Latin America has always been a very destabilized region, with ongoing conflicts and civil wars being widespread in the continent, with nations like Cuba and Venezuela and other nations facing such challenges throughout history. One such country in this region is still facing its longest-running active civil war, known as the Colombian armed conflict, in Colombia. If we go back in history, it all started in 1948 when there was an intense political fight between the Colombian Liberal Party and the Colombian Conservative Party. Later in 1948, a civil war broke out between both Liberals and Conservatives in Colombia, which eventually resulted in the human loss of around 200,000 people in the country. It was a 10-year civil war in Colombia from 1948 to 1958, which ended on 10th May 1957 with the signing of a peace treaty in 1958. Civilian rule was restored when both Liberals and Conservatives decided to end the conflict and unite together to form a coalition government known as the National Front.
This particular event is known as the “La Violencia.”. Though when everyone thought peace was restored, it was not for much time. In 1964 there was a creation of two separate guerrilla groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN). FARC is a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group whose only aim was and is to fight for the peasants and workers rights. It claims to represent the rural poor in a struggle against Colombia’s wealthier classes, claiming that workers and peasants have been exploited for a very long time. ELN, on the other hand, included students and urban intellectuals who were inspired by the Cuban revolution led by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Both the guerrilla groups were communists and had some sort of the same agenda. From working together in some regions to oppose the government To clashing with each other in some regions, both the groups are the largest rebel groups in the country, which still in the present opposes the Colombian government policies. In 1965, clashes happened between the Colombian government and FARC. The same year, ELN launched its first attack in Simacota, showing its dominance when they presented their “Simacota Manifesto,” which called on the conservative and liberal masses to join together to defeat the syndicate of both parties. As there were too many attacks carried out by these rebel groups on the landlords and business leaders, they formed their own paramilitary forces in 1980 with the Colombian army and large drug cartels to counter these rebel groups.
The FARC and ELN have long used violence, kidnappings, and extortion as sources of force and income. The FARC abducted presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt in 2002, shocking the whole country and the government. Colombia’s National Center of Historical Memory estimates that over the past 30 years, guerrilla groups like FARC and ELN have kidnapped twenty-five thousand people, and more than ten thousand people, including nearly four thousand civilians, have been killed. Drug trafficking is also one of the sources from where FARC used to earn its revenue. In 2000 Colombia supplied as much as 90 percent of the world’s cocaine. In 2009, the US government reported that the FARC was responsible for about 60 percent of Colombian cocaine exported to the USA. Finally, in 2000, U.S. lawmakers approved PLAN COLOMBIA, basically an aid package that aimed to help the country to combat guerrilla violence. In 2002 presidential election, Colombians elected Alvaro Uribe who pledged to take some harsh stance and punishments against the guerrillas. This was the period when Colombia witnessed some peace as his administration cracked down on the leftist rebel groups, which resulted in violence falling dramatically, with homicides falling by 40 percent and kidnappings by 80 percent. Still, a lot of scholars argue and accuse Uribe’s administration of violating human rights. After 8 years, Juan Manuel Santos, who served as defense minister under Uribe, was elected president in 2010, and his administration tried to organize some formal talks in 2012.
Countries like Chile, Cuba, Norway, and Venezuela acted as hosts and mediators in Havana, the capital of Cuba, which became the fourth round of talks between the government and the rebel group in thirty years. The peace agreement included FARC’s roughly seven thousand rebels to gather across the country and turn in their arms to a UN commission. The US government in 2016 roughly provided 490 million dollars in aid to Colombia. Also, as part of the agreement, the Santos government also pledged to spend billions of dollars in rural areas, which many Colombian rebels say have been long neglected. Both sides reached a ceasefire in mid-2016, and Santos and FARC leaders signed a peace treaty in the Caribbean city of Cartagena in September 2016. The rebel groups, such as the ELN, which is currently the largest rebel group in Colombia, also had peace talks with the government. The newly elected president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, who took office in 2022, held peace talks with the rebel groups of Colombia, especially with the ELN, who agreed to have a ceasefire for 6 months until February. His aim was to implement his ‘total peace’ plan, which came into effect when the ceasefire happened.
This ceasefire was the largest victory for Gustavo Petro as the president and for Colombia as a nation itself as well, because it was a push to end the armed conflict in the nation that has been happening for the past 60 years. But the peace in the nation was not for too long, as on September 18, 2024, ELN carried out a series of attacks on Colombian military bases in Arauquita, Arauca, close to the border with Venezuela, killing 2 soldiers and leaving 25 injured. This resulted in the government taking strict actions and finally suspending its peace talks with the rebel group. Even after all this, the president of Colombia gave another chance to ELN for the peace talks, but again the same thing happened in 2025, mid-January, when ELN and FARC both clashedin the Catatumbo region, in northeastern Colombia, and on the border with Venezuela, fighting over fierce contestation over control of criminal economies, particularly the cocaine market. The fighting has so far claimed more than 56 lives and displaced over 54000 people.
Over the past two decades, a lot of people had to abandon their homes because of violence and were forced to move from the countryside to urban slums. Out of 52.1 million people, which is the current approximate population of Colombia, more than 5.1 million people are internally displaced. The Colombian government has been trying their level best to restore peace in the country through a series of peace talks, negotiations, etc., yet they fail to restore full peace in the country and end the 60-year-long active civil war. In Colombia, there are still some regions where kidnappings and murders still tend to happen by the rebel groups. Colombia can come up with a different set of policies, such as dealing with poverty, unemployment, and income inequality for the people so that both the government and the rebel group can create a healthy environment in the country. Colombia has achieved partial peace, but it still needs to work on its peace treaties with other rebel groups by letting them present their points and demands, and at the same time, the rebel groups, such as ELN, need to step up and coordinate with the government to make Colombia a stable and peaceful nation again. The Colombian government can also give a chance to the rebel group to set up a local government at the local level through elections so that the needs of the rebel group can also be heard. This also will allow a healthy interaction and coordination between the two governments.
