betting on peace, seeking to address the underlying issues of instability and inequality in the country.

As Vera Grabe, a former politician and one of the founders of M-19, who is now working for the Peace Observatory, a Colombian organization promoting human rights, told Foreign Policy: “We used to live in a desert where peace didn’t exist. At least there are doubts—before, there was nothing. There is a possibility to end the conflict in Colombia as peace is, once more, a central point of debate.”