El Diamante, Colombia: Veterans of Colombia’s FARC guerrilla army could soon be making a living as ecotourism guides, beef processors or cheese makers under plans by the Marxist group to invest in economic projects once a peace deal takes hold.
Vast swaths of rural land abandoned for decades because of war will be open to development, including by ex-fighters from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) working on communal farms and other initiatives funded by the group.
President Juan Manuel Santos and top rebel leader Timoshenko signed peace on Monday, ending a 52-year-old conflict that killed more than 220,000 people and forced millions more from their homes.
The deal will be put to a public vote on Oct. 2 and is expected to be approved.
The economic projects, many planned for the future and some already functioning, will be run by the FARC to provide jobs to some of its 7,000 former fighters.
Financing will come from the FARC’s own funds and demobilisation money earmarked for individual ex-rebels under the peace agreement.
Many fighters have little education and come from poor, rural families so they need employment options to resist the profitable pull of drug trafficking, kidnapping and extortion.
“We have to be involved in the economy,” FARC commander Mauricio Jaramillo told Reuters in the jungle outpost of El Diamante, southern Caqueta province.
“We have to push an assured and positive development so we don’t head down the wrong path,” he said, declining to expand on specific projects or say how much would be invested.
Deep social inequality and lack of opportunities for rural Colombians sparked the creation of the FARC in 1964, and many fear disenchanted former rebels will join drug-running crime gangs unless there are economic alternatives.
The FARC’s seven-member secretariat, or leadership team, is loathe to acknowledge the existence of already-functioning projects for fear they may be seized by the government to lock down funds for victim reparations, say rebel sources.
Projects allowed under the peace deal are meant to be funded by payments of 8 million pesos (about Dh9,917 or $2,700) to demobilised fighters to help them start businesses.
