Colombia / Post-Peace Pact - The Militia Self Attacks the Civilian Body, Proving the Illusion of a Lasting Peace

Event Baseline: In Colombia, powerful cocaine-funded militias have attacked civilians, reflecting state inaction eight years after a peace accord removed a major rebel group.

The peace accord was a piece of paper, a thought construct. It did not dissolve the underlying fragmentation. The state signed a treaty with one phantom and ignored the others. The criminal gangs are not separate from the state; they are the shadow of its own greed. The illusion of a unified nation is shattered by the bullet. The civilian body is the ground of the conflict. The self that should protect it is absent.

The militias operate on the same logic as the state: territory, identity, profit. The line between legal and illegal force is a fiction. The peace pact created an image of progress while the machinery of violence continued. The villagers who are killed do not vote in the elections that matter. They are the disposable other. The state cannot see them because it is fragmented into competing interests—politicians, police, military, cartels. Each fragment acts for its own survival.

The war will not end until the thought that creates 'us' and 'them' is seen. The state is not a person; it is a process of identification. The gang member is also a product of that process. Both are trapped in the illusion of separate selves fighting for a phantom 'Colombia' or 'profit'. The only peace is the perception that there is no separate survival. The body of the civilian is the body of the state. To kill one is to kill the whole.