With more troops, Colombia seeks to curb cocaine-fueled violence on the border with Venezuela

In sweltering heat, Colombian Army soldiers, wearing camouflaged suits and anti-COVID masks, walk through the dense vegetation with their assault rifles ready to respond to an eventual attack by their many enemies on the border with Venezuela.

The soldiers are part of a new 14,000-strong military unit launched to stop escalating violence in the department of Norte de Santander, a northeastern region of Colombia larger than El Salvador, which has become the new epicenter of the armed conflict fueled by the surge. of cocaine production.

“Patrols on the border with Venezuela are very dangerous because any illegal group involved in drug trafficking and with a presence in the area can attack us”Said a sergeant with 20 years of seniority in the Army, as he protected himself from the sun under the shade of a tree, near a river that divides Colombia and Venezuela.

Explosions of antipersonnel mines, ambushes and fighting have left 16 soldiers and 19 members of illegal armed groups dead in 2021 in Norte de Santander, in addition to dozens of injured in around 30 attacks, according to statistics from the Ministry of Defense.

However, the increase in troops and the effort of the military may not necessarily be the correct tactic: the eradication of the coca leaf crops, the raw material of cocaine, is falling amid the resistance of the peasants of the region that claim to have no other alternatives to live.

In addition, the Colombian Army has a history of accusations of committing human rights abuses in its fight against leftist guerrillas, drug traffickers and criminal gangs in the midst of a conflict of more than half a century that has left 260,000 dead and millions displaced.

President Iván Duque accuses the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro of providing refuge to illegal armed groups in its territory, allowing cocaine trafficking to the United States and Europe in exchange for a share of the profits.

Venezuela’s collapsing economy and rampant crime also increase violence at the border, Colombian authorities say. Reuters showed in a recent investigation how the guerrilla of the National Liberation Army (ELN) functions as the de facto local government and main employer in some Venezuelan localities.

Caracas vigorously denies its responsibility and Maduro said in October that what exists on the border are “armed terrorists drug traffickers”, Groups that he defined as a strategy of the Colombian oligarchy to infiltrate and destabilize Venezuela with attacks.

Instability

Colombia hopes that the military strategy in Norte de Santander will provide a roadmap to pacify other regions of the nation of 50 million inhabitants that still face an armed conflict, now fragmented into local battles involving guerrillas and criminal gangs linked to drug trafficking. .

“Several factors of instability converge in Norte de Santander. The first is the presence of organized armed groups and drug trafficking. Norte de Santander is one of the departments with the highest concentration of illicit crops”, The commander of the Military Forces, General Luis Fernando Navarro, told Reuters.

Venezuela’s porous 2,219-kilometer border and weak law enforcement allow the ELN and FARC dissidents who rejected a 2016 peace agreement to attack in Colombia and flee to the neighboring country for safety, the official explained in a recent interview at his Bogotá office.

Seeking refuge in Venezuela protects them from aerial bombardments, the main weapon of the Military Forces to fight rebels in other parts of Colombia.

“It is a factor of instability that the strategic rear of these structures is in neighboring Venezuelan states. That makes it hard to fight them”, Assured Navarro.

According to the Military Forces, approximately half of the 2,350 ELN combatants and 30% of the 2,400 of the FARC dissidents are in Venezuela.

On the Colombian side, illegal armed groups are fighting each other for control of the growing coca production. The Catatumbo region, with more than 40,000 hectares, has the capacity to produce 312 tons of cocaine per year, a quarter of Colombia’s total, according to UN figures.

In addition to the dissidents of the FARC and the ELN, the criminal gangs of the Clan del Golfo and Los Pelusos have a presence in the area.

Homicides in Norte de Santander increased to 576 last year, compared to 539 in 2019. As of September this year, 436 people were killed, according to official figures.

Twenty-two human rights activists have been killed since the beginning of 2020, while frequent fighting between leftist rebels, criminal gangs and the army has displaced some 6,500 people, according to reports from human rights groups.

“What is in the background in this overflowing violence is all this dynamic of criminality,” said Wilfredo Cañizares, director of the Progresar Foundation, a human rights group based in Cúcuta, the capital of Norte de Santander.

The unrest in the area gained notoriety in June when dissident rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) detonated a car bomb in a military brigade in the city of Cúcuta and then a sniper tried to shoot down a helicopter with rifle shots. President Duque and other officials were traveling.

The dissident FARC commander, Jhon Mechas, recently assumed responsibility for the attacks on Duque’s barracks and helicopter, saying they were a protest against the US military presence.

It is possible that the recent capture of “Otoniel“, The top leader of the illegal armed group”Gulf Clan“That according to the police has connections for the shipment of cocaine in 28 countries on four continents, do not stop the violence.

The arrest could even increase it, according to analysts, since the criminal gang made up of some right-wing ex-paramilitaries could retaliate against the Armed Forces or start an internal fight for control of the organization.

More social investment

Security consultant John Marulanda, a retired Army colonel, said armed groups attack high-profile targets to drive authorities away from cocaine production areas and clear drug shipping routes to clandestine landing strips in Venezuela.

The Specific Command of Norte de Santander (Cenor) will bring together four Army units that previously operated separately, which according to military commanders will allow better coordination of logistics and intelligence with more patrols, offensive operations and air support.

“We are going to intensify special operations, offensive operations, also territorial control against all structures, against the drug trafficking chain,” said General Fabio Leonardo Caro, Cenor commander, when asked about the strategy to counteract the violence.

The Army says the troop surge, with US military advisers on the ground, will go hand in hand with investments in roads, schools and other social programs.

But the plans have detractors. Activists say that more troops in the region means little without anti-poverty measures and more support for the voluntary substitution of coca crops.

“It is proven that it is a failure to insist on the militarization of the territory as the only answer to these problems,” said Cañizares, from the Progresar Foundation.

“It has been proven that if there are no comprehensive responses that attack structural problems that are the breeding ground for these illegal structures, criminal gangs, guerrilla organizations, paramilitary groups, it will not work,” added Cañizares.

Peasants from the surroundings of Tibú, which with some 19,000 hectares is the municipality with the most coca leaf crops in Colombia, recently took 180 soldiers hostage for several hours in an eradication mission to prevent the destruction of their crops, which they claim it is the only way to survive in the absence of alternatives and roads.

And eradication efforts in Norte de Santander are falling with a reduction to just over 3,000 hectares of coca leaf so far this year from 9,498 in 2020, according to official figures.

Figures from the Defense Ministry and the Army also show that the number of cocaine-producing laboratories destroyed, usually deep in the jungle, was 458 in the first nine months of this year, compared to 694 in 2020.

But the seizure of 24.8 tons of cocaine in Norte de Santander so far this year exceeded the 16.6 seized in 2020 and 22.4 in 2019. The increase is due in part to higher production, more controls on the roads, as well as the improvement of satellite data provided by the United States, according to military sources in the region.

As peasants in the area clamor for land titles, credits and works, authorities insist that the security strategy will be backed by social investments and a voluntary crop substitution program.

The National Government is investing more than US $ 150 million in roads, schools, hospitals, aqueducts and electrification. The investment for the region includes a cocoa planting project that provides seeds to farmers, technical assistance and guaranteed sales at a fixed price.

“We consider it of utmost importance that we give the peasants who today are planting coca leaves the opportunity to have different income-generating alternatives”, Said the governor of Norte de Santander, Silvano Serrano.

“To that extent, with social investment, with territorial control, but also with different alternatives in economic development, we will be able to overcome these phenomena”, He concluded.