Arauca: struggle for the borderlands
The year began with an upsurge of violence in Arauca department, on the eastern plains along the Venezuelan border, where various armed factions vie for control of smuggling corridors either side of the line. On Jan. 4, the office of the UN Secretary-General expressed concern for the situation in Arauca, and called for a ceasefire. That month, at least 50 were reported killed, and some 1,500 displaced, in Arauca and the adjacent Venezuelan state of Apure. According to local media accounts, a three-way conflict involves guerilla forces of the National Liberation Army (ELN) and two “dissident” factions of the FARC that have remained in arms despite the peace deal—the 10th Front and the Segunda Marquetalia. (El Espectador, Feb. 7; Contagio Radio, Feb. 2; Contagio Radio, Jan. 4)

On Jan. 17, when President Duque arived in the border town of Arauquita to announce a new “major operation” against the guerillas, ELN fighters were openly patrolling the streets. (El Tiempo, Jan. 17)

On April 10, Duque announced the capture of the supposed commander of the 10 Front, Juan Gabriel Granados AKA “Orlando La Muerte,” in an operation in Villavicencio, Meta department, further south on the eastern plains. (InfoBae, April 11) His principal rival in the struggle for Arauca, ELN Eastern War Front commander Gustavo Aníbal Quinchía AKA “Pablito,” remains at large. (El Espectador)

And the 10th Front remained active. On April 29, the military announced that an air-strike in Arauca killed six 10th Front fighters, including the front’s new leader, “Jaime Chucula.” But community leaders in El Progreso vereda (hamlet), Puerto Rondón municipality, said those slain were actually local campesinos. (Prensa Rural, May 9)

Segunda Marquetalia commander Miguel Santanilla Botache, AKA “Gentil Duarte,” was killed in an apparent bomb attack on his camp in Jesús María Semprún municipality, in Venezuela’s Zulia state, on May 4. A Segunda Marquetalia statement said he was killed in an operation by the Colombian army, implying a cross-border raid. Gentil Duarte had actually been a negotiator for the FARC at the Havana talks that led to the 2016 peace accord. (El Espectador, May 31; El Colombiano, May 30; El Colombiano, May 27; El Espectador, May 25

Clan del Golfo stages ‘armed strike’
Dairo Antonio Úsuga David AKA “Otoniel,” leader of the Clan del Golfo cartel, who was arrested in October in the northern Gulf of Urabá region, was extradited to the US on May 5 to face drug trafficking charges. To facilitate extradition, the Council of State lifted the “precautionary measure” in his case that had been requested by victims’ organizations—who wanted him to face justice within Colombia for human rights abuses. The extradition was approved by the Supreme Court of Justice. Otoniel pleaded not guilty at a federal court in Brooklyn, NY. (Contagio Radio, DoJ press release, May 6; BBC Mundo, April 7)

But the Clan del Golfo responded to the extradition by staging an “armed strike”—a tactic usually employed by their guerilla enemies. Violent protests swept Urabá region and beyond, with scores of vehicles torched in 90 municipalities in nine of Colombia’s 32 departments. The departments of Antioquia, Chocó and Córdoba were particularly affected. The government mobilized thousands of troops to put down the protests, which were led by the Clan’s paramilitary wing, the Gaitanistas. (BBC News, May 9; Contagio Radio, May 5)

But there was speculation that the government wanted Otoniel out of the country to silence him. In April, Otoniel had testified before Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) that he had met sevral times with then-presidential candidate Luis Pérez, ex-governor of Antioquia and ex-mayor of Medellín, to discuss paramilitary collaboration. (El Colombiano, April 25)

On May 26, authorities announced that fugitive Clan operative Juan Castro AKA “Matamba,” who had escaped from La Picota maximum-security prison in Bogotá in March, was killed in an operation in the town of Bolívar, Santander department. Matamba was said to command a new paramilitary formation in the orbit of the Clan del Golfo, called the Cordillera Sur. (BBC News, El Espectador, May 27; El Espectador, May 26)

Mass displacement in Chocó
Chocó department, which stretches from the Gulf of Urabá down the Pacific coast, has been the most impacted by the conflict in recent weeks. June has seen repeated clashes between government troops and Gaitanistas—inlcuding within the “humaniatarian zone” of Nueva Vida, in Cacarica municipality. This is an area declared by the local Afro-Colombian residents as off-limits to armed actors—which neither side is now respecting. (Contagio Radio, June 10)

On May 30, residents of Embera Katío indigenous communities in Carmen de Atrato municipality blocked the Medellín-Quibdó highway to protest the presence of armed actors on their lands. In recent weeks, hundreds of Embera Katío residents had fled the zone amid inter-factional fighting, with many seeking shelter from municipal authorities in Medellín. (TeleSur, June 4; El Espectador, May 31; El Espectador, May 26)

May 13 saw a massacre at the Embera Dobida indigenous resguardo of Peña Alta, Alto Baudó municipality, with three indigenous residents and an Afro-Colombian friend slain. The perpetrators remain unknown, but the area had recently seen fighting between Gaitanistas and the ELN. (Contagio Radio, May 17)

On March 23 the National Police acknowledged carrying out aerial bombardment of Clan del Golfo targets in the Urabá region of Chocó, reporting three deaths. (El Tiempo, March 23)

And on June 8,  the social activist Jesusita Moreno Mosquera, who had been advocating for a ceasefire between the warring factions in Chocó, was assassinated in an attack by unknown gunmen at the home of her son in Cali. (El Tiempo, June 9; El Tiempo, June 8)

Elsewhere around the country
Localized conflict also persists in several other regions of Colombia. More than 6,000 have been displaced this year in southern Nariño department by inter-factional fighting, especially in the Telembí Triangle area near the border with Ecuador. Doctors Without Borders is assisting local municipal authorities in providing shelter for those fleeing violence in outlying veredas. (El Tiempo, May 14)

In northern Magdalena department, over 150 killings are reported this year in a contest between the Clan del Golfo and a rival criminal network, Los Pachenca. Some 700 have been displaced in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Maria, the rugged mountain range that straddles the department, overlooking the Caribbean coast. (El Tiempo, June 2; El Tiempo, April 22)

In Vegachí municipality, Antioquia department, Alconides Vallejo Álvarez, vice president of Communcal Action Committee at the vereda of La Clarita, was killed in a National Police operation against the Gaitanistas on May 25. (Contagio Radio, May 26)

Controversy surrounds a March 28 military operation in Puerto Leguízamo, Putumayo department, in the Amazon basin along the Ecuador border. On that day, 11 people were killed by the armed forces in a raid on El Remanso vereda. Duque and the Defense Ministry said that those “neutralized” were members of an unnamed illegal armed group. However, family members of the victims said that those killed were non-combatants. Minors and a pregnant woman were among the dead, raising the possibility that this was a case of “false positives“—civilian deaths reported as combatant deaths. (Contagio Radio, April 12; PBI-Colombia, April 3; WOLA, March 31; Cambio, March 29)

On Feb. 5, three brothers were killed by unknown gunmen at Diamante vereda, also in Puerto Leguízamo. (Contagio Radio, Feb. 7)

And amid all this, campesinos meet with deadly repression as they continue to struggle for justice over historical wrongs. On May 1, a local Nasa indigenous leader, Luis Antonio Tombé, was killed by National Police during a protest for recovery of usurped lands in Cauca department. The Jornada for the Liberation of Mother Earth was taking place in a rural area of Corinto municipality. Two police officers have been suspended pending an investgation. (El Espectador, May 14)

Photo: INDEPAZ via Contagio Radio

The previous days had seen an outbreak of fighting in the area between the National Liberation Army (ELN) and “dissident” factions of the demobilized FARC guerillas that have refused to lay down arms, in defiance of a 2016 peace agreement. At least 23 were killed in the clashes, which were said to be over control of smuggling routes across the nearby Venezuelan border. Reports were unclear on how many of the slain were combatants. About a dozen local families were also forced to flee their homes. Colombia’s official human rights ombudsman, the Defensoria de Pueblo, expressed “deep concern for the escalation of the armed conflict in Arauca, due to the confrontations between illegal armed groups that put the civilian population at imminent risk.” (Colombia Reports, Al Jazeera)

Colombian authorities are calling upon Argentina to extradite Roberto Jorge Rigoni, a former official of the Italian oil services company SICIM, who is accused of making protection payments to the ELN over the past years to avoid attacks on the Bicentenario Pipeline, a new artery for export of the region’s oil. (El Espectador)

Photo: Arauca Online via Colombia Reports

The protest campaign comes amid ongoing political violence nearly across Colombia, but especially the southwest. On April 20, Sandra Liliana Peña Chocué, the Nasa indigenous governor of La Laguna resguardo, in Caldono municipality of southwestern Cauca department, was abducted from her home and shot dead by four unidentified gunmen. The slaying came as the reserve’s Indigenous Guard have launched a campaign against the planting of coca within their territory without the consent of traditional authorities. Two days after the killing of Peña Chocué, several were injured in a clash that broke out as Indigenous Guard members were eradicating unauthorized coca crops in La Laguna.

Rights groups say Peña Chocué was at least the 52nd social leader slain this year in Colombia, amid an ongoing campaign of assassinations. Last year saw 439 assassinations nationwide, with over 1,100 activists and land defenders killed since Colombia’s 2016 peace deal was signed, according to the Bogotá-based Center for Popular Investigation & Education (CINEP). (El Tiempo, April 26; Havana Times, April 23; Colombia Reports, April 22; El Espectador, April 21; FrontLine Defenders, April 20)

Demobilized members of the FARC guerillas are also being targeted by presumed right-wing paramilitaries. In the space of five days in mid-April, four ex-FARC fighters were killed in the departments of Meta, Chocó, Arauca and Caquetá. According to the investigation unit of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), since the signing of the peace accords in November 2016, a total of 289 homicides of demobilized FARC fighters has been registered. (El Tiempo, April 24; Contagio Radio, April 23)

Amid the escalating violence, a locally-organized “Caravan for Peace” is making its way through the Pacific coastal region of Cauca, calling for a dialogue with armed actors and civil society to arrive at a new “Pact for Life & Peace,” addresing needs for security, access to land, and economic sustenance. (Colombia Informa, April 27)

Photo: Colombia Informa

Padrino did not name the armed group targeted in the operation, only identifying a supposed commander by his nom de guerre “Nando.” But regional media reports indicate the targeted group is one of the “dissident” factions of the Colombian FARC rebels that have remained in arms despite a peace accord. Bogotá accuses Venezuela of providing shelter to both dissident FARC groups and the ELN guerillas; the principal dissident FARC leaders Jesús Santrich and Iván Márquez are both allegedly living in Venezuela under protection of the Nicolás Maduro regime. It is hypothesized that the group targeted in Bolivarian Shield is a dissident faction refusing to accept the leadership favored by Caracas. (AP, El Tiempo, El Tiempo, Bogotá, RCN, Colombia, El Universo, Guayaquil, InfoBae, Argentina, Caracas Chronicles, Venezuela)

The Bogotá government and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees announced last month that Colombia would provide the 1.7 million displaced Venezuelans within the country with a new form of legal status, providing them with essential basic security while living in Colombia as refugees. The new initiative offers 10-year temporary status to displaced Venezuelans living in Colombia, a population that makes up nearly 40% of the estimated 4.6 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants in Latin America and the Caribbean. (Jurist)

Colombia continues to face its own internal displacement crisis. Colombia’s ombudsman office, the Defensoria del Pueblo, reported March 8 that more than 11,000 individuals have been displaced by fighting between armed groups in the country so far in 2021. (Jurist)

Map: Sofía Jaimes Barreto via Caracas Chronicles

Just over the previous 24 hours, 17 people had been killed in three separate attacks. Armed men murdered six young men at La Guayacana in the municipality of Tumaco, Nariño. Six people were killed in a remote rural area of ​​El Tambo municipality, Cauca department. And five were killed in the city of Arauca, in the department of the same name along the Venezuelan border.

In all cases it was unclear who the perpetrators were. All three regions continue to see armed activity by remnant right-wing paramilitary forces, narco gangs, “dissident” FARC factions, and the ELN guerillas. (Colombia Reports, Colombia Reports, DW, DW)

Colombia is meanwhile undergoing a reckoning with the legacy of political violence and serial massacres over the past generation. The country’s former chief prosecutor announced Aug. 25 that he has turned over evidence to the Supreme Court proving that ex-president Alvaro Uribe was complicit in two massacres in the 1990s. Former Prosecutor General Eduardo Montealegre said the 93-page document he submitted establishes Uribe’s involvement in the 1996 La Granja massacre and the 1997 El Aro massacre. (Colombia Reports) Both took place in Ituango municipality in Antioquia department, where Uribe served as governor. Right-wing paramilitaries were named as responsible in the twin massacres, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has held the Colombian government responsible in both cases.

Photo via Contagio Radio

Trujillo said in a virtual press conference after the decision: “The government will contest this ruling and continue carrying out, for reasons of national security, all of the work of binational cooperation with the United States, which includes the betterment of our capacities through training and technical advice.” (Reuters, July 3)

The SFAB is to operate in the so-called “Future Zones” newly created by Duque to “improve security in the territories and change illicit economies for licit economies.” The first Future Zones have been announced in five regions of the country, equivalent to 2.4% of Colombian territory: the Pacific coast of Nariño department, the Bajo Cauca and south of Córdoba department, Arauca department, the Catatumbo Valley, and Chiribiquete National Park in the eastern rainforest. (QColombia, June 3)

The legal decision comes amid outrage in Colombia over the gang-rape of a 13-year-old indigenous girl by soldiers. Seven soldiers pleaded guilty on June 25 to the assault, which took place three days earlier in Pueblo Rico, a municipality in Risaralda department. The local indigenous community is demanding that the soldiers be turned over to their traditional authorities to be tried under their autonomous system of justice before facing the national criminal courts. The National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) said in a statement that “what is in the news today constitutes a serious violation of the rights of the minor, and collectively victimizes her family, the Embera Katío people and the indigenous peoples of the country.”

The National Army refused to cooperate with the indigenous authorities and jailed the soldiers at a military compound, after closing a plea deal with the Prosecutor General’s office in record time. (Colombia Reports, June 26)

Photo via Colombia Reports

The ELN is not the only illegal armed group Colombian authorities are fighting with US support, said Duque at the Bogotá press conference. Also named as on a list maintained by the US Justice Department are FARC dissidents who remain in arms despite the 2016 peace deal, the EPL/Pelusos (a one-time leftist guerilla group and right-wing paramilitary now said to be collaborating), the AGC/Gulf Clan, the Puntilleros, the Oficina de Envigado, the Caparrapos, the Pacheli gang and the Pachenca gang. (Colombia Reports, Aug. 9)

The day after Duque and Terwilliger met in Bogotá, the Caño Limón Coveñas oil pipeline was once again ruptured in a bomb blast, contaminating local waters at the vereda (hamlet) of Las Bancas, Arauquita municipality, Arauca department. Although no group took credit for the attack, the pipeline runs through the heart of ELN territory and has been repeatedly blown up by the guerillas. (El Tiempo. Aug. 10)

Photo: Colombia Reports

But human rights groups are meanwhile protesting the assignment of an army general linked to "false positives" to head a new taskforce to combat "criminal bands" in the Bajo Cauca region of Antioquia department. Gen. Edgar Alberto Rodríguez Sánchez, newly named to head the Eagles Taskforce in the region, was investigated in 22 "false positive" cases when he was commander of the Magdalena Battalion of the army's Ninth Brigade  between 2006 and 2007. (Blu Radio, Jan. 3)

Survivors who are seeking justice for victims of "false positive" killings continue to themselves be targeted. On Jan. 11, Alfamir Castillo Bermúdez, the mother of a young man summarily executed by the army, was shot at while driving on a road near her home in the rural village of Pradera, Valle del Cauca department. She was accompanied by an escort from the government's National Protection Unit, and all escaped unhurt. Her son, Darbey Mosquera, was assassinated in February 2008 by members of the Martyrs of Puerres Battalion, a counterinsurgency unit attached to the army's 13th Brigade. (Semana, Jan. 12)

Photo: Contagio Radio

Following up on his pledge to address the matter within 30 days of taking office, Colombia's new right-wing President Iván Duque spoke this week about his conditions for resuming his predecessor's peace dialogue with the National Liberation Army (ELN), the country's last significant guerilla group that remains in arms. Duque listed three conditions: the concentration of guerilla fighters in pre-determined areas (akin to the "concentration zones" used in the FARC demobilization), the liberation of all captives held by the guerillas, and a firm time-table for the dialogue process. The president spoke just days after the ELN freed three soldiers who had been taken captive the same week Duque was inaugurated last month in Arauca department. But some 20 other captives remain in the guerillas' hands, including six soldiers who were also seized a month ago in Chocó department.

The ELN issued a communique stating its own demand—that the Group of Countries for Support, Accompaniment and Cooperation (GPAAC), established last year by Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland to support the new peace talks in Colombia, be allowed to send observers to oversee any transfer of detainees. Duque has refused to accept this demand, and the communique called for public pressure on him to do so.

An ELN delegation is currently waiting in Havana, where the last round of talks was held in May, ready to resume the dialogue if both sides can agree to terms.

Meanwhile, sporadic clashes between the ELN and government troops continue. One soldier was killed and several wounded Aug. 27, when ELN fighters attacked an army patrol in the vereda (hamlet) of El Troncal, Arauquita municipality, Arauca. (El Espectador, Sept. 7; El Espectador, El Tiempo, Sept. 5; Semana, Sept. 4; Semana, Sept. 3; El Espectador, Aug. 28)

Photo: Colombia Reports

There have been several more such assassinations since then. On April 4, a local leader of the Catatumbo Campesino Association (ASCAMCAT), Álvaro Pérez, was slain by unknown gunmen near his home in San Calixto, Norte de Santander department. He was the brother of the town's mayor, Jairo Pérez. (Prensa Rural, April 9; El Tiempo, April 5)

Neo-paramilitaries resurgent
Much of the violence is taking place in areas that have been particularly taregted by right-wing paramilitary groups over the course of the war—such as Ituango municipality, Antioquia, seemingly a renewed focus of para terror. A campesino leader in Ituango, José Herrera, was reported slain March 22, but authorities are now classifying the case as a "disappearance," as the body initially identified as his has been determined to be that of another local peasant. (El Colombiano, March 24)

Community leaders in Rio Sucio municipality, Chocó, reported that a group of some 80 paramilitary gunmen on March 26 invaded the vereda (hamlet) of Jiguamiandó and forced local residents to gather for a meeting, in which they threatened to kill "sapos" (informants). The gunmen were identified as members of the Gaitanista paramilitary network, and community leaders charged they were operating with the knowledge of the official security forces. (Contagio Radio, April 2)

The authorities have been making some efforts to crack down on the Gaitanistas, the most powerful of the "neo-paramilitary" networks. On April 11, eight National Police troops were killed in a shoot-out at vereda El Tomate, San Pedro de Urabá municipality, Antioquia, in what was said to be an attack by the "Clan del Golfo," the regional crime machine behind the Gaitanistas. (Nuevo Siglo, April 11)

Demobilized guerillas targeted
Demobilized former FARC guerillas appear to be especially taregted. On April 8, two houses that had been built for demobilized fighters at a FARC "transitional camp" in  Caquetá department were burned down by unknown assailants. (Prensa Rural, April 8)

But "dissident" or "renegade" FARC units that have refused to lay down arms are also accused in attacks on civilians. On March 30, community leader María Magdalena Cruz Rojas became the lastest to be killed in a series of attacks by presumed FARC "dissidents" in Mapiripán municipality, Meta department. She was apparently targeted for her participation in the government program of voluntary eradication of coca crops. (Prensa Rural, April 2; El Colombiano, April 1)

As usual, the campesino and indigenous commuities are caught between both sides. On March 25, one resident was killed and six injured as security forces carried out an operation with a "military objective" at the Nasa indigenous community of Palo, Caloto municipality, Cauca. The "military objective" was presumably a renegade FARC unit, but those attacked by the government troops were said to be local youth who were coming out of a discotheque. (Contagio Radio, March 27)

The coca eradiction program continues to be a harshly contested. In early April, cocaleros in Ituango blocked roads to protest what they said was "forced eradication" of their crops by government troops, in violation of an agreement with the local communities. (El Colombiano, April 6) Despite such episodes, the government still hails the program as a success, annoucning in late March that Arauca had become the first departament officially declared free of illegal crops in Colombia. (Prensa Rural, March 26)

Uribe links to paramilitarism
Despite official denialism from authorities that paramilitaries are behind the assassinations, the government is starting to respond to international pressure. In late March it was announced that the Elite Corps created as a condition of the FARC peace accords to combat paramilitarism will investigate the ongoing assassinations.  (El Espectador, March 26)

Colombia's Supreme Court of Justice has meanwhile ordered prison aithorities to step up security around an incarcerated leader of the demobilized Metro Bloc paramilitary force, Juan Guillermo Monsalve Pineda, who is preparing to testify against ex-president Álvaro Uribe and his brother Santiago Uribe Vélez about their links to the 12 Apostles death-squad. (Contagio Radio, April 9)

Photo via Contagio Radio