Episode 78. US Colombia Partnership & the 2016 Peace Accord with Colombian General Alberto Mejia and Ambassador Kevin Whitaker

Episode Transcript:

Amb. McCarthy: [00:00:11] Welcome to another conversation in the American Academy of Diplomacy Podcast series, The General and the Ambassador. Our podcast brings together senior US diplomats and senior US military leaders in conversations about their collaboration on a major international security challenge. I am Ambassador Deborah McCarthy, the producer and host. Today we will discuss the US Colombia military Partnership and the 2016 Peace Accord. Our guests are General Alberto Mejia Ferrero, the former general commander of the military forces of Colombia, and Ambassador Kevin Whitaker, the former US ambassador to Colombia. The general and the ambassador is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy. This podcast has been sponsored by the Fletcher School Global Master of Arts Program. The program allows career executives to earn a master of leadership in global affairs in one year without leaving the workforce. General Ambassador, welcome to our series. I thought I would start with an overview of the bilateral security relationship. Colombia and the US forged a close partnership over the past two decades. By the late 1990s, Colombia had become the largest exporter of finished cocaine in the world, and the US was suffering a crack cocaine epidemic. The concern about Colombia as a source country became the basis for the launch of Plan Colombia in 2000, under which the US Congress appropriated an estimated $13 billion in assistance from both the State and Defense Departments over a period of 15 years.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:01:45] Initially, the assistance was for programs to fight the cultivation, processing and distribution of drugs. The objectives were soon broadened to include counterinsurgency, as Colombia continued to be wracked by a decades old internal armed conflict, pitting the government against leftist guerrilla groups and right wing paramilitaries, all of whom were engaged in and profited from the massive drug trade. The goals became broader over time to include institution building as well as economic and social aid programs. Plan Colombia enjoyed bipartisan support through three administrations of President Clinton, President Bush and President Obama. With the 2016 peace agreement negotiated between the government and the largest insurgency group, the FARC, which we will discuss in depth. Us assistance to Colombia shifted to emphasize strengthening institutions, protecting human rights and promoting economic opportunity. The current assistance program is called Peace Colombia. It, too, has bipartisan support under both the Trump and now the Biden administrations. So, gentlemen, if I could start with an overview of what this internal conflict was all about, as it obviously is the focus of the peace accord. Why was Colombia wracked by internal conflict for almost half a century?

Gen. Mejia: [00:03:03] For more than half a century, Colombia was at centre stage in the region during the Cold War years, in part because of our geopolitical location and geography, but also because of its natural resources. Three different axis is, for sure close to a dozen insurgencies in Colombia in their efforts to destroy democracy. The axis of the Soviet Union, Cuba and of the peking line in Colombia. Another very critical aspect was the transformation of narco trafficking from parochial marijuana business to that profitable cocaine illicit market, including heroin. A strategic turn from the fight for organized ideology to the cocaine.  So this is the general context that I see as the common denominator of the past six decades.

Amb. Ferrero: [00:04:02] You know, what I would add here? That perhaps a more tactical level, the United States cooperated with Colombia in taking down the Medellin and Cali cartels in the late 80 seconds and early 90 seconds. And that story is fairly well known. But what happened after that is important to this story, and that is that the FARC, which had stayed away from narcotics trafficking, decided after Pablo Escobar was killed in the early 90 seconds and the Cali cartel was dismantled to enter into that field. And so getting access to coca cocaine and the resources associated with it permitted the dramatic increase in the military capability of the guerrilla force.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:04:44] Well, let me ask a little bit, if you can explain who these insurgency groups were and what kind of threat did they pose to the state.

Amb. Ferrero: [00:04:52] Trying to figure out how many guerrilla groups are in Colombia is really something, because there have been many, many over the years for the purpose of this discussion. The ELN, the National Liberation Army, which continues to exist, is a urban insurgency, more clandestine, whereas the FARC got its start as a rural, Marxist, land reform oriented insurgency.

Gen. Mejia: [00:05:16] ELN, also worth to mention that because of narco trafficking, not only the FARC, ELN had the ability to threatened Colombia's democracy, but also right wing paramilitary forces under different names such as Autodefensas Unidad de Colombia, today, Clan de Golfo. There also are many other right wing paramilitary forces have been also trying to fight for the control of some of the territories of Colombia with coordinate some ungoverned spaces in cases.

Amb. Ferrero: [00:05:53] You know, it's probably worth adding here that Juan Manuel Santos, the president who set on its path the peace negotiations with the FARC, he said that in 2000 the situation was that the Colombian government only controlled about a third of the national territory. The paramilitaries controlled a third, and the guerrilla groups controlled another third. So in a condition like that, getting back to your question, the existence of the state was in question by the time Plan Colombia was put in place.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:06:20] Well, I recall when I was the deputy assistant secretary in the INL bureau at the State Department under the Bush administration, that was a major issue, which is the state was not present in so many parts of the country. And we'll talk more about that because it continues to this day. Well, in early 2012, under President Santos, whom you just mentioned, Colombia launched a new counterinsurgency plan called Espada de Honor or Sword of Honor. Later that same year, the government began the formal negotiations with one of the insurgency groups, the FARC. So it's a question for both of you. What were the key elements of the counterinsurgency plan?

Gen. Mejia: [00:06:59] Before Espada Patriota was a court that helped to disrupt FARC intentions to conquer the capital of Colombia, and according to their strategy, the domination of the eastern Andean region. Just remember that only 15 years ago, just around Bogota, the FARC has 22 FARC-fronts positioned just around the city. So our democracy was completely kidnapped. And Plan Patriota focus mainly on the structures and leadership. But sort of honored was a plan that has a more holistic approach in President Santos went to visit a fourth brigade in Medellin and was the commander during those days. And he told me to put together a team to create these plan. And they gave me 90 days to produce a campaign plan by the end, without the intent to force the FARC to negotiate. One of the key aspects of this plan was happening to have access to very, very important information. When the forces are fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan, every time they seize a computer or an electronic device, they can exploit that immediately for future operations. The same night they can do ten different operations. In Colombia, we cannot do that, so all of that information goes to the judicial system.

Gen. Mejia: [00:08:40] In that specific case, we had access to 7.3TB of FARC information that let us see the FARC from a different perspective composed by six different subsystems: the armed component, the political component, the territorial one, the support networks, their resources, and command and control. So we did a very, very deep professional analysis of those different six subsystems are created and a strategy to tackle those systems. It was very important because we worked together very closely with our U.S. partners. The President led me invite Southcote, but also join the Special Operations Command and many other great military institutions. But the US Embassy was also key in helping to push this process forward. To me, it was vital not only the ability to do campaign plan, but also to understand the processes and the doctrine of capabilities based in plan. The US was very important in pushing towards a more doctrinal planning processes, support of jointness, more coordination and inter-agency approach. And in general, the US was the perfect partner in the perfect moment for us to build this plan that at the end was the base plan that forced the park to go into the table of negotiations.

Amb. Ferrero: [00:10:33] Alberto being being a humble man in a good way is downplaying a little bit the role that he played in this, not just as the overall author of the effort, but also his background as someone with very close associations with the United States over the years, going to various US schools, going to the Ranger school where he was, I think, the first international student to be the distinguished honor graduate at Ranger School. He knew the way the US military dealt with these issues and so then was able to translate those and explain those to US military US security officials in a way that was very, very comprehensible. First time I met Alberto was in 2009 at the Colombian residence here, where he came to brief Espinar and he and his team set up a PowerPoint. He went through in an hour, probably 200 slides in just this incredibly efficient, compelling, informative way. It was probably the best PowerPoint presentation I've ever seen. And so I complimented him afterwards and he said, Oh, well, thanks very much. That's great. You know, the whole deck is 2000 slides. Oh, okay. Well, thanks for sparing us that.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:11:45] Well, I wanted to ask Kevin to follow up that the US obviously helped to equip and train both the Colombian police and the Colombian military over the years. But how specifically did US assistance help them carry out the Sword of Honour campaign?

Amb. Ferrero: [00:11:59] In answering this, I think it's really important to underline that as important as our support was on the military side, it was the overall US support to Colombian institutionality the institutions of government which were so central to our overall success in Colombia. And I'm going to talk about the military part, but I just wanted to lay that marker down. I'll mention two particular areas where our engagement, I think was particularly helpful. One is on the intelligence side. There's a huge amount of information that was collected. We collected a lot of information. You'll recall, Deborah, I know in 2005, I believe it was a US aircraft was downed in Colombia and there were three American hostages as part of the effort to get our hostages back. There was an enormous amount of intelligence that was collected. And so permitting the Colombians to have access to that information that we developed, I think was very useful to them. The second point is just air mobility. In 2000, when Plan Colombia was initiated, I think that Colombia had something less than two dozen functional helicopters. And by the time I was there, that number was like 190. Almost all of them were modern American aircraft, most of them Blackhawks. The ability to project force, which is associated with having those helicopters, was one of the critical elements in the ultimate Colombian success.

Gen. Mejia: [00:13:20] And I would like to add that apart from from those systems that, of course, strengthen the capabilities of our military. Robert, all of this really started with Plan Colombia years before in the year 2000. So Plan Colombia was the perfect approach to put together these building blocks in order to develop those capabilities. Can we mention, of course, Army aviation intelligence? And I would like to add the huge efforts in trying to create world class special operation forces, but also the ability for the. Colombian air force to use precise bombing munitions, especially against high value targets. But to be the one topic that is very, very dear to our heart is the axis that the US planners have to their professional military education system. The people that helped me to create a sort of order. Most of them graduated from a US Army CUC, the School of Advanced Military Studies, SAMS, The US Army War College. As a matter of fact, this strategy of seeing for the first time the fark as a system of systems was as a matter of fact, the thesis that I wrote while was studying at the US Army War College.

Amb. Ferrero: [00:14:51] Just an additional comment. You know, Deborah, you and I both worked on Central America back in the late 80s and early, early 90s. And so you're aware of this phenomenon where the question of US military advisers was really at the center of especially congressional and media inquiry in Vietnam in the 1960s. Our presence there, which ended up being a half a million soldiers, started with advisors. And so when El Salvador came around in the late 80 seconds, there was a deep concern on the part of our congressional oversight that that same thing might happen again. So there were limits put on the numbers of advisors that could be there at any particular time that carried through with Plan Colombia. It illustrates two things. One, the durability of certain notions in the US government that the question of the number of advisors is really key, but also the fact that there were actually so few US military advisors points out that this was really a Colombian effort that was designed by Colombians with some assistance from the United States, obviously, but but really something that was intrinsically Colombian.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:15:56] Well, I wanted to move now to the peace discussions. After a series of exploratory meetings, peace talks between the FARC and the Santos administration began in Norway in 2012. They then moved to Cuba, where an estimated 50 rounds were held over the next four years. Key issues discussed, which led to agreements over the period, including one land use and rural development to the FARC political participation after disarmament. Three illicit crops and drug trafficking. Fourth, victims, reparations and transitional justice. Fifth, the demobilization and disarmament of the FARC. And six mechanisms to implement and monitor the peace agreement. It was a monumental task. During the negotiations, the counterinsurgency plan proceeded and FARC leaders were killed. The FARC also conducted ambushes and bombings, killing soldiers, policemen and ordinary citizens. In addition, in 2014, there were new parliamentary and presidential elections. General, if I could start with you. What was the reaction of the officer corps and the rank and file to the negotiations? And did it change over time?

Gen. Mejia: [00:17:05] At the very beginning, it was very difficult for us to learn about these political negotiations, especially when your forces, you you military's been successful in the battlefield. You all really want to hear, right? It was very hard. It was very hard to swallow for the institutions because after six decades of conflict, it is very, very easy to learn to hate your enemy. So many tragic things happened. So many losses in thousands killed in action, amputees, more than 12,000. So it was very difficult moment for all of us. But without a doubt, it is important to understand that we work under a democracy. There is civilian control over the military. And in those moments, to me, what is very critical is for our institutions to have an open, transparent and informed leadership in order to maintain discipline and to maintain the focus in everything we are doing. President Santos, in my opinion, gave us two very critical mandates. One side, he told us to keep the top tempo of military operation as if there were no political negotiations. And we will negotiate politically as if there were no military operations. And that's what we did. He was difficult at the beginning, but we really move into that direction. And the second political mandate that he told us is that he gave us five very specific red lines that the process that his negotiators will never cross.

Gen. Mejia: [00:18:52] So those lines, for example, did the protection of a military organization and doctrine, the protection of our economic and social systems, among others, were crucial mandates from the president that in a way let us work with discipline and with a special concentration in our operations. President Santos include two very experienced and prestigious generals as plenipotentiary negotiators and that decision was very significant. The General Mora and General Naranjo were there in Cuba for years protecting Colombia, protecting the negotiation itself at that, make us feel safer. At the same time, the president allowed the military to participate in the DDR, demobilization, disarmament and reintegration of these guerrillas through what is called a military technical commission of very well prepared and personnel that during all this time was also dealing with the fact and negotiating then with our longstanding enemy of older than six decades. Over time, support and perceptions were changing, especially because the process was long and very complicated. The leaders in charge had to be in a constant process of assessment of the situation, assessment of conduct morale in order to protect the commitment of our forces and in protecting the all of our national territory.

Amb. Ferrero: [00:20:41] Alberto's last point is that the very length of the negotiations, they actually started in a secret phase in 2010, public phase 2012, and finally agreed to in 2016. The very length of the negotiations created a sense of frustration. You know, it just was going on forever and nothing was really happening except the war was continuing to go on. Alberto, I'm sure you will remember, I believe it was April of 2016, there was a terrible incident involving the deaths of a couple of dozen of Colombian troopers in Buenos Aires. It really brought to the fore if a Colombian army troops are going to be killed in such numbers as this with people that were supposedly negotiating with what's really the point of it. And it was really a crisis moment in the discussions. And it's a tribute to the leadership of the Colombian armed forces, including, of course, the then commanding general of the armed forces, General Mejia, that he maintained the cohesion and the obedience, the obedience of the armed forces to the elected leadership.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:21:42] Well, I wanted to ask about the US involvement in these peace negotiations, which were Colombian peace negotiations in 2015 under President Obama. The US appointed a special envoy to the negotiations, our former boss, Bernie Aronson. Bernie Aronson in the early 90 seconds had helped broker an agreement that ended El Salvador's 12 year war between the government and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, the FMLN. What was the US involvement before this appointment and when? Bernie Aronson came in. What was his role.

Amb. Ferrero: [00:22:18] In 2010 when the discussions began? And they were secret from the Colombian public presence? Santos informed our ambassador at the time, who was Mike McKinley, and it was really at that moment that the Colombian side requested some kind of accompaniment from the United States, requested a senior personage, someone to be there. And I will say I actually opposed that at that time. And the reason why was it was my view that if a senior US government official were physically present there, the FARC would not be able to restrain itself from making requests for which the United States had responsibility to it. Extradition and eradication. Extradition of Colombians who violate US law has been a critical component of Plan Colombia. There was something like 50 FARC leaders who were under indictment at that time. And again, I didn't think the FARC could restrain themselves from trying to put that on the table and making that an issue in the negotiations. The FARC had long opposed coca eradication, especially aerial eradication or fumigation, as they call it, in Colombia, and they would have put that on the table as well. So my view is, let us hold off on this for now. In December of 2014, Secretary Kerry came down and at a particular meeting, the two principal negotiators for Colombia, Humberto De la Calle and Sergio Jaramillo, specifically asked him, We need somebody, we need a US representative.

Amb. Ferrero: [00:23:45] And in a very John Kerry like way immediately on the spot said, sure, of course we'll do that. And so Roberta Jacobson and I then assistant secretary and I came up with the idea of Bernie. Bernie was perfect for the job because of his demeanor, because of his background, because of his intelligence, his wisdom. I'll mention two things that I thought were very important on Bernie's side is he made clear in his first intervention with the FARC that there are two clocks going on now. This is again, it's 2014. Santos has just been re-elected. There are elections in 2018. There are US elections in 2016. And so what Bernie said is. There are two clocks. One is your electoral calendar and the other is ours. We don't know who's going to be elected in Colombia, and we certainly don't know who's going to be elected in the United States. His point was you really need to get to work on this now. The second thing that Bernie did, because Bernie, at least in my understanding, he wasn't negotiating. He wasn't suggesting proposals, but his mere presence there and his engagement as issues were discussed helped provide a sense of accompaniment and comfort, really to both sides. It was less in serving an active, positive role and more simply by being there as as a presence, which really made a difference.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:25:05] The final full peace agreement was signed in August 2016. It was submitted to popular ratification in October of that year and was rejected with 50.2% voting against. The next month, following discussions among the FARC, the government and the parties that supported a no vote, a revised agreement was signed between the government and the FARC. This agreement was submitted to the Congress for approval and passed with no dissenting votes. So my question is, why did the people of Colombia reject the initial accord and what were the key amendments that had to be made to the agreement?

Amb. Ferrero: [00:25:41] My belief is that at the time, most people thought that the accord would the plebiscite would succeed actually by double digit margins. All of the polling indicated that it was way ahead in that sense. It seemed a foregone conclusion at that point. And so that may have held down turnout. Another factor was that there was actually a pretty significant tropical storm on the north coast on the day of the vote, and that probably held down turnout as well. The no team, the team that urged voting against the plebiscite also rolled out a number of arguments which were at the time and later profoundly questioned, including that, for example, that the accord included gender components which were not consistent with Colombian culture. It was an enormous surprise to, I think, the majority of the Colombian people. President Uribe, who led the opposition, had said three days before the vote that he expected to lose. So I think it was a surprise to him as well. And I can assure you it was a surprise to me in the embassy.

Gen. Mejia: [00:26:43] The country was divided for this peace process. Our society was 50% in favor, 50% acid. People against had, of course, total distrust of the FARC. They were not willing to accept that in these kind of processes, there was a political justice that differs from the judicial one that was appealed very hard to swallow for most Colombians. People in favor accepted the sacrifice of justice for peace. In the end, political polarization and a harsh rivalry became the cover. The denominator of our recent political life disrupted. In a way, our path towards development and stronger democracy is what mentioned that media and social media also played key roles in the public perception of the peace process. Fake news, both in support and against the agreement was also widely spread.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:27:55] I wanted to move now to the implementation of the peace accord. Though the responsibility for the implementation lies with the government of Colombia, it must be noted that the international community has been involved. Cuba and Norway, for example, served as facilitators and are also the guarantors. The United Nations oversees monitoring compliance under a special UN resolution. As I noted, the agreement consisted of six parts. Now, each of these could be a podcast on its own, so I wanted to focus on a few of the sub accords, namely the ones on demobilization, transitional justice and shifting agriculture away from coca cultivation. General, per the agreement, FARC members had to move into transitory delineated special zones, a process monitored by the Colombian government and the UN. What was the role of the Colombian military in this process?

Gen. Mejia: [00:28:53] We were in charge. The current site of this operation. During the whole process, the FARC was very, very active in mentioning that they will never allow the Colombian military to provide protection, to gain the weapons, to protect their concentration sites, etcetera. At the end. They ask for the Colombian military to do this operation. So in a way, we feel proud being able to serve our country in this way and to prove that we have the moral high ground to move this operation forward. Intelligence was vital because we had to organize the protection of what we call humanitarian mobility corridors and the pre-concentration sites. So that by itself was the first phase of this big operation. Pre plebiscite. After the plebiscite, the results were negative. Of course, we were with the FARC in some areas moving through these corridors and also many of them around 10,000 already in the concentration sites. So, so it was a huge challenge because by losing the plebiscite, the military got caught in the middle of this very difficult situation. After the process was finally approved by Congress and signed, we had responsibility to protect the FARC in 26. It's called ETCRs Territorial Spatial concentration sites. Our approach was to train, certify, and we did a special vetting process to give this responsibility to 26 light infantry battalions. When we were doing this psychological interviews, we found soldiers that were members of these battalions that, for example, their families were killed years ago by FARC. These battalions were trained and especially certified.

Gen. Mejia: [00:31:09] We work very closely with the United Nations, with the Organization of American States. At the same time, the locations of these areas was a very big challenge. Most of them were located in very, very difficult areas in which, for example, we had to provide some support to fix mobility corridors and roads within our military engineers. We need to protect supply lines to help the logistics with our transportation capabilities and also a very, very big effort in humanitarian demining operations. Worth mentioning here that with the support of the US and especially very important philanthropists want to order Today with a Howard Buffett, we were able to create the first of his class in the world, a humanitarian demining brigade. With the latest equipment. Close to 8000 personnel spread in different parts of Colombia helped these rural communities to get rid of these improvised prosthetic devices. Are we moment in? The whole process was very important and in a way it helps to create confidence in the process. And also it helps to send this message to the FAQ that they were being literally protected by also supported by very professional forces that were following a very special government mandate. We had also a complementary operation in which we had the responsibility after having close conversations with Fart to go to more than 1000 places of Colombia after their logistical caches in which they had, you know, thousands of ammunitions, explosives and unconventional weapons.

Amb. Ferrero: [00:33:16] Let me touch on the counter-narcotics alternative development and the special jurisdiction for peace and the concerns that existed on the part of the United States at that time. Obviously, as you said, Deborah, part of the reason that Plan Colombia was conceived was because of the very high amount of coca cocaine, which was coming out of Colombia. The FARC, as I mentioned earlier, was quite insistent on ending aerial eradication of coca, which was a very effective tool. It was also quite controversial. I think that's that's fair to say. Not only the FARC, but others believed that aerial eradication needed to end with that being ended. The notion of the government and something that's really embedded in the texture of the accord is that, yes, eradication, including aerial eradication, including any involuntary eradication, will ultimately need to cease. And what needs to happen is as a form of voluntary eradication, where individuals who are now coca cultivators will eradicate their own coca and move into transition to alternative development. That sounds terrific and is incredibly difficult to do. As a practical matter, there's very little connectivity. Infrastructure problems are enormous and critically a very large number, certainly more than half, probably three quarters or 80% of the families that are involved in coca are actually forced to grow coca by one armed group or another, including the FARC. And so their free will is really not on the table here.

Amb. Ferrero: [00:34:47] Our concern and my concern as ambassador was that while the theory of how coca cultivation would be brought down made good sense and actually was probably the ultimate right answer, getting there would be extraordinarily difficult. And in the meantime, what we could see is a dramatic increase in coca production and right now as we sit here, there is about the same amount of coca in Colombia now as there was when Plan Colombia was started. That's multi-causal. But those are the facts, as they call it, the special jurisdiction for peace, which because it's Zona especial para la Paz, so everybody called it the hep. And I will do here. The hep was controversial with certain elements in Colombia, including those on the no side of the vote in the plebiscite. And their principal concern was that it was too easy on the FARC because even those individuals who were accused and admitted their involvement in gross violations of human rights, violations of international humanitarian law would only face up to 6 to 8 years in some kind of confinement, assuming they met other conditions. And so that was part of their concern. The concern that we in the government had had to do with judicial processing of individuals who violated US law. It was very clear to me from the beginning that the notion of the government and the FARC was that any individuals who submitted themselves to the HEP would therefore not be eligible for extradition, that the Colombian government would not move forward on extradition requests.

Amb. Ferrero: [00:36:23] With respect to those people, I understand that viewed from this distance, it makes a certain amount of sense. But the US judicial system stands on its own When an indictment is handed down by a grand jury. The existence or non-existence of a peace accord in another country is not material. It really came to a head in a particular incident. An individual who was a senior member of the FARC and actually on the negotiating team, a fellow called Jesus Santrich, was found by a grand jury in the United States to have continued to engage in narcotics trafficking after the signing of the accord. Actually, it was mere weeks after the signing of the accord. And so when we sought his extradition, which is again, the normal functioning of the US judicial system, the normal functioning of the US-Colombia extradition relationship. It did cause deep concerns among those who favored the accord, even those who didn't favor the accord. They had their own views on the matter of Jesus and treat. That was a bit our involvement on the on the hep, the so-called hep and on the counter-narcotics side.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:37:29] Since the 2016 agreement was signed, there have been two more presidential elections in Colombia. In 2018, President Duque was elected in 2022, President Petro. In March 2019, the Duke government vetoed six of the 159 articles that make up the law governing the peace accord, mostly related to the transitional justice mechanism you were just talking about. Those vetoes were overridden, however, in the Colombian Congress and the Constitutional Court affirmed the validity of the original accord provisions. So my question is, what changes did the Duke administration seek and what was that administration's record on implementing the peace accord?

Amb. Ferrero: [00:38:12] We had we the United States, had a specific concern because that HEP law would have required the US to provide all of the evidence with respect to individuals sought an extradition. That is not the way extradition works. In extradition, the requesting party provides legal documentation that a court in that country has found that there's reason to believe that a crime has been committed. The requested state is requested is to verify that and decide whether to extradite the person. They can do it or not. But we cannot and would not provide the information. There were other concerns related to the question of those who violated international humanitarian law and what their treatment would be going forward. Ultimately, the HEP was able to move forward on the basis of the original law. However, it has been somewhat controversial in succeeding days. I think based on this continuing concern that those who violate international humanitarian law would be given lighter treatment and also perhaps some concern that state actors would be more victimized or looked at with greater focus than FARC violators.

Gen. Mejia: [00:39:26] Talking about the transit from the President Santos to President Bush's administration. Of course, they are from two different political perspectives. So President Duque's party and his government oppose in many ways the process that was him. President Duque stress that the peace process his government  inherited was fragile due to the lack of funds and a complex institutional architecture that was created. As you can imagine, after the peace process, new institutions were created. They today belong and are part of our constitutional mandate. For example, the head, our transitional justice system, our country has been very active in trying to get financial support from the international community, but still a very big challenge. I would like to to mention that even though he has been criticized, President Duque, a support the victims which are there at center stage of this peace process by moving from three connected mechanisms to 15 and resulted in the reparation of more than 500,000 Colombians. Reparations to victims is very, very important and a vital part of the process the ship works in in four focal points. Truth, justice, reparation and guarantee of no repetition proceed to also build up the regulatory framework for the election of 16 members of the Committee of Victims for Congress.

Gen. Mejia: [00:41:13] And they achieved the largest numbers of land restitution to victims in the last decades. He moved plants for territorial development with basic services, infrastructure and the requirement to implement projects and helped push forward integral rural reform. With more than 50,000 rural titles assigned with pilot credits in support of rural communities. Of course, if you ask, for example, the actual government, the federal organization alone, they are going to say that it was not enough and that the person didn't push in the right direction in order to implement the agreement. The process is going to take decades, at least two decades. So the ability for governments to implement what was written in the peace process is difficult, is complicated, and probably resources will dictate, you know, not only priorities, but also the speed in which our democracy can move this forward. And that is why the new challenge of Pakistan or total peace. Is even more difficult to do to achieve.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:42:38] Well, I wanted to get to that because we have President Petro, who was just elected, is seeking to implement a total peace program. You just mentioned, General, to end violence by armed groups, increase investment in areas ravaged by conflict and reform the military and the police. The government, as I understand it, plans to negotiate with the ELN as well as with other illegal, violent armed groups. So my question to both of you is what effect will this new program have on the implementation of the 2016 peace agreement?

Amb. Ferrero: [00:43:09] From my perspective, Paz Total is very Colombian notion that we're going to have a single approach to solve all of the problems. And in fact, that was really embedded in the FARC peace accord, that this was going to be a comprehensive solution to all rural problems, to the problems of insurgency. As a practical matter, just as General Mejia was mentioning, it is such a large country and so complex. The problems are so embedded, the culture of violence and illegality is so strong and so durable over decades. While I very much applaud the ambition of trying to solve everything everywhere, all at once, my concern is that that's too big a lift. There are two aspects in particular which caused me to be particularly questioning. One is that groups which are purely criminal in nature, which have no political agenda, are meant to be included in this and meant, as I understand it, to benefit from the provisions of transitional justice. Just as Alberto laid out, this has been consistent with the FARC accord. An individual comes in, admits their guilt, agrees never to do it again, agrees to make reparations to the victims. They will only serve a limited sentence. They won't serve the full sentence as required under Colombian law. The problem with engaging with individuals who have no political agenda is that the illegal economies will continue to exist.

Amb. Ferrero: [00:44:37] And so therefore, the possibility that those illegal economies will simply recur with different people in charge is very, very high. And so that is a profound concern. Additionally, there were some members of the FARC who signed the accord or agreed to the terms of the accord and then went back to their criminal ways. These are known, as I understand it, in Colombia now as the FARC mafia. Those individuals are meant as well to be included in this total discussion. The problem here is if a sovereign state sets down the law saying this is the deal, and if you take this deal, all these benefits will accrue. And if you refuse the deal or if you agree to the deal and then renege on it, then the full weight of the government will descend upon you. And then you decide not to do that. You have undercut the ability of the government to credibly argue for the use of the stick in this carrot and stick world that is created by these discussions. And so therefore, it is a matter of some concern, I think, for those of us who care about Colombia and care about Colombia's stability.

Gen. Mejia: [00:45:42] The total price is strategy, of course, is at the center stage of President Petro's administration. As a matter of fact, I'm working right now with the US Institute of Peace in trying to put together the lessons learned and of all the experiences of what we did with the FARC in order to facilitate what occurred very soon. But the total peace concept in general is quite, quite difficult to achieve. On one side, it is important to tell our audience that the people that is going to be part of this process, that there are only two different legal umbrellas. On one side, you have the international humanitarian law. That was one of the key aspects during the FARC negotiation that will only cover the ELN and the members of Ex-FARC that did not sign the peace agreements. On the other side are the rest of these groups proclaimed Club El Golfo to Caldera Gramin parliamilitary forces, especially those members of Ex-FARC. That signed the agreements, but after that, they went back into becoming narco traffickers. They cannot be under the umbrella of international humanitarian law. The negotiation with them is not a political, but only a judicial. So you have two kinds of negotiation, a political one with ELN and ex-members FARC of the didn't sign. And the other conversation, which is mainly a collective surrender and be working benefits for our paramilitaries, assessors and groups like that.

Gen. Mejia: [00:47:43] This by itself is a huge problem because the government has to do negotiations at different levels when different groups with different agendas, which is very complicated, would like to mention that delete with the ELN is of course more and more complex. A very important portion. I would say 60, 80 or more percent of the airline structures under command and control structures are located in in Venezuela. So so that by itself is a big challenge for Colombia. On the other side, politically, we have now very big political friction between people saying that former members of faction that signed the agreements and went back into narco trafficking, such as Ivan Marquez, they cannot go back to do political negotiations, of course, to agree with that. And that today is an area of huge concern in Colombia, many at the same time that this very complex negotiation is happening with more than 50 different groups with different sizes, even urban meaning cartels. The government is moving into the Congress. Very important. Reforms in many areas of government. So reforms for taxes, political reform, education, judicial health and many other reforms. So all these reforms. A startup use in general, create a sense of mistrust or gloom, insists a sense of worthiness.

Gen. Mejia: [00:49:44] Narcotrafficking continues to be the common denominator of these efforts. As long as we still have one single plant of coca in Colombia, there won't be peace because these people, they will continue to have the resources, they will continue to have a access to weapons, etcetera, and they will continue to threaten those rural communities of Colombia. At the same time, we are not pushing forward in eradication and in doing the necessary interdiction against narco trafficking and other capabilities after Plan Colombia diminishing, of course, we don't have a the necessary tools to keep the tempo that we need against narco trafficking. So the a very complex situation. And that is why, in my opinion, we need to help our government to do good in what they can really achieve for the good of Colombia, for example, tackling our social problems and inequality. We are with with that. At the same time, we need to be very, very clear that we cannot let narco trafficking drugs. Because the impact of our national security in the years to come couldn't bring Colombia back ten, 15 years in in the security that we have been able to achieve.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:51:29] I want to thank you, gentlemen. This has been a fantastic, interesting discussion on the achievements and the challenges of one of our closest allies. I really appreciate you sharing your experience and your knowledge with our listeners, for it is an extremely complex situation where there's a lot at stake for both countries. Thank you, General. Thank you, Ambassador. Thank you, Alberto. Thank you, Kevin, for participating in the General and the Ambassador. I really appreciate it. This has been a new episode in the series, The General and the Ambassador. Thank you for listening. Our series is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy. This podcast was produced with the support of the Fletcher School Global Master of Arts Program. The program allows career executives to earn an executive master of leadership in global affairs in one year without leaving the workforce. You can find our podcasts on all major podcast sites as well as on our website, GeneralAmbassadorPodcast.Org. We welcome all input and suggestions and you can email us directly at General.Ambassador.podcast@gmail.com. Thank you for listening.