FARC | Five years of solitude for the ex-guerrillas

 

Despite successfully transitioning into a political party, the erstwhile FARC has not managed to achieve what it expected of the 2016 Peace Accord with the Colombian government

Five years after a landmark peace accord that brought to end a conflict that lasted more than five decades in Colombia, the United States has finally revoked its designation of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) as a foreign terrorist organisation. FARC had disbanded from being a guerilla military organisation as part of the peace accord signed with the Colombian government in 2016, into an overground political force called the Comunes (commons in Spanish). But splinter groups that did not accede to or abide by the accord continue to be designated as foreign terrorist organisations — dissident groups such as the La Segunda Marquetalia and the FARC-EP (People’s Army). This indicates that the accord continues to retain its discontents with some former FARC combatants refusing to give up on what they term is armed struggle, but what many suggest is a strategy in “their economic self-interest” to run some of the rackets that were common during the insurgency.

The accord was difficult to achieve — FARC had taken a lot of losses in terms of combatants, leaders and control over territory in the run-up to the 2016 accord, but was still capable of continuing a war of attrition that began as a left-wing peasant struggle in the 1960s but later degenerated into a mixture of guerilla

Source: https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/farc-five-years-of-solitude-for-the-ex-guerrillas/article37843837.ece