Military Review English Edition July-August 2016 | Page 47

COLOMBIA

is not inherently auspicious. To be celebrated, it must
do more than provide illegitimate organizations a path
to unobstructed power. Tactically, some predatory
actors may need incentives not to spoil the peace, but
strategically, peace must reflect a commitment to higher ideals, benefiting the political system more than its
most violent players. This in turn requires a common
vision of the country’s future, one that can bridge ideological divides and bring warring elites together. It is
questionable whether Colombia has reached this point,
not least because of the uncompromisingly revolutionary ideology underpinning the FARC struggle and its
duplicitous strategic approach.
In El Salvador, it took a decade of conflict and fundamental political shifts to unite the Farabundo Martí
National Liberation Front (FMLN) and the government in the quest for peace. Following the outbreak of
war in 1981, the two sides met first in 1984, and again
in September 1989, to discuss peace. Both times, too
much distance separated the two sides, and neither felt
militarily compelled to compromise. In La Palma in
1984, FMLN pointedly reminded the government that
they still “maintain[ed] control of a third of a national territory (sic), ha[d] significant popular support
in the cities and the countryside, maintain[ed] their
own armed forces, and enjoy[ed] important support
and recognition from the international community.”14
Confident, FMLN posited inclusion in the government
as a precondition for peace, something that would have
invalidated the elections of the previous year and the
freshly penned constitution. The talks collapsed, and
positions on both sides hardened.
The government also did not pursue talks with
much commitment. The Reagan administration was
ideologically opposed to accommodating FMLN, and,
regardless, the Salvadoran elite was never compelled to
support the reforms needed to get FMLN off the battlefield. In part, this was rooted in an unwillingness to
amend the recently altered constitution, but it related
also to the U.S. and Salvadoran governments’ faith in
an eventual victory. For both the White House and San
Salvador, attrition was deemed preferable to change, if
only to deny FMLN an opportunity to regenerate.
What allowed for productive talks were various
local and international developments, for example, the
end of the Cold War threatened FMLN’s funds and
compelled the United States to push for a negotiated
MILITARY REVIEW  July-August 2016

settlement so as to extricate itself from a suddenly far
less urgent conflict.15 Reacting to these shifts, FMLN
in 1989 dropped its demands for transitional power sharing and integration into the army, but it still
insisted that talks precede a cease-fire and that the
elections, planned for later that year, be postponed to
aid FMLN’s participation. The government balked, dismissing FMLN as “a small reality [that] cannot oblige
the government to change the republic’s constitutional
system.”16 FMLN was also not willing to yield: “We are
flexible,” a spokesman said, “but they are making a mistake if they think we are negotiating from weakness.”17
In the end, it took an embarrassingly high-profile
human-rights scandal by the El Salvadoran military
and a failed but symbolically potent FMLN offensive
into the capital, San Salvador, to make the stalemate
sufficiently painful for both sides to compel compromise. FMLN had to accept that the country’s democratic parameters were immutable, and the government that constitutional reforms were necessary to
depoliticize the military, reform the police, and investigate wartime abuses. Compromises such as these were
possible because both sides now shared a vision of the
future that was preferable to continued fighting, and
therefore committed themselves to the agreements
necessary for its actualization.
It is questionable whether the present situation in
Colombia has reached this point. Although Uribe’s
Democratic Security Policy inflicted severe losses on
FARC—one may speak of decimation—the government failed to translate the military advantage into
unambiguous bargaining power.18 FARC therefore
persists with its project, and the Santos government,
having squandered its advantage, appears powerless to
set the terms necessary to move forward. If anything,
FARC is now empowered by Colombia’s strong security
sector, as it uses the internationally resonant language
of human rights and government repression to offset
its profound military weakness and negotiate from a
position of strength.
Thus, harking back to the violent targeting of its
surrogate party, the Patriotic Union, in the 1980s,
FARC now insists on retaining its weapons in the peace
zones that it will then control and the military will
be restricted from entering. Whereas allegations of
government repression certainly were fitting in earlier phases of Colombia’s conflict, and there have been
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