I'm really saddened to see such uninformed comments here, regarding Colombia's situation. I am victim of FARC's wrongdoing, i've lost family members, peace and a place to live to them. I've also suffered similar damages from paramilitar actors here in the Caribbean coast. A peace agreement kills FARC legitimacy and their international position. If they «agree» to stop their actions, you'll see a bunch of former supporters (like those insane danish supporters) moving to the mainstream left of this country, Polo Democrático, who've failed to distance themselves from Venezuela, and indirectly, from FARC (just like the right wing, which is deeply entangled with paramilitarism). People who live away from the war zones are most ikely to support the NO, after all, it's not their kids, brothers and fathers whose lives are being sacrficed. People living in war zones just want it to stop. Seriously. Uribe moved the conflict to rural and underdeveloped areas of this country, so peope living on the big cities (Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, etc.) do not see the big influence of FARC's actions, they live instead under the horror of ex-paramilitar criminal bands, same who signed a peace agreement with Uribe. So it comes to me as a surprise how the least affected by the war, and the ones getting a huge slice of the paramilitar violence, are the ones voting for NO (Antioquia is understandable, Uribe is like a god there). I support the peace agreement, but i see concerning flaws in its current form. I am, however, no FARC apologist, and honestly a part of me would like to personally kill some of them, but we need to move forward, end this part of the conflict, and when we move the criminals away from a ideological umbrella, we can see and stop them as they are, criminals who do not give a FUCK about left or right, and i'm damn sure we'll see a chunk of guerilleros forming armed bands, so it's far from over. But this is the first step, and it needs to be done.
I agree, as a Colombian I think the most important part about the peace agreement is that it will delegitimize the position for using weapons in politics, which has become a long tradition in our country. It is also a huge step for a country that has solved it's political differences historically by killing the other party, that we have now had the capability of negotiating for 5 years under a truce, and that the right wing government is willing to accept political participation from the guerilla, and to entertain ultra leftist policies under a new bipartisan congress, and that it is recognizing that there is a huge social gap and inequality which led to the formation of the guerrilla in the first place, which should be fixed.
Unfortunately violence probably will not end instantly, since the drug trade will continue to be a big business, and that a part of the trained militias will not be able to readjust to normal civilian life once the peace is signed. But at least criminals and narcos will not be shielded under a political left wing speech and be united under a flag, which will eventually lead to violence ending.
I am completely confident that the Colombians will vote Yes for the peace process, and that the implementation will be successful. Some very big war criminals will probably walk away scot-free, but the huge overall benefit for the entire country will far outweigh the short term injustice.
Expect a lot of big startups coming out of Colombia and some very interesting investment possibilities, since the peace agrement shows confidence in the Colombian institutions and constitution, which will lead to a booming middle class in a 50 million person country which has a lot of space to grow in since it has been historically been overlooked because of the security issues.
We're already becoming LatAm's most important tech hub. Rappi (YC W16) became the first Andreessen Horowitz investment in LatAm. Authy (YC S12) was acquired by Twilio (first time a big Silicon Valley company acquires a colombian one). .CO was acquired by Neustar. There are other startups doing really well such as Platzi (YC W15) and Torre (formerly Bunny Inc).
Paisa from Medellin, Colombia here (currently living in Bogotá though).
Antioquia/Eje Cafetero will definitely be the region with the largest 'No' voting population. I would even think that the region with the next largest 'No' voters would be Bogotá DC. All of this is exactly because of what you say.
But let me tell you something: Even in Medellín, there's a correlation between being a young and studied person with voting 'Yes'.
The best analogy for me is the Brexit. Where old and uneducated people ruined the UK for the future generations.
Dear my dead friends in Sarajevo,
Europe has enjoyed 7 decades of peace. NYT told me, so it must be true. Kiza and Lana, you must've faked your deaths along with many of your friends based on the brilliant minds at the NYT. Please come home. Love always...
Official war is over, but there are still all kinds of violence; and where there is not violence there is the subjugation by threat of violence. Much of this has to do with US policy w.r.t. the Americas for the last ~200 years and more recently the War on Drugs.
Defining "peace" as a lack of official war is utter nonsense.
We only have to look south across a single border to see a country very much at war.
The funny thing is that until the peace process began nobody had ever called it a war in Colombia. It was just referred to as an internal conflict or a violence or guerilla problem. I guess the first part of solving it was recognizing that it was actually an internal war.
I think jedmeyers' point was that it's possible to have conflicts without it officially being designated a war - and he/she was holding Crimea as an example of such. There's still rebel paramilitaries in Southern Mexico who have declared war against the state (e.g. Zapatista Army of National Liberation) - but it's not "officially" a war (whatever that means)
The Cold War is the gift that keeps on giving. Many of our current worries (ISIS, for example) are things frozen in time by the appropriately called Cold War.
Maybe some day within my lifetime North Korea will stop being a dictatorship..
> Many of our current worries (ISIS, for example) are things frozen in time by the appropriately called Cold War.
The entity calling itself "The Islamic State" -- ISIS is an acronym for one English translation of its previous name for itself -- isn't "frozen in time" by the Cold War (you can certainly argue that a number of aspects of the Cold War formed important historical bases for its development, but the proximate trigger for it developing from al-Qaeda in Iraq into the Islamic State in Iraq (and then Iraq and the Levant -- or "Iraq and Syria" to much of the US news media, etc.) comes from the US invasion of occupation of Iraq, which was sort of the culmination of more than a decade of post-Cold War US-Iraq conflict and confrontation.
> The entity calling itself "The Islamic State" -- ISIS is an acronym for one English translation of its previous name for itself
I don't really see a big difference between "the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham" and "the Islamic State". They dropped the geographical indicator from their name. They're still there; the name without the geographical indicator is pretty transparently derived from the earlier one. There's nothing about "ISIS" that opposes or conflicts with the "new" name, nor is it even necessary for us to change our name for something according to the whims of someone else.
And yet it is indirectly tied - it was CIA support for the more radicalized mujaheddin factions in Afghanistan (which in turn was caused by listening to and trusting Pakistani ISI advice too much) that produced Taliban later, and indirectly accelerated the creation of al-Qaeda. Remember this?
That's a really indirect tie, because the group that became al-Qaeda in Iraq (and later the Islamic State in Iraq, etc.) was an unrelated homegrown Iraqi Islamist group that only adopted the al-Qaeda brand temporarily after al-Qaeda became the dominant public face of anti-American Islamic extremism in the wake of 9/11, dumping that branding as soon as they had their own local success and didn't need the al-Qaeda brand for increased visibility.
Not the same people, obviously. The tie here is the continuation of the same ideology. And while the ideology predates Cold War (Wahhabi, Deobandi, and even Qutb, from whom most of modern extreme Salafi directly derive), its quick proliferation is largely due to outside assistance in proxy wars.
And that very much was a part of the 'cold war' in that it caused the former Soviet Union to expend huge resources in Afghanistan. So the ISIS cold-war link is quite clear.
I wonder what exactly you mean... Borders used to change all the time, until we 1) got a little turned off by industrialized bloodshed, and 2) went nuclear. Now there's a lot of pressure on national borders as some states have become weak, and other stronger, but global politeness is preventing much of a shift in the lines.
At least in the case of North Korea, I very much fear that in a decade or two the place will go dark and the rest of of the world (ourselves included) will find a mausoleum of a country.
We'll all kinda go, "Well, we couldn't just invade them, could we?", and just silently acknowledge that everyone in the world sat there while millions of people were starved, butchered, or tortured.
And then we'll probably have a fight over what's left.
Read the final agreement (if you dare and don't vomit easily):
- Those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity will NOT go to jail, in a blatant violation of the Rome statute.
- Despite earning BILLIONS from drug trafficking, they will not issue any reparations to the victims, instead, ordinary colombians will be taxed for that purpose.
- They will be GIVEN between 10-30% of control of the senate. No election necessary.
- They will be GIVEN 26 regions where there will be no state presence. Coincidentally in every strategic drug corridor.
- They will not return the recruited minors.
- They will participate in the creation of a "super-tribunal" with absolute legal powers, even over cases that have been sentenced and closed.
This is not an agreement, it is the surrender of a state and should be an international disgrace. In a real country this would constitute high treason.
I see that they're guaranteed 5 (out of 100) senate seats, which by my math is definitely not 10-30%. I doubt most normal folks will vote for them, especially in the countryside where people have been the most affected by the conflict.
Yes, those responsible for war crimes - on all sides - (police, soliders, paramilitary, as well as the rebels) have the opportunity to confess before a tribunal and avoid jail time. It will be up to judges, but they will receive up to 8 years of restricted movement and community service (whatever that may be.) This is definitely the most controversial part of the agreement, as 95% of the country feels these folks are crooks and should be punished.
I could go on - I'm an American and have lived in Colombia for about 6 years now, and see an entire country that has been held back due to this stupid war - the agreement isn't perfect, but this needs to be put to bed, so the country can move forward. After having just seen the whole "brexit" fiasco, I'm a little worried about how this is being put to a referendum and seeing so much disinformation being spread. Even on an English speaking tech news site.
Yes I read it. Word by word. I am born and raised colombian, and for over 40 years have seen the result of sacrificing justice for short term gains or individual vanity.
It's not 5 seats. It's 5 in the senate, 5 in congress, and 16 in special circumscription where only FARC friendly candidates can participate.
They have massive amounts of money stashed for the upcoming campaigns, and by now you should be aware that money buys regional candidates in Colombia. Add to that fear of FARC retaliation in areas where the government now will have NO presence during elections or afterwards. (they have strategically left Frente Primero out of the accord, to handle the residual drug operation and armed coercion).
"Confessing" to war crimes and crimes against humanity does not constitute appropriate punishment under any international standard. The International Criminal Court and Human Rights Watch have both been quite clear that no jail time would be unacceptable.
You have lived here barely enough to have only seen Santos as president, who has done absolutely NOTHING except push his narcissistic agenda forward, at the expense of justice, economy and the independence of the branches of power. I am old enough to know colombia's problem is not 17,000 asshole terrorists in the jungle, it is LACK OF JUSTICE at every level, with politicians, guerrillas, paramilitaries etc. Sacrificing justice to appease one criminal entity is exactly why my country cannot 'move forward'.
I think this is the pragmatic approach vs an ideological approach. What would the cost be if the peace were not agreed upon? More kidnappings, more drugs, more innocent deaths, etc. Or you could try and continue the stalemate for another 30 years and vindicate justice.
At some point you have to cut your losses and consider sunken costs. It's not easy. Lots of people will be displeased, but in the end it might be the best outcome for their society.
There was no 'stalemate'. FARC in 2010 were 5000 strong, taking heavy losses and on the run. Then came Santos, who obsessed over winning international recognition that has eluded him at home, legitimized FARC, gave them an international stage and set in motion a 6 year 'peace process' that has left FARC in congress and senate, with all their crimes whitewashed, and with our already weak justice system mortally wounded.
>I think this is the pragmatic approach vs an ideological approach
I'm all for pragmatism, but I believe in long term pragmatism, not short term pragmatism.
Rewarding terrorists gets them to stop killing you, which is pragmatic, except in the long run it encourages other terrorist groups to start killing you, which is unpragmatic.
> Those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity will NOT go to jail
I dislike the injustice, but I've come around to the view that agreements like this are often consequentially appealing. If the end to a conflict leads to one's imprisonment or execution, the incentive might be to keep fighting even with unfavorable odds. I don't know the particulars of this case, but it's possible that a peace agreement could only be reached if it includes this provision, and so it might be worth it.
By that logic there should be no plea bargains or criminal surrenders. You negotiate not only to be released with no consequence. You also negotiate to lessen your punishment. The AUC paramilitary leaders did this and are now paying reduced sentences (8 years) in the USA, which if you ask me is shameful considering their crimes. FARC leaders, for the same crimes will not see one day in jail.
This all started when the right wing murdered Gaitán in 1948. Then the US began coming into Colombia heavily into the 1980s.
The left wanted to end the violence so founded UP in the 1980s and ceased violence. The landowners, AUC, CIA etc. murdered candidates, shot campaign workers, made it impossible to win electorally. They forced FARC back to the gun, they didn't want the left in elections.
For a long time FARC had nothing to do with cocaine, so who was sending it to the US in the 1970s? The AUC and right wing. Once the US began pouring billions into Colombia, the FARC could no longer prevent campesinos from growing coca in its areas.
It's funny too, as the US produces the deadly tobacco drug and distributes it to Colombians, but that is not a "drug" because the US doesn't want it to be. Yet Colombian campesinos who grew coca for centuries send coca to the US - then that is a drug and they are drug dealers. The AUC and Uribe and his father send coca north but the US government gives them a free pass.
Yes, we are all aware that your ideological allies are saints, forced to do the wrong things by fate and circumstances. While your ideological enemies murder babies for fun.
FARC apologists will always find a way to make everything about Uribe. All manners of crime are justified because 'Uribe did it first'. Colombian leftists are nothing if not hypocritical.
I'm Colombian, and they want more than victory, they want more violence, that's why the propaganda against the agreement is lead by the infamous paramilitary-involved ex-president Alvaro Uribe.
Violence is the only thing that will continue to go on if we keep asking for justice, so our children and grandchildren will die fighting wars we could have stop just because we hold that word in such high stem.
And the worse is it all is that _their_ children will continue to kill ours for reasons they think justifiable, and despite being truth or not it will cost them all their lives.
Not equal parties. A legitimately constituted state with 50 million people vs. 17,000 guerillas. All countries have terrorism and 'coexist' with it. In the meantime their citizens can go about their business. That was the state of things when Santos took office and revived the FARC guerilla.
If only the ones who are alive today thanks to the reduction of violence had a HN account, but they are the poor in the rural areas, not the computer scientists of La Javeriana.
If you stop your constitutional obligation to combat crime, OBVIOUSLY there will be fewer deaths in combat. That does not make it right.
And of course, in typical izquierdista fashion, you justify your arguments by turning it into a class warfare statement, even grouping me with computer scientists (I am not) from La Javeriana (fine private university, but I'm also not from there).
This is a pretty mystifying set of complaints. When the South lost the US civil war, how much of the senate did they get? How much territory was ceded to them?
The Union and Confederate armies both had around 200,000 soldiers each in 1861. That is a war on equal terms. FARC guerillas are about 17,000 now (about 5000 in 2010, before this 'peace process'). The colombian army is 500,000 plus 40 million regular citizens who despise FARC. The situation is quite different from US post-civil war reconstruction efforts.
I'm living in Colombia, and my perception is most people want the agreement rejected and the President impeached.
There's going to be a referendum on the agreement, and in spite of the government being heavily campaigning for it, odds are voters will side against it.
If they don't I'm out of here. This will become Venezuela 2.0.
I am also Colombian and I would honestly recommend you and every other Colombian out there to read the peace terms before taking a stand. Either if you are voting yes or no. I know 297 pages sound like a lot, but the terms are written in an easy to follow language and are worth the reading.
Doozy admits the truth you won't see in the US corporate media. The Colombian bourgeoisie does not want peace. It's why they murdered Gaitán. It's why when the left unilaterally put down the gun in the mid 1980s and ran for office, they had right wing death squads, the AUC etc. kill off the candidates, campaign workers etc.
They want to run things with the army, with the US army and billions coming in from Plan Colombia etc. They don't want to let people vote or campaign, they'd prefer the FARC control a few departments in the south and they rule by force in the rest of the country.
Thanks for making things clear. You don't see this kind of clarity in the US, where liberals say FARC wants violence and other nonsense.
Actually the peace process of the M19/UP of the 1980s is a chilling precedent of what will happen in Colombia if this agreement goes on: The government may grant immunity to the FARC, but their victims will not forget nor forgive.
Peace with impunity will mean more war, as the victims of the kidnapping, racketeering and murdering (or their surviving relatives) will want their revenge, just as they did after the government forgave M19's crimes.
In the (unlikely) case this agreement is approved, it wouldn't surprise me if it leads to a coup. And that's a rare thing in Colombia, one of the oldest democracies in the world and a country where the last coup attempt took place in the 19th century.
Have you heard of Rojas Pinilla? He led the last successful military coup in 1953.(not 19th century like you implied) If not I'm sure you are at least aware of his grandson Samuel Moreno and his infamous "carrusel de las contrataciones"
You come across as one of those well-to-do Colombians who had the privilege of avoiding the draft through the purchase of a libreta militar, am I right? You don't want this war to end but you sure as heck won't risk your own neck to fight against the enemy that you so viciously despise. Let other Colombians from less affluent families keep fighting your war while you get your passport and your VISA ready to jump ship if things get a little too hairy for you.
Actually we just had a major of the capital (Bogota) of the country wich was part of M19 and he is still alive, so I'm not sure which revenge you talk about in that case.
I'm living in Colombia as well, and the fear of the people is mostly about impunity not about becoming Venezuela 2.0. The USA gov doesn't fear another Venezuela, that's why they support this agreement.
The fear mongering as been done by a self-proclaimed enemy of the current president, the ex-president Alvaro Uribe. Wich has been involved in many paramilitary scandals but somehow he is still free (despite many of his close friends being not)
By the way deaths by war have been decreased in a 95% since the first agreements with FARC.
If you look at the byline, it is very interesting that this was co-written by Juan Manuel Santos (for other readers: the current president of Colombia).
Colombian here. There are 3 kinds of people against the agreement:
1) The people who just base their arguments on what they see on tweets and memes. Those are the same who won't read the agreement paper and who haven't read about how Ireland and Rwanda solved their conflicts and how they prospered afterwards. Those are the ones who see 'shooting them all' as something physically plausible.
2) Then there are the ones who are more responsible and actually read the agreement paper. These ones will counterargument in more intelligent ways. However, all of this group's arguments converge to the fact that they are ignoring that this is the most realistic, achievable and actionable version of the agreement. They're heavily sceptical about FARC's intentions and they would like everything to be renegotiated.
3) Finally, the ones who have a huge emotional investment in the topic because their family has been directly affected by FARC. This is the group which I personally comprehend the most, but still think they are not seeing the big picture. There's no such thing as a perfect peace and FARC will evolve into smaller rebel groups. But if we have been able to combat the big group, imagine what we can do against a smaller version of it.
doozy I'm assuming you haven't read the agreement. I invite you to read the parts that explain how there will be a transitional justice mechanism that'll not only subside FARC victims but will become an investment in infrastructure, education, etc.
I also invite you to read the part that talks about how FARC will get participation in politics. There are currently 102 seats in the senate and only 5 additional ones will be given to FARC. They will also get 5 seats in the Reprsentatives Chamber, out of the current 165.
When Colombia successfully negotiated a peace treatment with another marxist guerilla in the '90s (M-19) and they became the 'Unión Patriótica' party they got 15 seats and forward to 2016, we're not Venezuela 2.0. Our economy has done pretty well actually.
No their civil war ended long ago. But they do still have a lot of violence caused by gangs like Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) and the armed vigilante groups that hunt them.
MS13 was started by Salvadoran prisoners deported from the US, so I guess the whole thing is coming full circle.
I suppose it depends on what where you draw the line between violent crime and civil war. Usually when we think of war, we think of the combatants having clear political goals. As in they are trying to take or hold onto territory or political power. I'm not sure MS13 has any such goals.
I could see how the level of violence would be about the same as that of a war, but for various reasons we don't call it such.
A good old friend of mine just linked me directly to this comment, and with good reason. Somewhere around the years 2005-7 I was involved in a light edit war with a Dutch gentleman that rewrote this page to wipe away all reference to the Western Hemisphere as a geopolitical term. Rather than taking into account its historical usage, and _current_ usage in various fields, he instead approached the term on purely etymological, and consequently mathematical, basis. Western? Surely the part to the left. Hemisphere? That can only mean exactly half. I spent a good amount of time in the library researching this. Old books with old maps from rare collections, simple google searches, and more casual physical references. None really really backed up the etymological definition. I made a few attempts to edit, but eventually gave up. Mostly, because it seemed so pointless. The information out there (as opposed to online) was so apparently and plentiful, it felt like I was to argue that the sky is blue. So I let it be.
A decade later, and the results still stand. A bland, technical page with with a tabulation of the countries Within, Without and Somewhere In Between the two Sets dominating the page.
That's a great story! I'd be curious what the page looked like before.
I actually really look at the tables, but saw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere#/media/File... and then came to comment here. To the best of my knowledge I had never thought of this before, but it occurred to me while I was reading the opinion piece.
