Small Wars Journal

A Phony Peace in Colombia

Tue, 09/25/2018 - 1:21am

A Phony Peace in Colombia by Mary Anastasia O’Grady – Wall Street Journal

An announcement by Néstor Humberto Martínez, Colombia’s attorney general, earlier this month reveals the sad state of that country’s November 2016 “peace agreement” with the narco-terrorist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Mr. Martínez said that he has evidence that there are officials inside the agreement’s “special peace court” who are “cooking up falsehoods and fraudulent processes” in violation of the Colombian Constitution.

Mr. Martínez pledged to prosecute these “unscrupulous” individuals for hiding information about members of the guerrilla group, known by the Spanish acronym FARC, who have violated the terms of the agreement requiring them to report to special enclaves and confess their crimes. This fits with reporting from the region that thousands of renegade FARC members have rearmed and returned to the battlefield. Their goal is to reclaim their turf from other drug-trafficking armies.

Welcome to Colombia, where the much-ballyhooed deal, crafted in Havana by the government of then-President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC leadership, is unraveling faster than you can say “crime pays.”

The scandal at the peace court is only a slice of the trouble left behind by Mr. Santos, who handed power to President Iván Duque in August. As Bloomberg reported Sept. 11, Colombia is now experiencing a spike in rural violence, which had been greatly diminished under President Álvaro Uribe (2002-10).

Credit for this burgeoning regional security disaster also goes to former Secretary of State John Kerry, who backed the plan, and President Obama’s envoy to the Havana talks, Bernard Aronson…

Read on.