Earlier this year, the ELN unleashed a series of attacks against suspected members of the Tenth and Twenty-eighth Fronts of the FARC dissidents.
The 28th Front of the FARC dissidents declared war “without rest and without quarter” against the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN), after the clashes and attacks that have occurred in the department of Arauca in recent weeks, while organizations ask the Government that intercedes with a negotiation.
In a video statement read by one of the commanders, the 28th Front, which emerged from the remnants of the FARC, acknowledges responsibility for the car bomb attack perpetrated on January 19 in the city of Saravena, for which it apologizes, but At the same time, he assures that: “those of us who struggled with this war tell them that there they have it, without rest and without quarter.”
Thus, this front, which claims to act “under the determinations of the FARC general secretariat,” returns to address “everyone who is directly linked to the insane actions of the ELN” to ensure that “we will not give them a truce, that they can hide wherever they want, even under the rocks, we will look for them”.
In this scenario, where the tension between the two groups has escalated brutally since the beginning of the year and there are already at least 34 deaths in this department bordering Venezuela, the Comprehensive System for Peace today requested the intervention of the Government.
This system, made up of the Truth Commission, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) and the Search Unit for Disappeared Persons (UBPD), “makes an urgent call to the Colombian Government to promote and/or facilitate humanitarian dialogues between the armed actors immersed in the escalation of the conflict in Arauca”.
The organizations assure that the confrontation between these two armed groups in the municipalities of Saravena, Fortul, Tame and Arauquita has left 34 homicides, some 2,000 displaced people, 2 kidnappings, the confinement of indigenous communities and the general threat to social leaders and presidents of Community Action Boards.
At the beginning of this year, the ELN unleashed a series of attacks against supposed members of the Tenth and Twenty-eighth Front of the FARC dissidents or people linked (or innocent) to that group.
The dissidents, before today’s declaration of war, already replied in a statement that they were “willing to confrontation” and since then they have threatened activists, human rights defenders and trade unionists, have imposed restrictions on mobility between municipalities and threatened to society.
After an attack on the Saravena aqueduct system, self-managed by the community through a cooperative, in the early hours of January 19 there was a car bomb attack in the urban center of Saravena that cost the life of the security guard Simeón Delgado.
The explosion took place in the center of the urban nucleus, where shops and offices operate, and although it apparently targeted the headquarters of the Joel Sierra Human Rights Foundation, the greatest damage was suffered by the local agency of the Colombian Agricultural Institute (ICA). , where Delgado worked.
In today’s communiqué, the 28th Front justifies its “legitimate action” against the ELN, for the selective assassinations, and, assuming responsibility for the attack against “its urban command center”, assured that “there have been collateral damages that have affected the property of the civilian population and generated anxiety.”
For this reason, they stressed: “we express our apologies and assume our responsibility. We self-critically regret that this confrontation directly affects, clarifying that the civilian population is outside our military objectives.
In Arauca, the ELN and the former FARC already clashed in a “guerrilla war” between 2004 and 2010, which left a list of five thousand dead civilians and a large number of casualties in the ranks of both groups.
From there came an agreement, a kind of “coexistence manual”, where they agreed to respect their territories and not confront each other, which continued to be respected after the demobilization of the FARC.
However, in recent months these two fronts, which are believed to be coordinated by the national dissident alias “Gentil Duarte”, have grown in size and threatened the hegemony that the ELN has in this part of the country and on the Venezuelan side, where it is estimated that they are between 60 and 70% of its troops. (I)
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