The ELN announces a ceasefire for the end of the year holidays in Colombia

The ELN has announced a unilateral ceasefire for this end of the year in the midst of negotiations with the Colombian government.

The guerrillas offer this goodwill gesture, which will run from the morning of December 24 to January 2, as a sign that this time they seem more willing than ever to reach a peace agreement and demobilize after more than half a century. of armed struggle.

According to the most recent figures from the Army, the ELN had at least 2,350 combatants in 2021 and a notorious presence both in border regions with Venezuela, such as Catatumbo and Arauca, as well as in the departments of Nariño and Chocó, near the Pacific corridor. .

In the video in which the rebels have made the announcement, they emphasize that the measure "only covers the Military and Police Forces", in such a way that they reserve "the right to defend themselves in case they are attacked".

Since the beginning of the talks, the doubt has persisted as to whether some guerrilla fronts that operate with a significant degree of independence will abide by the decisions made by the negotiating leadership that last week concluded the first cycle of talks with the government of Gustavo Petro in Caracas. .

Colombian justice has detected within the ELN six groups of combatants dedicated to drug trafficking and illegal mining who do not usually comply with ceasefires and have no interest in a negotiation process and disarmament.

In the national map of risks due to the presence of the ELN in Colombia that the Ombudsman's Office recently presented, the last active guerrilla in the country "has a presence, is in transit or intermittently" in 22 of the 32 departments, mainly in Norte de Santander - where the Catatumbo region is located -, Chocó, Arauca, Antioquia, Valle del Cauca, Cauca and Nariño.

In Arauca, it maintains a war with the dissidents of the extinct FARC guerrilla that strayed from the peace process – which on more than one occasion has spilled over into neighboring Venezuela – and in Chocó with the Clan del Golfo, the largest group of drug trafficking, which calls itself the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia.

Senator Iván Cepeda, part of the government's negotiating team, received the announcement, despite its unilateral nature, as a "show of good will and contribution to continue building the path of peace in the context of the dialogues that we are carrying out." .

The National Liberation Army has declared unilateral truces on several occasions, as it did in May for the presidential elections, but there is a key precedent regarding a negotiation.

The process with the ELN that began at the end of the Government of Juan Manuel Santos (210-2018), and that the Caracas table proposed to resume from the point where it was suspended during the period of Iván Duque, did not reach a peace agreement, but there was a “bilateral, temporary and national” ceasefire that lasted 101 days.

This partial agreement, reached in September 2017, was the first document ever signed by the ELN with any government, despite the fact that it has sat down to negotiate with almost all of them since the 1980s. Founded in 1964, the ELN was born under the influence of the Cuban revolution and also has Catholic roots, inspired by Liberation Theology.

“This bilateral ceasefire coincided with the visit of Pope Francis to Colombia and it was carried out well, on both sides, as certified by the United Nations, which were the overseers,” highlights Juan Camilo Restrepo, who was then the chief negotiator for the Government of Santos.

An antecedent that can be useful for the new negotiation to advance.

The announcement of the unilateral ceasefire comes after the first cycle of talks, which concluded without reaching the expected bilateral ceasefire after three weeks in Caracas.

While waiting to know the precise dates of the next round of negotiations in January, the delegations have already decided to move to Mexico.

The parties announced humanitarian relief agreements for two specific regions of the Pacific – Bajo Calima, in Valle del Cauca department, and Medio San Juan, in Chocó – although an ELN armed strike in Chocó has clouded those prospects.

At the beginning of the month, President Petro announced another humanitarian agreement on the table, which consists in allowing the Embera indigenous people displaced throughout the country and often forced to beg in the big cities to return to Alto Andágueda,

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