What has the history of the peace processes with the ELN in Colombia been like?

(CNN Spanish) — Talking about peace agreements with the ELN guerrillas is talking about decades of failed processes and governments that have tried to negotiate, unsuccessfully, throughout the country’s recent history.

This time the government of President Gustavo Petro is once again attempting a negotiation with the oldest guerrilla in Colombia which, after years of suspending talks with the government of Ivan Duque, is trying to reach an agreement with the government to lay down its arms.

The most recent advance to reach a cessation of violence was the suspension of military operations against the ELN on July 6 of this year, a measure that came a month after a bilateral ceasefire was agreed with that armed group in June 2023, which according to the government announcement would start on August 3 and last for 180 days.

The agreement, presented in Havana, contemplates a recruitment process from June 9 to July 5 that includes the activation of a communication channel between the parties, the beginning of pedagogy activities and preparation for the implementation of the mechanism of monitoring and verification, among others.

According to that plan, the orders to cease offensive operations by the parties will take effect on July 6. On July 10, a plenary meeting of the dialogue table will be held to approve the protocols prepared. Finally, on August 3, the “bilateral, national and temporary” ceasefire will begin for 180 days, which will have “a vocation of continuity after evaluation by the parties.”

That ceasefire agreement reached a bilateral agreement on fire with that armed group, which at that time was signed with four other armed groups —the Segunda Marquetalia, the Central General Staff, the AGC and the Self-Defense Forces of the Sierra Nevada— from on January 1 through June 30, 2023, as reported by Petro on December 31, 2022. At that time, Petro said that the bilateral ceasefire will be “extendable depending on progress in negotiations.” Petro promotes “total peace” whose objective is to negotiate the end of armed violence with all criminal groups in the country.

Negotiations during the Petro government

In October 2022, representatives of the Government of Colombia (led by President Gustavo Petro) and the ELN announced from Caracas, Venezuela, that they would reinstate the talks table, after a three-year hiatus during the government of Ivan Duque.

“For the Government of Colombia and the ELN, the participation of society in this process is essential in the changes that Colombia needs to build peace,” reads a joint document signed by the parties. The Government of Colombia said that compliance with the protocols agreed between the State and the ELN is a “fundamental step to achieve total peace” and that it is giving the ELN “full guarantees” to return to the talks table.

The first formal cycle of negotiations of this new stage took place between November 21 and December 12, 2022 in Caracas, Venezuela. In this cycle, agreements were reached on the agenda, the institutionalization of the negotiation table, pedagogy and communications.

But a false announcement by the Petro government at the beginning of January 2023 generated a fracture in this peace process: a unilateral announcement about a supposed bilateral ceasefire by President Gustavo Petro ended in a political entanglement that left doubts about the will of peace of the armed group and the decisions of the president and the negotiating group. According to that announcement, the agreement would be for six months.

But it turned out that the deal never happened.

“The ELN cannot accept as bilateral a unilateral decision of the government, which does not abide by the formality of the Mesa as the agreed space to reach understandings and violates the procedures of not disseminating to public opinion what is not based on consensus. Therefore , this decree does not commit the ELN,” the ELN said in a statement.

The two delegations had extraordinary talks in Venezuela in which “the impasses that were generated previously were clarified and overcome,” according to a statement issued on February 12.

On February 13, the second cycle of peace talks with the ELN with the United States as the guarantor country, along with Venezuela, Chile, Cuba, Norway and Brazil, was installed in Mexico City.

And in June 2023, after the political entanglement over the false Petro announcement, the parties finally signed a bilateral national ceasefire for an initial duration of six months until January 2023. The agreement began with the suspension of military operations. against the ELN on July 6 at midnight.

The negotiations of the ELN of Santos, Duque

Those of Petro are the continuation of the peace negotiations with the ELN that advanced during the government of President Juan Manuel Santos.

These negotiations began at least since 2014, the year in which the exploratory dialogues between the parties began. And in 2016 the start of peace talks was announced after reaching an agreement and establishing a six-point agenda: participation, democracy, transformation, victims, conflict and implementation.

During those negotiations, the peace talks were marred by a weak bilateral ceasefire that the parties agreed to in 2017, when the ELN stopped firing for the first time in 52 years. But with accusations of armed actions on both sides, the truce was finally broken, and the agreement was gradually weakened, so much so that in April 2018 Ecuador suspended its participation as a facilitator of the talks until the armed group ceased its hostilities. .

With the end of the Santos government in August 2018 and the arrival of that of Ivan Duque —a staunch opponent of the negotiated solution to the conflict— the peace talks with the ELN were frozen, as Duque called for an end to the kidnapping and the armed actions by part of the guerrilla group.

“A forceful gesture is needed towards the Colombian people and it has to be the release of all those kidnapped. If this premise is fulfilled and these criminal activities are terminated, we are ready to begin that exploration,” Duque said weeks after beginning his term. , in September 2018. The ELN asked the Government to continue with the dialogues.

But an inexcusable event for Duque led to the definitive suspension —during that administration— of the search for peace with the ELN: a terrorist attack with a car bomb at the National Police Cadet School in the south of Bogota in 2019, which the guerrillas won.

At that time, the ELN said in a statement that “it has insisted on agreeing to a bilateral cessation to generate a favorable climate for peace efforts, this proposal has had significant national and international support, but the government response has been negative.”

Since January 2019, Duque has terminated the dialogue table with this illegal armed group, due to the ELN’s lack of guarantees and willingness to move forward with the search for peace.

Petro lifts arrest warrants and tries a new negotiation

One of the commitments of the Petro Government, at the beginning of its mandate, is what it has called “total peace”, which is the negotiation with all the armed groups to end the war in the country. Within this commitment, he approached the ELN and both parties agreed to continue with the 2016 agenda, suspended for several years.

So in August 2022, Petro lifted the arrest warrants and extradition requests against the ELN chief negotiators, in force since the Duque government, and a month later the guerrilla delegation left Cuba —where they had been since 2018— for Venezuela. to return to the negotiating table.

For this new stage, Petro has considered Venezuela “key” in the peace talks with the ELN, for which reason it invited Nicolas Maduro, the questioned president of the neighboring country, to be the guarantor of the negotiations, a request to which Maduro agreed immediately.

The failed negotiations between 1975 and 2014

The first peace negotiations between the Colombian governments and the ELN date back to 1975, when the Colombian Army practically dismantled the central command of that guerrilla and the ELN communicated its interest in laying down its arms to President Alfonso Lopez Michelsen. The Government accepted the proposal, but the guerrillas never arrived, alleging military operations that prevented their displacement, says a documentary account of the failed peace agreements made by the Center for International Affairs of Barcelona, ​​CIDOB.

In the 1990s, the government of President Cesar Gaviria (1990-1994) managed for the first time to get the ELN to sit down to negotiate and the result was slightly encouraging: the Socialist Renovation Current, an ELN dissidence, demobilized in 1994. But the bulk of that guerrilla group never laid down their weapons and continued to commit crimes, according to a count by the Ideas for Peace think tank.

During the government of President Ernesto Samper (1994-1998) a rapprochement with the ELN would again be attempted, this time with the Magnucia talks”, so called because they were held in the German city that bears this name. In 1998 a preliminary agreement was signed between “civil society” and the government-backed ELN to start a peace process, but an ELN attack in Antioquia that left 70 people dead clouded the progress that had been made up to that point.

Finally, during the government of President Alvaro Uribe, between 2005 and 2007, exploratory phases began in Cuba and Venezuela for rapprochement with the ELN, with the support of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the Governments of Spain. , Switzerland and Norway, according to the CIBOD count.

From these exploratory dialogues a document titled “Proposal for the National Government — ELN Base Agreement” emerged, as the local press reported at the time, where the bases for a negotiation were laid and touched on issues such as the bilateral ceasefire, cessation of hostilities, release of kidnapped and a road map to move forward with the negotiations.

According to the Barcelona Center for International Affairs, a disagreement between the parties, the ELN’s non-compliance with the Government’s immovable conditions, and the weakening of then-President Uribe’s relations with Venezuela, led to a weakening of rapprochements, until the The dialogue reached a deadlock, which was revived with the government of Juan Manuel Santos almost a decade later.

With information from Melissa Velasquez, Fernando Ramos, Florencia Trucco, Stefano Pozzebon and Kiarinna Parisi