In the picture
Catatumbo region, next to Venezuela. Illustration included in the final report of the Truth Commission.
report SRA 2025 / [ pdf version ]
√ President Duque was inefficient in implementing the historic 2016 peace agreement ; Petro believed he could go even further, but the status has gone backwards.
√ In his two and a half years in office, Petro has reduced the troop issue and capabilities of the Colombian Army; when he has needed it, he has found himself in difficulty.
√ The leftist governmentfights if convinced: directing military operations against the ELN goes against its tradition and ideological stance.
It has been almost 10 years since the signature the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP), a historic milestone and Nobel Peace award winner, which put an end to the longest civil conflict in Latin America, the circumstances of which have been exposed in the finalreport of the Truth Commission set up for this purpose. However, the security outlook in Colombia today is discouraging. In just two and a half years of Gustavo Petro's government, Colombia has experienced some episodes of violence not seen since the end of the last century and the early 2000s. The government's improvised response to the latest wave of violence in Catatumbo, generated by the National Liberation Army (ELN), demonstrates the failure of the security policy and the setback the country has experienced in this subject.
The increase in violence and the regrouping of illegal armed groups should not be seen as breaking news. On the contrary, the instructions for a resurgence have been in place since the years following the signature the peace agreement . After the signature the peace agreement in 2016, Colombia had two years of relative calm where the issue of killings, kidnappings and recruitment by criminal groups decreased nationwide. However, from 2018 to 2022, the government of Iván Duque was characterized by its lack of commitment to implement the agreement. According to the Red Cross, the country's humanitarian status deteriorated since 2018 with kidnapping and extortion on the rise. Duque's security policy favored territorial control and the weakening of armed groups and drug traffickers, but was inefficient: violence increased in new hotspots, such as on the borders with Brazil, Venezuela and Panama. By 2019, more than 2,000 men had returned to arms, and there was an increase in murders of social leaders and high rates of internal displacement.
The lack of willingness to comply with the agreement did not lead the State to the most abandoned areas, where a greater reintegration of ex-combatants was expected and where there could be a high risk of recidivism in violence, thus generating a power vacuum. There were territories where the former FARC certainly demobilized, but the State never arrived, paving the way for other criminal organizations (such as the ELN and the Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia or Clan del Golfo) and for a return to arms from the former ranks of the FARC (such as the Estado Mayor Central). This sample how historically in Colombia violence is transformed and developed by the lack of a legitimate state. The ultimate failure of the peace agreement occurred in 2019 with the establishment of the Second Marquetalia, formed by dissidents of the process and high commanders of the FARC.
Petro and his Total Peace
Following the 2022 triumph of candidate Gustavo Petro, who brought the first leftist president to power, the country moved towards a new way of dealing with conflict, assassinations of social leaders and recidivism. The Total Peace policy became the crown jewel in security subject for the Petro government, ensuring, at the time, that the country could cease its permanent state of internal conflict and the arrival of peace. However, today this is far from being the case.
The Total Peace policy establishes a legal framework for the government to negotiate with armed criminal groups and grant them sentence reductions if they cooperate in social dialogues. It is a bid to negotiate and establish justice sustaining processes, as in 2016, with as many armed groups as possible. The Total Peace law includes organized crime of a non-political nature, associated with illegal economies, drug trafficking and illegal mining.
Criticism of this law was widespread before it was sunk into congress at the end of 2023, arguing that Total Peace lacked a solid legal framework and compromised the independence of the Attorney General's Office by granting political convictions to criminal offenses. Moreover, as The Economist warned, neither the ELN nor the Clan del Golfo, the country's largest criminal organizations, were interested in the process.
In this context, in early 2025, the latest wave of violence broke out in Catatumbo, a border area with Venezuela, with confrontations between FARC dissidents, the ELN and the Colombian Army. The events, which have led to the displacement of 30,000 people, have demonstrated the power that these criminal organizations have gained. Faced with this, in an improvised war strategy, the government, which had proposed Total Peace, had to resort to the Army. And since the army had seen its ranks reduced and its offensive capabilities diminished in the two years of Petro's government, it had some problems in dealing with illegal groups that, like the Clan del Golfo, have grown rapidly. Also during the Petro government, the military leadership has undergone notorious changes that have only increased demoralization in the institution.
The government's response was extremely limited, as directing military operations against the ELN goes against its ideological stance and it does not have the operational capabilities to respond adequately. The crisis is all the more distressing when months earlier, in August 2024, the Ministry of recognized a setback in territorial control and the loss of some regions by the army and police, along with an increase in kidnapping and extortion fees .
However, an important actor not addressed so far is Venezuela. Following the diplomatic crisis between Colombia and Venezuela in 2019 the ELN has taken effective control of the border zone on both sides and since that time has not diminished its capacity for control. That territorial control in the neighboring country has made it easier for it to increase its illegal Economics , drug trafficking and illegal mining activities, with the connivance of the government of Nicolás Maduro, which has made Venezuela a strategic and ideological sanctuary for armed groups such as the ELN and FARC dissidents.
For the Petro government, the violence in recent months and the lack of a military and/or humanitarian response has been the resounding failure of the Total Peace policy. Petro illusorily wanted to reach out to armed groups that are not interested in negotiating, as they are better off illegally. A new outbreak of violence in Colombia in the post-2016 era was something foretold and had been brewing in recent years. The government found itself with a status that has surpassed it and its responses have been limited and without results.
Although the Colombian president seeks the approval of the state of exception to resolve the conflict in Catatumbo - "the ELN took the path of war and war will have war," he has written in X, the Judiciary and congress do not agree with him, so his hands are tied.