Brewing Troubles in Colombia, With Roxanna Vigil

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox. I'm Jim Lindsay, the Mary and David Boies Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is Brewing Troubles in Colombia.

With me to discuss rising political violence in Colombia, Latin America's third most populous country, and its consequences for the Andean region and beyond is Roxanna Vigil. Roxanna is an international affairs fellow in national security at the Council. Her research focuses on post-conflict reconciliation using Colombia's Commission for Truth, Coexistence, and Non-Repetition as a case study. Before joining the council, Roxanna served as a senior sanctions policy advisor at the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. Before that, she served as a director for Andean affairs at the National Security Council, where she handled foreign policy and national security issues for Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. At the Treasury, she also led the U.S. delegation to the Financial Action Task Force of Latin America. Roxanna, thank you for coming on the President's Inbox.

VIGIL:
Thank you, Jim.

LINDSAY:
In recent weeks I have been reading a lot, Roxanna, about growing political violence in Colombia. That's why I wanted to have you on and have a chat, and get a sense about the direction the country is headed as it goes into next May's presidential election. I'll note that in June, a Colombian senator was holding a rally in Bogota, he was shot in the head. He regrettably succumbed to his wounds in August, and just a few weeks ago rebels shot down a police helicopter, detonated a car bomb killing I think at least nineteen people. Can you give me a sense of what's happening on the ground in Colombia today?

VIGIL:
Yes, you're right, Jim. There has been what seems to be trends going in the wrong direction in Colombia. So, on the one hand you have Colombia, that in 2016 brokered a peace deal with the FARC guerrillas, the largest, most established guerrilla group in Colombia, and that for a while, a short time brought a lot of those violence indicators down. That of course is from the peak, very high numbers of deaths and kidnappings and forced displacement of people during the peak of the conflict. What we're seeing now is eight years after the signing of those peace accords, those accords are still being implemented. But what we're seeing is a change in the nature of violence in Colombia from more widespread throughout the nation to focus on certain areas where the FARC vacated and new groups, and some existing groups, filled that space in Columbia. What they're after is drug trafficking routes as well as coca cultivation areas that is then used to produce cocaine. Some of those rising indicators include kidnapping, extortion, forced displacement, recruitment, including the recruitment of children. So really, really troubling trends.

LINDSAY:
Okay, I'm glad you mentioned the 2016 peace deal that was struck between the Colombian government and the rebel group known as the FARC. It was portrayed at the time as historic, It was an effort to end essentially a half-century long civil war, but it's not clear that Colombians were unified on the terms of the peace agreement. I recall that Iván Duque, who was president of Columbia from 2018 to 2022, actually campaigned against the agreement, and my understanding is that Columbia's highest court ruled that he had to implement it because it had been enacted and signed properly. So, give me a sense of what it is about the peace agreement in 2016 that has left many Colombians disappointed, but also as I understand it led to a fracturing in the biggest rebel group, the FARC, with at least six thousand or so basically dissenting from the agreement and continuing to carry out activities.

VIGIL:
So you're right, the 2016 peace accords were pretty contentious in Columbia.

LINDSAY:
They lost it at public referendum—

VIGIL:
Correct.

LINDSAY:
... and the government went back and renegotiated, couldn't take it to a vote and just had it passed through the Colombian coffers.

VIGIL:
That's correct, it's really important to look at the margins though of that referendum. It lost by very thin margin, and it's also important to look at where the deal had support and where it didn't. The urban areas were the ones that voted against the deal, overwhelmingly. The rural areas voted overwhelmingly in support of the deal where the violence was concentrated and the communities that were most affected by the violence—

LINDSAY:
Those people who were feeling it voted for peace.

VIGIL:
Exactly. Colombians in general, at least polls show, they support peace. They believe that peace negotiations are the way to end these conflicts versus a military confrontation. The difference here, the contention comes into play when it's the details. One of the most controversial aspects of the deal was related to transitional justice.

LINDSAY:
What does transitional justice means? I know it's popular among our set to talk about transitional justice, what does it mean in practice?

VIGIL:
In practice it means it's a recognition that the ordinary justice system is not going to be able to, for many different reasons, prosecute and put all the people that committed war crimes into jail. Part of a negotiation means that both sides are going to get some of the things that they want, but both sides are going to get some of the things that they don't want. That's the nature of a compromise. Part of the compromise in the Colombian deal was what the details of transitional justice was going to mean. What were the FARC members that were demobilizing, what kind of justice were they going to face? The way that the transitional justice system in Colombia was set up, it essentially has three arms. One, it is an arm that is essentially a war crimes tribunal that is looking at some of the most emblematic crimes that were committed during the war, and they've done it in groups.
So, there's eleven cases that they're looking at, thousands of victims in many of the cases. Those FARC former combatants that have come forward and admitted to their crimes are going to get a more lenient sentencing. And this also, by the way, some of the perpetrators were military officials, so they're involved in the group of perpetrators of war crimes. Those that have not admitted or are not admitting to the war crimes that they're being accused of will then go through an adversarial process in a trial. It's been several years, the war crimes tribunal has been working for many years on these cases, many indictments, many accused coming forward admitting to their crimes, including in front of the surviving victims or the survivors.
Later this year you are going to have the first sentences be issued by this war crimes tribunal, and there is still a question of what will that sentence be? What will justice look like for those that committed these crimes? It won't be what you get in the traditional justice system, it won't be the very long time in jail. So far, what we know is there'll be some form of restriction of freedom. It's not clear what that means and it's not clear how long that will be for.

LINDSAY:
So, I take it that a question is going to run through all of this is essentially one of fairness, are the right people being punished adequately for their crimes? But it sounds as if Colombians don't necessarily agree on what constitutes fairness. Is that a fair reading?

VIGIL:
I think that's fair. Colombians want justice, and it is in the context of a negotiation that also means compromise. So, that's really where the tension was with regard to that particular aspect of the peace deal. Another controversial aspect was how the FARC ex-combatants would be integrated into the political life of Colombia.

LINDSAY:
Okay. And I should say that the Colombians are not the first or only people to face these challenges. Every country I can think of that has had a civil war has at the end had to confront the question of what do you do to try to bind your country back together, and that can lead you to make choices or forgive crimes that for many people are unforgivable.

VIGIL:
Correct. And then just really quickly, the other two arms of the transitional justice system in Columbia, which is innovative and ambitious for a comprehensive peace agreement, one is the Truth Commission, which you mentioned, and a very detailed accounting of what happened during that fifty-plus-year war, who were the perpetrators, and then really allowing the Colombian people to tell their story and the surviving victims. And then, the other arm of it is a unit that has been set up to search for those who were forcibly disappeared. There are over a hundred-thousand people in Columbia that have been registered as forcibly disappeared, and that touches on both of the other arms, which is Colombians want to know what happened to their loved ones. Many of them still don't know. And so, this is part of what it means to implement this peace deal and to give those victims some form of truth.

LINDSAY:
I mentioned that President Duque came into office as a critic of the deal, but he was forced to abide by the law and to implement it. How enthusiastic was he in doing it? Did he go ahead and apply all of his political talents to making sure the peace agreement worked, or did he try to rewrite it or abandon parts of it?

VIGIL:
So, he was not able to abandon or rewrite it because of the limitations placed by the constitutional court. The implementation of the peace deal has been slow and uneven. It is an ambitious deal, it seeks to address some of those structural problems within Colombian society that have led to—

LINDSAY:
What would those be?

VIGIL:
So those include inequality, a lack of state presence in the countryside. It includes the drug problem. Colombia is the number one producer of cocaine in the world—

LINDSAY:
A lot of it comes to the United States, but a lot of it goes to the rest of the world. I keep reading that Europe has a growing problem with cocaine.

VIGIL:
Absolutely, it does. It's not just Europe, it's also Asia, Africa, and South America is a growing market for cocaine. So, the peace deal is extremely comprehensive.

LINDSAY:
Well, I can see that that would be a problem because my understanding is that some of the issues involved in the peace deal include land redistribution, and regardless of the countries I've studied, when you start talking about redistributing land that means winners and losers, and that's always controversial.

VIGIL:
Absolutely. And to your point of how well the administration inherited the deal, implemented it, the deal has met some serious challenges. Part of it is yes, it is an ambitious deal, but part of it is also political will. And so, as it stands right now, the deal is facing some real challenges in being able to meet the commitments that were made, and fully implement it by the deadline, which is in about six years from now.

LINDSAY:
I'll note that disappointment can be a very powerful force in politics. If people think they're going to get something and don't get it, it can really change their politics. But I mentioned Gustavo Petro, who is the current president of Colombia. He was elected in 2022. I'll note that he is Colombia's first leftist president. When he was a teenager he joined a guerrilla group, I think it was called the 19th of April Movement. He spent some time in jail in the 1980s, eventually became involved in Colombian politics. As you alluded to a moment ago, he was a fan of the peace deal and he wanted to move forward with rapidly going forward with its various implementation steps. I guess he called it his total peace approach. How has that worked?

VIGIL:
So, in addition to campaigning for the peace deal, Petro won the presidency by promising more peace. Even though the 2016 peace accords ended one part of the conflict, it did not end the entire conflict because there are still armed groups in Colombia active today, and of course organized criminal groups that are active in Colombia. So, the Total Peace policy was really focused on additional negotiations with the various active groups in Colombia, and we're talking about a lot of groups. There's up to nine negotiation tables that have been part of the Total Peace deal, it's been a big challenge. What we're seeing is that the armed groups that have been part of some of these negotiating tables have not been negotiating in good faith and have exploited the negotiating table to consolidate their own power, including territorial expansion in Colombia and competition with other groups over coca cultivation areas and drug trafficking routes.

LINDSAY:
Okay. So, help me understand a little bit more about the other side of the negotiating table. I don't want to go through all nine groups, but let's talk about three of them. One would be the dissident rump members of the FARC. Another would be a group called the ELN, and a third is a group known as the Clan del Golfo, which I understand is a transnational criminal organization. Now, help me understand each of these, because I'm not so sure that rebel group transnational criminal organization, it really sort of captures it or that the boundaries are that cut and dry.

VIGIL:
Yes, it is a very complicated security situation in Colombia, so you're right, those are the three most powerful groups in the country right now. The ELN is a long-standing guerrilla group that's been active in Colombia, and it has about six thousand members. The other group, which you mentioned, is the Clan del Golfo, also known as the Gulf Clan, and that has anywhere between six thousand to nine thousand members. And then, the various FARC dissident groups, these are former FARC combatants that did not demobilize with the peace deal and have splintered off into different factions that are still active in Colombia. So, what happened is that when the FARC demobilized in 2016 they vacated the area where they had control, and that presented an opportunity for these groups to enter that territory and—

LINDSAY:
Nature abhors a vacuum.

VIGIL:
Exactly. And so, what you have today is a lot of competition among these three groups, but also other groups fighting with each other to control some of these areas. Drugs is a big driver of the conflict, but it's not just drugs. You also have illegal mining, you have human smuggling, and you have other illicit economies that are at play here that are driving the conflict.

LINDSAY:
Is it the case, Roxanna, you mentioned illegal mining. I have read that Colombia exports more gold each year than its official statistics show it actually producing.

VIGIL:
Yes, that's correct. And it's a significant discrepancy in what they report producing and what is exported. So, that raises the question of this surplus gold, where is it coming from? We think some of it is coming from illegal mining in Colombia, but some of it may also be coming from illegal gold mining in Venezuela that is then smuggled into Colombia to be exported. So, it's absolutely a growing problem, and with the growing price of gold and the fact that gold is a growing export for Colombia, it exacerbates that problem.

LINDSAY:
To go back to the ELF and to the dissident members of the FARC, are they fighting for ideology? Are they fighting for a different vision of Colombia? Or is it merely over territory power, control?

VIGIL:
So, the armed groups in Colombia, play this narco but also guerrilla role. They do have some political ambitions that is part of the negotiations. But a really important point here is looking at what role the 2016 deal plays in the incentives for the ELN and for the FARC dissidents to demobilize. One concerning trend is that over four hundred former FARC combatants that did demobilize and have been working with the government to be reintegrated into society have been killed since the 2016 peace accords. That calls into question the government's commitment to security guarantees that it committed to as part of the deal. The government's ability to follow through on the security guarantees for former FARC combatants is going to be something that the ELN and the FARC dissident groups are going to be looking at closely, because if they see that those guarantees are not materializing, it lowers their incentive to participate in any form of negotiation in a serious way.

LINDSAY:
I would imagine from the perspective of Colombians, they do not want to go back to a raging civil war, just given the level of violence, the number of deaths that occurred over that half century.

VIGIL:
That's right. So, the trends now are going in the wrong direction, and that is concerning. With that said, at the peak of violence during the conflict in Colombia, what you saw was over two-hundred thousand victims who were killed, and thirty-eight thousand victims who were kidnapped, and that was between 1995 and 2004. With regard to forced displacement, the worst year was in 2002, and that was with over seven-hundred thousand victims. We don't need to see those kind of numbers for there to be a significant increase in widespread violence in Colombia. The reality is that in part because of assistance from the United States on security cooperation, Colombia—

LINDSAY:
So-called Plan Colombia.

VIGIL:
That's right, Plan Colombia, which included over ten billion dollars in security assistance to Colombia starting in 2000, and over the course of about fifteen years after that, Colombia was able to go from being the most dangerous country in the world to being much safer with less homicides, less kidnappings. So, those days are behind Colombia. With that said, there are some serious concerns with regard to these trends and with regard to the concentration of violence in some of the areas that were most impacted by the conflict, which continue to be hot spots, because that is where the coca cultivation is located, that is where the drug trafficking routes are located, and where you see some of these other illicit economies.

LINDSAY:
I should note that my former CFR colleague, Paul Angelo, wrote a great book on Plan Colombia and how it was rolled out, what its strengths were and what some of its misses were. I want to talk a little bit more broadly, Roxanna, if we may, about what the events in Colombia might mean for the Andean region. When you look at a map you can see that Colombia borders Venezuela, borders Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Panama. I had our colleague Will Freeman on a while back, and we were talking about Ecuador, and he's noted that crime in Ecuador is up in part because of what's happening in Colombia. It's spilling across the border. If you talk to many of my Colombian friends, they would say Colombia's politics are being shaped by the very large number of Venezuelans who've come to Colombia, fleeing what is happening under the government of President Maduro. So, help me understand what you see happening on the ground in Colombia, what you think it might mean for the region.

VIGIL:
You're absolutely right, there are spillover effects with what's happening in Colombia. The huge increase in coca cultivation and cocaine in Colombia is affecting the region. What we've seen is since 2012 there's been a fivefold increase in coca cultivation, and that trend has continued, and coca cultivation and cocaine production in Columbia has hit record highs. So, not only does that mean that neighboring countries of Columbia are being destabilized because of the competition that is taking place for these drug trafficking routes, but the effect goes beyond that to these emerging markets that you mentioned. Europe is an emerging market for cocaine, Asia is as well, and South America, Brazil and Argentina are significant markets where you're seeing more and more cocaine use. One of the issues that concerns me is also the extent to which some of this can trigger some migration. So, Colombians were the fifth-largest nationality arriving at the southwest border in 2023 with over a hundred-and-fifty thousand encounters at the southwest border that year.
And the other factor here is also Venezuelans living in Columbia. Columbia hosts over three million Venezuelans fleeing the crisis in Venezuela, and our data isn't very good at collecting information on whether Venezuelans that were encountered at the southwest border were coming from Columbia or from Venezuela, or from some other third country, because there are many Venezuelans around the world that have fled Venezuela, and Venezuelans represented the second-largest group of migrants arriving at the southwest border in 2023. So, these are really big questions. Right now encounters are low at the southwest border, but we don't know what kind of effect a destabilizing event or an increase in some of these trends that are going in the wrong direction might have on the calculus of migrants.

LINDSAY:
I should also note that migrants don't only migrate to the United States. There are a number of countries between Columbia and the United States that people can migrate to, and you have potential dislocating effects from that, and the knee bone's connected to the shin bone's connected to the ankle bone—

VIGIL:
Absolutely.

LINDSAY:
... so on and so forth.

VIGIL:
Absolutely, and actually that raises another key concern, which is the Darién Gap. So, this is a jungle that is in between Colombia and Panama, that just a few years ago was not being used by migrants as a transit route, but in the last few years grew to the point where just two years ago you had half a million migrants using that jungle called the Darién Gap to move north.

LINDSAY:
It's quite a dangerous place, is my understanding. This is not a place you would walk through—

VIGIL:
Very dangerous. It's a very dangerous place, not only because of the terrain but because criminal groups saw an opportunity to exploit vulnerable migrants, and that created a whole other set of risks and dangers to migrants. The numbers in the Darién Gap are also down, because of the risk of migration it raises the importance of ensuring that Colombia, our strongest partner in South America and one of our longest-standing partners on security cooperation in the region, as stable as possible and avoiding a turn to resurgence and conflict.

LINDSAY:
You raise the United States, so let's close on that question. What, if anything, is the Donald Trump administration doing with its policy toward Colombia? I mean, this has been a very active administration on lots of fronts. All I've really heard this administration say about Colombia was very early on threatening President Petro with very steep tariffs if he didn't accept Colombian migrants being returned to Colombia. What is the state of U.S.-Colombian relations?

VIGIL:
So Colombia, in addition to being a key security partner that not only has been a very good investment for the United States, because as I mentioned overall they have been able to overcome being the most dangerous country to being in a much better place today, another—

LINDSAY:
It's an example of an American policy that succeeded.

VIGIL:
Absolutely.

LINDSAY:
So, just American foreign policy gets a lot of knocks for failing, here is the case where it worked.

VIGIL:
Absolutely, and it really helped Colombia get to a place where it was able to negotiate with the FARC and secure a comprehensive and ambitious peace deal. The other important factors of the relationship include the economic ties. The United States is Colombia's number one trading partner. Colombia and the United States, in addition to having a really strong trade relationship, the United States has a trade surplus with Colombia to the tune of—

LINDSAY:
We sell them more than we buy from them.

VIGIL:
That's correct—

LINDSAY:
Not a lot of countries on that list, Roxanna.

VIGIL:
No there aren't, and it's to the tune of 1.3 billion dollars last year. So, the Colombian market is extremely important to U.S. exporters, and one of the most important groups of exporters in the United States that will be looking to see the direction of the U.S. government's policy towards Colombia are agricultural exporters, huge agricultural export market for the United States. The other thing I wanted to mention was the presence of U.S. firms in Colombia. There's over six-hundred U.S. firms in Colombia, and that relationship between the private sectors in the United States and Colombia has huge potential for growth if investors feel confident that the security situation will not deteriorate. So. this is another important aspect for why the Trump administration has an opportunity with Colombia to keep that return on investment, make sure Colombia does not go down that path where things are worse, there's more instability, spillover effects, potential migration.

LINDSAY:
Roxanna, let me close out our conversation by coming back to where we began with this question about brewing troubles in Colombia, concerns about the direction the country is headed. At the end of the day as you survey the challenges the country faces, but also understanding the resources it has, the leadership that it has, the desires that Colombians have for peace and not to go back, are you an optimist or a pessimist about where the country's headed?

VIGIL:
Overall I am optimistic. I think that Colombia has overcome a lot in the last thirty years. They have been able to negotiate the demobilization of two large groups, one being a paramilitary group, the other one being the FARC. They've been able to turn significant parts of the country around, and on top of that they have a strong democracy. So, I think this is one of the biggest reasons why I'm optimistic is they've been able to deal with highly-polarized political environment, and yet have been able to overcome some of those differences through their government and through their courts. So, I'm optimistic for the future of Colombia. I do think that the role of the United States is the wild card here because Colombians have chosen the United States as their key partner, and what that means going forward will play a significant role.

LINDSAY:
On that note, I'll close up this episode of The President's Inbox. My guest has been Roxanna Vigil, international affairs fellow in national security here at the Council on Foreign Relations. Roxanna, thank you very much for sharing your time and your expertise with me.

VIGIL:
Thank you, Jim.

LINDSAY:
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