Citizens Attack Military in Colombia under Pressure from Guerrillas

On Sunday, citizens attacked military personnel in the department of Cauca, in southern Colombia. The action took place in the municipality of Caloto, allegedly and according to authorities, due to pressure from a dissident guerrilla group of the extinct FARC. In the act against the military, fifteen soldiers were wounded by a group of civilians who, shouting and armed with machetes, stones and glass bottles, allegedly attacked the soldiers, some of whom received injuries to their heads and other parts of their bodies as a result of the mob violence.

According to what has been confirmed, instrumental in this act was an illegal armed group, dissident of the former FARC, seeking to expel the military from the area where it carries out its criminal actions. This scenario is nothing new in the region.

Destruction of coca laboratories

Just this weekend, in the departments of Valle and Cauca, the military dismantled a total of seven laboratories processing coca paste. According to confirmed data, 5,154 gallons of liquid inputs and 1,099 solid kilograms were seized from illegal armed groups operating in the sector, and destroyed. Since these groups are financed by drug trafficking, reprisals were immediate.

The Navy, in operations coordinated with the Colombian Army and police, have dealt a hard blow to the finances of organized crime in the region. “It is presumed that these structures belong to the Jacobo Arenas Western Bloc Residual Organized Armed Group, which commits crimes in the area,” the Pacific Naval Force said in a statement.

Illegal groups instrumentalize civilians

The use of civilians against the security forces by illegal armed groups is not a new action. Under extortion and threats, criminal gangs are using the population living in the conflict zone as an instrument against the army and police.

Cauca, in the south of the country, is one of Colombia’s most complex regions, where, for years, the state has had the greatest difficulty in maintaining public order. The department is home to various armed groups, essentially the guerrilla group known as Second Marquetalia, a dissident group of the FARC, the National Liberation Army (ELN) and paramilitaries of the Gulf Clan.

Mass displacements, assassinations of social leaders and the use of the population under duress to confront the public forces have proliferated strongly in a department that has been plunged into violence since this acute phase of the conflict began five years ago.

The demobilization of the powerful FARC guerrillas in 2016 did not help the Colombian state regain territorial control and impose constitutional order. On the contrary, the withdrawal of the historic guerrillas gave way to the occupation of a multitude of illegal groups vying for control and drug trafficking in one of the departments with the highest concentration of criminal gangs in Colombia.

Absence of the secular State

The complex situation of violence is not only due to the inaction of the security forces, but also to the lack of various state structures. “For example, the Prosecutor’s Office, Family Welfare, the Ministry of Education, the Attorney General’s Office, the Comptroller’s Office, and the social works of paving roads, building schools or health posts never arrived (in Cauca). Instead, the pedagogy of terror was installed, which is the way in which the illegal groups instill fear in the people in order to subjugate us,” explained Guillermo Mosquera, a peasant leader in the region, to the newspaper El Espectador.

Another consequence of this entrenched situation in Cauca is the increase in the recruitment of minors by the many illegal armed groups operating there. Between 2018 and 2023, the Ombudsman’s Office issued 17 early warnings, 13 of them for “serious risks of recruitment of minors by non-state armed groups” in 8 municipalities.

Although the ceasefire that has been in effect since August last year between the security forces and the ELN has reduced armed actions, the diversity of illegal groups operating in the region results in repeated acts of violence against the civilian population.