HAVANA: After 52 years of fighting, almost four years of peace negotiations and three months after a final deadline, the Colombian state and the Marxist guerrillas of the so-called Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have agreed to a bilateral and definitive ceasefire. The war has left more than 220,000 people dead. Its end is a cause for celebration, for Colombia and for the region. However, the peace deal is controversial and putting it into practice will be tricky and probably made harder due to the unpopularity of the government of President Juan Manuel Santos. The president was due to fly to Havana, the site of the talks, for a ceremony with FARC’s leader Rodrigo Londoño (Timochenko) in the presence of UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon and five Latin American presidents. The two sides had stopped firing a year ago, when the FARC declared a unilateral ceasefire and the government halted offensive actions. But the government’s formal declaration of a ceasefire remains historic. It might be possible that the two sides have agreed on the details of the FARC’s demobilisation. This would mean 6,800 troops and 8,500 militia of the group assembling at 22 fixed points around the country and once Colombians have approved the peace deal in a plebiscite, expected to take place in October, then the FARC will start putting their weapons ‘beyond use’, under supervision of international monitors. Santos’s predecessor as president Álvaro Uribe had launched a campaign of ‘civil resistance’ against the agreement, which he portrayed as handing Colombia over to the FARC and “Castro-chavismo”. There are legitimate grounds for worry since nobody knows how much money the FARC has invested from its criminal businesses and many also distrust the sincerity of its conversion to democracy. This is also true partly because the peace negotiations have taken so long and missed so many deadlines. Unfortunately, the peace agreement comes when Colombia is facing a sharp economic adjustment. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects the economy to grow by only 2.5 per cent this year, compared with 4.4 per cent in 2014. Santos is also expected to increase taxes later this year to fill a hole in government revenues caused by the oil slump. Considering the decreasing popularity of Santos, this will not bade well for his government. But Santos says that war is more expensive than peace. He said that, if the agreement is less than perfect it is because Uribe’s military build-up weakened the FARC but could not defeat them. The fact that Colombia’s conflict has long been an anachronism does not make it any easier to end. Peace with the FARC will improve the lives of Colombians, especially those in remote rural areas. However late in the day, it is a big prize.