The world is mired in conflicts largely inspired by terrorism of unlimited ruthlessness. There seems no end to the violence which has seen the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocents and, according to the United Nations, the largest ever wave of desperate refugees fleeing the fighting. But there can and will be end to this carnage. One of the longest-running and most brutal insurgencies came to an end this week, after lasting for no less than 52 years. Colombia's FARC guerrillas signed a binding peace deal with the government putting a stop to a conflict, which has cost the lives of 260,000 Colombians and driven no less than six million from their homes. At the signing ceremony, the participants from both sides wore white shirts as a sign of peace. It was an impressive spectacle and it clearly prompted the country's other main guerrilla group, the ELN, to say that it too wanted peace. How these bloody conflicts began all of half a century ago and how they have come to end, surely holds lessons for those other parts of the world presently gripped by violence that seems to have no prospect of a peaceful resolution. In the 1960s, Colombia, like most South American countries was characterized by a huge disparity between a small, super-rich and generally land-owning elite and the majority of the country where poverty, not just in the cities, but in rural areas, was extensive. Latin American guerrilla movements were encouraged by the communist Che Guevara, sought to right social injustices by rebelling against the often-military governments that ruled South American countries. FARC was one such movement inspired by Fidel Castro's successful overthrow of the venal, US-mafia-dominated Cuban dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. FARC's insurrection was based in the jungle-covered mountains near the border with Peru. Successive efforts by government troops to surround and wipe out the rebels failed, in part because they were able to slip across the frontier into Peru or Ecuador. Tragically a revolt that began with high motives quickly degenerated. Initially the revolutionaries, as they styled themselves, relied on willing support from local peasants, who believed the promises of social justice and a decent income and wanted to see the huge private estates broken up and the land redistributed. But as the years passed and the revolution seemed no closer to success, local support began to wane. The peasants just wanted their lives back, wanted to live in peace. At this point FARC began to exact a terrible toll on locals it suspected of betraying then to the government. There were reprisal killings. But there was worse. The revolutionary leaders were desperate for money to pay their forces. They turned to narcotics to earn an income. Over time these once visionary rebels became nothing but another ruthless drugs trafficking gang. Two generations of fighters have since passed through the FARC ranks, more interested in gaining an income than obtaining social justice. But the world and indeed Colombia have moved on. The government has broken the major drugs cartels. The country still has a checkered human rights record but it is a functioning democracy and is stable and quietly prosperous. The battle-hardened revolutionaries suddenly saw no reason to carry on. So they have quit, defeated not by government forces but by history.
