LIVE Updated 9 minutes ago Live Updates Colombia Panel Issues Report on Decades-Long Civil War A special truth commission is likely to target the government and leftist groups for their culpability in a half-century long conflict that left at least 260 000 people dead Here’s what you need to know A truth commission is set to publish the most comprehensive account yet of Colombia’s war Colombia’s brutal internal conflict killed tens of thousands of civilians Declassified documents highlight the U S role in Colombia’s conflict Get alerts on major developing stories A truth commission is set to publish the most comprehensive account yet of Colombia’s war A tattered Colombian flag flying over a rebel base in 2018 Federico Rios Escobar for The New York Times BOGOTÁ Colombia — It was a 58-year-conflict involved almost every sector of Colombian society and cost hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of American dollars And on Tuesday a government-appointed truth commission is to release the most comprehensive examination yet of a war that began as a conflict between the Colombian government and the country’s largest rebel group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC The conflict eventually evolved into a complex battle between the government the FARC paramilitary groups and the United States government which provided billions of dollars in aid to the Colombians to help them fight the insurgency and the drug trade that funded it The conflict left the country with deep scars that are yet to heal — an estimated 260 000 people were killed most of them civilians and more than five million were forced from their homes by the violence The report overseen by a group of 11 commissioners is the product of the 2016 peace deal between the FARC and the government Commissioners were instructed to not only investigate human rights violations committed by all actors between 1958 and 2016 but also to write an extensive history of the way the conflict affected social economic political cultural and environmental rights Commissioners were also asked to examine the factors that perpetuated the conflict including the rise of paramilitary groups and the rapid growth of what became an all-powerful cocaine industry The report is to be released at a ceremony at a theater in the capital that is named for Jorge Eliécer Gaitán a presidential candidate whose assassination in 1948 is largely viewed as a precursor to the conflict with the FARC The investigation is expected to be highly critical of the U S role in the war Today despite a 20-plus-year effort by the United States to eradicate the Colombian cocaine trade the drug’s base plant the coca leaf is grown at record rates according to U S data The report comes at a critical inflection point in Colombia Just a week ago the country elected its first-ever leftist president Gustavo Petro Mr Petro had campaigned on issues of social and economic justice and inclusion — themes also promoted by the peace deal and the transitional justice process that came with it He now faces the monumental task of following through on his promises in the face of a deeply divided society and an economy dogged by high inflation a large deficit and chronic poverty The truth commission report could help in the healing process — or be used to further divide society Mr Petro will attend the publication ceremony The outgoing president Iván Duque a conservative who campaigned against the peace deal will not according to a spokeswoman The report is not judicial and the commission will not issue sentences or penalties That process is being carried out by a different body created by the peace deal known as the Special Jurisdiction for Peace Instead the truth commission is meant to “establish ethical and political responsibilities ” according to commission documents while trying to establish a common truth and “lay the foundations for the transformations necessary to make peace possible ” — Julie Turkewitz Colombia’s brutal internal conflict killed tens of thousands of civilians A church in Bojayá Colombia that was destroyed in a 2002 attack by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia leaving more than 100 people dead Ricardo Mazalan Associated Press A report scheduled to be released on Tuesday by a special Colombian truth commission will seek to shine a spotlight on a complicated and brutal internal conflict that had its roots in the 1960s and became the longest civil war in Latin American history The conflict followed an earlier decade-long civil war between supporters of the country’s Liberal and Conservative parties that became known as “the violence’’ and left tens of thousands of dead Communist leaders then took up arms against the government with leftist rebels claiming to fight for the rural poor and seeking to overturn an economic system that critics said had led to chronic inequality The largest rebel group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia unleashed a campaign of violence kidnappings and extortion that traumatized generations of Colombians In the 1980s a diverse group of right-wing paramilitaries emerged to fight the leftist insurgents some made up of landowners organizing to protect their property and others linked to drug trafficking Both left- and right-wing groups depended on the drug trade for money and competed for territory to grow the coca crop used to manufacture cocaine As more players became involved the war became increasingly chaotic and violent in a conflict that left an estimated 260 000 people dead and forced five million to flee their homes Civilians were routinely the victims of random kidnappings extrajudicial killings and sexual violence “It is a war with many intersecting actors ” said Gonzalo Sánchez a former director of Colombia’s National Center for Historical Memory “The war is much more confusing than a bipolar confrontation ” The Colombian military which the United States helped supply and advise became embroiled in one of the conflict’s biggest scandals the so-called false-positive cases in which soldiers killed more than 6 000 civilians according to a postwar court and passed them off as rebel combatants to bolster the government’s claim that it was winning the war “The war loses its senses its north its justifications and ends up involved in purely criminal actions” including by the state Mr Sánchez said Peace talks began in 2012 in part because of military advances that weakened the guerrillas as well as what Mr Sánchez characterized as “social weariness” and a realization among political leaders that negotiations were the only path to an enduring peace The FARC handed over weapons as part of a landmark 2016 peace agreement which also promised infrastructure and jobs to long-neglected rural regions and created a special tribunal to collect evidence and oversee reparations and punishments Since then security has worsened in many areas as armed groups compete over the drug trade and for territory once controlled by rebels Civilian massacres and murders of human rights leaders have surged and many have criticized the outgoing administration for dragging its feet on implementing the agreement Still though the peace process remains fragile and incomplete the commission’s report could help the country heal from the trauma of the war Mr Sánchez said and “reinforce the atmosphere of national reconciliation ’’ — Genevieve Glatsky ADVERTISEMENT NEW Declassified documents highlight the U S role in Colombia’s conflict A rebel group reacting to the overflight of an aircraft during a patrol in 2016 Federico Rios The United States believed that the Colombian military was behind a wave of assassinations of leftist activists and yet spent the next two decades deepening its relationship with the Colombian armed forces newly released documents show The Central Intelligence Agency had evidence that the Colombian military had provided a target list to paramilitaries who killed 20 banana plantation workers in a high-profile massacre the documents show but went on to send billions of dollars in aid to the Colombian government On Tuesday a truth commission in Colombia will release a long-awaited report that attempts to build an extensive history of the nation’s decades-long internal conflict in which at least 260 000 people died The report written as a result of the country’s 2016 peace deal with its largest insurgent group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia is meant to be used by Colombia’s next government to create policies that move the country toward a lasting peace It could help shape Colombia’s future relationship with the United States Among the themes explored in the report is the role of the U S government which spent decades funding and training the Colombian military in its fight against the FARC and the drug economy that financed their insurgency And among pieces of evidence used to write Tuesday’s report are thousands of declassified U S documents gathered and organized by the National Security Archive a Washington-based nongovernmental organization that specializes in supporting post-conflict truth commissions A digital library of the documents will be published in August But the National Security Archive provided The New York Times with some documents ahead of time They reveal that the United States had decades of knowledge of alleged crimes committed by the Colombia military — “and yet the relationship continued to grow ” said Michael Evans director of the Archive’s Colombia project Particularly demonstrative he said are a series of C I A operational reports not normally available to the public even after a record request One report written in 1988 during a period in which leftist activists were being killed on a regular basis found that a wave of assassinations carried out against “suspected leftists and communists” was the result of “a joint effort” between the intelligence chief of the Colombian Army Fourth Brigade and members of the Medellín narcotics trafficking cartel Many of those killed were associated with a party called the Patriotic Union The report said it was “unlikely” that this took place “without the knowledge of the Fourth Brigade commander ” Later in the document a C I A officer writes of a 1988 massacre in which 20 farmworkers many of them union members were killed The C I A officer indicates that the U S government believed the assassins “obtained the names of their intended targets” from the Colombia Army’s 10th Brigade intelligence unit Other documents show that the United States knew oil companies were paying paramilitaries for protection and that at least one company gathered intelligence for the Colombian military One company was “actively providing intelligence on guerrilla activities directly to the Army ” according to the C I A “using an airborne surveillance system along the pipeline to expose guerrilla encampments and intercept guerrilla communications ” The Colombian Army “successfully exploited this information and inflicted an estimated 100 casualties during an operation against the guerrillas” in 1997 according to the report Another document written in 2003 hints at one of the grimmest chapters of the war called the false positives scandal In that case the Colombian military is accused of killing thousands of civilians during the presidency of Álvaro Uribe and trying to pass them off as combat deaths in an effort to show it was winning the war In recent court testimony in Colombia former soldiers have said they felt pressured to kill fellow Colombians by higher-ups A July 2003 memo to Donald Rumsfeld then the secretary of defense from the top Pentagon deputy for special operations celebrates a significant rise in combat kills since Mr Uribe took office took — 543 in just six months compared with 780 during the last two years of the previous government The document is titled “recent successes against the Colombian FARC ” — Julie Turkewitz