Rebel-fuelled violence derails leftist president's 'Total Peace' plan in Colombia

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA – On Saturday afternoon, the southern stretch of Colombia’s sprawling Pan-American highway was packed with vehicles ferrying farmers and Indigenous villagers.

But soon after midday, an improvised explosive device tore through over a dozen cars and minibuses trapped in an illegal roadblock. At least 20 people were killed, with another 56 injured, making it one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Colombia’s recent history.

Authorities were quick to identify the culprits: the Central General Staff (known as EMC), an offshoot of the now-defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) who refused to lay down arms in a 2016 peace deal.

For many citizens, the attack was yet another sign of the deteriorating security landscape in much of the country.

Civilians in the crossfire

While many international observers drew a line under Colombia’s long-running armed conflict following the 2016 peace deal, the past years have seen a resurgence in violence as a cabal of armed groups vie for territorial control at the expense of civilians.

The EMC in particular has earned a reputation for its brutal tactics, according to analysts.

“They are characterized by a strong, heightened aggressiveness toward the civilian population,” said Laura Bonilla, deputy director at the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation, a Bogotá-based think tank.

As well as Saturday’s highway bombing, the EMC was blamed for dozens more attacks over the weekend in multiple Colombian provinces, underlining its vicious stranglehold on swaths of territory in the South American nation.

The militia has paved the way in the uptake of new battlefield technology – particularly drones, with analysts describing it as the most advanced rebel group when it comes to modern warfare.

“It has become clear that this criminal group’s capabilities have surpassed those of law enforcement, and there is, so to speak, no strategy in place to stem its advance,” said Gerson Arias, conflict and security investigator at the Colombian Ideas for Peace Foundation.

This weekend’s wave of attacks was a way for the EMC to flex its dominion over southwestern Colombia, where it considers itself to be the de-facto authority.

Pitfalls of Petro’s peace

It also signals a broader security crisis across the country.

Rights groups say Colombia is posting the highest rates of displacement, forced confinement, and victims of explosive attacks in a decade as the armed conflict heats up.

In recent years, new militias like the EMC have risen from the ashes of the FARC while old groups have consolidated power.

Since 2018, the number of armed group fighters has more than doubled to 27,000.

Leftist President Gustavo Petro – himself a former Marxist rebel – came to power in 2022 promising to end the conflict once and for all by negotiating with the groups, a policy he dubbed “Total Peace.”

But analysts say his attempts to play nice with guerrillas backfired.

“It is a poorly conceived, unconditional peace with no red lines. This is what allowed the groups to expand,” said Arias.

He explained that the government agreed to ceasefires during negotiations with rebels – including the EMC – without requiring guarantees about recruitment, rearmament, and respecting civilians.

Bonilla also said that Total Peace provided “perverse incentives” for groups to splinter in order to get more specific concessions from the state, fuelling bloody battles between factions.

But the analyst also noted that the resurgence in the armed conflict began before Petro and can be traced back to recruitment drives during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Thousands upon thousands of young people were removed from the education system and never reintegrated… many of these young people ended up involved in delinquency or organized crime,” explained Bonilla. She added that a breakdown in transnational cooperation under the Ivan Duque administration (2018-2022) fuelled cross-border illegal arms flows.

But if Duque oversaw the beginning of Colombia’s slide back into conflict, Petro has done little to stop it. The government has signed a demobilization deal with just one armed group, the Comuneros del Sur, but even that could be at risk.

While the state keeps pushing peace negotiations with a smattering of other groups, these show little sign of progress and, as Bonilla notes, “are running out of time” before Petro leaves office in August.

Divergent paths ahead of elections

On May 31, Colombians head to the polls to vote in first-round presidential elections.

The race has been shaped by the country’s mounting security issues, which hit the campaign when Democratic Center (CD) party hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay was assassinated at a rally last year.

Paloma Valencia, who now leads the CD’s ticket, promises an iron-fisted crackdown on armed groups, a policy shared by her right-wing rival Abelardo de la Espriella.

But Ivan Cepeda, a close Petro ally and the current front-runner, vows to continue to negotiate peace with the groups.

Whoever wins will be under pressure to tame the ascendent rebels and tackle the mounting security crisis.

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