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I'm reading news articles in Spanish to try and polish my skills, but I've hit a bump. Below is a paragraph from an article:

La operación es parte de un esfuerzo más amplio llamado Escudo Comunitario en el que participan fuerzas policiales anti-pandillas locales, estatales, federales e internacionales, iniciado en 2005, que busca identificar, arrestar, enjuiciar, encarcelar y deportar a los pandilleros y sus asociados con el fin de proteger a las comunidades.

An example of where I'm confused is "ïniciado en 2005". Shouldn't this be written as "ha/había iniciado en 2005" to indicate either present perfect or pluperfect tense? What am I missing?

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Here, iniciado works as an adjective, not too different from what you could write in English. Maybe your problem here is that the adjective is so far away from its noun (esfuerzo). Let's remove a bit of the sentence:

La operación es parte de un esfuerzo [...] iniciado en 2005 [...]

It is easier to follow now, isn't it?

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    That's exactly what I was going to answer (+1). I just wanted to add that the article could have used a verb, changing the adjetive for a relative clause: La operación es parte de un esfuerzo que se inició/había iniciado...
    – Charlie
    Commented May 12, 2017 at 7:54
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    Thank you! I forgot the past participle could be an adjective.
    – Garren Miller
    Commented May 12, 2017 at 7:54

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