MS Risk Blog

Colombian Government and FARC Sign Historic Peace Agreement

Colombia’s centre-right government and the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel group signed a peace agreement on 26 September to end a half-quarter war that has killed a quarter of a million people an which once took the country to the brink of collapse.

After four years of peace talks in Cuba, President Juan Manuel Santos and rebel leader Timochekno, the nom de guerre for Rodrigo Londono, warmly shook hands on Colombian soil for the first time and signed the accord. Guests at the ceremony, which took place in the Caribbean coastal city of Cartagena included United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Cuban President Raul Castro and United States Secretary of State John Kerry. Showing its support for the peace deal, the European Union (EU) on Monday removed the FARC from its list of terrorist groups. Kerry also disclosed that Washington would review whether to take the FARC off its terrorism list, and has pledged US $390 million for Colombia next year to support the peace process. While on Sunday, 2 October, Colombians will vote on whether to ratify the agreement, opinion polls shows that it should pass with ease.

The end of Latin America’s longest-running war will effectively turn the FARC reel group into a political party fighting at the ballot box instead of the battlefield, which they have occupied since 1964. In the worst days of the war, attacks targeted the capital Bogota, which rebels threatened to over run, and battles between the guerrillas, paramilitaries, drug gangs and the army raged in the countryside, parts of which remain sown with landmines. Thousands of civilians were killed in Massacres, particularly in the rural areas of the country, as the warring sides sought to prevent people from collaborating with or supporting enemy forces. The FARC also became a big player in the cocaine trade and at its strongest, it had 20,000 fighters. Now, its some 7,000 fighters must hand over their weapons to the United Nations within 180 days.

Despite widespread relief at the end of the bloodshed and kidnappings of the past fifty-two years, the agreement has caused divisions within the country. Former President Alvaro Uribe and others have voiced anger at the accord, stating that it allows rebels to enter parliament without serving any prison time. In Cartagena on Monday, large billboards urged a “yes” vote in the referendum, while Uribe led hundreds of supporters with umbrellas in the colours of the Colombian flag urging voters to back “no.” Some Colombians are also nervous over how the rebels will integrate back into society.  Most however are optimistic that peace will bring more benefits than problems.

In recent years, Colombia has performed better economically than its neighbours and peace should reduce the government’s security spending an din n turn open new areas of the country for mining and oil companies. Challenges however will remain as criminal gangs may attempt to fill the void in rebel-held areas, while landmines hinder development and rural poverty remains a challenge. Analysts believe that President Santos will likely use his political capital to push for tax reforms and other measures in order to compensate for a drop in oil income caused by a fall in energy prices.

US Elections 2016: First Presidential Debate

On 26 September, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald held their first of three debates with each accusing the other and a snap poll indicating that the debate gave Mrs Clinton a boost in her chances to win the White House on 8 November

Mrs Clinton was under pressure to perform well in the wake of her bout with pneumonia and a recent drop in opinion polls. However he days of preparation appeared to have paid off in her highly anticipated first 90-minute standoff with Mr Trump, with a CNN/ORC snap poll stating that 62 percent of respondents felt that Mrs Clinton won the debate while 27 percent believed that Mr Trump was the winner.

While initially, Mr trump was strong early on, as the night wore on he appeared to become repetitive and more undisciplined. During the debate, Mrs Clinton accused Mr Trump of racism, sexism and tax avoidance, effectively putting him on the defensive. She sought to raise questions about her opponent’s temperament, business acumen and knowledge. Mr Trump, who is making his first run for public office, used much of his time to argue that the former first lady, US senator and secretary of state had achieved little in public life and that she wants to pursue policies, which have been started by President Barack Obama but which have failed to repair a shattered middle class. He suggested that her disavowal of a trade agreement with Asian countries was insincere and argued that her handling of a nuclear deal with Iran and the so-called Islamic State were disasters. In one of the more heated exchanges during the evening, Mrs Clinton accused Mr Trump of promulgating a “racist lie” by suggesting that President Obama was not born in the United States. The president, who was born in Hawaii, released a long-form birth certificate in 2011 in a bid to put the issue to rest. Only earlier this month did Mr Trump state publically that he believed the president was US-born. In a bid to get a reaction out of Mr Trump, Mrs Clinton suggested that he was refusing to release his tax returns to avoid showing Americans that he either paid next to nothing in federal taxes or that he is not as wealthy as he says he is. Mr Trump replied by saying that as a businessman, paying low taxes was important, adding, “that makes me smart.” He later stated, “I have tremendous income,” adding that it was about time that someone running the country knew something about money. Where Mrs Clinton seemed to pique Mr Trump’s ire was when she brought up his past insults about women, stating, “he loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them and he called this one ‘Miss Piggy’ and then he called her ‘Miss Housekeeping.’” During the debate, Mr Trump hinted at wanting to say something but stopped short. Afterwards, he told reporters tat he had though off raising the sex scandal involving Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, who was in the audience with their daughter Chelsea. He stated, “I was going to say something extremely tough to Hillary and her family and I said I can’t do it. I just can do it. Is inappropriate, its not nice.”

Columbia and FARC to Ratify Peace Accord this Month

According to Spain’s acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, Columbia’s government will ratify a peace accord with the Marxist rebel group FARC on 26 September.

On 25 August, the government of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos reached a peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to end the group’s 52-year-old war against the Colombian state. On 29 August, Colombia’s FARC rebel force formally ordered its fighters to observer a ceasefire, which still has to go to a plebiscite vote on 2 October. The agreement, which was reached after almost four years of talks in Cuba, will see the FARC rebels hand their weapons over to UN-sponsored monitors and reintegrate into civilian life.

More than 220,000 people have been killed in the conflict, tens of thousands have disappeared and millions have fled their homes in a bid to escape the violence.

Malian President Warns of Further Insecurity in West African Country

On Friday, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar warned the United Nations that the failure to fully implement a nationwide peace accord was helping al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS)-affiliated groups spread their influence in the West African country.

Speaking at a high-level meeting on Mali at the annual UN General Assembly, President Keita stated, “we have to admit that several factors are contradicting our will and effort,” adding, “in particularly the extension of terrorism and banditry and security of neighbouring countries because of the desire of terrorist groups affiliated to al-Qaeda and Islamic State seeking to expand.” The president further disclosed that Islamists were using the slow implementation of peace accords in order to “manipulate” and “destroy” links between different ethnic groups in Mali. One incident, a clash in the north that erupted earlier this week between pro-government Gatia milita and the Tuareg separatist Coordination of Azawad movements, has highlighted the fragility of the UN-backed deal, which was singed last year between the Malian government and northern armed groups. That agreement is meant to end a cycle of uprisings. Also speaking at the meeting was Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra, whose country is leading mediation efforts in Mali. Lamamra disclosed, “we must redouble our efforts,” adding, It’s terrible that signatories of the accord are involved in the fratricidal killings.” Meanwhile French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, whose country has thousands of troops deployed across West Africa in a bid to hunt down militants, disclosed that the security situation was “in general satisfying despite asymmetric attacks.”

UN peacekeepers are deployed across northern Mali with the aim of stabilizing the vast region, which was occupied by separatist Tuareg rebels and al-Qaeda-aligned Islamist militants in 2012, before France intervened the following years. Tit-for-tat violence between rival armed groups however has distracted the West African nation from fighting Islamist militants. Furthermore, the country has become the deadliest place for UN peacekeepers to serve. On Thursday, the international mediation team, which includes the UN, Europeans Union (EU), African Union (AU) and regional bloc ECOWAS, disclosed that it believed the situation could not continue without compromising the agreement. The international mediation team also threatened international sanctions on those responsible for blocking the deal’s implementation.

Reports Emerge of In-fighting in Boko Haram

Reports have emerged from the remote northeastern region of Nigeria that in-fighting has broke out within militant group Boko Haram after the so-called Islamic State (IS) group announced a new leader to its Nigerian affiliate last month.

In August, IS announced that Abu Musab al-Barnawi, the son of Boko Haram’s former founder Mohammed Yusuf, had replaced Abubakar Shekau at the head of the terrorist organization. Just days later however, Shekau insisted that he remained in charge of the Islamist group, whose insurgency has killed at least 20,000 people since 2009 and forced more than 2.6 million from their homes. In early September, sources in northeastern Nigeria reported that there have been deadly skirmishes between the two factions, even as the Nigerian military is seeking to finally rout the rebels in a sustained counter-offensive.

On 1 September, several fighters from Shekau’s camp were said to have been killed in two separate gunbattles that erupted with IS-backed Barnawi gunmen in the Monguno area of Borno state, near Lake Chad. While the Nigerian military has declined to comment on the reported in-fighting, one locate who lives in the area disclosed that “the Barnawi faction launched an offensive against the Shekau faction who were camped in the villages of Yele and Arafa,” adding, “in Yele, the assailants killed three people from the Shekau camp, injured one and took one with them, while several were killed in Arafa.” The attack prompted residents of Arafa to flee. The local also disclosed that fighters from Barnawi camp had the previous day attacked gunmen loyal to Shekau in Zuwa village in nearby Marte district, killing an unspecified number, adding that “the Barnawi fighters told villagers after each attack that they were fighting the other camp because they had derailed from the true jihad and were killing innocent people, looting their property and burning their homes.” News of the factional clashes has been slow to emerge because of the destroyed telecommunications infrastructure in northeastern Nigeria.

Since the death of Mohammed Yusuf in police custody in 2009, Shekau has led Boko Haram, waging a deadly, indiscriminate guerrilla war that has overwhelmingly targeted civilians in the three main northeastern states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe. Within these states, suicide bombers have repeatedly targeted mosques, churches, markets and bus stations while hit-and-run attacks have destroyed remote villages and have killed and maimed thousands of residents. Thousands of people, many of them women and young girls, have been kidnapped, with the widely most known hostage taking occurring in April 2014, when more than 200 schoolgirls were taken from the northeastern town of Chibok in an attack that sparked international outrage. In many videos and audio recordings that have been released over the years, Shekau has justified the attacks against the secular state, those who support it and anyone who does not share his radical interpretation of Islam. In March 2015, he pledged allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and changed the group’s name to Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). However over the past year, there have been growing tensions within the group, and experts have suggested that the indiscriminate killings of civilians, coupled with Shekau’s “dictatorial” style, including secret killings of dissenting commanders, have caused a rift. This was evident shortly after his nomination, with Barnawi making a point of critiquing Shekau’s leadership and lambasting him for targeting ordinary Muslims.