Colombia was once seen as a success story. Threatened by violent insurgents, the country regained stability and, in 2016, reached a peace agreement with the largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Spanish initials FARC). All this was accomplished with sustained US security and economic support.
Lately, Colombia seems to be moving backwards. A recent series of attacks by one of the remaining guerrilla forces, the National Liberation Army (Spanish initials ELN) has left 85 persons dead. Other armed groups are expanding, leaving ever greater areas of rural Colombia in shambles and undermining the hopes of President Gustavo Petro, who took office in 2022 seeking “total peace” with all armed groups.
Colombia remains in better shape than it was in 25 years ago, when a descent to “failed state” seemed a real possibility. The economy has been performing decently if not spectacularly. But Colombia may have to do without the boost it once had from massive US assistance, as Latin American (indeed global) policy under President Trump moves away from long-term foreign assistance.
Decades of Fighting, then a Peace Accord
The roots of bloodshed in Colombia go deep. In the late 1940s, fighting broke out in much of the countryside and continued well into the 1950s. This brutal internal conflict, “la violencia,” lacked ideological content and was ultimately resolved by a power-sharing agreement among political elites. But the disturbed rural environment proved to be a breeding ground for what became the FARC, a Marxist (indeed Stalinist) rebel group.
The FARC insurgency persisted at a relatively low level for decades, aided by Colombia’s rugged geography which makes it hard to maintain state presence in much of the country. But the rise of the cocaine industry in the 1980s and 1990s dramatically shifted the balance of power. The FARC acted as a protector of narcotics traffickers, and indeed directly entered the business, gaining wealth and power to the point of challenging the Colombian state. Negotiations undertaken by successive presidents went nowhere.
A major American assistance package termed “Plan Colombia,” created in 1999, together with a commitment not seen before by Colombian leaders, put the FARC under sufficient pressure that it entered into peace talks.
The agreement of 2016 included provisions for disarmament and “transitional justice” under which guerrilla fighters who had committed human rights abuses would give themselves up in exchange for reduced sentences. Land reform and rural development programs were promised. Seats were reserved in Congress for the FARC which was to convert itself into a political party.
On a separate track, an agreement was reached with the principal rightwing paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Spanish initials AUC), which had evolved from a protective police force created by rural landlords into a powerful rural army closely tied to the drug cartels. It, however, was never granted the same political status as the FARC, and was offered less generous terms. Nonetheless, pressed by Colombia’s US-backed military and by the threat of extradition, it too agreed to disarm.
As the peace agreements took hold, violence dramatically decreased. But the seeds of further conflict were sown. Colombia remained a major producer of cocaine, and the money which this generated was available to those, both leftist guerrillas and former paramilitary fighters, who did not want to come in from the cold. Also, implementation of many elements of the peace accord progressed slowly.
A Range of Groups Stay in the Field
The far-left National Liberation Army, always smaller than the FARC, preserves more revolutionary élan and demands more social and political restructuring than Colombia’s democratically elected leaders have ever been prepared to concede. In January and February 2025, it attacked police stations in the town of Cúcuta close to the Venezuelan border, which resulted in 85 deaths and the displacement of 80,000 persons, leading President Petro to end peace talks and order a military offensive.
The National Liberation Army engages in narcotics smuggling and benefits from close ties with the Maduro regime in Venezuela. And it is more decentralized than the FARC, with individual regional fronts acting independently. It is unclear how much control its negotiators who have repeatedly met in Havana with Colombian officials really have.
Other armed actors have been equally frustrating for Petro. Talks with FARC dissidents, elements which either never accepted the 2016 peace agreement or broke with it afterwards, have followed the same pattern of temporary ceasefires which have failed to hold, aggravated by divisions within these groups. These dissidents and the National Liberation Army have fought each other over control of territory in rural areas throughout the country.
Colombia has also had to face the return of drug-linked paramilitary organizations, which are successors to the former AUC, but which have also recruited former leftist guerrillas. They are a powerful force in northwestern Colombia close to the Panamanian border through which northbound narcotics flow. Known as the “Gulf Clan,” they have sought to give themselves a political veneer, calling themselves the “Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia,” after Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a populist figure from the 1940s.
A President Under Pressure
In the face of resurgent violence, President Petro’s governance has become ever more erratic. He himself is a former guerrilla, having belonged to the “April 19 Movement” (Spanish initials M-19), a leftist-populist urban terrorist group active in the 1970s and 1980s. He later entered electoral politics, becoming mayor of Bogotá and running repeatedly for the presidency. His 2022 victory made him the first unabashed leftist to hold that office in Colombia.
He succeeded Iván Duque, a conservative who had gained office in large measure because of public skepticism regarding the implementation of the 2016 peace deal. (He saw the FARC dissidents as a reconstituted armed wing of the now-legal former guerrilla organization, rather than a breakaway faction.) By the end of his term Duque had lost popularity, with the economy sputtering in the wake of the COVID crisis and the security environment deteriorating.
Petro, running on a campaign of economic reform and the pursuit of total peace, initially included figures from a range of political parties in his cabinet. Despite a fragmented Congress, he was able to gain passage of a revenue-enhancing tax reform which he saw as crucial to financing rural development in support of his peace efforts.
But Petro grew impatient with constant negotiation with Congress over his reform proposals. His confrontational style and grand plans for change have shaken business confidence. Economic jitters have been aggravated by his environmentalist agenda that would end further exploration for hydrocarbons (at a time when Brazil, Argentina and Guyana are ramping up production). He has even gone so far in his anti-oil crusade as to order state oil corporation Ecopetrol to withdraw from a joint venture in Texas with US firm Occidental.
Next Steps for Colombia
Still, Colombia’s budgetary situation remains relatively sound, inflation is under control, and most observers predict steady if unspectacular growth for 2025-2026. This is in keeping with the country’s historical pattern, in which decent economic performance helps maintain political stability despite rural violence.
With his dream of total peace frustrated, Petro seems ready to take a harder line against the violent groups. He named a military officer as defense minister. But renewed aggressive military action will lead to civilian casualties and to population displacement at a time when Colombia is coping with huge refugee flows from Venezuela. And, given that insurgents have access to narcotics funding and, in the case of the far-left National Liberation Army, a safe haven in Venezuela, a renewed military effort will be at best a costly long-term proposition.
Some observers urge that the armed forces confine themselves to a “violence reduction” strategy in which they take only targeted action, while efforts at regional truces continue. This, of course, is not so different from what the Petro administration has tried during much of its time in office. It may lead to fewer civilian casualties but leave ever larger areas in the hands of the illegal armed groups.
Since much of the violence and displacement is the result of fighting among these groups, a “violence reduction” approach by the government is unlikely to be effective. In the absence of genuine will on the part of these groups to negotiate, Petro or his successor will be forced to choose between difficult alternatives.
And for the United States
US assistance has continued at a lower level than under Plan Colombia but remains important. Would such support be forthcoming for a renewed Colombian military effort against armed groups? The arguments in favor remain the same. Colombia is a country of 50 million people, close to the United States. A worsening situation there will lead to increased narcotics and immigration flows.
Trump and Petro have already had one conflict over Colombia’s initial refusal to accept deportees. Although this was ultimately resolved, Petro engaged in harsh criticism of Trump, not likely to help bilateral relations. And Petro has shown little enthusiasm for counternarcotics efforts, calling for legalization of cocaine (although he has kept up extraditions of major traffickers, always a US priority).
Trump has taken a tough line on narcotics, but his attention seems focused on fentanyl coming from Mexico, where the issue has been framed in terms of both hardening the border and possibly making unilateral strikes against narcotics laboratories. The traditional US approach in Colombia has focused on strengthening the police and military, but it does not seem to fit current administration policy, even as the future of the capacity-building programs maintained by the State Department’s International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Bureau remains unclear.
Equally uncertain is the future of bilateral commercial relations. The US-Colombia free trade agreement, which entered into effect in 2012, was another pillar of the effort to stabilize the country but its fate is hard to predict. With the US government now wary of international engagement, be it on security or economics, Colombia, once a close partner, may find that it faces a growing internal crisis on its own.
