Former foes join for peace

Oscar Buitrago was an Army captain whose career ended when a rebel landmine blew off his foot. Alberto Cuellar was a guerrilla commander whose face was torn apart in a police ambush.

Like thousands of other Colombians, the two men saw their lives shattered by an internal conflict that has dragged on for nearly four decades.

But Mr. Buitrago and Mr. Cuellar have left behind the bitterness and pain of war and are now working together for peace.

They are the founders of Con Fe Paz (With Faith, Peace or CFP) a group that brings together ex-soldiers and demobilized rebels – all of whom were seriously injured in the conflict but are now united in a desire to find reconciliation.

The idea is simple: If wounded veterans can make peace with the very people who caused their injuries, so can the rest of this broken nation.

"Reconciliation starts with an act of forgiveness: a handshake, a hug, a show of feeling for your enemy," says Buitrago.

Earlier this year, negotiations with both of the country's largest rebel armies collapsed, and last week's landslide victory by hard-line presidential candidate Alvaro Uribe Vélez was seen by some as evidence that many Colombians no longer believe that a peaceful settlement is possible. With so much money at stake in the cocaine trade, many see the laying down of arms by rebels as wishful thinking.

But as the fighting threatens to escalate, peace activists say that Buitrago and Cuellar's experience show that an alternative to violence exists.

"It's an example for the rest of the country," says Ana Teresa Bernal, the director of Redepaz, a national network of peace programs. "They prove that reconciliation is not impossible."

According to Ms. Bernal, CFP differs from other peace groups because each of its 400 members has an intimate knowledge of the horrors of war.

"They have seen the pain and fear of war, and that gives them a moral authority that nobody else has," she says.

At their office in downtown Bogotá, the two men keep a bundle of fading snapshots as a reminder of the life they left behind.

One photograph shows Cuellar in his days with the Popular Liberation Army, or EPL. Straddling a dirt bike, he wears a red rebel armband on his shoulder and a revolver on his belt.

In another shot, Buitrago poses Rambo-like on a rain-swept hillside, brandishing an assault rifle in one hand and a hand grenade in the other.

"That's old history now," says Buitrago, turning away from the photographs.

But there are other reminders that cannot be so easily ignored: Buitrago needed three years of therapy and surgery on his leg, and now walks with a prosthetic foot.

Cuellar still carries 28 bullet fragments in his face from the police ambush that almost cost him his life.

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