Even a ratified August agreement will not produce immediate peace. Several observers argue some FARC militants will quickly give up on civilian life and join militias that are not subject to the peace deal or go to work for drug cartels. The agreement does signal FARC as a combatant force has fractured. That means overall violence should diminish, dramatically, and that will give political reconciliation a chance.
But the question of whether a new round will build up is an open one.
And please note that the half century it took Colombia to break their insurgents/drug gangs reflects rather well on American efforts made over about 5 years to break the back of the insurgents and terrorists in Iraq from mid-2003 to mid-2008 (note that I wrote this at the end what I called phase 5, and we did go on to win the phase 6 I defined with pretty good precision; sadly, we allowed Iraq to fail in phase 7, although we are making an effort to reverse that failure).
