At least 23 people have died since the weekend amid the resumption of armed conflicts between Colombian criminals in the Arauca region, on the border with Venezuela. According to the country’s president, Iván Duque, it is likely that there are civilians among the dead.
The dispute involves the ELN (National Liberation Army), considered the last guerrilla in Colombia, and dissidents from the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), a group that signed a peace agreement with the government in 2016 after decades of clandestine activity.
According to a statement released by the Colombian Army on Sunday night (2), the two groups are fighting over the control of illegal practices such as drug trafficking.
The same happened in the mid-2000s, when the two guerrillas faced each other in the region, in a battle that advanced to the Venezuelan side, in the state of Apure. By the end of the conflict in 2010, more than 58,000 people had been displaced and at least 868 civilians had been killed, according to Human Rights Watch.
In March of last year, when Colombian armed groups clashed with Venezuelan military personnel in the region, around 5,000 people fled Apure.
Due to the most recent clash, the Colombian government deployed troops to the site, where, throughout 2021, members of the security forces also came into conflict with criminals.
Duque also called a meeting of military and police leaders to assess the situation in Arauca and take steps to resolve it. “I have ordered that two battalions be dispatched within the next 72 hours to assist with the task of territorial control,” he said in a video feed.
The exact death toll from the weekend’s actions is not yet known, but the country’s deputy defense minister said authorities were surveying the number of bodies scattered across the region. According to Colombian intelligence, at least two dissidence chiefs were murdered on the Venezuelan side recently in disputes involving other armed groups, including drug traffickers.
The ELN is estimated to have about 2,500 fighters, both men and women, says the independent think tank Indepaz. On the other hand, the group formed by FARC dissidents totals approximately 5,200 guerrillas, 85% of whom have never been part of the extinct guerrilla.
On Monday night (3), Venezuelan authorities said that at least seven people, including a teenager under the age of 15, died in a clash between armed groups during the year-end celebration in Barrancas del Orinoco, municipality of 30,000 inhabitants in the state of Monagas.
The region is located almost 1,500 kilometers from Arauca, far from the control of Colombian authorities. Even so, opposition politicians and the media in the area point out that the episode would involve disputes between a local gang and a Colombian guerrilla.
According to María Gabriela Hernández, a former deputy from Monagas for the opposition, “irregular groups with a Colombian accent” are fighting for control of the region, which she says is a base for human trafficking and smuggling of minerals, drugs and weapons.
The conflict even extends to narrative disputes involving the Colombian and Venezuelan governments. Duque accuses the Chavez regime of “compacting with the existence of illegal armed groups”.
The Colombian president said at the end of a security council in Cartagena that the ELN and FARC dissidents “have operated at will in Venezuelan territory with the consent and protection of the dictatorial regime”, referring to the regime of Nicolás Maduro. The Venezuelan denies the accusations.
The two countries broke off relations shortly after Duque came to power in August 2018 — the Colombian is close to the US government, one of Maduro’s main adversaries.
In four decades of frontal combat against drug trafficking, with US funding, Colombia remains the largest producer of cocaine in the world and the US its largest consumer.
In late November, the Americans removed the FARC from their list of terrorist organizations, but added to the list two groups of dissidents from the organization. The change in designation makes it easier to send help for projects that involve ex-rebels. The guerrillas were considered terrorists by the US since October 1997, under Bill Clinton.
Today, the FARC is formally a political party — which at first kept the acronym, but changed its meaning to the Alternative Revolutionary Force of the Common, before renaming itself the Commons. Under the peace agreement, the group received ten seats in Congress after the agreement was signed.
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