2023-04-23 07:01:00
In more than 8 months of government, President Gustavo Petro had not had such a detailed map of the armed groups with which he wants to negotiate as the one that arrived at his office a couple of weeks ago. With two confidential reports made by trusted men and under the maximum technical rigor, military intelligence gave him a long list with the five largest armed groups in Colombia and the 23 additional gangs that merge and fight each other to dominate territories and seize drug trafficking routes.
The result is clear: 31 of the 32 departments in the country, with the exception of the islands of San Andrés and Providencia, have a high armed presence of at least three large criminal groups. According to intelligence calculations, some 17,600 men and women join the troops of the guerrilla and narco-paramilitary groups that, in 2022 alone, murdered 215 social leaders and made that year the most violent against this group of people with special protection.
Said intelligence reports, advanced by Reuters and known by this newspaper, not only give the Army an idea of where its military objectives are, but also help the President to know the real strength of each armed group and reach the tables of negotiation and submission with clear information about their real power and foot strength.
The information, of course, takes on special relevance in the midst of the total peace policy that the Head of State adopted as his main political banner: to negotiate peace and bring to justice all the illegal armed groups that Colombia has. But where are they located, what is the size of their troops, and who leads them?
ELN: the largest troop
The National Liberation Army (ELN) is the largest and most powerful armed group in the country today. With 5,850 members, the Army classified the guerrillas as the illegal armed force “with the greatest capacity for damage and territorial control.”
Of this total, it is estimated that 50%, some 2,900 men, are in the armed struggle and the rest are in urban and political support networks.
According to independent reports and estimates made by InSight Crime, these guerrillas operate in at least 23 departments and in eight of the 24 states of Venezuela.
Due to this presence in the neighboring country, past governments and experts in organized crime have told Nicolás Maduro to protect the ELN and collaborate with them throughout the border area to mobilize cocaine. Right in that part, the guerrillas have a command that operates in Norte de Santander and Zulia, Venezuela, which is known as the Manuel Pérez Martínez Northeast War Front.
Said troop is one of the most relevant at a strategic level and is led by Leonel Salazar Roa, alias “Gonzalo Satélite”, a seasoned subversive who has been in that group for more than 20 years and has been in charge of the entire binational border for about five years. years.
The rest of the organization functions as a confederate structure in which its war fronts maintain a certain political, operational and financial independence, but obey the general orders of its top commander, Antonio García, and its current chief negotiator, Pablo Beltrán.
With this group, the Government holds a negotiating table that will advance in its third cycle from the first week of May in Havana, Cuba. While they refuse to accept the bilateral ceasefire that Petro has been proposing since last December, the Casa de Nariño formalized a military alliance with the Venezuelan Army to attack the guerrilla cells they have there.
The scattered Gulf Clan
In second place in the report, the self-styled Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as Clan del Golfo, have 4,060 members, of whom 1,620 are combatants.
Despite this, it is well known that the organization allies with and subcontracts to smaller gangs with a presence throughout the country to achieve military and economic objectives. For this information, it is believed that he could have influence over 6,000 armed men who do not belong precisely to him.
After the capture and extradition of its top commander Dairo Antonio Úsuga, alias Otoniel, the group passed into the hands of Jovanis de Jesús Ávila Villadiego, alias Chiquito Malo, who mostly commands from Urabá in Antioquia.
One of his first tasks was to convince the group to get on the bus of total peace, despite the opposition and objections of leaders such as Wilmer Giraldo, known as “Siopas”, then deputy commander of the Clan and who was found dead on a highway in March. Dadeiba.
After becoming the top leader, there were doubts about whether Chiquito Malo could keep the AGC powerful and united. Two years later those doubts were dispelled and it is clear that the group did not fragment. despite the absence of Othniel.
Precisely because of this fragmentation that military intelligence described, it is believed that it has been more difficult for the Clan to respect the ceasefire that it agreed with the Government. Although Petro still maintains peace intentions with them, he ordered the resumption of offensive military actions after multiple attacks on the Public Force and the civilian population that had the Casa de Nariño between a rock and a hard place due to the apparent docility that the Executive showed before them. .
Although their main headquarters are Antioquia and Chocó, the Clan has demonstrated control in at least 17 departments and various areas of Venezuela, where it fights hard against the ELN and even with the Venezuelan Guard, which supposedly would pave the way for the guerrillas to traffic.
The dissidences of two “Ivans”
In third and fourth place are the Central General Staff (CMS) and the Second Marquetalia, the two Farc dissidents commanded by Ivan Mordisco and Ivan Marquez, respectively.
Although both are FARC dissidents, they have different origins. While the Márquez group was one that emerged after betraying the Peace Agreement and taking up arms, the EMC group was a complete bloc that refused to sign peace from the beginning and, therefore, still retains a clear political status that granted to the guerrillas.
Despite the fact that in the past they were fighting partners within the ranks of the Farc, now the “ivanes” fight each other.
Intelligence believes that the General Staff has 3,530 members, 2,180 of them armed, and that the Second Marquetalia has 1,060 combatants and 610 in support networks.
In the midst of this recycled war, the current guerrilla leaders of both dissidences are all men who held positions of power in the extinct FARC. As second in command of the EMC is alias Calarcá, former commander of the 40th Front, and as deputy commander of Márquez’s dissidents is Walter Mendoza, one of the founders of the Farc mobile columns and of the original central command of that guerrilla.
With all this verified, the two military intelligence reports also detailed the characteristics of smaller and more focused armed groups such as Los Pachencas, whose troops number 1,000 armed men located in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, and the Chotas and Espartanos who, according to information revealed by the high commissioner for peace, Danilo Rueda, they would reach around 830 combatants with influence in Buenaventura.
Thus, there is no better evidence than this criminal map to illustrate what many criticize Petro’s total peace: that it is excessively ambitious and could have bad results when trying to cover everything in one slice and with Danilo Rueda as the only communicator. in the middle.
If peace were achieved with all these armed groups, 20,000 combatants would emerge from the jungles and rural areas of the country: the largest and most important non-simultaneous demobilization in history.
#criminal #map #Colombia