Jorge Enrique Botero

Correspondent

The newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, July 17, 2024, p. 28

Bogotá. The government of President Gustavo Petro has launched a carrot-and-stick plan to advance its peace strategy by simultaneously announcing an all-out offensive against guerrillas in the southwest of the country and an extension of the ceasefire with rebel forces operating in eastern and northeastern Colombia.

While the head of State signed the decree of bilateral ceasefire until October 15 with one of the dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) at the Casa de Nariño, the Minister of Defense, Iván Velázquez, ordered a new ceasefire in a press conference. all-out offensive against the so-called Central General Staff (EMC), commanded by Ivan Bite, a seasoned guerrilla leader who never accepted the peace accords signed in 2016.

Analysts of the internal armed conflict and experts on military issues were skeptical about the success of the onset announced by Velázquez and recalled that in the two years of the current government, almost identical phrases have been heard, without any notable results. On May 6, after the death of four soldiers at the hands of guerrillas, Petro wrote in X: The offensive against the EMC in Cauca must be total. And if the president has to go, the president will go..

An intricate region of Andean mountains and Pacific Ocean coastline, the department of Cauca and its neighbors, Nariño and Valle, are the national epicenter of coca cultivation, cocaine production and export.

Knowing the war and its paths for years like few others, as well as an analyst in alternative media, historian Carlos Leyva commented to The Day that, After a couple of years of recess, resources derived from illegal drugs have once again become the great fuel for groups outside the law, whose weapons have been modernized, causing an unprecedented escalation of the war..

According to Leyva, the guerrillas allowed the army to enter the mountainous labyrinths of Cauca, Nariño and Valle and now, even if they wanted to, the public forces cannot get out, trapped in a network of adversities that includes high military technology (use of armed drones), a topography ideal for guerrilla warfare and a population highly contaminated with the culture of illicit economies.

In another large part of Colombia, meanwhile, the silence of the guns will be heard in the coming months, in accordance with the ceasefire decree issued by the government. These are the departments of Meta, Caquetá and Guaviare, belonging to the so-called eastern plains, as well as in the regions of Magdalena Medio and Catatumbo, mountainous, bordering Venezuela and also the scene of numerous types of illicit economies.

There, the government and the dissidents led by Calarcá Córdoba, with 16 fronts and some 2,800 armed men, will try to acclimatize to peace through territorial development plans that include roads, agrarian reform, social welfare and the substitution of illicit crops.

Sources close to the peace negotiations who asked to remain anonymous said that only official promises have been heard and predicted poor progress in the short and medium term. The most skeptical believe that the peace commissioner, Otty Patiño, is betting on the disintegration of the insurgent forces, making people believe that there is some good guerrillas and some bad guerrillas.

In its desire to deliver a pacified country in 2026, the government also has peace talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN), currently frozen, and has just opened a new round of talks with the Second Marquetalia, another faction that emerged from the extinct FARC, led by Iván Márquez, head of the negotiations that led to the peace pacts in Havana in 2016.

The president signs pension reform

After a troubled legislative process, around which the interests of powerful private conglomerates and the sabotage of traditional political forces moved, President Petro was finally able to sanction this afternoon the reform of the pension system, one of the flagships of his government.

Before thousands of people who gathered in the Plaza de Bolívar in this capital, he called on senior citizens and citizens in general to be aware of the constitutional study process that will take place in the high courts, where there are still sectors determined to prevent the success of any of the social reforms promoted by the president.