All right, folks, we will begin now. So thank you for coming. Good morning. Thanks for weathering through the getting here and weathering the rain. I know it can be a bit paralyzing for some folks here in Washington. But thank you for making the effort. My name is Carl Meacham. I'm the director here at the America's Program. And today is a really great day for us and for the program. We have Ambassador Villegas. And we're happy to do the launch of our new report, Columbia, Peace and Stability in the Post-Conflict Era. I imagine that you all are aware and have been paying attention to the news. And I'm sure some of you were invited or went to some of the events that occurred during the week with President Santos. That trip has proven very productive, I would say. Santos's visit to Congress, he met with President Obama, visited a number of think tanks, rubbed elbows with the key members of the foreign policy establishment here in Washington. So that attests to the importance of President Santos, but also of the importance of the relationship with Columbia, which I think in a time where we have political dysfunction here in the United States, it's one of the only bipartisan policies that folks agree with on both sides of the aisle. So given all of this attention to this trip, we're thrilled to have the ambassador. And we consider this event to be somewhat of a book and to President Santos's trip. So the broader purpose of today's event is to launch the executive summary of our report. There are copies of that report, I think, at the entrance, but we'll also be putting it on the web, on our website. And in the second of today's sessions, we will be discussing the findings of the report in depth, which I co-wrote with two very distinguished scholars and friends, Bob Lam, who's here, who directs the program on crisis and conflict and cooperation here at CSIS. And Doug Farah, who's a senior associate in my program, but also the president of IBI Consulting. But before we get into the two sessions, I want to give you a sense of where this project began. The project started out about a year ago with the goal of looking at the tremendous strides Columbia has made, particularly in rural security and in recent years. In particular, we wanted to address two things. First, what the Colombian government is doing to secure its achievements and promote development in rural areas. And second, how the US-Columbian relationship will evolve as security and rural conflict play a decreasing role. These were issues that came out during the president's visit, I think. I think it was incredibly successful as a trip, but I still think that there's some questions that need to be dealt with how this relationship goes forward. Again, it is the most important relationship we have in South America. Colombia is our closest friend. So thinking about what is to come after the framework of Plan Colombia, I think, is in particular very relevant. And we attempt to do this in the study. The project had a number of components that came together in the compilation of the report. We held a conference in Bogota with a whole bunch of key stakeholders from Colombia. Doug conducted a set of site visits that ended up providing some key insights for the report. We examined the government's current plan de consolidación, what the government is doing to build more inclusive society, what is being done to increase access in the judicial system in rural areas as well as increase its effectiveness, the government's effectiveness, and finally, what is being done to generate more sustainable economic opportunities. Since I have your ear as well, I just wanted to give you a couple of thoughts and the ambassadors here, more importantly, give you a couple of thoughts on the visit and going forward in this relationship. I would say that success, though, of Plan Colombia does not mean that the relationship should stop evolving. And it needs to be adapting moving forward. There are so many things that now are possible with Colombia that weren't before. Issues of trade and commerce, the president's visit to the Chamber of Commerce and the issues that were highlighted there, I think, should be highlighted in a big way. And with that in mind, I think issues like including Colombia and the TPP is a conversation that needs to be had. Colombian security needs continue to decrease. It would make sense still for us to deal with the areas where Colombians are still working on many of these issues, which we will focus on in the second panel of the report. In many ways, the next frontier in the US-Columbian relationship, again, is commerce. We need to pursue that. But what's really most important is that the US and Colombian governments continue to adapt their relationship to ensure that both countries' interests continue to be served by this partnership. The bilateral relationship has proven hugely beneficial for both governments, and it's important that they work together to keep it that way, always focusing on the next potential area of collaboration. So that shift makes sense in the context of the ongoing peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC as well. Obviously, the US has some serious stake in the success of these negotiations. It's huge for Colombia, but it's also huge for the region. I think the United States and the administration has done a good job of sort of treading lightly. And in anything that's been said, I think we've been very good in our support. But at the end of the day, this is Colombia's endeavor, and we should be supportive of those efforts. With that all said, I want to introduce today's speaker, Colombian Ambassador Luis Carlos Villegas. As many of you know, Ambassador Villegas just presented his credentials this week, and this marks his first public appearance as ambassador. I believe the ambassador's first task was helping to coordinate President Santos's visit. So you've been very busy, and you're probably immersed with everything having to do with Washington, the good, the bad, and the ugly. But we're glad that he could take time out of his schedule to come and visit us today. A few quick notes, the notes that we always focus on when we do these events. We will have a question and answer period. This session is on the record. As you see, there are members of the press here. Please identify yourself. If you have views that you'd like to share with us, we welcome and encourage them, but make them short as we want to try to get as many people. And the ambassador's time is of the essence here. He doesn't have a lot of time. So without further ado, Ambassador Villegas, welcome, and the floor is yours. Good morning to all of you. Since this is a peace event, Propole the Death of Nelson Mandela, I was thinking this morning that you could take by the arm every single human being on Earth today and say, I'm sorry for your loss. So please join me standing up and giving one minute of thought to Mandela's legacy. Please. Thank you. Thank you, Carl, for this invitation. I read also Doug Farah and Bob Lam. You three have done a marvelous, marvelous work studying the Colombian reality, not only nowadays, but in your former responsibilities. And starting the debate on how the future of Colombia can be shaped and the past conflict Colombia can be foreseen starting now. This has been a marvelous week, as you mentioned. Maybe the Colombia week in DC. We have had the visit of President Santos, his meeting with President Obama, a meeting that I was there amazed, seeing two friends talking about the world, the world economy, peace, different initiatives for the bilateral relationship, and trying to build common solutions for the region, for the hemisphere. But it doesn't stop there. They also talk about soccer. And we have the final draw today in Brazil. So we will see who was right, President Obama or President Santos, when they said they wouldn't like to meet each other in soccer in the first match. They would like to meet in the final. All right, this is my first official presentation. I'm glad it's on peace. It shows where we are in the Colombian reality. I'm glad CIS started that. I know also that the documents you prepared on peace and sensibility in the past conflict Colombia has raw material, the thoughts and experiences of a large group of prominent Colombians from different origins and capacity. So that document is really of a great value for us. I will see with you, ladies and gentlemen, a couple of points. First, I think it's good for the context to put you in the picture of the new Colombian. Where are we now? And how the decision of President Santos to negotiate with FARC is part of that new Colombia. What's the context of the negotiation? What are the achievements so far? What is currently being under negotiation? What are the next steps? How do I foresee the post-conflict and a couple of conclusions? First, the new Colombia. In 10 years, I don't think there is another emerging market or economy that has suffered such a dramatic positive change. Imagine that 10 years ago, the size of our economy was less than $100 billion. We were the economy number seven in Latin America. This 2013 is going to close above $400 billion of GDP. And we are number three in Latin America after Brazil and Mexico. Sorry for the Argentinians that are present here, but that is so. We have multiplied by almost four times our GDP per capita. So we have a different society in 10 years. One society is the one that has $2,000 per inhabitant. Another society is the one that has $9,000 per capita. The needs are different. The capacity of requests to the state is different. The capacity of organizing themselves as a society is different. The amount of information from outside is different. The capacity to connect each other is also different. So only for that reason, the income, we have a different society than the one we had 10 years ago. Other data, foreign trade. When Ambassador Frechette was in Colombia, foreign trade was in total $25 billion. It's going to close this year at $120 billion. Diversified foreign trade. We were very close to import oil 10 years ago. We are now producing a million barrels a day. And in three years more, 2015, we will be producing half of the Venezuelan oil output. That was unthinkable 10 years ago. We also have an economy where 74% is of the private sector. And it has been so, even with the dramatic growth of the economy. And that is something that is unique in Latin America. In the social field, when we started the negotiations of Caguan in 2009, 1998, 60%, six out of every 10 Colombians were under the line of poverty. Today, three are under the line of poverty out of every 10. And extreme poverty is in one digit for the first time. We can say for the first time in 200 years that our society, our nation, is a nation with a majority of middle classes. And that's also one of the most dramatic changes a country can live and have. Very few countries have had unemployment going down month after month for 40 months nowadays. That's the reality in our labor market. Growth for the next year has been stated by the IMF in around 5%. And so the horizon of our economic data is also bright. Another final figure, the public budget of Colombia 10 years ago was $30 billion. The public budget of Colombia for next year is going to be $115 billion. So you can imagine the change of the capacity of the government to do things, to build roads, to design the social networks and help in education, in safety, of course, in security, to have a better foreign policy, to invest more. That's also a great difference. I will not talk about security in this house, you know, that's better than I do. Just say that 10 years ago, our society was living a lack of hope. And nowadays, we are a country and a nation with hope and not only hope, but with the quality of a very important regional power in Latin America. That's the new Colombia. The decision to negotiate makes part of that change because conflict, even if it's small, even if it's in very located areas, very focalized areas, is an obstacle for a faster development of Colombia. I think the decision Colombia has taken is to become a developed country in the next generation. The conflict is an obstacle for that goal. So we have advanced, we have progressed, but we need to remove the conflict to move faster in poverty reduction, in inequality reduction. And to that reality has come also a very progressive and integral agenda of President Santos, an agenda that starts with victims' preparation, with land restitution, with the recognition of victims of health programs, support programs for displaced that come from years before, and a foreign policy that also matches those internal needs. So the change, the speed of the change and the progressive agenda of the government have found a match with the negotiation. The negotiation is not an isolated decision but makes part of that need of becoming a developed country. What's the context of the negotiation? Three elements, so four. One, our military balance today is quite different from the one we had 10 years ago. It's a balance that shows a group of armed forces that respect human rights, that are modern, that train, they are trained. They can give cooperation to third countries as we have seen in Mexico, in Honduras, Salvador, Guatemala. We have requests from Costa Rica, from the Dominican Republic. We will triple that cooperation in 2014 for Central America. We have even had invitations from Western Africa. So the military balance is in favor of the state and I think is irreversibly in favor of the state. Second, we have a full international support for this negotiation. But there's a small difference. The support of 2000 was to the process. The support of the international community to the 2013 process is to the government. We have also a stronger state, as I said in the budget, in the institutions, the armed forces, intelligence. And fourth, we feel we have felt the ethical need to move to us the end of the conflict in time. Every victim we can save from the conflict. Every kidnap we impeach to be produced. Every terrorist attempt that we discover or we don't let happen is a gain for the Colombian society. What have we achieved so far? Two agreements on point one and two. The agenda has six. One is rural development. Two is political participation. Three is DDR, disarmament, immobilization, and reintegration. Number four is drug trafficking and illicit crops. Number five is victims. And number six is the way to refrain to ratify the agreements by the people. So points number one and two, rural development and political participation, we have already agreed on. In rural integral development, what's the content of that point one? Of course, with the limits we have agreed on confidentiality. But the big headlines are, first, land titles, valuation of land, and taxation of land. It's an old debate in Colombia. It has 100 years of how to tax land. That debate is solved in point one. We will have a modern identification, valuation, and taxation of land in Colombia. In Colombia, half of the rural areas, we don't know who they belong to. What do they produce or not? Do they have water or not? Who's there? Who was there? Who could be there? So that first effort through land censors, rural censors, has already begun. Then we have specific development programs, credit, technical assistance, irrigation, research, connectivity, broadband, et cetera, health and education, children's assistance, women that are rural workers, security under match between small exploitation and farms and corporate investment that can coexist. The third big chapter is food security. We have agreed on two new institutions, a big one, a large national committee on food security, and local committees on food security. And the last is a definition, the clear definition, of the agricultural frontier. Where you can have agriculture? Where not? Where you can have mining? Where not? Where you can have oil? Where you can't? That is something that has not been done yet. And we have to define clearly what our paramos and where are they? Where are the natural parks, the local parks, the Amazon reserve, the Orinocchia reserve? Where there are areas of special world interests in biodiversity, for instance. That definition has to be done so that everybody knows one could be done where. Those are the four big titles of the point number one. In point number two, things are even simpler. We have agreed with FARC to build a new opposition statute, but not the government with FARC. The unarmed FARC, as a political party, has to be in a table with the other parties of the Colombian democracy and to shape a new opposition statute. You say that's obvious. It hasn't been done in Colombia in the last 40 years. So it has been agreed, and we will have an opposition statute. Electoral reform, again, with the parties that exist, with un-desarmed FARC, and specialists from outside international experts that could give Colombia what's the most modern way to have the operational procedures of elections. We also moved in a new chapter for Colombia. That's the rights of the social movements to protest and to be opposition in very local policies. That is something that is happening all over the world. There we agreed on a chapter to give a framework to that new expression of the people in questions of protest and opposition to certain local decisions. And we also agreed to have a few special electoral circumscriptions for FARC. No, for the regions where the conflict has affected the most people, where FARC will have to compete with others for that space in the chamber, not in Senate, in the chamber. How many of them? It has to be agreed. There won't be many. We all know FARC and government where the most affected regions and people are. So it's going to be a negotiation, but not a very long and hard one. That's what we have achieved. What is currently being negotiated? Well, drug trafficking and illicit crops. It sounds like a simple, small subject of a little negotiation in the Caribbean, but imagine the consequences that could have in the world policy against drugs if you had a Columbia Zero Coca. And that is possible. We have moved from 200,000 hectares of Coca to 40,000. We are not the biggest producer of Coca leaps nowadays. And we could move to zero with the help of FARC, with the decision of FARC, to help eradicating illicit crops. The balloon effect is something we have to take care of, to think of, because if the market still exists, someone will produce that Coca. It won't be us, hopefully. What's next? Well, the next question is, let me make here a reflection. Points one and two were the questions that FARC were asking to the Colombian society. What are you going to do for rural development? What are you going to do to open and modernize political institutions and participation? Points three to six are the questions that the Colombian society is putting to FARC. What are you doing to do with your arms? What are you doing to do with your victims? What are you doing to do with drug trafficking? What are you going to do with the justice procedures that you're going to face? And how are you going to accept the ratification of the people of our agreements? And let me tell you that when I found that point two was agreed, my optimism raced. Because FARC know that I have just told you that after point two, it's their responsibility, the process. The speed depends on the speed. They give answers to those questions. They give clear answers to the Colombian people to those questions. So if they let the process get to the end of point two, I think there's hope for success. We're going to have a new moment that is going to be the last months is the coexistence of the negotiation and the elections. It happens for the first time in Colombia. Every time we have had negotiations and the elections come, we suspend the negotiations. This time, the negotiations are going to be there. So prudency is going to be the word because the Colombian campaign, as you probably know, has a high temperature. And nobody wants that in the middle of the elections, we have facts that could affect the process. Two more points to end and start our questions and answers space. One, post-conflict. My economic background shows me that we could foresee public expenditure for the next 10 years of between one and two points of GDP per year. That is something that we couldn't afford 15 years ago, but that we can afford in the next 15 years. We have the muscle of a public finance to do so over international credit, over international investment capacity, or national investment capacity. So a program to change the rural areas and to invest between one and two points of GDP per year in the next 15 years is something possible, not only possible, but necessary. And as President Santos says, we have designed a program for rural development that is inexorable. If we have an agreement with fire, good. If we don't, that's the program we have to deal with. In political participation, the same. We have to have an opposition statute with or without fire. We have to have a modern electoral system with or without fire. We have to let people and its social movements to exert protest and to express themselves in a better framework with or without fire. Hopefully, it's going to be with fire. And that post-conflict is full of room for international cooperation. And that's my conclusion. Peace in Colombia, as you say it in your document, as you say it in your document car, peace is just the wrap up of this chapter we have written with the United States for 12 years. But it's the start of a stronger engagement of the US in our development, in our capacity to lead Latin America, in our capacity to rebuild a society that has suffered violence for 50 years. So I close saying we, Colombians, shouldn't be afraid of reaching peace. As Mandela said, a brave man is not the one that feels no fear. He is the one that has the capacity to conquer fear. Our society has proven to be brave, because we have conquered fear many times in the last 50 years. But this is the final chance. Thank you very much. Before we get to the questions from the audience, that was a great speech, remarks. Heartfelt thanks for being so candid on so many issues that I think everybody is interested in learning more about. I don't want to take time from the audience, because we have experts here that have been following Columbia for years, for decades. But there's two things that I just wanted to get your views on before I open it up. One is the opposition statute. A lot of folks feel that it's going to be very difficult to integrate the FARC into a political system. There are references that are made to the peace process in Ireland. How did you get the IRA? How did you get Sinn Féin into a political process? Is it hard, or is it harder, or is it possible to do that with the FARC? Is it possible to integrate the FARC that's been using arms instead of words for so long to make its points? The FARC that doesn't believe in the state of Columbia, is it possible to integrate the FARC into a political system and process in Columbia and for them to participate just as another political actor or just as another political party? You have to hit the button there. That question is key. And we have debated about it many times in our team in the last year. Because politics, as many other expressions of mankind is a question of culture, of building from inside a common feeling about something external. And when you come from the jungle, where your political instrument is a gun, where your political propaganda is fear, to change to speeches, votes, and convincing people with arguments is a new field, a new universe. That will take generations also for FARC to be adapted to. And the example is not only politics, but also the subject of recognition of victims, of pardon, of reparation of victims, of guarantees of non-repetition of facts. There it's starting to learn. We have in our Colombian society learned that in the last eight to 10 years. You see generals asking for pardon. You see public servants that present their excuses to the victims. That lead reparation procedures internationally or domestically. That is something FARC has to learn as a political actor of the Colombian society. It'll take time. It will be hard. And last, the question that I think is out there right now, particularly on the heels of the president's visit and successful meetings that have occurred. For the United States, the relationship with Colombia has been central to the relationship in the region for so long. You see that with the budget that has been dominated by expense having to do with Plunk Colombia for more than a decade. You see it with the relationships, the close relationships that we have at every level between our two governments. One of the issues out there, again, and I think you highlighted some of it in your remarks, you talked about the Colombians working in different parts of the region and even in countries in Africa. What would your ideas be for this relationship, for the bilateral relationship going forward? What other areas should we be focusing on? What other areas can we sort of work on and use Plunk Colombia as a point of departure for a closer, broader, more updated relationship between the two countries? I think I have been accompanying presidential visits to the U.S. since President Uruguay in the end of the 70s. So I can compare what I saw last Tuesday with what I have seen in the last 30 more years. And it's a real pleasure for a Colombian to see that change in that kind of agenda we have built with the U.S. The two presidents sat on Tuesday and talked about energy, non-conventional hydrocarbons, gas associated to coal, the interconnection for electricity between Colombia and California, the renewable energy sources, and so on. They sat and talked about technology, how the U.S. can help Latin America, especially Colombia, to give massive coverage of technology and connection to internet to the poorest inhabitants of our countries, education, the formation of experts to design applications of internet for the poor people. Those are new fields. And of course, the point that I mentioned of security cooperation to third countries. We have already trained a little less than 20,000 officials in Central America, judges, investigators, police, special military forces, and so on. So we have that capacity. We build that capacity with the U.S. I have to say it's a lot cheaper for us to do that than it is for you. So it's an advantage for the recipients. And it's better received. I have to say that also bluntly. So those three things are an example of what the new agenda between the U.S. and Colombia is. Okay. I'm going to open up to the audience. Sir, if you get louder, if you can get the microphone. If you could identify yourself, please. And if you could stand up. I'm Carlos Salinas with Healing Bridges and formerly with Amnesty International. Ambassador Villegas, I deeply appreciate you invoking the memory of Nelson Mandela as a former activist involved in the divestment campaigns here in the United States. I think I have an observation and a question. One is the observation is that the African National Congress did make that transition from the gun to the spoken word as the DM-19 in your country to the point that we have a governor in a southern state that was a former fighter. I would also remind us of the past involvement of the Farc and electoral politics through the Patriotic Union Party. And my question is given that land claimants, in other words, people organizing to take advantage of the government's goodwill in restituting land are still being killed. And given the past experience of the Patriotic Union and being exterminated as a political party, what is the governor, the government's plan to ensure that such affronts to human dignity and to peace in Colombia are met with an effective zero tolerance policy? There's also been a key question in the discussion of point two. Security for the people in Colombia that decides to go into politics, especially those that come from the ironed politics to unironed politics. It was a long discussion with the recognition that what we had done before was not enough with the recognition that we needed the state of the art to give that security. It also needs the guarantees that the disarmament will be something that you can, you can comprobar, that you can verify, that you can verify. It's very important because one of the historic judgments you can have on the tragedy of the UPE is the coexistence of arms and politics. This time we have to be sure, to make sure with the international assistance needed that politics, unironed politics, is safe in Colombia. I lived the days where you got out of your house at 8 a.m. and you said to your wife, I don't see if I'll be back in the evening. That kind of fear is now gone, but we have to build the protocols, the institutions, and the new techniques in the world that give the assurance of those that are going to take the political path, unironed, that they are safe. It was a long discussion. It has a special chapter in point two that I cannot give the details, but it was a long discussion. Right up here in front of the microphone. Mr. Ambassador, welcome to Washington. I'm Adam Isaacson with the Washington office on Latin America, and thank you for your candid comments. Hope you have a chance to give them to our government soon, if you haven't already. I apologize. I'm gonna ask probably the most vexing question as I can see it about what's coming up in the peace process. And that is, well, we've seen the letters and statements from the International Criminal Court Prosecutor basically saying that Columbia cannot offer amnesties or even suspended sentences for the worst violators. So you're sort of stuck, if you go with that, you're stuck with a situation where the FARC will have to turn in their weapons. The worst, the top leaders anyway, the worst violators among the top leaders are gonna have to turn in their weapons and go to some sort of denial of liberty. Jail, some alternative, we don't even know what. I'm not sure how you do that. You're in quite a dilemma there. So I guess the question as I would frame it is, obviously not what's the answer because we don't know yet, but what are even on the menu of options that you're considering right now? How can we square that circle? The problem of that question is that nobody knows how to do that, nobody. I'll tell you why. This is the first peace process under the umbrella of the Treaty of Rome. This is the first time that a country member of the Treaty of Rome decides to seek how transitional justice works or what that is. We're shaping that. We are trying to convey the most extreme's vision, the most extreme's vision. One's that say, let's get out of there. Others that say, let's give it all to the international procedures. You have to find a median path where justice is served and where peace is served. Those two values are very important for the societies. And they have to be defended both at the same time, not one above the other. So I think what will permit the peace process in Colombia to receive the light of the international justice, let's say, is transparent and ratification by the Colombian people. That the Colombian people know in the broadest detail what has been negotiated. How are we going to deal with the toughest issues like the one you've mentioned? I think transparency is the mother of justice. And if we do those two things, public conscience of what you're signing and transparent of what you have negotiated, maybe we will give a good precedent for future peace processes under the umbrella of the road. Let me go in the back, Howard. Mr. Bassinger, thank you very much for your excellent presentation. My name is Howard Weard. I'm a university professor and a think tank scholar. I was intrigued by your comments about the incorporation of social movements into the process of political participation. And I'd like to ask you, both as a lawyer and as a diplomat, if you would explain how this will work, must a group, for example, acquire juridical personality from the state to qualify as an acceptable social movement and could the state therefore deny that request for recognition? Must a social movement show what its finances are? Or must it show its membership lists in order to be accepted as a social movement? Could you explain a little bit from your background as an attorney as well as a diplomat how a process by which a social group seeks recognition or participates in the political process? How that happens? I think that Latin America faced a novelty in the 80s that was democracy. And we'll face another novelty in the second decade or third decade of the 21st century that is called middle classes. And for that, I think we all have in the region to be prepared to have an appropriate free framework of expression for those new middle classes that will be there asking. First, not to go back to poverty and second, to be every year better in quality of life. So that was a discussion. It was not the discussion on give me your base of the database. It was not on you can only function if you have legal personality giving by the minister of the interior. No, what rights you have to organize yourself? How can you pacifically protest? How can you oppose to the local decisions and the local authorities have to phase that opposition take it into account? So it's not a restrictive chapter. It's just an opening chapter of new expressions of social organizations. It's more to build on freedom than to restrict. All right. Well, Mr. Ambassador, I wanna thank you for taking the time to come out of your busy schedule. I know right now at 11, it's everybody's waiting to see where, at least where the United States in Chile will end up on my... Right on screen and Colombian, I guess the rest of the countries that are participant, but I wanna thank you again for taking time to come to CSIS, to the America's program to talk about these very difficult issues. You were extremely candid and open and I appreciate that. Will you please join me with a round of applause? So we're gonna take about five minutes now before we go to the next panel. Okay. All right, folks. Folks, we're gonna get started with the second panel. So I would invite you to sit down and let's get started. Thank you. Okay. So as I was mentioning to my co-authors here, we're gonna get into the meat and potatoes part of the sessions today. We're gonna get into the substance having to do with the report and I was so lucky to be able to work with Doug and Bob on this project. The project had a number of components that led up to the report. In addition to reviewing the existing literature, a core activity that played an important role in shaping the final report was a one-day expert's workshop that was held in Bogota. In June, the Doug and I participated in which was coordinated through the Centro de Estudios Estratégicos Latin Americanos and its director, Pablo Reyes. So we really were able to sort of immerse ourselves in all the different issues, many of which were highlighted by the ambassador and which I highlighted in my opening remarks. Separate from the workshop, Doug was able to perform two site visits which I hope he elaborates on because they really are truly really interesting and exceptional and the information that he was able to pick up from on the ground research to the two departments of Dolima and Casanare to meet with local officials to get an on the ground assessment of Columbia's current rural consolidation efforts. I don't wanna steal Doug's thunder here at all and I know he's gonna talk about it but these are really great and I hope you do take some time to talk about it. It's highlighted in the report. So to my right is Doug Farah. Doug is a senior associate in the America's program as I mentioned earlier and he's the head of international assessment and strategy center. Many of you know Doug for his work as a foreign correspondent with the Washington Post where he worked from 1985 to 2005 spending considerable time in Latin America and West Africa. As I mentioned, Doug traveled to Bogota with me and did a lot of the research there. On the different issues. To Doug's right is Bob Lamb, senior fellow and director of the C3 program here at CSIS which looks globally at the intersections of conflict crisis governance and development. While a PhD student or candidate at the University of Maryland, Bob spent a year living in Columbia where he worked to develop new methods to study gang governance, violence and the legitimacy of stateless slums of Medellin. Bob is gonna focus on such issues as governance and needs of improving social inclusion in rural areas, topics he knows well and areas where his expertise provided important insights in our report. So I'll stop there in the interest of time. Again, the three of us are gonna go through our key findings of the report and I'm gonna give it off to Doug. I hope you look forward to this. I'm very excited. I'm glad that you stayed. I know the first act was a good one but we promise to be equally as impressive or even more. All right, Doug. All right, well thank you very much and thank you for the presentation. Notice I didn't promise I'd be more entertaining than the ambassador. That's on Carl. No, I think to start out with that, I've been, I lived in Columbia for several years and have been covered the country extensively from 1989, my first trip in was when Rodriguez got to blew up a Navianca airliner, stayed through the Pablo Escobar years and through the demise of the Cali Cartel, the Northern Valley Cartel, the other cartels and I think one of the things, whenever I do things on Columbia, which I always find to be a privilege, is that it really is a dynamic change and I spend a lot of my time now in Central America where you see them in a downward spiral, particularly the Northern Triangle, not too dissimilar to what Columbia was going through but without much hope in the near term or midterm of turning that process around and I find it very troubling and when people ask me what is the solution, I say well there is one example in the hemisphere that you can look to where the situation is actually more complex than what you're facing and where certain critical elements came together including political will, including the ability to assume the war as their own, including a whole series of things, a happy marriage I would say between what the US was willing and could provide and what the Colombians were able to absorb, riddled with many, many problems and many of the human rights issues and I think that my site visits, I think illustrated both of those really interestingly and it's sort of an unintentional way because I think if you look at Columbia you see enormous progress and you see enormous things happening and then you see the mountains there still left to climb you think holy cow, every step you take the mountain seems to get higher and I think that that is a tremendous challenge. My first visit was to Casanare down in the oil and cattle region and that's an area that's not included in the government's consolidation plan yet and so you had a series of municipalities spread across a fairly wide geographic zone trying to come to grips with how to integrate themselves into the country in a much more efficient way, how to define what their responsibilities were with relation to the state government and then to the national government and it was very much a sort of a self-initiated type of activity which I found fascinating but in sitting with the mayor of one of the towns to come in we went into this little Sala de Espera waiting for the mayor in this little town and on the wall were all the other mayors around there and I saw so just making conversation on these are the other mayors I said, yep, that one's dead, that's the profile of Hustizia, that one's dead, he's a paramilitary, every one of them was either dead or in jail or on the run and it was like, I was like, now that is, that is one of the major problems left in Colombia is to eradicate, in this particular case it was the paramilitaries and they seem in Casanare goes through governors every 18 months or so because they're all found to be corrupt or linked to paramilitaries and thrown out and which is sad and interesting but to me one of the takeaways is that they're actually going to jail. I mean at the end of the day what you don't see in many other parts of the country is that there are actual investigations where the governor is removed, goes to jail, they have elections for new ones, they seem to be flawed because they can't seem to get one who isn't contaminated but it's a really interesting, I think to me that's sort of the good and the bad you see in there is that Colombia of all the countries I've dealt with extensively is been the most creative and the most innovative in trying to find ways out of what seem to be sort of downward death spirals that are no longer downward death spirals. So you have a series in Casanare of private initiatives some funded by the oil companies, some funded by other types of NGOs trying to work with the municipalities and get them to understand that you have certain rights related vis-a-vis the central government, you have certain rights you can ask for things from the state government and as you move forward you can become captains of your own destiny in a way that you don't yet understand. And what was interesting, I sat in on a two day conference with people from about 15 different municipalities and it was really interesting how eye-opening it was to them to basically understand no one had ever explained to them how the government works or in a macro sense. This is the responsibility of the central government. When you have this problem, this is what the state governments are responsible. This is what the municipal governments are responsible for. This is how you have access to resources that you don't know exist, et cetera. And it was a really dynamic group that I happened because one of my trips fell apart I ended up going there sort of at the last minute as an alternative so I had no way to plan this for my attendance. And it was a really interesting dynamic group that was really trying to think about how to deal with very local communal issues and then a little bit broader at the sort of commonality of communities. But it wasn't a macro thing at all but to hear them debate how to do a decent, how to convince people that they should give some money to pick up garbage in their communities and what the resources were, what they could do, how they could influence opinion and then sit down in different working groups and design different ways to go at it was really kind of inspiring and really interesting. And then they feel very, and I think this is one of the things that the government's gonna have to deal with as things go forward. They felt very resentful of the people that were in the consolidation process. And clearly the government of Columbia cannot put the entire country in the consolidation process now because it's an enormously expensive and complex operation but there is this feeling among some air and I imagine a lot of areas that some people are getting more than they should out of the process and they're getting short and getting short change. And it's just an observation on the political reality. I think that the government obviously has to prioritize as it goes forward and it can't do everything all at once. The Tolima site visit was a little different because it is an area of consolidation and there you can see the tremendous amount of work that is going into the consolidation process and the tremendous amount of work that remains to be done in the consolidation process. My big takeaway from watching from hanging around down there was that they've done a pretty amazing things and they are very focused in the consolidation and the joint commands where they have the Army Corps of Engineers doing a lot of road billings and a couple of civilians, couple of special judges coming in to do land cases coupled with a whole bunch of special things that they're doing because they can afford to do them in relatively small areas. And this is a very strong FARC area not far from Marquitalia where the FARC was founded and an area where, as I said, the takeaway to me was that the land issue is the one that is going to really, really be incredibly difficult to resolve because in this particular area they stopped keeping land records in 1956 during the violencia.  There's no relationship between the reality and that's a tremendously difficult problem because are you going to, how do you rationalize that process out? How do you determine who the real owners might be? A lot of it is now contested and I think as you see in other areas of the country as people begin to go back to reclaim land that there's the flare of violence, the incidence of violence. I think the ambassador, you know, talked about the need to do more and to focus on that, which I think they're doing but it's not a done deal at all and so there are multiple huge factors and then bringing the issue of justice to people in areas in Tolima where the FARC has been for, you know, active for the last almost 50 years to then turn, reincorporate them into society and give them some reason to trust the state, I think is an enormous challenge. I think that if you look at positive state presence it has never been there and I think that one of the things that I thought was hopeful was that the entire consolidation teams seemed to be very aware of that. They seemed to be very aware that they had never been there, that these people didn't trust them, didn't necessarily like them and that they had to give them some reason to buy into the system. It wasn't a pro forma, well, we'll just do this, this and this and they listened very closely to what Rhodes people thought were priorities that the Army Corps of Engineers should develop right away, a whole series of things that, and their enormous complications and people were angry and people weren't feeling things were going fast enough and all of those things which are inevitable. But I think that the fact that they were willing to listen and sit down and integrate, you had the two-star Army person directing the Comando Conjunto, but you had the police, you had the judges and they were working very consciously to keep the military out into the perimeter and doing the activities against the FARC and letting the police and not the anti-narcotics police but the regular police be in the towns and villages where they could deal with the people, learn to deal with people, try to build some trust to the people, but they were finding, they kept running into land issues as well. They couldn't even set their tents or do anything on certain land because they didn't know who owned it and then they couldn't build a police station because there was no land records that they could then go say, okay, we are acquiring this land and we paid this much for it because no one knew. So there were all these sort of multiple things happening together that were slowing down the process but I think that at the end of the day and I tell this to people all the time in Central America because they could say, what's the model? And I was just in Mexico at a big security company they were saying, what's the model? I was gonna say, I don't know, it's different for every country but there is one country that has experimented and is thinking a lot about it and will make an enormous amount of mistakes along the way but have done enormous amounts of things and that's Columbia and I think that it's not a one size fits all model but I think that the conceptualization of the problems the ability to visualize what might be the problems going forward and to tackle them with their own resources largely I think one of the things that surprised me in doing the research for this was that on the military, on the security side and this doesn't include a lot of the AID stuff and all but on the security side the US percentage of assistance was never more than 24% of their defense budget and has gone down to about five now and I think if you look at Latin America, Central America one of their huge problems is there's no buy-in into the system and it's 90%, 100% US funded and then it all goes to the wrong hands and disappears when it became their own I think one of the things that I found with the Colombians in dealing with their security forces over time is they significantly downsized their appetite to things that they could maintain and digest and hold on to and I think that Central America wants AWACS and stuff, well, that's never gonna happen, right? Blackhawks were significant and there are a bit of a strain on the thing but they've gone to toucans and other things that they can actually maintain, hang on to and I think that that's another lesson to draw from that so I'll stop there and turn it over to Bob but I think that the two, the sort of the mirror images of where the state is making the reintegration efforts and where it isn't, we're really interesting and illuminating and I think that as the process goes forward in Columbia, the government can incorporate more groups into the consolidation efforts they'll be significantly better off because the ones that aren't are really struggling with incredibly limited resources, thank you. Thanks Doug, Bob. Okay, hi, thanks very much, Carl for inviting me to join in this study and to Doug for that really useful update. So in my world, I studied conflicts all over the world, governance, development, stabilization programs and so on and from that perspective, I have to say, thank God there are places like Columbia because there aren't very many places in the world where there's been real legitimate progress on stabilization, on expansion of governance, on attitudes in the military towards human rights abuses on real institutional development and if you look at Columbia 20 years ago and compare it to where it is today, it's really an incredible story and it's from my perspective, it's a very useful thing to study because it shows that it is possible to make progress in these very difficult and complicated types of conflict. So what I'm gonna focus on is review just a little bit of the progress on consolidation, on governance, on the civilian side of things and talk mainly about the future. What are some of the things that remain to be done? The military successes that Columbia started having about 10 years ago once they realized that using proxy death squads to eliminate opponents and we're losing in battle before against the FARC. By 2003 they were actually defeating the FARC in battle. They had professionalized, they were better trained, they had better doctrines, they had better equipment and so now they faced a new problem which was they were actually controlling territory that Columbia hadn't controlled in 40 years and the new problem was well now we have to govern the place and happily civilian and military groups worked together, worked very closely with the United States to implement a couple of initially pilot project, pilot consolidation project that was later evaluated, revised somewhat and expanded. CSIS was one of the early evaluators of that. Phil McClain here was involved in that effort and a big concern of all that is that well these are reasonably successful programs but they really do need to be institutionalized, that the normal institutions of government need to really pick up the, get more closely involved in the overall consolidation effort so that it can be sustained. In the consolidation zones themselves but also I think just more generally about consolidating the state of Columbia as a state, as a legitimate state that controls its territory as a monopoly of force and rules in a legitimate way. There's a few areas that still need to be, that we still need some progress on. The first is on the rule of law, there's been some serious, serious progress on the rule of law, a lot of the corruption has been shaken out of the system, there's a great deal of capacity but courts still do lack the capacity that they need to prosecute criminal activity the way they really need to and especially to resolve land disputes. The local national coordination is an important issue that we identified a few years back that seems to still be an issue. It's not entirely clear in some cases what role mayors and governors play in the consolidation process. Depending on the personalities, they might play a bigger role or a smaller role but that's an issue that remains to be grappled with. The third bit is measuring progress. We were involved in a formal evaluation of USAID's transition programs but there's a sense that it would be very useful to do a better job of collecting data, identify an indicator as a really just measuring progress so that there's a number of good reasons to do that but it's not being done quite to the degree that it could be done. The fourth is sustainability. I already mentioned the importance of transitioning special consolidation programs into the normal work of government. That's worldwide, that's a big challenge. The stabilization to development transition is always problematic pretty much anywhere you go but it really is key to being able to sustain the programs and to really maintain control over territory and govern there. One of the challenges to that is that the people who live in the cities have a pretty good life now. They're pretty safe, they're the majority of people, they're the ones who have most the money, they're the ones who pay taxes, they're the ones who vote the most and if they don't really get that there's still a war in some places that there are still places that the government really doesn't have control over or access to, the public support that's gonna be needed for taxes and for difficult political decisions and so on is going to be an obstacle to being able to sustain a lot of these programs and the final issue that where a lot of progress remains to be made is on the issue of social inclusion particularly in rural areas, particularly of internally displaced persons, Afro-Columbian communities, indigenous communities and just rural populations in general. They are among the most disadvantaged populations in Colombia. They are disproportionately victims of violence throughout their life cycles and since 1991 constitution, there have been a whole series of laws and departments put in place to protect them and to provide them services but in 2004 and again in 2011 for example, the constitutional court ruled that the government of Colombia was not actually living up to its obligations to internally displaced people and so one of the recommendations that came out of this was really take a serious look at implementing the policies that are already in place. It's actually following through with them, finding the resources to do it and take it very, very seriously. A legitimate state, if we wanna talk about consolidation, we're talking about the consolidation of legitimate state power throughout the entire territory of the country and a legitimate state is one that recognizes and treats all of its citizens as full citizens and as full members of society and gives them the opportunities to participate in the political life of the country and that's certainly the direction that Colombia has been going with and as we heard the ambassador say this morning but there are some serious obstacles and I think one of the most important obstacles is not necessarily the good of you. I think the FARC is probably a dying force as a peace process. I think that's not fully under control but there's very good progress there. The biggest obstacle I think is the rural power structures. There are still large landowners who act as feudal lords who in some cases they try to protect their commercial interests and that's fine but sometimes they do it in ways that are illegitimate. They have had a corrupting influence at times. They have joined paramilitaries and criminal bands at times. They have formed death squads at times. So if the government, if the state of Colombia wants to consolidate itself as a state that is legitimate, the Gidea is the past, they're the future. The main competitors to the state of Colombia are the rural power elites. And so the victims, the internally displaced people who have been displaced in the past, those who are being returned to their lands who are being attacked again today and a lot of the Afro-Columbian communities and the indigenous communities continue to be the victims in a lot of cases mainly of not from the left, continues to be from the left also but more from what's usually referred to as the right. So one of our key recommendations here was that the focus needs to be there. There needs to be more aggressive action against that. Merely returning victims to their land and then providing defensive protection is not gonna be enough. There needs to be aggressive prosecution and pursuit and perhaps battle against some of the armed rural elite. I'll leave it at that and turn it back over to Carl. Excellent, thank you. Thank you, Doug and thank you, Bob. I think it's my role to sort of focus on the broader side of things and I'm just gonna focus on three points and then we're gonna open it up to a good discussion. One is the change that has occurred in Colombia over the last decade or so. Security related figures, since 2000 we see huge improvements, homicides down 43%, kidnapings down 95%, acts of terrorism and acts against infrastructure decreased by half. The issues having to do with their economic situation have improved. Foreign direct investment alone has increased 633% since 2000. At the same time, domestic unemployment is down 38% and poverty is down 34%. So you have radical change that has occurred. Nevertheless, you do have the issues that were highlighted by Doug and by Bob and there's a fear that there could be some backsliding if we're not dealing with these things and make sure that we are proactive. So any withdrawal of aid will have to be carefully paced too slow and resources may be wasted too fast and we might see a painful resurgence of the same challenges we've seen the last decade that we've been trying to beat back which is what I think Bob was focusing on. The changing nature of the conflict reflects the success of a joint strategy in subduing Colombia's largest threats but as we have discussed today, challenges remain in consolidating these gains and ensuring that they are not reversed. I think Doug mentioned that in Colombia, foreign assistance was at 1.24% and now is decreased to five and you have the ownership that the Colombian government has and Colombian society has of their progress and you don't have that as much in other countries. So that's a positive thing but both countries really have to look at what the approach will be going forward, how will they continue work together to address Colombia's shifting security challenges even as they begin to increase their focus on rural development and commercial expansion. Bottom line, Plan Colombia is seen as a success story. The visit as we saw with President Santos is evidence of that, the conversations that President Obama had with President Santos were more expansive than just security, that's evidence of that but should the US not shift aid to address Colombia's new challenges, there's a concern that the US commitment to sustained efforts addressing transnational security challenges could be called into question and that's something that we need to deal with. One of the issues that pops up a lot in these discussions but didn't pop up at all today was the state of democracy, security and economics of Colombia's neighbor and the role that that can play also in a lot of these issues. The instability that you see in Venezuela is for real and could have a serious effect in all of these developments and all the progress that we've seen in Colombia. So I just wanted to sort of close on that and I think that these two guys have done an excellent job and focusing on the issues that are sort of the pillar of the report and then we look forward to your questions and having a little discussion with you, your views, your thoughts, there's a lot of experts here. On Colombia on our report. So thank you. Questions? Hold on one second, hold on, we're just gonna get the microphone too, yeah. We'll take it from there. Thank you very much for your presentations. I work in Putumayo department. So I have not witnessed the sense of the progress that has been highlighted by your findings and certainly not reflected in the media because even in Colombia there's no, there's very little media that comes out of Putumayo. My question is, how do you all see the fact that there are many different Colombias inside of Colombia playing out? In other words, if we go to Puerto Asis Putumayo and we go to Cartagena de las Indias, we might as well be in different time zones. And so my question to you is, how do you see that fact playing out in terms of the context, the point that Dr. Lam made about the rural issue being critical? I completely agree with that. I'd love to hear your comments about that incredible reality that is Colombia of its absolute variance. Thank you. Well I think that is one of the most difficult challenges and I think that Putumayo with the 48th front and other fronts in there has been, I think, a particularly difficult area for the state to begin to move into. And so I think that, but I think that I've written about the misconception, there's a lot of literature that says that there are, I guess mostly in Central America, there are two states, the formal and informal state. No, there are about a million states within the different countries. And when you get down into even different parts of Putumayo, there are different realities and as you spread out from there, you get into, and then you have the border regions are always different from other regions. And I think that they are, in terms of having developed longstanding cultures of illegality, probably the most difficult challenges for states across the region to incorporate back into a legitimate use of the legitimate presence of the state because borders are traditionally areas where illicit products transit. There's a culture of accepting that as being legitimate and the government is being illegitimate. So I think you have multiple challenges, but I think that the state, and I think that one of the things that won the constant dangers, and I think the Santos government has been pretty good about trying to combat this, not entirely successfully, is making everything Bogota centric when you look at the world through Bogota. And I think what Bob said about the rural power structures is, it was very true in Casanayi.  But I think it's a huge reality. You could probably map out 120 different real states where things function differently in Colombia. I have to pull it off the top of my head, but I think it's a huge challenge. When I talk about governance, I usually distinguish between formal governance, informal governance, and illicit governance. The fact that there are some communities throughout the world that organize themselves in ways that are not like states and that are not part necessarily of the broader state is not in itself a problem. There are indigenous communities that are self-governed and that are not a threat to the neighbors, are inclusive enough within their own communities that they need not merit the world's attention as being problematic. The problems come in when either when state governance becomes abusive to the people within its territory or aggressive to the people outside of its territory or when non-state actors who control territory become abusive to people within their territory or aggressive against people outside of their territories. So the issue of state consolidation is fully compatible with the ability to recognize informal forms of governance, tribal form of governance within its territory. The problems come when violence comes into play and coercion is the means through which decisions are made. And so to the point of it being, Colombia being a whole bunch of different states in one, I use the term statelets. There's a lot of statelets within Colombia that's not a problem in and of itself. The problem is violence and coercion. Phil, hold on a second. Doug, you've had experience in Central America, deep experience in Central America and in Colombia. The ambassador when he was addressing it, I thought did a really interesting job of laying out this whole question of the land and the use of land and how it's going, the Baldeas and the whole legal concept also the social side of it. What my recollection is that in El Salvador, once you began the, remember the reformist military, the young colonels in 82 or so said, we're gonna do a current reform. That's when violence really took off. I mean, that is a huge igniter for violence. Can you give a, compare a contrast a little bit there and what you see coming down the road? Because your basic statement is pretty optimistic and I'm just wondering if there isn't something about to happen. Doug, can you please be pessimistic? Oh, I can be pessimistic, especially when I get into Central America, I can be very pessimistic. No, I think land ownership, especially when you view the level of inequality in Colombia is going to be, I discovered the Gini Coefficient and Land Concentration in doing the research for this and it is a key detonator for violence and that's why I think that the necessity of the government, the central government to focus on that as a very high priority and a resource intensive effort is because when you start messing with land, you start messing with the power structures and when you start messing with the power structures, you have violence and I think one of the interesting things in Central America, what you saw in 79 when you had the reformist junta was that was the detonator, that was when the Civil War started, that kicked that off and when you saw the, when you were having the 800 bodies a month or a week during the height of the desktop activities, it was because it was the landowners who wanted that to happen. So I think that you have to be incredibly conscious of that as you move into and Columbia has this enormous problem of one of the most concentrated land, formal land usages, formal land titles in the world and so it would be really, really a grievous historic mistake not to factor that in as they go forward with this and I think that as you watch the modest resettlement efforts of the victims, the victims trying to reclaim their land and the number of threats to get the sophistication of the threats that they get and the constant sort of tracking of the movements of the people coming back so that they can be killed if they try to take certain areas of land should be a huge flashing light to say, okay, this is really the core of what they have to deal with. Everything else matters, this is gonna be, I think, the central battle going forward. Is that pessimistic enough for you? That was made to order. Hector. Thank you, Hector Shamis, Georgetown. On this issue of the state, I mean, just one short reflection, there is evidently an increase in stateness in Columbia since Planned Columbia, higher capacity for enforcement. The downside of this is that the drug issue has been exported to other countries without Planned Columbia and so there is less state in Mexico, in Central America and all the way down to South America. There's not gonna be another Planned Columbia for every country in Latin America because this is historically the norm. The state doesn't correspond with the map. The state as administration and bureaucracy doesn't correspond with the map in any Latin American country, I would say. Having said this, the future of this plan relies on issues of state, on enforcement, on the part of the FARC that the state itself, Bogota, is gonna be able to enforce the paramilitary that they're not gonna get massacred like it happened in the past. On the other side, that FARC are gonna enforce compliance with units. It's very common in these processes, from Sinn Fein to, you name it, in El Salvador, that certain units, which have operated for decades autonomously, because it's part of their organization, will not comply with the idea of the plan and will maintain their autonomy and continue doing things. And this is a question of proportion in the end. How many of those units, there were very few in Ireland but how many are there gonna be in Bogota? And therefore that can potentially derail the whole plan. In that sense, can you make an assessment looking forward of the respective ability to enforce compliance? Again, from the government, that the paramilitary are not gonna massacre FARC elements coming into politics. And from the FARC, that they're gonna have control of units that may continue using the same strategy in the future. Would you like to try that, Robert? The challenges of enforcing compliance in a situation like that. I mean, I think it's a great question. I think it's one of the heart. I'm more pessimistic in Colombia than in just about any other place. A lot of times when we talk about these issues, we often talk about legitimacy as we have to figure out how to get the people of the country and the disparate parts of the country to figure out how to make them think the state is legitimate. When in fact, it's usually more important the people who control the elements of the state to recognize the people in their territory as legitimate members of the same political community. We've made more progress in Colombia in that sense than in most other places that have a zillion different statelets and a fragmented society like that. And so that, to me, that shows a degree of intellectual sophistication and political willingness to grapple with the difficult issues, the difficult political issues, the difficult logistical issues to figure out how to expand the writ of the state and increase its legitimacy. So I'm optimistic in the sense that the struggle will probably happen. How you do it is, honestly, it's gonna be partly a matter of luck. Partly a matter of the personalities of the people who have weapons, how much money they're able to get, how many followers they're able to hire, and the ability of the government to remain focused on consolidation. It's not easy, but I think the key element, which is willingness and sort of the sophistication to recognize and learn from past mistakes is present in Colombia in ways that it's not in other places. That's probably a deeply unsatisfying answer. I specialize in deeply unsatisfying answers. Can I just add one thing briefly? I think the huge problem in Central America after the wars is that we thought disarmament was sufficient and when nobody focused on the clandestine structures that provided all sides, particularly, and in each country, in each side of each country, there were segments of the forces that didn't demobilize and what you see is that they are the driving factors because they immediately went into, from political to criminal activity. And so one of the huge driving factors in Central America is the legacy of those organizations. And I would say that in Colombia, if you're not able to eradicate, this is the clandestine or the subterranean structures that have allowed these groups to prosper on all sides of political spectrum, I'd be particularly worried about the FARC because the FMLN had 12 years. These guys have had 50 and the level of sophistication in which they have learned to move things around, I think it'll be, and it's not part, you can't negotiate that away. And as you said, you'll have actors on all sides that respond to outside interests. And Hermann from the embassy is not here, but I believe he's the one who told me, last time we were talking that their assessment is that only 17 of the 72 FARC fronts are now under the direct control of the secretariat. The other ones have all wandered off with their weapons are doing large amounts of other criminal activities, which will make it very, very difficult for that peace process to bring meaningful results in many areas where you already have significant violent factors going on. But we'll take our victories where we can get them. Thank you. Doug, I guess I have two quick questions or one question, two indicators about Southern Tilema. Now, I mean, land titles have been hard for the consolidation program to get going on, but they're a key indicator of state presence, state consolidation. Were you seeing titling happening? And once you got out of like county seats in each municipality, out of the Casco Urbano, how do you pronounce that? You get into the rural area. Who's in charge of security? Is it still the army? Is the police actually out in rural areas responding to calls or is it just everybody on their own? In the zonas de consolidación, the police were actually out there. They were in all the little villages. And the army was, except for the Corps of Engineers doing the roads, relatively invisible, except because they were out in the, I didn't go all the way out to where they were, but they were looking at expanding the perimeter where the police could operate and the judges could operate. So I thought that was quite interesting and the fact that they have two or three meetings a day in the Comando Conjunto where they look at what problems are. I mean, they viewed their biggest problem internally in that sector as being FARC extortion and FARC sort of intelligence networks, but the military wasn't dealing with that at all. That was all turned over to the, at least what they said. I didn't stay there long enough to monitor it all, but there was no visible sign of the army going in there and because they weren't violent acts, they were trying to identify the logistical networks, identify who was doing what, and then the police were doing that, and then they had judges come in who would then mobilize to the towns to do different, take the octos, will you see all this and do all that stuff. So I think that that in those areas is impressive. I think in the Casanades is an entirely different thing. You had mostly private security folks and oil security folks running around and doing what they do, all in identical Toyota pickups out, doing different, no matter what company was, they all had the same white pickups running around. So I think that it's, so it depends on where you are. So I think in those areas of consolidation, it was heartening to see that. On the land titling, you need the security structure to go with the titling process, and I'm not sure that that is being factored insufficiently. I think that there's a desire to sort of meet numbers on titlings and they have methods that are specific because when they're supposed to have certain things done by certain times, and not much, I wouldn't say not much. I don't think that there is as serious a look at the security issues surrounding that that there should be. I think that it's sort of coming into periphery now, like, oh my God, we really should probably be thinking about that more, but I don't think they're there yet. I'll hold that one second here. Here's the microphone, great. My name is Marie Del Castillo, and I'm with the US Embassy in Bogota, and actually I work on the land program, and security is an enormous issue, and it's central to the whole strategy of which areas people will be allowed to be restituted to. In fact, security is so important that the areas where people can be restituted to are really quite small. They're called micro focalized. So you see the map of Columbia, and you see the little pimples. That's where they've decided it's safe enough. It's an enormous issue. It is front and center. Much more needs to be done. The other issue with respect to security and land is the fact that there are landmines all over Columbia. In fact, Columbia has, after Afghanistan, the highest rate of injuries from landmines. And the problem is they have very little information with respect to where they are located. So what they've done is they sort of like black out huge areas of Columbia. They're like, we don't know where it is, but it's someplace in this quadrant of Columbia, and so then they don't allow people to be restituted there. So they need much more money in order. They just recently, after a four year process, have allowed HALO to come in. It's the first civilian demining agency to come in and begin to work in very circumscribed areas. And that needs to be expanded, and they need much greater resources to do that. Who's most responsible for the mining of landmines? Primarily, the FARC. Dr. Mayor, the FARC. So people say, well, it'd be great. They come on our side, and they can tell us exactly where they are. But they don't keep track. Yeah, never mind. Yeah, so that's... Anyway. Okay. Are there any... One last question there in the back. Yeah, it goes a bit to the point she was making about the fact that you don't have security still in many places in the country. And it goes back to... Everybody mentioned land Columbia as the key to success. I think it wasn't so much land Columbia as the way that the tools that land Columbia left were used under the democratic security policy. But one of the key issues for the security policy was control of the territory. But now the policy has given way to consolation. And now you have all the task forces around the municipalities taking care of consolation. Hasn't there been lost a lot of control over the territory precisely because now sort of the objective, the goal for the forces has been to attack the FARC because of the peace negotiations of trying to put pressure on them. And you've left a whole lot of the territory without the protection that you were given in the past. I think there are an enormous number of moving pieces that have to happen in Columbia for the process to be able to move forward. And I think that that's one of the huge challenges the government has had, which is when you go in... I mean, at some point you have to consolidate what you've taken, what you're... To hold it. But so I'm not sure. I don't know what the correlation exactly. My impression, and Adam made no more of this or Bob made more on this. My impression is not that there were drawing forces from areas that they would otherwise be. I mean, they do have a police, at least a police presence, some military presence in all of the municipios, I think, were 98% of the municipios. So I don't think there were drawing from the territory to attack the FARC. I think what the military's sort of conception, I think, is that the FARC is down to about 7,400 or something like that. Each operation sustained, they're in small groups. Each operation to really go after them is much more expensive per capita, let's say, than it was before. And they've pushed them back to where they're not existential threats to most places. So I think consolidation in that context, to me, makes sense. You want it, you need to grab onto what you have and then bring in all the multiple factors and tools that have to sort, I mean, if you have a police force out of justice, then you're no good. You put people in jail and they walk out. If you have justice with no police force, they have nothing to do. I mean, you have all of these series of complicated things that have to happen almost simultaneously, which is what makes it so incredibly expensive to run. And I think that the Colombians are gonna make and have made, I'm sure, an enormous number of mistakes, but they're trying, I would say, better and more coherently and have thought about this process more than anyone else probably in the world. So I think that it's difficult to criticize people operating in unchartered waters. For me, that are that complex when I think the basic aim is correct. Okay, if there aren't any other questions, I wanna thank you for coming and sticking around and staying for the whole morning. I want to let you know that the report is available at CSIS, or I'm sorry, the Executive Summary of the report, is available at csis.org forward slash publications. The full report will be available after the new years. It's definitely worth reading. We've given you a taste, I think, today of our scholarship, but I think that you'll find it interesting and there's much more in the report. So once again, thank you for coming. I hope you enjoyed it. Have a good day.