A cease-fire between the Colombian authorities and the nation’s largest remaining insurgent group took impact on Thursday, the longest halt to hostilities the group has agreed to and a milestone in efforts to finish the nation’s 60-year inner battle, which has killed roughly 450,000 folks.
Whereas the cease-fire is meant to final six-months, it may pave the way in which for a everlasting truce with the leftist group, the Nationwide Liberation Military, a guerrilla group often known as the E.L.N. that operates within the countryside and has helped gas the violence that plagues components of rural Colombia.
The settlement with the rebel group was a high precedence for President Gustavo Petro, who took workplace final 12 months promising to ship what he referred to as “whole peace’’ with all the nation’s armed teams. Mr. Petro, himself a former member of a insurgent group, is the nation’s first leftist president.
The cease-fire applies to fight between the E.L.N. and the state, however permits the group to defend itself whether it is attacked.
Authorities officers hope the settlement will defend the “civilian inhabitants that has been so affected by the actions of the unlawful armed organizations,” Iván Velásquez, Colombia’s protection minister, mentioned on Wednesday.
The group’s lack of a unified command has made it troublesome to barter with up to now. Particular person factions typically act autonomously — at instances over the objections of excessive commanders.
Earlier discussions between the E.L.N. and the federal government have collapsed a number of instances for the reason that Marxist-Leninist group was based in 1964. The newest negotiations had been suspended in 2019 after the group bombed a police academy in Bogotá, the capital, an assault that killed 22 police cadets.
A newly created entity made up of the officers from the Colombian navy and authorities, the United Nations and non secular teams will monitor the enforcement of the brand new settlement.
The cease-fire was introduced in June following three rounds of personal negotiations in Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela.
“Hopefully it can bear fruit,” Mr. Petro mentioned of the settlement in a speech on Tuesday. “It would rely extra on them than on us.”
The E.L.N.’s high commander, Eliécer Herlinto Chamorro, identified by his nom de guerre Antonio García, referred to as on combatants to adjust to the cease-fire in a video on Monday and mentioned that additional discussions with the “participation of society” would transfer ahead “to make Colombia a fairer, extra democratic and inclusive nation.”
Colombia’s inner battle erupted within the late 1950s as a battle between the federal government and a leftist insurgency group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, know because the FARC, however finally grew extra complicated and concerned different left-wing rebels, right-wing paramilitary teams and drug cartels.
The federal government reached a landmark peace accord with the FARC, the most important insurgent group, in 2016 following an arduous five-year course of.
However the E.L.N., which has round 5,800 members, in accordance with Colombia’s protection ministry, is taken into account extra ideological than the FARC and fewer hierarchical. The FARC’s disarmament left an influence vacuum for different armed teams to fill, together with the E.L.N., which has practically doubled in dimension since 2016.
The totally different teams typically compete for management of territory and the nation’s drug commerce, trapping harmless civilians within the center.
The E.LN. has carried out kidnappings for ransom, extortion and assassinations, and is thought for bombing oil pipelines and concentrating on authorities and navy infrastructure. In lots of areas with little authorities presence alongside the Pacific Coast, in addition to the border with Venezuela, they successfully act because the state.
If the cease-fire holds, it will be a significant victory for Mr. Petro, who’s dealing with a political disaster after his son was accused of laundering cash from drug traffickers.
It may additionally doubtlessly result in different agreements with the E.L.N. that might particularly name for a halt in violence towards civilians, mentioned Elizabeth Dickinson, a Colombia-based senior analyst for Worldwide Disaster Group.
“The hope is that the negotiations can have superior far sufficient that we will take into consideration different steps,” mentioned Ms. Dickinson. “The precedence for our communities and actually the overall inhabitants can be a cessation of hostilities.”
