(AFP) – Colombia’s ELN guerrilla group on Friday ordered civilians in areas under its control to stay home for three days as it carries out military exercises in response to “intervention” threats from US President Donald Trump. Trump said earlier this month that any country that produces cocaine and sells it to the United States was “subject to attack.”
The ELN, the oldest surviving guerrilla group in the Americas, controls key drug-producing regions of Colombia and vowed on Friday to fight for the country’s “defense” in the face of Trump’s “threats of imperialist intervention.” It urged civilians in areas it controls to stay indoors for 72 hours starting at 6:00 am on Sunday, avoiding main roads and navigable rivers. “It is necessary for civilians not to mix with fighters to avoid accidents,” the group said in a statement.
Colombian Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez dismissed the ELN move as “nothing more than criminal coercion” and vowed the military “will be everywhere — in every mountain, every jungle, every river” to counter its threat. With a force of about 5,800 combatants, the ELN — the Spanish acronym for National Liberation Army — is present in over a fifth of Colombia’s 1,100-plus municipalities, according to the Insight Crime research center.
The ELN has taken part in failed peace negotiations with Colombia’s last five governments. While professing to be driven by leftist, nationalist ideology, the ELN is deeply involved in the drug trade and has become one of the region’s most powerful organized crime groups. It vies for territory and control of lucrative coca plantations and trafficking routes with dissident fighters that refused to lay down arms when the FARC guerrilla army disarmed under a 2016 peace deal. One ELN stronghold is the Catatumbo region near the Venezuelan border, which is one of the areas with the most coca crops in the world.
Several studies have pointed to an ELN presence across the border, where it allegedly operates in alliance with Venezuela’s armed forces, though President Nicolas Maduro denies this. The ELN launched an offensive in Catatumbo in January, sparking a conflict with FARC dissidents that led to more than 100 deaths. It was the bloodiest incident since President Gustavo Petro took office in August 2022. Colombia is the world’s top cocaine producer, according to the UN.
– Souring ties –
Relations between Bogota and Washington, historically strong, have soured under Petro, Colombia’s first-ever leftist president. Petro has openly clashed with Trump, calling him “rude and ignorant” and comparing him to Adolf Hitler. The Colombian leader denounced the Trump administration’s treatment of migrants and what he has termed the “extrajudicial executions” of nearly 90 people in strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, which the US claims, without providing evidence, were ferrying drugs.
Petro has also criticized Washington’s military deployment within striking distance of Venezuela, where Maduro fears he is the target of a regime-change plot under the guise of an anti-drug operation. Washington, in turn, has accused Petro of drug trafficking and imposed sanctions. Trump removed Bogota from a list of allies in the fight against narco trafficking, but the country has so far escaped harsher punishment — possibly as Washington awaits the right’s likely return in the 2026 elections.
© 2024 AFP
