The twelfth round of peace talks between the Colombian government and FARC rebels ended on Saturday in Havana, Cuba with both sides expressing optimism despite a lack of recent concrete actions and agreements in the past week.

Current negotiations, which began in October 2012, have been more successful than previous attempts, with difficult obstacles like land reform having reportedly been cleared. Four other discussion points remain unresolved, including how to disarm and reintegrate former FARC soldiers into society and bring FARC into the established political process as a legitimate political party.

The next set of negotiations will resume August 19th after a week-long recess. Hosted by Cuba and facilitated with the assistance of Norway, the negotiations had an original completion deadline of 12 months, but current Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said that the deadline was "flexible if significant process was made."

"Deadlines in these processes are totally counterproductive," Santos said in a radio interview on Monday. FARC negotiators also agreed that "rushing into a settlement" was not prudent.

Despite the slow progress on several issues, analysts are optimistic that a deal can be reached, particularly since FARC "seems serious about reaching a deal." The agreement on agrarian land reform, which took seven months to finalize, is a sign that FARC is willing to compromise on certain issues. Government negotiatior and former Colombian Vice President, Humberto de Calle, said he was optimistic because "never before has anyone come this far." A joint statement between the government and FARC negotiators on Friday indicated that proposals and discussions regarding the rights and guarantees for political opposition was being negotiated.

Previous negotiation attempts were deemed as failures, with the most recent attempt taking place during Colombian President Andres Pastrana's term from 1998 to 2002. Those talks suffered from institutional problems and fears on both sides of retaliation and assassination attempts on respective leaders.

The Marxist-Leninist rebel group has been waging a bloody conflict against the Colombian government and right-wing paramilitaries for nearly five decades.  The group was established following a ten year conflict between Colombia's Conservative and Liberal political parties, known as "La Violencia." The current conflict between FARC and the Colombian government is the longest and last remaining armed conflict in Latin America, and pressure has been placed on both sides to find a permanent solution to end the violence.

FARC was at its political and military peak  during the 1990s, when the group controlled nearly 40% of Colombia's territory and was operating within miles of the capital city, Bogota. A strategic shift from kidnap-for-ransom to narcotrafficking and coca production in the early 2000s also helped FARC gain much-needed funds, as did military and intelligence assistance in the early 2000s from Venezuela and Hugo Chavez, discovered in documents seized when a high-ranking FARC commander was killed by government forces last year.

That strategic shift and outside assistance helped FARC wage a bloody campaign against Colombian military and citizens, primarily in rural areas. Over 600,000 Colombians have died in the conflict and Colombia continues to have one of the highest numbers of internally displaced persons in the world.

In the last ten years, however, the tide has been turning in the Andean country. Renewed counterterrorism efforts by the Colombian government under former president Alvaro Uribe and major military and intelligence assistance by the United States, under its $8 billion Plan Colombia program, has led to a drastic reduction in FARC's strength and territorial control.  

The Colombian military estimates that FARC's troop numbers have been cut in half in the past ten years to around 8,000 active fighters. Several top FARC leaders have also been killed or captured. Narcotrafficking has also declined due to Plan Colombia's controversial coca eradication efforts.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) announced on Friday that coca growth in Colombia has declined by 25% in the last year and the country is "no longer the world's biggest coca producer." According to the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, production of pure cocaine in Colombia has dropped 72% since 2011. U.S. officials have hailed this as proof that Plan Colombia and other anti-narcotics programs have been successful. 

Despite the seemingly rapid decline in FARC's strength and political power, the negotiations between it and the Colombian government remain a major policy and public diplomacy issue. Public opinion in Colombia is widely against FARC and narcotrafficking, but a majority of people are also losing patience and are not optimistic that peace between the two groups can be achieved. Reuters reported that in a recent survey "43% of of those polled in July said they were optimistic peace could be achieved, down from 45% in April."

While the negotiations continue in Havana, the Colombian government has continued to engage in counterterrorism and counternarcotic efforts against FARC and ELN, another leftist rebel group not included in the current negotiations.

The Colombian government has rejected FARC's calls for a ceasefire during negotiations, saying that "the guerrillas would just use it to regroup and rearm, as they did a decade ago during the last attempt."

The Colombian government also announced on Saturday that the military had killed a regional FARC commander, Jesus Antonio Plata Rios, who led a rebel front in western Colombia. Rios was killed during a counterterrorism operation in the department of Cauca.

Reach Executive Producer Colin Hale here. Follow him on Twitter.