Time to call the FARC’s bluff

IT WAS never going to be easy. Three times since the 1980s Colombian governments have tried but failed to broker peace with the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Even so, the latest talks seemed set to succeed in ending a conflict that has dogged Latin America’s third-most-populous country. Facing strengthened security forces, the FARC, a narco-Stalinist outfit, has lost all hope of military victory. Unlike the previous efforts, the negotiations are following a tight agenda, of five points, aimed at ending the conflict for good. They take place in Havana, opaquely, in an effort to insulate them from the continuing conflict back home.

But the process has been grindingly slow. After 32 months agreements have been reached on only three of the five points. In the past year the two sides have become bogged down on the most difficult issue—transitional justice, or what punishment, if any, guerrilla leaders accused of war crimes should face.