By Diana Calderón, EL PAÍS, September 1, 2025
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
The Colombian conflict expert X-rays the increasing power of the armed groups and the security policy failure to adapt.
Colombia is passing through an escalation of violence right now just a year before the presidential election, which demonstrates a profound institutional breakdown in the countryside. The humanitarian crisis in Catatumbo—with dozens of deaths and more than 50,000 people displaced—illustrates this reality dramatically. Just last week, the downing of a helicopter in Amalfi cost the lives of 13 police officers, while an explosion in Cali left six people dead and nearly 80 injured. Between 2023 and thus far in 2025, 629 soldiers and police officers have been kidnapped, not only by illegal armed organizations, but also by campesino and indigenous organizations they had manipulated. One of the people best prepared to explain what’s happening is Kyle Johnson, co-founder of Conflict Responses Foundation, and with a Master’s Degree in political science. He is very familiar with the Colombian conflict in those territories.
Question: CORE just presented a report about the expansion of the armed groups. What’s your understanding of that?
Answer: We have studied four variables. The first is the military aspect, which includes their territorial expansion and how many members they have, according to intelligence data. We found that all the groups are operating in more municipalities than three years ago, and they also have more members than they did. But the increase has been unequal. The Clan del Golfo is the one that has expanded the most and grown the most. On the contrary, the ELN has expanded hardly at all, and their number of members is stable.
Question: Why the differences?
Answer: The ELN is losing in several conflict locations. Although they’re winning in Catatumbo, they’re losing to the Clan del Golfo in southern Bolívar, Antioquia, or Chocó. The Dissidents, in spite of the fact that they’re divided, are also growing in size. Maybe the weakest is the Segunda Marquetalia, which is now the smallest group of Dissidents with the least coverage of territory, with the majority of the members in Venezuela. The other Dissidents have gone to new places. Those commanded by Calarcá to Huila, and a few to Tolima; Mordisco’s are expanding in the Amazon area, and a few to the southwest and west of the country.
Question: Were the ceasefires decreed by the government with several organizations at fault for the expansion?
Answer: The answer depends on the group. There were only two formal bilateral ceasefires signed by the government and a group. One with the EMC, which in 2023 took advantage of the ceasefire to expand in Huila. But the other one, with the ELN, lasted a year without their strengthening or similar expansion. In contrast, the Clan del Golfo expanded in spite of the fact that there was only an informal ceasefire of three months at the beginning of 2023, and the Segunda Marquetalia also had no ceasefire, and it grew from Putumayo to Caquetá and Amazonas.
Question: How did you find the situation with the second variable, the illegal economy?
Answer: On this front, it’s more difficult to have clear data, but all the illegal economies have increased or have become more profitable. In the drug traffic, we see more production of cocaine than ever; in illegal mining, the price of gold is at a record high; in extortion, there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence that it has become much more generalized in the conflict areas. Besides that, the groups have sources of funds that did not exist ten years ago, such as deforestation, or trafficking migrants through the Darien. All in all, they have more money.
Question: Which part of transnational crime is more important, the Mexican cartels, or the Venezuelans?
Answer: The Mexican cartels are very important in the drug trafficking. Although they are here at times, their principal role is financing the operations and, through that, they control the business. There are also European actors, making sure the cocaine gets to Europe; you can see this in the increased volume in several important European ports, and there are actors in Venezuela and Ecuador, two important routes for export of cocaine,
Question: What factors explain the difficulties the Armed Forces are having in controlling the growth of the criminal economies?
Answer: Their role is complicated. The security strategy and policy have come into play, which under Duque were less effective than we hoped. Petro brought important changes in their role, but those weren’t implemented, so we’ve seen the continuity and, recently, the strengthening of a policy planned to confront the FARC 20 years ago. The policy has to reflect the change in context better. The government also doesn’t have enough soldiers to confront all the altercations that are going on. To carry out big operations, they move troops from one area to another; that leaves the first exposed. Finally, there are policy difficulties between the Ministry and the President.
Question: You also found an effect of military corruption or possible omissions in confronting the groups. Where are the areas where you saw that?
Answer: Although we didn’t deal with that subject very much in the report, and it’s hard to get solid evidence, there are some emblematic cases of those problems. I recall that a general was pulled out of Cauca when some audios appeared in the press that accused him of getting together with the armed groups. At any rate, people might think that when the Army doesn’t take an action it’s because of corruption, but maybe they don’t have the capacity, or there’s a strategy to get in and get out of a certain area.
Question: What’s the internal cohesion like in these criminal organizations?
Answer: We found a weakening in that aspect. The Dissidents tried to create a centralized hierarchy like the FARC had, but that failed, and we’re seeing divisions like the ones with Mordisco and Calarcá. The Segunda Marquetalia also tried that, and they also failed. That’s led to the atomization of those groups and greater fragmentation of the conflicts. The ELN, for its part, has always had difficult internal issues, but now they have openly lost a front, Comuneros del Sur, and that is a backward step for their cohesion. The Clan del Golfo, which is not perfectly centralized, has had problems like those that led them to kill their own Bloque commander in Chocó, but it’s the group that has been the most able to maintain cohesion. They have a command staff, a leadership body, but, above all, a lot of individual loyalties. In addition, because they participate more directly in the illegal economies, the financers and the group have a very clear interest in making sure that the businesses are functioning well. And since all the members benefit from that, they have been able to avoid open divisions.
Question: The fourth variable is governance with these groups. How is daily life functioning for the people?
Anwer: We see four areas of this governance. One is the sale of protection, when they argue that they are there to prevent the entrance of other groups that would do harm. This could be ugly, because they, themselves do violence. Another area is their regulations. They force people to have no contact with the enemy, to comply with schedules for their movements, they prohibit stealing and violence, regulate how much deforestation you’re allowed. The third aspect is that they hand out justice. If I lend you money and you don’t pay, I can go to the group and ask them to take care of the problem We are seeing that the Community Action Boards usually also carry out the role of judge, and people turn to the group only as a second option. And the fourth aspect is keeping the economy going, that’s how they extort them. Besides those small things, in some cases they build roads or construct clinics.
Question: Do the local political clans take part in this governance?
Answer: In the places where the groups do the governing, if I can simplify, and with the exception of the Clan del Golfo, there is no government to compete with them. There certainly are complaints about agreements between local governments and groups on some matters, from election issues to the implementation of projects they approve, but there is no proof. In any event, we are seeing the limited capacity of the local governments, of the Mayor’s Offices, which are very poor.
Question: Are there territories that have been able to free themselves from the conflict, from those powers?
Answer: The violence we’re seeing now is much less than what we were seeing before the peace process with the FARC. In Colombia, statistically, it’s better and there are advances in places like the south of Tolima. They are complaining there now about movements of very small armed groups or some extortion, but there has definitely been progress. That’s not a small thing in the region where Alfonso Cano was on the move before his death in 2011 and where they founded the FARC. Unfortunately, the conflict that was closed down with the FARC was not the only conflict existing in the country, and many of the places where the FARC had been operating now experience a fierce invasion of other groups.
Question: In this new phase of the conflict, more diffused, but legal, what is the security policy that’s necessary?
Answer: That’s the million-dollar question. The security policy needs to have the protection of the civilian population as its central element. It has to be more specific and intentional than it is now. That requires defining how you look at the operations and the military strategies or those of the police. The rest of the government has to take advantage of the local partners that exist in some areas, like the indigenous reservations or the Afro-Colombian community councils who have the right to govern in their territories. Strengthening them is immensely important. In other places, what the government supplies has to have an element of justice, however informal it might be, to see that the laws are obeyed. It could be with the police, with the Community Action Boards, or with the indigenous legal system. And finally, the government has to make sure that the legal economy functions, so the people can survive, because in many areas with armed conflict there are only the illegal economies, which the government can’t regulate. That is connected to the necessity for development, in that education is fundamental. In any place we go we find an educational infrastructure, but there are no teachers. Anyway, the main thing is expectations. That won’t be fixed in three or four years. We need government policies that will fix that little by little.
Question: The government has introduced a submission bill in the Congress. Wouldn’t that be a perverse incentive?
Answer: No, because any criminal organization already has an incentive to strengthen and expand just in case. They’re always going to seek more power, regardless of what the government might offer in negotiation.
Question: But what kind of power? Because we’re not talking about political expectations but economic.
Answer: Exactly. And that takes us to a very interesting point: what to offer. If we think that the only incentive is economic, they have no incentive to negotiate ever, because they’re making money while being at war. We could focus on reducing their income from the war, which this administration has tried without much success. Or we could look for other incentives so they will want to negotiate.
Question: What incentives?
Answer: That needs more research. At the international level, there’s talk of emotional incentives, recalling that there are people who have interests beyond the coldly economic. It could be their family, their welfare, being tired of being at war. In fact, some from the Clan del Golfo are looking for peace and quiet; they want to retire, to put it that way. It might work to explore those pathways.
Question: That sounds a little naïve, doesn’t it? We’re talking about criminals, people that are causing profound damage to society every day.
Answer: As you say, they’re people engaged in criminal activities. But they are people. And although they’ve done the worst things you can imagine, they’ve planted bombs, committed massacres, or forced disappearances, there are examples of negotiations with organized crime that go beyond money.
Question: Do you have an example?
Answer: It worked in El Salvador, although negotiated below the level of the murders, not peace as peace. Ecuador has cases of negotiating with gangs. The United States has others. But they were very specific agreements, like reducing the violence without dismantling the criminal organization. So they give us clues, but no solutions. What I do know is that if we start with believing that their economic interest Is all there is, their incentive will be to continue fighting the war. There’s nothing to negotiate. Then there’s absolutely nothing we can do.