2025-01-23
7 分钟Colombia has declared a state of emergency.
Dozens of civilians have been injured in the violence and thousands displaced.
They tied me up and they tied up my friend.
Back in 2016, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded that year's Nobel Peace Prize to Colombia's then president Juan Manuel Santos, heralding, quote, his his resolute efforts to bring the country's more than 50 year long civil war to an end.
A war that has cost the lives of at least 220,000 Colombians and displaced close to 6 million people.
The citation noted correctly that peace in Colombia was not quite a done deal.
Colombia's people had narrowly rejected in a referendum the peace agreement President Santos proposed, perhaps unwilling to forgive quite so quickly the pestilential narco gap which had wrought such terror.
Big majority of the FARC members are now.
Nevertheless, negotiations continued and hands were eventually shaken.
And if you'd like to hear President Santos talk more about how he did it, you are commended to episode 343 of the Foreign Des.
I had told the FARC, the rules of the game is there's no ceasefire.
We continue the war until we have an agreement.
And episode 142 of the Big interview.
The adversaries, you beat them, but you have to be able to realize that they are going to be your partners, your citizens with whom you have to live with for the rest of your life if you want peace.
However, as events this week have wretchedly demonstrated, peace in Colombia remains a not altogether realised ambition.
In northeastern Colombia, at least 100 people have been killed and tens of thousands displaced by renewed fighting.
Colombia's current president, Gustavo Petro, himself a former teenage guerrilla with the group known as M19, has declared what he's quaintly entitled state of internal commotion.
Less delicately, President Petro has said of the guerrillas chiefly responsible for this latest violence that they had, quote, chosen the path of war and war they will have.
At which point, time to meet the protagonists.
The group chiefly responsible for the latest violence are the Ejacito de Liberacion Nacional, or National Liberal Liberation army, generally known as the ELN.