CIAO DATE: 01/04

Was Failure Avoidable? Learning From Colombia’s 1998-2002 Peace Process

Colombians had never seen President Andrés Pastrana as angry or as dejected as he appeared on television the night of Wednesday, February 20, 2002. His effort to end nearly 40 years of violence - a conflict with leftist guerrillas and paramilitary vigilantes that claimed over 3,500 lives in 2001 - had just received a fatal blow. More than three years of frustrating negotiations had come to nothing.

That morning, an elite unit of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - FARC), the larger of two leftist insurgent groups active in the country, had hijacked a domestic airliner. Landing it on a highway in the guerrilla-dominated countryside of Huila department, members of the FARC’s Teófilo Forero column kidnapped one of its passengers, Liberal Party Senator Jorge Gechem Turbay. That same day, the guerrillas dynamited a well-traveled bridge in Antioquia department. An ambulance, its driver unaware, plummeted into the Danta River. All aboard the vehicle died, including a woman in labor.

That night, as he ended the peace process on which he had staked his presidency, Pastrana did not mince words. "None can doubt that, between politics and terrorism, the FARC has chosen terrorism. We Colombians offered an open hand to the FARC and they have responded to us with a slap."

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