COLOMBIA/FILE: As FARC peace talks with the Colombian government approach their one year anniversary, the demobilization process is gathering steam with growing numbers of rebels laying down their weapons

Record ID: 349783

  • Title: COLOMBIA/FILE: As FARC peace talks with the Colombian government approach their one year anniversary, the demobilization process is gathering steam with growing numbers of rebels laying down their weapons
  • Date: 15th November 2013
  • Summary: GUAVIARE, COLOMBIA (FILE) (ORIGINALLY 4:3) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF HELICOPTERS AND TROOPS DURING OPERATIONS
  • Embargoed: 30th November 2013 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Colombia
  • Country: Colombia
  • Topics: Conflict,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAE6KWS4QTSU8I8LA53LM60L4UI
  • Story Text: As FARC peace talks with the Colombian government approach their one year anniversary, fear of death is just one of the reasons why more rebels are laying down their weapons to find peace in their daily lives.
    Medardo Maturana, known as "Tomas" by his former comrades of 23 years, left the ranks of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) because he feared being executed after opposing a pact between the FARC and a cartel to share a drug trafficking route.
    Desperate, he decided to embrace a demobilisation programme provided by the government aimed at ending a long and bloody internal conflict in Colombia.
    After contacting troops by mobile phone, Tomas walked 12 hours through the jungle, taking his partner and a donkey with him.

    "I had been analysing the issue (demobilisation). I made the decision and I came over. I got in touch with the closest troops (army). They received me, I can say with a sense of brotherhood as though I had never even lived with the rebels," said the 53 year-old former rebel fighter.
    If leaving the guerrilla is a difficult decision, rejoining civil life is even more complicated. After living in the jungle, deserters end up hiding from their former armed comrades for fear of being executed.
    Just as other deserters, Tomas receives 24-hour protection and when he talks he avoids giving details about where he lives, what he does or what his future plans are.
    Rebel deserters sometimes end up living under the protection of troops who once chased them. Some live with their relatives in military barracks and others are flown to faraway cities and even change their identity for security reasons.
    Tomas is not the only one. The government says 1,140 FARC rebel fighters and ELN rebels, a smaller rebel group, laid down their weapons in 2012, a drop which represents three times more than those reported during combats and bombings by the Colombian Armed Forces.
    Colombian Defence Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon, said desertions continue as more rebel fighters stop seeing a future in the armed fight which started nearly half a century ago during the Cold War and which has claimed more than 200,000 lives.

    "Demobilisation this year is growing. I give demobilisation a special a special value because its a humanitarian attitude, it saves lives, it does. It helps other Colombians to get their life back, it allows them (rebel fighters) to repent and also recover their families with the protection of the public force and Colombian state," said Pinzon.
    On the other hand, for the FARC, it is part of a psychological war waged by the government. The desertions, rebel chiefs said, occur in all conflicts.
    But analysts suggest the desertions were one of the sparks that spurred the rebel group looking to push ahead with peace talks with the Colombian government which started last year in Havana.
    For these men who spend most of their lives hiding in the jungle, setting their weapons aside is a hard decision. They know, that once in the city, they will still be living in fear.
    In 2003, the Colombian government created a programme to encourage deserters, offering benefits such as training, work opportunities and subsidies.
    Parallel to the peace talks in Cuba, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos maintains pressure on the FARC, which had some 20,000 fighters at the end of the 1990s controlling vast swaths of the country but in recent years have lost important leaders such as Alfonso Cano and "El Mono Jojoy."
    Santos' strategy is clear, to demobilise close to 8,000 FARC rebel fighters that remain in the jungle. Desertions help.
    The government spends 95 million dollars per year on advertising its desertion programme through radio adverts.
    The individual reinsertion programme costs some 3,000 dollars annually per capita with former rebel fighters staying seven years in the programme.
    Alejandro Eder, Director of the Colombian Agency for Reintegration said the programme was cheaper than jail.

    "The cost of having a prisoner in Colombia is more than double the cost per capita per year of the reintegration process and it also has higher rates of relapse according to a 2004 Colombian Congress study. Seventy percent of those who set their weapons aside relapse. In our case, more than 70 percent maintain their legality at a lower cost," he said.
    Although the FARC has said desertions in any conflict were normal, analysts said the FARC make up for desertions through a voluntary or forced recruiting programme of youngsters without opportunities in isolated rural areas, where poverty affects 46 percent of the population.
    Tomas said the government's reinsertion programme was affecting the FARC.

    "Because the state with this policy is helping the person. If that person wants to continue studying, he continues studying. If they want a productive project they give that person money, a few million to start it. So those people are seeing this policy is affecting the guerrilla. I'm not saying it's falling apart, but it is affecting it."
    According to the government 20,797 rebels deserted in the last decade, more than 80 percent of those were from the FARC.
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