BOGOTA, Colombia — In 2005, Duvan Ernesto Barato found himself broke and unemployed, living alone in the tropical plains of eastern Colombia, estranged from the wife and daughter he had abandoned years before. As the months wore on, Ernesto, a deserter from a right-wing paramilitary group linked to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), feared the stigma of his violent past would prevent him from finding a job and resuming a normal life.
“When people think about members of an armed group, the first picture that comes to mind is of a soldier in camouflage, carrying a rifle and assassinating someone,” he says.
It wasn’t until he arrived in Bogota the following year that things began to turn around. When the remaining members of his paramilitary group demobilized in 2006, Barato was able to enter the Colombian government’s reintegration program for ex-combatants. Helped by the program’s financial and emotional support, Barato resumed his studies and earned a university degree in psychology. A decade later, he now works as a psychologist for the district government in Bogota, treating ex-combatants as they adjust to their new reality.
Such a story is familiar in Colombia, where the road to peace has been long. The government is moving closer to signing a cease-fire with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, that would end a half century of combat, one of the world’s longest-running conflicts. Within the country, however, there is a common refrain among security analysts and civil society leaders: a peace agreement is important, but it won’t guarantee peace.
“A deal is a signature on a page,” says Félix Mora Ortiz, the executive director of Fútbol y Paz, a recently launched non-profit dedicated to using soccer as a tool to promote nonviolent conflict resolution among young people. “It’s not the objective.”
The war in Colombia has killed more than 220,000 people and displaced nearly 6 million since its start in the mid-1960s. To achieve lasting peace, Colombia will need to effectively disarm, demobilize and, crucially, reintegrate FARC members into mainstream society.
That means accounting for an estimated 20,000 people, a number that includes the group’s 7,000-plus fighters, along with urban militia members and support personnel. A peace agreement with the National Liberation Army, also currently being negotiated, could add several thousand more. Precise figures are unknown, but around a quarter of the FARC’s members are likely to be minors, some with children of their own. Many of the adults in the FARC joined the group before coming of age and lack basic literacy skills.
The reintegration process may overwhelm the existing capacities of the Colombian government, according to a report from the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). Failure to bring former rebels into society could mean a repeart of the mid-2000s, when many of Barato’s peers fell back into violence following the demobilization of 32,000 members of the AUC and other paramilitary groups.
Attracting ex-paramilitaries into reintegration programs has been a challenge. Only 52 percent of the 57,765 Colombians who have demobilized from armed groups since 2003 are currently enrolled in or graduated from the government’s formal reintegration program, according to data from the Colombian Agency for Reintegration (ACR). That figure includes a number of ex-FARC members who deserted the group in the past decade.
“There are some people for whom it’s very difficult to confront a different way of living, finding employment and working sunrise to sunset” says Sandra Paulina, a Bogota resident who left the FARC in 2011 after 12 years with the group. “They prefer not to accept the help of the state.”
Around 15 percent of the AUC fighters ended up joining violent criminal gangs and now constitute one of the country’s largest security threats, responsible for a killing spree of left-leaning activists in the past several months. These groups could also destabilize the peace deal by targeting FARC members after they’ve laid down arms.
It is those former AUC fighters who demobilized that the government lost track of, says Adam Isacson, an analyst at WOLA.
Before disarming, the AUC instructed most of its child combatants to return to their homes, in an attempt to shield its leaders from legal repercussions for the abuse of minors. This prevented many children from entering therapy and reintegration programs designed for citizens under age 18, and little is known of what happened to that demographic.
The FARC, some analysts believe, could also try to disguise its use of child soldiers, particularly if prosecutors from the International Criminal Court, to which Colombia is a signatory, signal that the peace deal is insufficiently tough on holding leaders from all sides of the conflict accountable for past crimes.
The FARC recently announced an agreement with the Colombian government to have UNICEF and the International Organization for Migration assist in demobilizing minors from its ranks over the next several months. But the group, some analysts believe, is likely downplaying its use of child soldiers in the event that prosecutors from the International Criminal Court, to which Colombia is a signatory, signal that the peace deal is insufficiently tough on holding leaders from all sides of the conflict accountable for past crimes.
Some success, yet distrust remains
But the government’s efforts to reintegrate former members of armed groups into society have found some success. A 2014 study by La Fundación Ideas para la Paz (FIP), a Bogota-based think tank, found that three-quarters of the participants in the ACR’s program have not returned to criminal behavior. And the ACR says it has incorporated lessons learned since the mid-2000s, including expanding its program length to six and a half years. Participants in the program are paid a monthly stipend, assigned a social worker and provided vocational training.
“Colombia has probably been better than most countries that have had large-scale reintegrations to do,” says Isacson. “The current program is much better — but we’ll see if they can apply it if they suddenly get 20,000 or 25,000 people at once.”
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A particularly vulnerable demographic could be ex-guerillas who are about to turn 18. While the ICBF encourages its participants to voluntarily enter the ACR’s program when they become adults, the transition between the two agencies can be daunting.
“The ICBF’s program is very protective, because they take care of everything, including housing,” says Maria José Torres, a program manager with the ACR. “The ACR’s program is more independent, which leads to some angst, but with the idea that they’ll continue in their reintegration process.”
Another complicating factor is the FARC’s distrust of the ACR, which they view as an institution associated with their enemies: paramilitaries and FARC deserters. A peace deal will most likely necessitate the creation of a new agency to handle FARC reintegration.
“The FARC are going to refuse to have that agency in charge, because it would be sort of symbolic of surrender,” Isacson says.
Eduardo Álvarez, a coordinator with FIP, says reintegrating the FARC will be in large part about improving governance in the territories where the FARC controls — and where its fighters are likely to remain.
“Reintegration for the FARC doesn’t mean that they return to houses, or to towns,” he says. “It means they’ll drop their arms but stay in the same places where they currently are.”
Isacson adds, “This is isn’t going to work if you don’t involve civil society, especially at the local level.”
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For Félix Mora, the founder of Fútbol y Paz, that means a commitment to holding on- and off-the-field seminars for victims of the conflict throughout the country, using lists provided by local governments.
Mora uses his own life story as a redemptive example for others. For more than decade, as a professional bullfighter in Colombia and Spain, he participated in an industry often associated with the mistreatment of animals.
“For many years, my life was only bulls, bulls, bulls,” he says, sipping a cappuccino on a recent morning in Bogota. “People ask me now how I can be a promoter of peace, when I was involved in the killing animals. But I’m proof that people can change.”
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