Assaults shock Colombia simply weeks earlier than presidential election

[ad_1] BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — A spate of assaults against civilians and military bases in Colombia’s southwestern area has raised safety considerations because the nation heads to a Could presidential election wherein crime is anticipated to be one of many prime voter considerations.

Insurgent teams have staged 26 assaults with explosives and drones since Friday, together with a lethal blast Saturday on a freeway between the cities of Cali and Popayan, based on Colombia’s protection ministry. The demise toll in that explosion rose to 21 individuals on Monday.

Violence within the area is nothing new. Unlawful teams have sought to manage the world for many years, deeming it strategic for illicit actions, akin to illegal mining and drug trafficking, together with the cultivation of coca leaf, the uncooked materials for cocaine.

Authorities blamed a gaggle generally known as the FARC-EMC for the deadly explosion, close to a tunnel on the Pan-American Freeway. The group is led by Nestor Vera — generally generally known as Iván Mordisco — a former member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia , identified by its Spanish acronym FARC, who refused to hitch a 2016 peace take care of the nation’s authorities.

Sergio Guzmán, a political threat analyst in Colombia’s capital, Bogota, stated that Mordisco’s group might be attempting to exhibit that it has the capabilities to do severe injury, and is looking for to “set up its credibility” with Colombia’s subsequent authorities because it positions itself for future negotiations.

“A part of what they're doing is establishing leverage in direction of the long run,” Guzmán stated.

Below President Gustavo Petro , a former member of a guerrilla group, the Colombian authorities has tried to stage peace talks with the nation’s remaining insurgent teams by means of a method generally known as " total peace .”

The federal government has supplied ceasefires to varied teams in an effort to advertise peace negotiations, however analysts say the technique has failed, as a result of these teams used the ceasefires to regroup, rearm and strengthen their grip over communities.

Teams just like the FARC-EMC have been identified to tax residents in areas below their management, and likewise forcibly recruit youth into their ranks.

“The federal government’s peace coverage has been naïve,” stated Javier Garay, a political science professor at Colombia’s Externado College. “They thought that if they'd a condescending angle in direction of these teams they might obtain a optimistic response.”

In late 2023, the FARC-EMC entered peace talks with the Colombian authorities. However a faction led by Mordisco deserted the talks in April 2024, and has been fighting the Colombian government since then.

Elizabeth Dickinson, a Colombia analyst on the Worldwide Disaster Group, stated that Mordisco’s group is especially sturdy within the provinces of Cauca and Valle del Cauca, the place it’s preventing for management of drug trafficking routes and unlawful gold mines.

For the previous two years, Mordisco’s group has additionally used drone assaults and automotive bombs, to answer an offensive from the Colombian navy within the Micay Canyon , a distant space lined with coca fields that's below the FARC-EMC’s grip.

Dickinson stated that the most recent assaults in southwest Colombia are a method for the group to indicate that it may possibly maintain its “asymmetrical warfare” towards the federal government.

Colombia’s protection minister on Sunday stated that kidnappings and lockdowns enforced by insurgent teams on communities had decreased in Cauca over the previous 12 months due to the federal government’s actions.

In a nationally televised tackle Monday night time, Petro stated his authorities has fought drug trafficking and slowed down the cultivation of coca crops in Colombia, the place he stated 258,000 hectares (638,000 acres) had been planted with coca in late 2025.

However the authorities’s complete peace technique has come below hearth from the opposition, whose candidates are hoping to profit from the nation’s safety woes, as they promise to take a more durable stance on crime.

Petro is barred by Colombia’s structure from working for one more time period. However his social gathering’s candidate, Iván Cepeda, has promised to proceed peace talks with insurgent teams.

Cepeda stated on X that he rejected the latest assaults in southwest Colombia, and urged authorities to research whether or not they had been a part of an effort to intervene with the election.

The request was echoed Monday night time by Petro, who requested safety forces in Colombia to research whether or not the explosives utilized in Saturday’s assaults got here from Ecuador, whose conservative authorities not too long ago began a commerce warfare with Colombia over safety points alongside their border.

“They need to sabotage our elections in order that the intense proper wins,” Petro stated with out specifying who may be attempting to undermine the Could election. “They're scared,” he stated in his televised tackle.

Voters in Colombia will head to the polls on Could 31 to select from 14 completely different presidential candidates, together with Cepeda, and conservatives Abelardo de la Espriella and Paloma Valencia.

Whereas Cepeda favors the continuation of Petro’s “complete peace” technique, his conservative rivals have stated that they favor confronting insurgent teams and placing extra navy stress on them earlier than resuming peace talks.

Guzmán stated that whereas this weekend’s assaults “deepen the discomfort” with the safety scenario in Colombia — the place a presidential candidate was killed last year — either side will attempt to revenue from this new wave of violence.

“Authorities supporters will use the assaults as a chance to say that that that is precisely why we have to attain pressing agreements with (insurgent) teams,” Guzmán stated. “Detractors will say this is the reason we have to extra aggressively assault them.”

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Comply with AP’s protection of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

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