By Luis Jaime Acosta
BOGOTA (Reuters) -Illegal armed groups in Colombia have added thousands of members and expanded their territorial control in the last three years, despite government efforts to negotiate ceasefires, according to an internal security report seen by Reuters.
The twice-yearly report, issued to security officials on Tuesday by domestic security and intelligence agencies and shared with Reuters under condition of anonymity, is key to determining the composition and growth of illegal armed groups and designing military or diplomatic strategies to combat them, three security sources told Reuters.
Armed groups totaled 21,958 people – including combatants and auxiliaries – by the end of June, the report found, 45% more than the 15,120 estimated in mid-2022, when President Gustavo Petro took office.
This exceeds the 17% expansion from 12,833 registered during the four-year term of former President Ivan Duque. In the last year alone, the report found that armed groups grew 7%, adding 1,469 members.
Colombia’s Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez confirmed to Reuters that the latest estimated number of armed group members was around 22,000 and blamed the rise on groups exploiting the government’s peace efforts.
Armed groups, who fund themselves through drug trafficking, illegal mining and other crimes, remain present in Colombia after a six-decade conflict that has left over 450,000 dead and despite a 2016 peace agreement between the government and the FARC, the then-largest rebel group.
Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president and a former member of the M-19 guerrilla movement, launched a policy of “total peace” when he took power, with the aim of freezing military operations and employing talks and ceasefires to finally end the bloodshed.
However, as talks broke down, the government restarted military operations and began fresh offensives against most of the armed groups.
“This (increase) is linked to poorly designed ceasefires that gave a strategic advantage to armed groups so they could strengthen their territorial control,” said Eduardo Pizarro, conflict expert at the National University of Colombia.
“The peace policy’s failure is total and irreversible,” he added, saying it would be difficult for the government to reduce armed group numbers through negotiations.
Sanchez recently said that illegal armed groups were highly resilient as funds from drug trafficking allowed them to recruit fighters, buy weapons, and expand their territories.
Clan del Golfo, a criminal group that emerged from ultra-right-wing paramilitary squads, remains Colombia’s largest armed group with 7,550 members, according to the report, while the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN) totaled 6,245.
(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing by Sarah Morland; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
