“Peace is always better than war”.
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The Colombian government’s chief peace negotiator says it will be “catastrophic” if Colombians fail to endorse the pact with the country’s largest rebel group in an October 2 referendum. President Barack Obama also welcomed the deal.
“The armed conflict with the FARC has ended”, he said to applause.
The team that spent almost four years negotiating with the FARC in Havana, stressed at their news conference that the government and people from all walks of life must work together to help integrate the fighters into mainstream society.
After the deal was announced President Juan Manuel Santos, 65, who was re-elected in 2014 on the promise of a peace deal, said in a televised address: “Today I can say – from the bottom of my heart – that I have fulfilled the mandate that you gave me”.
The conflict had seen an estimated 220,000 people killed and displaced more than five million. After 2026, the former rebel must prove their political strength at the ballot box.
The British prime minister, Theresa May, phoned President Santos to congratulate him on Thursday. In this regard, the High Commissioner for Peace, Sergio Jaramillo, said the guerrilla members should participate in a democracy, to campaign and convince the Colombians of their ideas, and to ensure that a life insurance is assured with this transition. Several top rebel commanders were killed and its ranks thinned by half to the current 7,000 guerrillas.
The most contentious agreement would let rebels who confess their crimes avoid jail and instead serve reduced sentences of no more than eight years by helping rebuild communities hit by the conflict.
Santos’ plebiscite is not without risks.
Humberto de la Calle notes that when previous Colombian peace drives failed, it took at least a decade to renew them.
After the agreement is signed the date is still unknown the FARC will begin mobilizing its troops to 31 zones scattered across Colombia.
Over the 13 months since the FARC declared a unilateral cease-fire and the government reciprocated with an unofficial truce, violence has fallen to the lowest level since the movement was created 52 years ago by outlaw peasant groups joined by communist activists.
In what is considered among the bloodiest armed conflicts in the world and the longest in Latin America, millions of Colombians have been forced to flee their homes as the war spiraled out of control.
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The government is still fighting a smaller rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), whose ongoing kidnappings have derailed efforts to open peace negotiations.
