Duque was sworn into office on Tuesday. "We will make corrections to those structural errors which surfaced when applying the accord. The victims [of the conflict] must receive moral, financial and economic compensation from executioners," Duque said at the inauguration ceremony.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel movement waged a revolutionary struggle against Colombian authorities for over 50 years before signing a historic peace accord in 2016.

READ MORE: 'I Don't Believe Former FARC Leader Could Be Elected President' — Researcher

Previously, Duque promised that he would respect the peace accords with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia signed by then-President Juan Manuel Santos.</s>Tres ataques de las disidencias de las FARC en el departamento colombiano del Cauca, en el suroeste del país, dejaron un policía muerto y cinco heridos a pocas horas de que el presidente electo, Iván Duque, tome posesión del cargo, informaron este martes las autoridades.

En el municipio de Padilla el saldo fue de un uniformado muerto y tres más con lesiones luego de que detonara una motocicleta que fue cargada con explosivos.

"A eso de las 21:40 hora local, de este lunes 6 de agosto, estalló una motocicleta que habían dejado instalada muy cerca a la estación de policía. El pueblo está consternado porque aquí estas cosas nunca se han visto, la comunidad se volcó hacia al hospital para verificar el estado de salud de los uniformados", indicó a periodistas el alcalde, Víctor Hugo Vidal.

El policía muerto fue identificado como el intendente Edier Burbano, comandante de la estación de policía de Padilla. El parte oficial indica que Burbano y los tres heridos hallaron una motocicleta abandonada detrás de la estación de Policía y cuando procedían a moverla estalló.

En un segundo ataque, hacia las 4.45 hora local de este martes, encapuchados lanzaron artefactos explosivos contra la estación de policía del municipio de Suárez causándole heridas al auxiliar de policía Brayan Adolfo Lugo.

A la misma hora se registró otro atentado en el municipio de Santander de Quilichao, en donde también estalló una motocicleta ubicada frente a las instalaciones de la Registraduría. El hecho ocurrió cuando transitaba por el lugar una patrulla de la Policía, cuyos ocupantes salieron ilesos, mientras que el guardia de seguridad del edificio resultó lesionado por trauma acústico.

Ambos hechos, explicó el gobernador del departamento del Cauca, Óscar Rodrigo Campo, "al parecer fueron obra de las disidencias de las FARC, al servicio del narcotráfico, según el diálogo que hemos tenido con Ejército y Policía".</s>In his inaugural address, President Ivan Duque says he will take steps to fix 'structural flaws' in the deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia

BOGOTA, Colombia – Colombia's new President Ivan Duque took office Tuesday, August 7, with no shortage of tough issues to tackle, from heightened tensions with neighboring Venezuela to the lingering difficulties of peace-building with the nation's rebel groups.

The right-wing Duque, who is just 42 years old, succeeds Juan Manuel Santos – and could work to undo the deal his predecessor reached with leftist FARC guerrillas to end a half-century of conflict.

Wearing a sash in the country's national colors, Duque took the oath of office in Bolivar Square in historic Bogota in the presence of several regional leaders including Mexico's Enrique Peña Nieto and Ecuador's Lenin Moreno.

In his inaugural address, he said he will take steps to fix "structural flaws" in the deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), without offering concrete details.

"We will deploy corrective measures to ensure that the victims get the truth, proportional justice, reparations – and no repetitions" of the past, said Duque, a lawyer by training and a former senator.

Duque said he will also take a tougher tack in talks with the country's last active rebel group, the Marxist ELN, to ensure that a "credible process" is put in place so that that the group ceases all criminal activity within a set time limit.

Colombia's political left, defeated in June elections, protested as Duque took office, demanding justice for the more than 330 rights activists murdered since the December 2016 peace accord with the FARC.

Observers agree that Duque's success will depend in large part on his connection to popular former president Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010), who handpicked the political novice to help the right – which opposed the FARC deal – regain power.

"His mentor's situation and relations with Venezuela are the keys" to Duque's presidency, political scientist Diana Avellaneda from Javeriana University told Agence France-Presse.

Relations with Caracas took a dive over the weekend when Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro claimed to have been the victim of an "assassination" attempt – and put the blame on Santos, "ultra right-wing" domestic opponents and the US.

Duque looks set to stand up to Colombia's neighbor to the east, demanding "free elections" following a May poll that saw Maduro re-elected, which was boycotted by Venezuela's opposition.

He hinted at a tough line against Maduro, saying Colombia "will reject any sort of dictatorship on the continent."

The neighbors share a 2,200-kilometer (1,400 miles) long border that is hard to police.

Bogota has accused Caracas of harboring Marxist rebels, while hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have crossed the border to escape food and medicine shortages, failing public services and hyperinflation in their homeland.

If Duque "starts answering everything Maduro says... he will add fuel to the propaganda and political fire to keep ratcheting up the tension," said international relations expert Jairo Velasquez.

The analyst added that the new Colombian leader could become Venezuela's "enemy, real or imagined."

Peace with rebels? Not so fast

At home, Duque's firebrand rhetoric has increased tension and rocked already fragile relations with rebels, both former and current.

He has long criticized the FARC deal as being too lenient in allowing former rebels accused of atrocities to serve as lawmakers.

Ending 50 years of conflict that has cost the lives of 260,000 people and left more than 7 million displaced is no easy undertaking.

But Duque – with Uribe's backing – has made it clear he thinks the deal is deeply flawed.

Meanwhile, Santos – who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the FARC deal – admitted defeat in his bid to negotiate a ceasefire with the ELN, despite making "significant progress."

Duque made it clear that further progress will not come easy.

While his tough stance on peace may give Duque headaches upon taking office, he could also suffer from the rug supporting his political ambitions being wrenched out from under him.

As the hand-picked choice of Uribe, he enjoys considerable support from the powerful Democratic Center party his mentor launched.

But the 66-year-old Uribe, now a senator, is accused of witness interference and faces a Supreme Court investigation, and an uncertain political future.

At least Duque can call on strong regional ties amidst a recent upsurge in the fortunes of the political right on the continent, notably in Argentina, Chile and Peru. Brazil may follow suit in October.

But in addition to woes with Venezuela to the east, all is not serene on Colombia's southern border, where Ecuador has been angered over the drug-trafficking violence spilling across its frontier.

In Colombia, some 209,000 hectares (516,500 acres) of land are used to grow coca, the principal ingredient used to manufacture cocaine. Colombia is the largest cocaine producer in the world. – Rappler.com</s>Ex-combatants from the Colombia’s demobilized FARC group are recreating a guerrilla jungle camp to show tourists what their life during the conflict was like.

According to newspaper El Espectador, the former guerrillas’ reintegration camp is located in La Paz, Cesar and will be transformed into an ecotourism site where visitors can meet former guerrillas and enjoy a type of “peace tourism.”

Visitors can stay in what was essentially a FARC camp and sleep in temporary-style huts that combatants endured during the course of their armed struggle against the Colombian state.

The organizers also hope that the tourists will be given the opportunity to sleep in the pre-fabricated houses provided by the government as part of the historic peace deal in order to gain an understanding of the changes that took place through the agreement.

The project was started by 19 ex-combatants in June this year when the “Tierra Grata Ecotours” company was set up with the idea of promoting tourism centered around the ongoing peace process.

The former guerrillas have received training from several institutions and organizations such as SENA, Valledupar Chamber of Commerce and Procolombia where courses relating to business and tourism were on offer.

The ex-fighters, decorated the prefabricated houses that were built for them in accordance with the terms of the peace deal with murals alluding to the history of the guerrilla group that fought against the State for more than 50 years.

For months, the former combatants have been training and rehearsing for the reception of tourists that will be invited to converse and ask questions about life in what was for decades Colombia’s largest guerrilla group.

The camp has a kitchen with a “Cuban stove” that was used by the rebels during the conflict with the idea being that visitors can try dishes that were the basis of a guerrilla diet during the war.

In addition, the project organizers hope to build a house of memory to pay tribute to the victims of the conflict, which will be open to tourists in the future.

“The memory house has to be oriented towards recognizing and making the victims visible. It is not about making an apology for the conflict,”said German Gomez, an ex-FARC commander.

How the FARC’s reintegration process is supposed to work

Since the signing of the historic peace agreement and the subsequent laying down of arms by the FARC, new projects are springing up around the county as ex-combatants try to reintegrate into society after decades of conflict.

“These projects dignify the human being and give them the option of growing,” explained Gomez at the La Paz site.

FARC’s armed struggle against the state began in 1964 playing a role in a wider armed conflict including right-wing paramilitaries and state forces that cost the lives of 260,000 people.

Peace talks are currently ongoing with Colombia’s last remaining Marxist-inspired rebel group the ELN.

was last modified: by</s>The outgoing President of Colombia said Monday that the greatest achievement of his administration, which will conclude its term on Tuesday, is the signing of the peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), while he also lamented the murders of social leaders in the country.

"No peace is perfect, nor easy to consolidate, especially in our country, affected by so many forms of violence. The assassinations of social leaders are a pain with which I am left with," said Juan Manuel Santos in his last address on television as president of Colombia.</s>(Bloomberg) -- In the far north of the Colombian Andes, where for decades Marxist rebels controlled cocaine production and battled the army, a widely-praised 2016 peace accord was supposed to change everything. It has — for the worse.

Promises of new security measures and crop substitutes have gone unfulfilled. Where once there was brutal — but clear — rebel rule, there is today a cacophony of drug-trafficking mafias, each charging farmers so much protection money that coffee, cattle and even cocaine are barely profitable. Former guerrillas are re-arming, the homicide rate is skyrocketing and hundreds are fleeing, emptying schools and businesses.

“What’s happening is a criminal reconfiguration for the control of territory and illegal economies,” said Ariel Avila, a political analyst at the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation in Bogota. “No one counted on the government being so slow in arriving in this area.”

The government spent four years negotiating an agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, earning outgoing President Juan Manuel Santos a Nobel Prize. But then the state effectively abandoned Ituango and other FARC zones. President-elect Ivan Duque, who takes office on Tuesday, is facing record cocaine production, a countryside overrun by private armies and a spreading FARC dissidence.

Duque says that coca, the raw material for making cocaine, is an “existential threat” to the nation, which he will combat using aerial spraying with herbicides and by forcibly digging it up, as well as with substitution programs. This is music to the ears of the U.S. government but will deprive many local families of their only source of income.

Key pledges in the peace accord were never put into action. As soon as the FARC stepped back, paramilitary groups entered Ituango, moving through farms and hamlets in groups of a dozen or more. Not a single coca shrub has been dug up here under the promised crop-substitution program. Projects meant to create work for former guerrillas haven’t materialized.

“They left us with nothing but our underpants,” noted one former guerrilla, who said that both the dissidents and a drug cartel have tried to recruit him. The cartel offered him 800,000 pesos ($280) a month, he said.

The government said that the peace deal would boost growth by at least half a percentage point per year, but so far there’s been little sign of any such “peace dividend.” Colombia’s economy expanded last year at its slowest pace since the global financial crisis.

A former FARC fighter calling himself “Rogelio” gave up on the peace process and left a United Nations-monitored camp for demobilized FARC fighters and set up a new guerrilla force at the end of last year. Rogelio is one of more than 1,000 of some 13,000 FARC members who took part in the peace process that have now taken up arms again, and their ranks have also been swollen by new recruits. The re-appearance of the guerrillas in the region triggered a frenzy of violence from the cocaine-trafficking group known as the Gulf Clan, or Gaitanistas, which is murdering anyone suspected of helping the dissidents.

“We decided to continue the struggle due to the government’s failure to comply with the peace accord and due to the murders of ex-combatants and social leaders,” a member of Rogelio’s group who identified himself as alias “Picino” said in reply to written questions.

Rogelio, who walks with a prosthetic limb after losing his leg to a mine, declined an interview, saying the intensity of the fighting made it impractical. A separate FARC dissident faction led by alias “Cabuyo” also operates in the region, as well as at least one other drug cartel, according to police.

“I want to get out of this hell,” said one woman, speaking outside the Ituango funeral parlor after her 18-year-old son was murdered, apparently by the Gulf Clan.

In Ituango, local farmers and businesses used to pay protection money to the FARC. Now, they receive competing extortion demands from different factions and risk death if one group hears of a payment to its rivals. Paramilitary groups are charging farmers 100,000 pesos ($35) per head of cattle, according to one local business leader, and are expected to impose a crippling “tax” on the upcoming coffee harvest.

And whereas the FARC used to levy a “tax” on the trade in coca paste — a type of unrefined cocaine produced by the farmers — the Gulf Clan will often buy the paste on credit then decline to pay for it, saying the shipment was seized by the police, according to one local man whose family has land planted with coca. They also steal chickens, crops and whatever else they need from the farmers.

While the homicide rate has continued on its downward trend in Colombia’s big cities, it has jumped in cocaine-producing regions such as Tumaco on the Pacific coast, Catatumbo on the border with Venezuela and Ituango.

Since the peace accord, Ituango has become one of the most dangerous places on the planet. So far this year, 43 people have been murdered here, up from eight in all of 2016. That makes Ituango, with a population of about 25,000, four times as deadly as El Salvador, the world’s most violent nation.

Ituango has the misfortune to be strategic for the cocaine trade, since near here the Andes mountains give way to the coastal plain that leads to the Caribbean from where the drug is shipped to Central America and Mexico.

The dissidents know Ituango’s mountains and canyons better than anyone and have more combat experience than their enemies, but the Gulf Clan has more money and weaponry. Civilians are caught in the middle.

Locals now live in a state of terror. On the dirt path to the town of Santa Rita, the Gulf Clan has taken to dragging passengers off buses to execute them by the side of the road. They also impose a curfew on the civilian population, forbidding them from traveling after dusk.

Ituango’s Peace Council, consisting of representatives from the community, business leaders, the church and the mayor’s office, suspended its operations in July after receiving death threats. One of its members, Mary Castrillon, recently fled four hours to Medellin following threats to kill her family.

After a man with a gun arrived at Castrillon’s doorstep last year, the National Protection Unit, which provides bodyguard services for people at risk, studied her case, found that the level of risk was “ordinary” and declined to help her.

Community leaders in the region are “the walking dead,” while the families of former FARC fighters have “the whiff of embalming fluid” about them, said Father Carlos Cardenas, the local priest.

At least six former FARC members have been murdered in Ituango since the peace accord, two of them inside the security rings protecting their camp. In February, someone threw a grenade through the window of a family suspected of ties to one of the armed groups, killing a three-year-old girl.

“When the peace process started, we saw a great future for Ituango, people started coming back after many years,” said Gladys Zapata, who works in a local school. “There was a lot of hope, but now, my God, things are worse than they were before.”

To contact the author of this story: Matthew Bristow in Bogota at mbristow5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Ethan Bronner at ebronner@bloomberg.net, Melinda Grenier
A police officer dies and five people are injured in three separate FARC attacks in Colombia.