In a conference room in Doha – a city now as familiar with ceasefire documents as with energy contracts – representatives of the Colombian government and the country’s most powerful armed group have signed what they are calling a ‘Commitment to Peace’. For Qatar, it is another marker in an increasingly crowded portfolio: a Gulf state turning itself into a consistent peace broker in conflicts thousands of miles away. The agreement, announced by Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was reached after two rounds of talks in Doha between Colombia and the self-designated Ejército Gaitanista de Colombia (EGC), better known as the Clan del Golfo or AGC. His Excellency Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr Mohammed bin Abdulaziz al-Khulaifi presided over the signing, flanked by senior envoys from Norway, Spain and Switzerland – a quartet styling itself the “Group of Facilitating States”. On paper, the commitment is cautious but far from cosmetic. The text, as described by Qatar and the mediators, binds both sides to alleviating civilian suffering, ending armed confrontation and laying the groundwork for “sustainable peace”. It explicitly links peace to the dismantling of the AGC’s criminal economy with a view to reintegrate child soldiers into Colombian society. From Colombia’s perspective, the stakes are obvious. The AGC emerged as the country’s dominant illegal armed group in the vacuum left by the demobilisation of FARC in 2016 and is estimated to command several thousand fighters. It straddles the line between paramilitary force and drug cartel, controlling trafficking routes, mining areas and entire communities. For President Gustavo Petro, who came to office in 2022 promising “total peace” with guerrillas and criminal organisations alike, getting the AGC to the table at all is an achievement; securing a signed roadmap for demobilisation is something more. Beginning March 1, 2026, AGC combatants are to gradually assemble in three defined “concentration areas” – two in the conflict-scarred Pacific department of Chocó and a third in neighbouring Córdoba. Ten additional municipalities will be folded into pilot peace programmes, on top of five already announced in September. While fighters gather, arrest and extradition orders against them will be suspended – an amnesty-adjacent concession is often the uncomfortable price of getting guns off the table. That this architecture has been built not in Bogotá, Oslo or Geneva but in Doha is no accident. For years, Qatar has positioned itself as a convening power for conflicts that have exhausted more traditional venues. Its foreign ministry notes that the first round of talks with the Gaitanista Army, held in mid-September at Colombia’s request, was designed around phased confidence-building: protecting human dignity, respecting human rights and including affected communities in the process. Put simply, Colombia has joined a growing list of states – from Afghanistan and Sudan to the Democratic Republic of Congo – that see Qatar as a useful, neutral broker with the resources, patience and diplomatic muscle to host long, grinding negotiations that might or might not succeed. The facilitators’ joint statement is careful to frame the commitment not as a reward, but as a step towards demobilisation, civilian protection and the eventual return of state authority. It stresses that implementation will demand “discipline, transparency and trust” – and pointedly warns that there will be “many hurdles and challenges to overcome”. For Qatar, those hurdles are familiar. Its mediators have watched more than one painstakingly constructed arrangement wobble under the weight of local spoilers, shifting political winds or simple bad faith. But the deeper logic of its foreign policy remains remarkably consistent: conflict resolution as statecraft. By repeatedly inserting itself at the hinge points of far-away wars and peace processes, Doha accumulates something that cannot be bought on energy markets: strategic relevance. The “Commitment to Peace” signed in Doha will not, by itself, end one of Latin America’s most resilient armed structures. But it does underline a quieter truth: when governments and gunmen go looking for a table at which to talk, they are increasingly finding it in Qatar.
