The term of President Gustavo Petro - Colombia’s first leftist president - ends today, and he refused to attend the inauguration of President Abelardo de la Espriella held in the city of Cali. Petro insists without evidence that the election was illegitimate and vowed to lead demonstrations against the new government. The threat of civil disorder against the country’s democratic expression is an ironic capstone on a failed presidency that had, as a signature initiative, the “Total Peace” program. Its aim was to end the remaining armed terrorist insurgencies against Colombia’s democratic institutions, enact peace agreements and bring the insurrectionists into the democratic fold. On balance, the failure of Total Peace matched with Petro’s rhetorical assault on the very democratic institutions he claimed to be defending could be a defining moment for his legacy.
What is underneath?
Petro was elected on the promise to negotiate an end to the violence, terrorist insurgencies and organized crime that Colombia has suffered under for almost a half century. His “Total Peace” approach was to have the state lay down its arms and extend offers of varying degrees of leniency to armed groups in exchange for a cessation of violence and an abandonment of criminal activities such as drug trafficking, kidnapping and the manifest extortion of communities under their control. Then, the Colombian state would tap a development fund nourished by foreign donors to fill the economic and social gap left behind by the armed groups to mitigate any return to violence and criminality.
It was an idealistic idea, based somewhat on the process adopted by former president Juan Manuel Santos more than a decade ago in reaching the purported peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). It also proved to be naive and dated, given who the armed groups actually are behind whatever mask Petro sees.
Petro put initial focus on those branded with ideological motives, however flimsy, like the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the dissident remnants of the FARC. As a former Marxist terrorist himself, Petro seemed to feel more at home in a narrative where rebels would be approached by someone who could understand their objectives. But the talks with both groups turned into tactical games at Petro’s expense without a drop of “ideology” left.
The central flaw in Total Peace was that none of the violent armed groups have any ideology other than the vagaries of organized crime. The notion that they were clinging to Marxist revolutionary ideals while they’ve expended all their energies as full-on mafias was laughable from the moment Petro’s government sat down with them.
Case in point: the Gulf Clan, a drug cartel with roots in the paramilitary groups that waged ferocious battles with the FARC beginning in the 1990s, but were broken up by former President Alvaro Uribe in 2006. At that time there was a right-wing ideological tint that gave strategic cohesion to their soldiers in what was, in reality, a gang battle with the FARC over territory. The only real ideology of the Gulf Clan has ever been crime and profit, and it is now clear this is the unifying belief system of all the armed groups in Colombia. Petro, steeped in his romanticized memory of the 1970s, refuses to face it.
Indeed, Petro’s dance with the biggest cocaine trafficking organization in the world was an embarrassing episode. He was played by the Gulf Clan in talks and with a tentative cease fire in December 2022. It crumbled in early 2023 when Petro’s government moved to dismantle illegal gold mines fully or partially controlled by the Gulf Clan, which responded by mobilizing violent protests by miners that destroyed an aqueduct that communities depended on for drinking water. Petro terminated the cease fire and launched military action against the cartel. From then on, any back and forth was clearly just a ruse while the Gulf Clan tightened its grip on its territories.
Indeed, Total Peace was a boon for the cartels’ recruitment efforts as well as the cocaine trafficking business. The Ideas for Peace Foundation (FIP) in Colombia issued a report this week that found that Total Peace failed on all three pillars of its design — the de-escalation of violence, transformation of territory and the transition of armed group members to civilian life.
Violence and territorial control by illegal organizations increased during the four-year period, and the number of fighters in the armed criminal organizations has nearly doubled under Petro, FIP reported.
Meanwhile, cocaine production in Colombia has exploded to a volume over nine times bigger than what the United Nations reported in 2012, the year when the U.S. and Colombia launched joint operations to fumigate coca fields from the air. Petro vowed to never resume aerial fumigation, and the armed criminal organizations reaping the benefits no doubt appreciated it.
Our take:
In the final months of his presidency, Petro’s military stepped up its attacks on the Gulf Clan while frantically seeking a negotiated deal with the organization in talks being held in Qatar. Supposed agreements were reported, but a critical eye sees them as the Gulf Clan buying time and positioning for whatever the next Colombian government would do.
President Abelardo de la Espriella has vowed to confront violence and organized crime with a strategy that sounds more like ‘total war’. He plans to resume aerial fumigation of coca fields, as well as bombing strategic sites for training and operations by the criminal syndicates. The United States has also pledged to step up bilateral cooperation with Abelardo’s government on reducing cocaine production, including through the use of eradication drones. He will not engage in dialogue, the new president has said, and will only accept surrender. It remains to be seen how Abelardo’s approach will work.
That said, the FARC only came to the peace table after Uribe had largely destroyed it with a full-scale military campaign that had the support of the United States under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. His successor, Santos, swerved into the peace deal with the support of President Barack Obama. The very notion that the FARC was a legitimate political movement has been disproven in the last decade. The political party it became when it laid down its arms has attracted little public support in elections and relies on foreign cheerleaders and political privileges it won in the peace agreement to even exist.
Whether Abelardo can bring these wealthy and well-armed gangs completely under heel in his four year term is very unclear, but there is no doubt that a coordinated and professional military intervention that seriously damages their ability to operate, preferably with regional support from Colombia’s allies, is absolutely necessary.
Indeed, the folly of Petro’s Total Peace makes the case for an abrupt reversal in policy. It was ridiculous to think that these criminal organizations who have profited beyond their wildest dreams from violence and crime will ever peacefully give it up.