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Group of ex-Farc rebels announces offensive despite 2016 peace deal Former Farc commanders say they are returning to war despite 2016 peace deal
(about 4 hours later)
A group of former rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) has said in a video posted online overnight that it will launch a new offensive, three years after a peace deal was signed with the government. Two former commanders of the demobilised Colombian rebel group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Farc, have announced a that they are returning to war, nearly three years after a peace deal which sought to end South America’s longest guerrilla conflict.
Two former commanders, known by their aliases Iván Márquez and Jesús Santrich, appear in a 32-minute YouTube video that Márquez said was filmed in Colombia’s Amazon. The two men, known by their aliases, Iván Márquez and Jesús Santrich, released a video to YouTube early on Thursday morning in which they lambasted president Iván Duque and his government for not keeping its end of the deal, negotiated over four years of talks in Cuba.
“This is the continuation of the rebel fight in answer to the betrayal of the state of the Havana peace accords,” he said, dressed in fatigues and surrounded by armed fighters. “We were never beaten or defeated ideologically, so the struggle continues.” Dressed in military fatigues and flanked by armed fighters, Márquez said: “This is the continuation of the rebel fight in answer to the betrayal of the state of the Havana peace accords. We were never beaten or defeated ideologically, so the struggle continues.”
Márquez was a key negotiator of the 2016 peace agreement. He went missing last year after his nephew was arrested and taken to the US to cooperate with drug-trafficking investigators. The 2016 deal sought to formally end 52 years of war that killed over 260,000 people and forced 7 million from their homes, in a bitter conflict between left-wing rebels, government forces and state-aligned paramilitaries.
The video comes as the complex accord faces severe challenges, including the murder of hundreds of former rebels and human rights activists, delays in funding for economic efforts by former combatants and deep political polarisation. Márquez led the Farc’s negotiating team, assisted in part Santrich – who is currently wanted by US authorities for trafficking cocaine.
Colombia’s president, Iván Duque, was elected on a platform to change parts of the deal but has failed to get congressional or judicial support to do so. He has repeatedly said former guerrillas with a true desire to disarm will be supported. The deal initially failed to pass a public referendum by the narrowest of margins. Many took umbrage at the accord’s guarantees of uncontested seats in congress for Farc leaders, and softer sentencing guidelines for those who committed atrocities.
“The great majority remain committed to the deal, despite all the difficulties and dangers,” a former Farc commander Rodrigo Londoño, known as Timochenko, tweeted. “We are with peace.” Londoño is now a leader of the Farc’s political arm, which was born out of the peace accord. Peace is war as armed groups roil Colombia's lawless border region
There was no immediate reaction from the government. Implementation of the process has been fraught with difficulties, and in many rural areas, the peace it promised has failed to materialise.
“All of this, this trick, this betrayal, this perfidy, the unilateral modification of the text of the accord, the unfulfilled commitments on the part of the state, the judicial set-ups and insecurity, have obliged us to return to the mountains,” said Márquez, whose birth name is Luciano Marín. Seven thousand Farc fighters turned in their weapons to a United Nations monitoring body, but smaller rebel groups, Farc dissidents, and drug trafficking gangs have filled the void left behind. Mass displacements continue as rival groups contest territory.
The group will seek to coordinate with the leftwing rebels the National Liberation Army (ELN), Márquez said, but that kidnapping would not be used as a source of financing. Activists and social leaders, partly responsible for the grassroots implementation of the accords, are being murdered at alarming rates. Six hundred twenty-seven local activists have been murdered since the deal was signed, according to local watchdog Indepaz.
Security sources said the group commanded by Márquez could number as many as 2,200 fighters. About 150 former Farc fighters have also been killed. Ex-combatants and critics of the government say Duque has not done enough to protect them.
Santrich, whose birth name is Seuxis Pausías Hernández, is wanted by the US over an alleged conspiracy to export 10 tonnes of cocaine. The Farc’s political leader, Rodrigo Londoño – better known by his alias Timochenko - clarified on Thursday morning that the Farc, now a legal political party, would continue to honour the deal.
Another former commander, Hernán Darío Velásquez, who goes by the alias El Paisa, also appears in the video. The Duque government inherited the peace process when it came into power in 2018 and has long voiced skepticism of it, cutting funding to its transitional justice mechanism earlier this year.
Patricia Linares, the lead magistrate of the special transitional justice courts, said that “the wrong decision of a group of people – who betrayed their commitments to peace, to Colombia, and to the world – cannot be enough to cut off the longing for peace which all Colombians share.”
Duque’s political patron, former president Álvaro Uribe, led the campaign to defeat the referendum in 2016. His tenure from 2000 to 2008 was marked with brutal military blows against the Farc, which critics say they came with little concern for human rights and collateral damage to civilians.
Duque made no immediate comment on the rebel statement on Thursday morning, but his peace commissioner, Miguel Ceballos, called for the special peace tribunals investigating the rebels’ war crimes to strip Márquez and Santrich of benefits under the accord.
In their announcement, Márquez and Santrich said that they would be forming a “new guerrilla” to continue in arms against the government. Security forces estimate that they command up to 2,200 soldiers, according to Reuters. While the Farc depended on drug trafficking, extortion and kidnapping to fund their political ambitions, but Márquez said the new faction will not use ransom money for income.
The move was welcomed by a commander from another leftist rebel group the National Liberation Army (or ELN). “Better late than never,” said the masked guerrilla known as Comandante Uriel in a video posted to Twitter.
Peace talks between the ELN and the government, collapsed in February after a rebel carbomb killed 22 people. Once overshadowed by Farc, the ELN has grown steadily stronger since the peace deal, extending its reach far into neighbouring Venezuela.
Despite Márquez’s announcement, former rank and file Farc fighters – many of whom have started new lives and families - said they were be committed to peace.
“Peace is the way forward,” said Manuel Bolivar, a demobilised fighter who now lives in Bogotá. “It has brought us reconciliation and forgiveness.”
Jorge Taverich, a former fighter living in the country’s southern Putumayo province, echoed the sentiment. “We respect the position of our brothers Márquez and Santrich but we have made a bet on peace and we are going to see it out,” he told the Guardian.
Juan Manuel Santos, the president who negotiated the deal and won the 2016 Nobel peace prize for his efforts, called on his successor to stick to the process. “90% of the Farc is still in the peace process. We must continue to comply. The defectors must be fought with all force,” he tweeted on Thursday morning. “The battle for peace does not stop!”
Adam Isacson, a security analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America think tank, said that the announcement should prompt the Colombian government to move faster to implement the peace deal.
“Duque can still avoid being remembered as the president who blew a historic opportunity for peace – but to do so, he has to change course now.”
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