At least 80 people have been killed and thousands displaced in north-east Colombia after the collapse of a fragile truce between rebel groups vying for control of the one of the country’s largest cocaine hubs.
Violence between the National Liberation Army (ELN) and dissident factions of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) has rapidly escalated in the lawless region bordering Venezuela since Thursday, forcing at least 5,000 people to flee their homes.
School has been suspended indefinitely as classrooms have been converted into emergency shelters for families fleeing their homes and the region has requested emergency humanitarian assistance, said William Villamizar, governor of the Norte de Santander region.
Dozens of civilians have been injured and 20 people, including 10 women, have been kidnapped, according to Colombia’s ombudsman office.
At least 3,000 people have been displaced in the municipality of Tibú, said the local mayor, Richar Claro.
“We are seeing innumerable families who have lost children and even sadder still, children who have lost their parents,” Claro said. “Kids and the elderly are crying as they are leaving their farms and crops behind. It’s absolutely heart-wrenching.”
“We can’t even give the victims a dignified burial as we cannot get into the areas to reclaim the bodies due to ongoing violence.”
The current clashes are the among the worst Colombia has seen since its first leftist president Gustavo Petro took office in 2022 with a promise to bring “total peace” to the war-wracked nation.
On Thursday, Petro cut off on-off talks with the ELN, Colombia’s oldest active armed group, after the rebels were accused of killing five members of a rival drug-trafficking faction.
The unrest has quickly escalated.
Among those killed were a local community leader and seven former rebel fighters who laid down their weapons in a 2016 peace deal with the Farc. That agreement formally ended six decades of conflict which killed 450,000 people and displaced millions more.
But since then the state has not retaken control of former Farc strongholds, allowing other armed groups including the ELN and dissident Farc units to muscle in on the cocaine trade, said Gerson Arias, a researcher at the Bogotá-based thinktank Ideas for Peace Foundation.
Catatumbo’s extensive coca crops and strategic location on the Venezuelan border have made it a hotbed of persistent violence, and according to Arias, tensions between the rebel groups had long been building. “This war is a long time coming,” he said.
The dissident Farc’s 33rd front, which has expanded rapidly in recent years, has occasionally clashed with the ELN in the region and has tried to buy off the support of communities in ELN strongholds by building football pitches and bridges.
An audio recording published on Sunday appeared to show one of the 33rd front’s commanders’, Andrey Avedaño, declaring all out war on the ELN. “A war was imposed on us and we have to fight it with those who imposed it on us,” Avedaño appeared to say in the recording.
The Colombian military said on Saturday that 300 troops are being sent into the border region to try and quell the violence.
Petro had pledged to bring all major armed groups to the negotiating table instead of pursuing them militarily, but the plan has so far seen little progress and the conflict in Catatumbo is likely to be the nail in the coffin for discussions with the ELN – and the entire strategy, Arias said.
“There is no way now the government can meet the ELN at the negotiation table…. All the other negotiations were already in crisis too, and this development is only going to make them more complicated. The Total Peace strategy is dead.”
