On the problems of guerrilla reinsertion into civilian life

Antonio Sangino Paez
Director, Corporación Arco Iris - Corriente de Renovación Socialista

The following is from an interview by human rights volunteer Martin Eder, who traveled to Colombia earlier this year. Translation by M. Hope.

What is most important is not simply the disarming of men and women who have taken up arms, but successfully transforming an armed political actor into a civilian political actor. This needs to be the essence of any peace proposal.

I see three major constraints to the peace process and to successful reinsertion of former guerrillas into civilian life. There is the special circumstance that in Colombia peace accords have been partial, with individual groups (unlike, e.g., the Central American accords, which have applied generally to the entire country). Thus we are attempting a peace process in a context of widespread violence that has not been deactivated. In this sense, the whole issue of human rights in Colombia is critical to us. While we recognize the express desire of the executive to protect the rights of the demobilized, the sad truth is that historically the executive has had neither the power nor the ability to govern to insure that both the entire government as well as society at large view us with the same benevolence as the central administration, with which we signed the peace accord.

A second important constraint is that it is extremely difficult to put forth an alternative to the well-financed bipartisan politics of the traditional parties. There is promise of lively debate over this issue in the new Congress. However, the Constitution of 1991 left unchanged the political habits and the power structure in the country, the mechanisms for financing campaigns and political parties, let alone any guarantees to function as an opposition party.

And finally, another salient limitation is that none of the peace policies of the recent governments has provided the guarantees needed for political reinsertion. No peace policy yet has incorporated real guarantees to allow the organizations to maintain an existence in legality. Clandestine political guerrilla organizations can finance themselves by several means--albeit illegal--such as kidnaping, the war tax, high profit economic activities, but financing a political party is not easy.

A certain amount of assistance is available, though always on an individual, personal level. Instead, a process is needed for transforming a collective actor who engages in politics through armed action into an actor with favorable conditions and appropriate guarantees to engage in civilian politics.

So: the key to a peace process has to be turning an organization that does politics by way of arms into a viable organization within civilian politics. And to date none of the peace policies of any of the administrations has provided the necessary guarantees.

The international community must help us defend the peace accords already signed. Political negotiation with groups still in arms will necessarily be long, given the complexity of the Colombian situation. And it is important to safeguard the peace already made as we wait for another peace to come. In this the international community has a very important role to play in denouncing cases of human rights violations, in demanding that the Colombian government protect human life, and demanding guarantees for the demobilized to participate in the political life of the country. The international community should also help publicize the accords reached so far, and the drama of those who have chosen to make peace but live a very fragile existence amidst an ever more dramatic confrontation.