Civil War is Solvable

as you can tell from my accent, i'm irit. I grew up in the Republic of Ireland, which was far from the violence and the terror happening up in Northern Ireland at the time, and I was too young to vote in the referendum for the Good Friday Agreement, which was this incredible development in the peace process between Ireland and Britain and Northern Ireland. But I have to say I remember so much relief and just such huge joy all over the country when the agreement was ratified and

the violence was over. Now in Ireland it hasn't been a perfect piece, but certainly lives were saved and sanity was restored to this region that was in complete turmoil. So I was reading this UN report and one hundred years ago, whenever there was war, ninety percent of the casualties were military personnel and ten percent were civilians, mainly women and children. And now that number has totally reversed. In a war today, ninety percent of casualties are civilians.

To understand how difficult it is to end a civil war or any armed conflict, really, perhaps it's useful to look at the conflicts ongoing today. There's this ongoing conflict mapping project. It's called the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, and this year, just up until May of twenty nineteen, they reported over eight thousand deaths in places like India, Syria, Yemen and Nigeria, and across the world overall,

violence causes one point six million deaths every year. Conflicts in Syria and in Nigeria and in Yemen today, sometimes I think they look intractable, like how on earth could we even hope to see an end to these terrible times? But other wars have ended, Other conflicts like the one in Northern Ireland, they seemed endless too, but they did end.

And our guests today knows more than most about just how to make peace As President of Colombia, he was instrumental in bringing to a close a decades long conflict between the government, paramilitary groups and communist guerrillas like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, who you probably know as FARK. Millions of Colombians were displaced through the years of the conflict, and two hundred and twenty thousand people were killed. So

how did Columbia put through? Former President Santos discusses how he's here with Ann Applebaum, who's reported from Columbia in the past herself. There are tons of fascinating insights in here, so let's get into it. One manual, Santos, when you became president of Columbia, you were faced with one of the longest running, most insoluble civil wars in the world. When you begin thinking about how to solve a problem like that, it seems intractable, it can't end. How do

you break the problem down? What do you think of first? What was your first instinct? My first instinct was to try to get a complete picture of the problem and try to generate the necessary conditions to solve it. Many times this is not done, and when you don't have the necessary conditions at your disposal. It is impossible to solve a conflict of the nature. What do you mean by conditions? What exactly were you talking about? What? What was it wasn't known. I studied why my predecessors failed,

because all of them tried to negotiate peace. And I studied more than seventeen conflicts around the world. Some of them were successful in being ended, some of them not. But I studied each and every one of these conflicts and extracted what was applicable to our conflict and the lessons that I should learn of what to do and what not to do. And when I had those conditions ready, I then started negotiations. Conditions like you have to have the military balance of power in the favor of the state.

As long as the insurgency the grillers think they can win by using violence, it's very difficult to negotiate peace. You need the commanders of the insurgency to personally consider that for them on a personal level, it's better to negotiate a peace agreement than to continue the war. And something that is very very necessary in today's world. Any asymmetric war in any part of the world needs the support of the region and if necessary, of the international

community to reach an agreement. So these conditions were identified and then created. Because conditions don't appear just out of the blue. You have to create those conditions, and we created those conditions in the case of Columbia. And what did you do first, What was your first effort in

that direction? Well, my first effort was to strengthen our military and I had the opportunity of doing that because I was Minister of Defense before being president, and also to use the carrot and the stick with the military commanders, telling them that they personally would be better off if they negotiate peace. And something that I did which was quite controversial at the moment, was making peace with our

neighbors in order to seek their support. Charles in Venezuela, who's not popular in Colombia, was very unpopular and we didn't have diplomatic relations or even trade relations with Venezuela at that time, and I made peace with him. Also with President Correa and Ecuador, the south of Colombia, we did not have diplomatic or even trade relations with either. We needed them to support the peace process, otherwise the peace process would not be successful. So I made peace

with both of them. And with other neighbors, which we did not have it at that time, in good relationships Brazil and Peru and the rest of that America. I know that one of the other things you did is that you sought to give the rebel leaders some incentive to join the political process in Colombia, in other words, to bring somehow bring them in, allow them to have a political party, allow them to be elected. And this, of course was also controversial because many people feel that

these are criminals and they should be in jail. Can you explain why you thought that was necessary and whether you think it worked well. Every peace process boils down to where you draw the line between peace and justice. No matter where you draw the line, there will always be some people from one side seeking more justice or from the other side seeking more peace. So to make peace is not very popular, and this is an experience

that all peacemakers have had during the recent history. Also, in a process of this sort, what are the guerrillas fighting for. They want to change the country, They want political power, and you have to give them a way out, a dignified way out, if you want them to lay

down their arms. And the way to do that is to offer them a space in our democracy, and almost every peace process around the world has to give the counterpart some guarantees that they can continue their struggle without violence through democratic means, and this is an essential part of any agreements. Yes, this is what was done in Northern Ireland as well. Absolutely, and every other conflict in the world has been solved by giving the counterparts some

kind of guarantees in their democratic life. Otherwise they will never give up their arms unless you defeat them military and exterminate them, which is something impossible in the case of Columbia, it was impossible. Then you have to negotiate, and negotiations mean making transactions. In the case of Colombia, for example, I gave them at ten places in our Congress, five in the Senate, five in the House of Representatives

to guarantee them for three period representation in Congress. And they were satisfied with that, and I think that was an essential part of the agreement. When you do that, though, don't you risk and I know this was this did happen in Colombia, don't you risk losing public support? The public is angry at these people. They're terrorists, They've caused all this damage they've killed people, they forced people to

leave the country. They've been very destruct So how do you bring the public along and convince them that this is trade off between peace and justice is worth it. When I became president, I was the most popular politician in Colombia. I had more than eighty five percent favorability. As soon as I talked about negotiating peace, I was warned, this will cost you your political capital. People will not understand that you are very effective. Hawk was elected because

you were successful making war. You now sit down with the terrorists to make peace. But it's the only way to finish the war through a negotiation, and so you have to be able to do what is correct, even though it's unpopular. You have to be able to sacrifice your political capital if you want to achieve your objectives. And I was warned that was going to happen, and

it happened. My favorability went down dramatically. But I have the great satisfaction of ending the war with the FARC after fifty years, and that, of course, is made it worth while in every respect. I was in Columbia last year and was traveling with a friend who was doing a project. We met lots of young people who were entrepreneurs and who were building new things in Columbia, and I did have a feeling that this is a country

where there was a lot of optimism. People kept beginning sentences by saying, now that we have peace, now that the war is over, now we can do things that we couldn't do before. But at the same time, they weren't at all enthusiastic about the deal, about the rebels entering the political process. It was a very strange contrast, you know, as if they were half convinced that this was a good thing, and they saw why it was beneficial, but they didn't feel optimistic about the process itself. This

happens in every peace process. The people like peace, but they don't like to pay the price for peace. The price in this case was to see the guerrillas terrorists who had committed tremendous atrocity the war crimes in Congress. A lot of people, of course, don't like it. I don't like it, but it's the necessary price you have

to pay in order to have peace. I prefer to have them in Congress shouting and making speeches, and to have them in the jungles can napping and putting bonds, How do you bring society around, what is the do you have advice for your successors? How do you convince people that this is a good way to end the conduct? Because I know some people are not convinced. One of the most difficult problems that you confront in a process of this order is to tell the people that they

have to learn how to forgive, how to reconciliate. And this is very hard. To tell a mother whose daughter or son have been killed raped to forgive the perpetrators. This is very, very difficult. But I learned from the victims that the victims, and this is a very strange paradox, were the ones who at the end were more enthusiastic about ending the war because they did not want other people to suffer what they suffered. For me, that was

a lesson in life. I never expected that. On the contrary, people who had never experienced war or was not affected by war were the ones who were more critical of the peace process. But this is something which is normally in many other processes. I studied them. For example, in the case of Israel and Palestine, Prime Minister Rabine, who paid with his life the peace processes. He did with

the Palestinians. Experienced that from the Israeli people who did not want the Palestinians to have a say in Israeli politics. This is a common denominator of almost every piece process. Mandela was very much criticized by his own people who are being too lenient. But as he said, if you want peace, you need to make transactions. Did you meet

with victims? Yes, I had a marvelous experience. A professor from Harvard went and visited me at the beginning of my government and said, you are embarking in a very, very difficult trip. I advise you, when you're sad, when you're about to throw in the towel, to talk to the victims. Tell you their dramas, what they have gone through. That will re energize you. And that's what I did.

I had as a discipline to talk to victims every week or every two weeks, to different victims, and that served through the process with six years, as a tremendous re energizer. Every time I talked to a victim, I came out saying I have to continue, I have to persevere, and they, the victims, were the first ones to tell me President don't throw into towel, continue persevere. What was your experience like of speaking to the rebels whom you'd fought against for many years? You need to put yourself

in their shoes. Empathy is very important in any negotiation. What is it that they want? What are their concerns, what are their ideals, their objectives. If you don't have an idea of what they want, it's very difficult to negotiate. So I came into the negotiation with tremendous apprehension I was their worst enemy. But I made it as one of my objectives to build trust that they started trusting

me and I started trusting them. Of course, I put many sort of measures throughout the process to confirm that they were negotiating good faith, and I think they did the same with me. And at the end, the trust was there that I was negotiating good faith and that they were negotiating good faith, and that was essential. From your experience, do you think you can generalize you learned

from other conflicts which you studied. Are there lessons that you would like to pass on to others When you look around the world, When you look at you at Israel, Palestine, or at some of the other other civil wars that continue. Yes, there are many lessons. First, that every conflict can have a solution. Five years ago, six years ago, nobody in Colombia thought that a piece agreement with the farm was possible,

and people say that we made possible the impossible. And that is a lesson for any conflict if you find the correct condition and you find the correct moment, because there are moments in a process which are essential to have a successful negotiations. I think every conflict in the world can be solved. Any other specific lessons, I mean, is it is it just is it just being optimistic or there's or their specific To solve any any conflict, you you need to know what the counterpart really wants.

You need to be able to convince the international in today's world, the international community, of a solution to this conflict. You need to know where you draw your red lines, but where you can give to the counterpart what is

necessary to obtain peace. For example, in the case of Colombia and in the case of today's conflicts, there's no way you can have a solution with total impunity because all countries are are subject to the Rome Treaty, which is a treaty that was negotiated by the intrans community

precisely to allow peaceful solutions of armed conflicts. In that Rome Statute, the International Criminal Court was born, was created, and the transitional justice was in a way invented, and the negotiation in the case of Colombia and in any case, was go and negotiate as much justice as you can without sacrificing peace. And this is the nutshell of any

conflict today. You cannot have total amnesty for war criminals or people who have committed the terrorist acts that are considered crimes against humanity, But how to punish them, how to judge them, is an essential part of any conflict today. In the case of Colombia, it's the first time that the two parts sat down and negotiated a special tribunal to apply transitional justice. And this is being showed as

an example for other conflicts. From no One, lots of people say whenever you approach a country in the throes of a civil war or a difficult conflict, I'm thinking of Libya, I'm thinking of several other particularly difficult places. People from those places will say, oh, our country is so specific. Our conflict is to do with our history. You know, there aren't any lessons we can learn from

the outside. Sounds like you don't agree with that. No, because we're all human beings, we all have concerns, we all want to live in peace, and you get any conflict we had, a religious conflict, ethnic conflict. These conflicts can be solved when there's goodwill from both parts and a conviction that peace is better than the war. There are a lot of countries that have now have very deep divisions and deep polarization, which doesn't necessarily lead to

civil war violence. One might even say that the United States right now is very bitterly divided and polarized. Do you have advice for Americans about how they can think about overcoming these deep civic divides. Well, this is a problem that is present almost everywhere in the world, this deep polarization. That's when emotions take over and arguments are left to one side. We must try to recuperate the importance of the arguments of dialogue and not simply react

with your emotions. This is much easily said than done, but it is again a necessary condition to try to diminish the polarization that we're seeing in the US. In Colombia. In Europe, for example, what is happening in Europe due to the problem with migration. When you analyze the problem migration in Europe, this is a very very small problem to create such political reaction, and you have to be able to explain to the public opinion that the problem is not as big as many people are trying to

present it. The problem is minimal. I will give you a statistic. In Colombia, we have today many more Venezuelan refugees than the whole amount of refugees that have gone into Europe. We had been able to cope with that. How is it possible that in Europe governments are falling because of that? It's simply an example to show you that many of the problems that have caused this polarization are not that big, and the big challenges to try to explain why this is so and try to reduce

this polarization. Are there examples of ordinary Colombians or groups of Colombians who contributed to the peace process by their actions? Are there examples? You can give, oh, many, many examples. I will tell you one specific example. Her name is Pastora Mita. Her son was tortured and then killed. Two weeks later, somebody went into her house. He was wounded.

He took care of him, and when he recovered he saw a photograph of her with her son, and he said, I am sorry to tell you I was the one who killed him, and I was one who tortured him. And she reacted in a most spectacular way, positive way, saying thank you for telling me, because I will forgive you and this will liberate me from my hate. That story for me was so powerful. Liberate me from my hate. This is what the world needs to be liberated from hate.

And this specific example, I can mention a hundred in the war in Colombia, people who really are the heroes of this peace process. That's why when I received the Peace Prize and Nobel laureate, I said, this is not for me, It's for the victims, liberation from hate. It's such a beautiful idea and a possible reality too. But keeping the peace is always ongoing work. Since one Manuel Santos ended his term as president, his successor Van Duquet

has actually undone much of his work. Some dissident fark rebels started to fight again, and lawlessness prevails in some parts of the country. And sadly, the number of social activists being killed is on the rise. As we've heard, achieving piece is incredibly difficult, and maintaining pieces possibly even more so. Columbia has a difficult road ahead, but things are undeniably better there now than the darkest days of the conflict, and their example is really want to learn from.

Solvable is a collaboration between Pushkin Industries and the Rockefeller Foundation, with production by Laura Hyde, Hester Kant, Laura Sheeter, and Ruth Barnes from Chalk and Blade. Pushkin's executive producer is Neia LaBelle, Research by Sheer, Vincent, engineering by Jason Gambrel and the great folks at GSI Studios. Original music composed by Pascal Wise and special thanks to Taylor Heather Fine,

Julia Barton, Carli Mgliori, Jacob Weisberg, and Malcolm Gladwell. You can learn more about solving Today's biggest problems at Rockefeller Foundation dot org, slash solvable. I'm Mave Higgins, Now go solve it.