FARC

  Bottom Line Up Front Protests in Colombia, South America’s oldest democracy, have been relatively under reported upon in the international media. The protesters are motivated by a desire to achieve economic and social justice for segments of Colombian society that have long been ignored. There is some evidence that ...

  Bottom Line Up Front The protests in Colombia are driven by myriad issues—corruption, stagnant wages, grievances related to human rights, and a stalled peace process. The government has reacted with a show of force, with troops remaining on the streets of the capital and a curfew in effect for ...

  Bottom Line Up Front Shortly after being released from prison, Seuxis Pausias Hernandez, a former commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was sworn in as a member of Colombia’s congress. The transformation from rebel leader to politician was enabled by a 2016 accord between Bogota and ...

  Bottom Line Up Front On January 19, a car bomb exploded in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, believed to be the work of the New IRA. On January 17, the National Liberation Army (ELN) killed 20 police cadets after exploding a car bomb at a training center in Bogotá, Colombia. Colombia ...

After the surprising results of the Colombian peace referendum on Sunday night, both the government of Colombia and the FARC must try again to reach a deal to end the 52-year war in their country. The Cipher Brief spoke with Andrea Saldarriaga Jiménez, a researcher at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne ...

On Sunday, Colombians were called upon by their government to answer a simple question, “Do you support the final agreement to end the conflict and build a stable and lasting peace?”  Their answer shocked the world: by a razor-thin margin, Colombia voted down the peace agreement brokered by their government ...

Colombia’s pollsters, who are usually pretty accurate predictors of vote results, didn’t foresee this. Public opinion surveys showed a clear majority of voters in the South American nation—from 55 percent to as many as 72 percent—intending to vote “yes” in an October 2 plebiscite to approve or reject a peace ...

The unexpected vote in Colombia to reject the peace deal with the FARC has left the country in shock and its leaders scrambling to determine a path forward.  In a conversation with The Cipher Brief, I. William Zartman, a Professor Emeritus at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International ...

The Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas this week signed an historic ceasefire, bringing the two sides one step closer to ending over fifty years of bloody conflict.  Despite this landmark achievement, however, new challenges lie ahead. The agreement, announced in Havana, Cuba, is a ...

For a very long time, the word that most often followed a mention of Colombia was cocaine.  Colombia was the world’s largest producer of the illicit drug.   In the mid-2000s, the South American country turned a corner and made significant progress with its program to systematically eradicate the coca plant. ...

In 1992, Peru produced an estimated 60 percent of the world’s cocaine. At one time, cocaine production was the largest industry in the country, at 17 percent of Peru’s GDP. It provided between four and six billion dollars in revenue to Peruvian drug trafficking organizations. Unlike the Colombians, Peruvians and ...

My name is Pedro José Arenas Garcia. I am a former Colombian congressman and the director of the Observatory on Growers and Crops Declared Illicit in Colombia, a civil society organization that takes interest in the human rights of rural workers associated with coca, cannabis, and poppy production. The Observatory ...

The government of president Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) have been negotiating in Havana, Cuba for the past four years to put an end to an internal conflict that has ravaged the country since the 1960s. Santos has confirmed that the signing of a ...

In light of the announcement by Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos of a signed peace deal between the government of Colombia and the FARC, The Cipher Brief revisits Cynthia Arson of the Wilson Center's take on what comes next in post-conflict Colombia. March 23, 2016, the deadline set by the ...

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos will not be pressured into signing a final peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).   “I will not sign a bad deal to meet a deadline,” Santos said last week, announcing that the March 23rd deadline for Colombian peace negotiations will pass ...

Since 1982, Colombia’s government and the FARC guerrilla group have sat down to negotiate four times. This attempt appears to be the one that will finally end with a peace accord. The negotiators are on the fifth of five substantive negotiating agenda topics, and they appear likely to announce a ...

The plan to sign a peace agreement early next year to end the more than 50-year civil war in Colombia appears to be in jeopardy. Earlier this week, a senior Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) negotiator, Jesus Santrick, said the negotiations between the government and the FARC will not ...

Last month, The Cipher Brief published a feature commentary on the prospects for peace in Colombia. This month, we continue that conversation with Frank Mora, the former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs. Mora offered his thoughts on the status of the negotiations between Bogotá and ...

Colombia is not a “typical” Latin American country.   It diverges from common views of the region in ways that are interesting and important.  It has a deep democratic vocation, lacking the repeated coups and dictatorships common elsewhere.  Its one military coup was peaceful and initially enjoyed broad support from ...

Colombia is not a “typical” Latin American country.   It diverges from common views of the region in ways that are interesting and important.  It has a deep democratic vocation, lacking the repeated coups and dictatorships common elsewhere.  Its one military coup was peaceful and initially enjoyed broad support from ...

Juan Manuel Santos’ administration and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) kicked off peace negotiations in October 2012. The chosen methodology ("nothing is negotiated until everything is negotiated") and the absolute secrecy of what is being discussed at the table have left society uncertain about the country’s future.  There ...

There should be no doubt that the current round of negotiations between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is a major step toward a full peace agreement.  It provides for accountability for past crimes on both sides, even though the details still remain to be ...