While American support is disappearing, the post -war peace of a nation is turning up

When Colombia signed a historic peace agreement with rebels in 2016, it was celebrated internationally for the termination of a war that had destroyed a large part of the country for decades. The United States reinforced peace efforts, causing displaced farmers to return to their country and the prosecution of war crimes.

Now the support of the US government – the largest foreign economic backlog of the agreement – has disappeared.

Since the Trump administration has withdrawn the most foreign aid worldwide, including dismantling the American Bureau for International Development, it has undermined a deal that is partly designed to limit the drug flow to the United States.

“This places Wind in the wings of armed groups,” said León Valencia, director of the Bogotá-based Peace and Reconciliation Foundation, an organization that has received issues after the conflict and American funds. “They can tell demobilized guerrillas or victims that the government has signed a peace agreement and has not complied with its promise.”

Since 2001, USAID has spent more in Colombia than any other South American country, around $ 3.9 billion.

While the American defense and state departments led military expenditures in the 2000s to an alarmed plan to eradicate Coca agriculture, USAID poured money into related economic development projects.

After Colombia had signed the Peace Agreement with the largest and oldest Guerrilla group in the country, the United States also focused on projects that helped Colombian officers to fulfill the agreement -while they also had farmers alternatives for cultivating coca leaves, the basis for cocaine. The rebel group, the revolutionary forces of Colombia, or FARC, have been fighting the government for six decades.

The challenges of Colombia during the second Trump administration have been merged the withdrawal of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which helped to pay efforts such as large countercotics operations and the annoying process of removing landmines.

The results are setbacks on the spot for the army and the police who can benefit criminal groups.

“It’s hard to overdo what a large paradigm shifts this is for the Colombians because they are so connected to the Americans,” said Elizabeth Dickinson, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, who monitors and tries to prevent armed conflicts. “It is a tectonic shift that the US may not always be there.”

In small cities and rural areas of Colombia, where armed groups are still active, USAID projects had been vital to maintain stability, according to interviews with 14 current or former employees of the agency or contractors in Colombia. Most refused to be identified because they were not authorized to speak and out of concern that it would endanger the possibility of future work.

“There are parts of the country where there are the bad guys and then there is USAID,” said a former contractor who worked with a non -profit organization that suspended his work to prevent young people from joining armed groups after the financing of the US had stopped.

USAID also helped Colombia to provide services to the more than 2.8 million migrants from Venezuela who have arrived over the past decade, making Colombia the largest recipient in the world who fled the political and economic crisis of Venezuela.

Yet the American support is not completely welcomed in Colombia. Many conservative politicians agree with the claims of the Trump government that it is an inefficient use of funds, while some left -wing politicians say that our money is an instrument to control Colombian society.

The left-wing president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, wondered why US AID was about strengthening the country’s immigration and customs agencies, and said that this kind of expenditure infringed the sovereignty of the country.

“Trump is right,” said Mr Petro in a television on television. “Take your money.”

Colombia’s armed conflict goes back for generations. Worteld in frustration about inequality and land distribution, it turned into a complex struggle between left -wing guerrillas, right -wing paramilitaries, drug cartels and the government, fed by drug money and other illegal matters.

While FARC laid his arms, shoots remain and existing and new armed groups forces, according to analysts.

Today the country is confronted with eight separate armed conflicts, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, that described The humanitarian situation of the country as a reach the most critical point since then the signing of the peace agreement.

Ariel Ávila, a senator for the green party who worked in peace-related projects before he held office, said that the withdrawal of USAID resources for a web of non-profit organizations dependent on American support for building democracy, some of which have been closed.

“For me, USAID has not just been about peace structure,” said the Lord Ávila. “It has been an agent for democracy.”

Central to helping the country to cement a lasting peace is the establishment of the Special jurisdiction for peaceA court who focuses on trying out crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the internal conflict that left At least 450,000 people dead.

American help – via USAID and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – represents about 10 percent of the foreign support of the court, said judicial officials.

The US government offered technical and logistical support in three of the large-scale cases of the Court of Appeal every thousands of victims-over sex acts, crimes aimed at black and indigenous population and the systematic murder of left-wing politicians. The agency has also provided research instruments, such as DNA test kits, to identify bodies in mass graves.

The loss of American aid will delay the work of the court, said judicial officials, which is worrying because it has a 15 -year deadline to reach judgments and punishments in cases that include tens of thousands of victims and defendants in rural and difficult to reach areas, said judge Alejandro Ramelli, president of the court.

“We are committed to finding the answers on thousands of questions that the victims have had and have never answered for many years,” said Mr. Ramelli. “International aid is essential to find that truth.”

USAID financing also helped the Colombian government in mapping millions of hectares in areas affected by conflicts, which was the key to the peace agreement. Land inequality had been a core creeps since the fighting broke out, so the government promised to give formal ownership to poor farmers who work in national land.

Government officials are busy mapping wide chunks of territory for which there is little or no formal government record. The National Branding Agency of Colombia, which supervises the process, said that the US government has contributed to conducting country investigations, developed safety protocols for work in conflict areas and identifying land used for illegal crops.

Civil servants have mapped out more than 3.2 million hectares through a program financed by USAID, just in the city of Cáceres, in the mountainous Antioquia region, they could spend titles to 230 families who agreed to stop agricultural coca leaves in exchange for formal land possession.

Without the support, many of those cards have been put on hold because the National Land Agency does not have the budget to complete the work alone, the agency said. “The importance of USAID is clear,” the agency said in a statement.

USAID support has also been the key in regions that experience a new conflict.

In the northeastern region of Catatumbo, near the border with Venezuela, the country sees its worst period of violence in a generation. 106 people have been killed since January and, according to a local government, more than 64,000 from their houses have been displaced count.

Zelor Villegas, 27, is one of the displaced persons. In 2019 he helped find Corporación Pride, an LGBT interest group in the Catatumbo region, and last year won his organization a contract-funded contract to follow violence that affects women, young people and minority groups.

In January, two major events turned the lives of Mr. Villegas upside down: widespread rifle fire broke out among the foothills of the dissolved FARC guerrillas, and the Trump administration ordered a global freezing of foreign help. Mr. Villegas was forced to flee the region and lost both his contract and the US sponsored psychological and legal support that he received for his work.

Now the future of Mr. Villegas is uncertain, and the work of his organization in following and supporting victims in one of the most violent regions of Colombia is on hold.

“I feel impotent,” he said. “An organization like ours in this part of the world is rarely noticed.”