Why Nobel Peace Prize went to Colombia's Juan Manuel Santos (and a lesson for Modi)

The Norwegians have put faith in ongoing efforts for that ephemeral goal called world peace more often than many would give credit, or diss, them for. Much like in 2009, when the Nobel Peace Prize went to the newbie president of the United States of America, Barack Obama, for a string of passionate, statesman-like speeches he had made as part of his election campaign, this year too, it's the resolute attempt, and not its ultimate success, that has steered the Nobel Committee at Oslo to make its pick.

The 2016 Nobel Peace Prize gong has been sounded for the Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos as the recognition for his endeavour to end over five decades of civil war in his country, where violence has been routine and ordinary for fifty years and counting.

Juan Manuel Santos is the second Colombian to win the Nobel Prize, the first being the literature laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who won it in 1982.

The world's most prestigious peace award for Santos, however, is both a controversial and surprising one, since it was just a week back that the Colombian people had rejected by a wafer-thin margin a referendum on a peace deal tipped to be historic with the communist rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and its leader Rodrigo Londono, also known as Timoleon Timochenko Jimenez.

That "Brexit-like" shock rejection of a referendum of the peace deal that took four years of rigorous and persistent talks in the making was enough for many to put their 2016 Nobel Peace Prize bet with the White Helmets, the Syrian aid group that's working relentlessly in the bombing-ravaged parts of Bashar al-Assad's country.

However, Santos emerged as the winner.

BREAKING NEWS The 2016 #NobelPrize #Peace is awarded to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos pic.twitter.com/7OhiCruc1o

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 7, 2016

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2016 to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos for his resolute efforts to bring the country's more than 50-year-long civil war to an end," said the Norwegian committee chairwoman, Kaci Kullmann Five while announcing the award.

Yet, the peace prize is a push for the future, to help Santos realise his unfinished project of ending the 52-year-long civil war raging at the heart of Colombia, tearing the country apart, and getting embroiled in deadly drug cartels operating out of its heart of darkness, something that the now famous Netflix television series Narcos is portraying with gritty, but often over-exoticised detail.

"There is a real danger that the peace process will come to a halt and that civil war will flare up again. This makes it even more important that the parties, headed by President Santos and FARC guerrilla leader Rodrigo Londono, continue to respect the ceasefire," Kaci Kullmann Five rightly warned at the prize announcement event.

In other words, the Nobel committee is asking the Colombians and indeed FARC leader London, as well as other parties invested in the peace process to "Narcos and chill", as it were, for the Nobel purpose.

Colombia's bloody civil war

Among the Latin American countries which have dabbled with the excesses of communism and have faced the US-backed military wrath against the Marxist guerrillas, Colombia happens to be one the most persistent one. It is estimated that over 250,000 have been killed in the five decade conflict that the government has fought against the guerrillas, particularly the FARC, which, supports Soviet style armed revolution.

During and after Cold War, Colombia, therefore remained a battleground against these ideologically opposed forces of power. And, in the process, fell prey to drug trade and related terrorism. Drug cartels and notorious drug lords make up Colombia is popular imagination, thanks to Hollywood, but also the decay and deterioration of a once people's war poisoned by in-fighting, cocaine and plain fatigue of fighting the US-backed military prowess of respective governments.

Juan Manuel Santos: Warmonger to peacenik

Exactly that legacy was the prelude to Juan Santos's prefatory career in the government when he served as the defence minister of Colombia from 2006-10 under his mentor and the hardliner president Alvaro Uribe. The most controversial decision taken during this stint was the bombing of guerrilla camps in neighbouring Ecuador, killing the then FARC leader Raul Reyes along with many more rebels.

That violation of sovereignty of a foreign country apart, Santos, under President Uribe, continued to adopt militaristic policies towards the Marxist rebels, fuelling the civil war that continued nevertheless, killing many more thousands in its wake, while the kidnappings and face-offs carried on nonstop.

Moreover, incriminating evidence against the Colombian military emerged wherein it was established that it had been slaughtering innocent civilians and passing them off as rebels in order to shore up its "kill rate", something that routinely occurs in India's own Maoist heartlands, particularly Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha. The scandal of "false positives" earned Santos' mentor President Uribe an international notoriety, and convinced his protégé that this wasn't the way forward.

However, key global achievements were also made during this militaristic phase of Juan Santos. Under his guidance and strategic leadership, the Colombian military freed kidnapped Colombian-French politician Ingrid Betancourt as well as three American citizens held by FARC for six years.

But the volte-face came once Santos was elected president in a historic mandate on the plank of "democratic security" and assumed office in 2010. His rapidly shifted his goalposts and organised clandestine meetings held in Fidel Castro's Cuba with FARC leader Rodrigo Londono, which soon developed into full-fledged peace talks from 2012 onwards, garnering much international applause and hope in due course.

Within the Latin American neighbourhood, Santos built bridges with former Venezuelan left-wing superhero, the late Hugo Chavez, as well as made overtures to others such as Evo Morales of Bolivia.  

In a 2014 interview to Al Jazeera, Santos said of its political about turn: "We don't make war for the sake of war. I had to make war and I did it very effectively. But you fight for an objective and any soldier and any statesman should have peace as the ultimate objective, the highest value of your society. Especially a country that has been at war for 50 years, peace should be the objective of everybody. But many times you have to make war before you reach the conditions to allow peace to prevail."

Roadblock to peace and the gong

On September 26, Santos signed the peace deal with Rodrigo Londono and on October 2, the agreement was set to be approved by a popular referendum. Much like Brexit, a confident and hopeful Santos faced the rude shock of Colombians rejecting the peace deal, ostensibly for being too lenient with the FARC leaders.

Despite that stumbling block, which postpones the peace deal by one or two years, until Santos' current and second term expires, in 2018, the Colombian president's political legacy was enshrined with the big Nobel gong.

It's the recognition of Santos' efforts which are genuine and relentless. It is obvious that he's looking for a slice of history-making that would be spoken about in the annals of Latin American tumultuous politics, flanked by the USA on the one hand, and communist heartlands on the other.

Santos has taken upon himself the mantel to shape Colombia's post-conflict future. The Nobel Committee underlined that, and expressed its hope that the world, as well as the people of Colombia, wouldn't abandon the leader at this critical juncture.

However, the very fact that it gave the Peace Prize to Santos alone, and did not hyphenate it with FARC's Londono (which could have been the case had the referendum been positive), means that the Nobel Committee chose to respect the Colombians' sentiments, which are still raw and nursing wounds from the decades of deadly, drug-tainted conflict.

The road to peace is abandoning bloodshed and bullets, and have future-oriented talks that benefit everyone. Northern Ireland, South Africa, Rwanda are stellar examples of stable peace having been achieved after protracted and immensely bloody conflicts. 

There's legitimate hope for Juan Manuel Santos' Colombia still.

Though the desperation of the times could be noted that exactly as the announcement was being made in Oslo, the Syrian aid group and a Nobel contender White Helmets' centre was bombed in Hama. A sobering, humbling perspective, no doubt.

At the time of the @NobelPrize announcement, @SyriaCivilDef center targeted in Hama. Back to work. pic.twitter.com/DsOE0WRbs3

— The White Helmets (@SyriaCivilDef) October 7, 2016

Postscript

Is there a lesson for India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Juan Manuel Santos' career and political graph?

Yes.

Since India's own multi-pronged wars, within and outside, remain a major cause of human rights violation, since the Indian Army oversees the world's most militarised zone in Kashmir that's under lockdown for three months now, it's perhaps best to admit that the heavy-handed, militaristic ways have never led to stable and lasting peace amidst disgruntled parties.

Modi's Nobel Peace Prize aspiration isn't hidden from anyone. But can it be achieved by politically and militarily bludgeoning his opponents? Certainly not.  

Also read: Nobel Peace Prize: Invisible faces and unheard voices 

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