The young soldiers were attacked at 03:00 in the morning with grenades, improvised explosive devices and rifle bursts in a rural area of the municipality of Buenos Aires (southwest), department of Cauca, according to an army bulletin, which reports six uniformed “murdered”.
“Several soldiers have lost their lives (…) All between 18 and 20 years old,” the president, Gustavo Petro, later explained at the end of an extraordinary security council in Bogotá.
“The operation they did is infiltration. The attack was premeditatedly sought, it was planned by the Jaime Martínez column”, one of the groups that departed from the peace agreement to which the majority of the former FARC guerrillas accepted in 2016, added the president.
Last week another three soldiers were killed in fighting with dissidents in the municipality of Argelia, near Buenos Aires. Both attacks were “concomitant with each other,” Petro said.
Since he took office on August 7, the president and his delegates have met with the heads of the two main factions of FARC dissidents with a view to eventual peace negotiations.
The First Front, or Central General Staff – which brings together most of the combatants, including the Jaime Martínez column – announced in September that it was going to reduce attacks against the security forces to promote a bilateral ceasefire.
“The military position does not cease as long as there is no real willingness to negotiate” on the part of the dissidents, Petro assured this Tuesday and anticipated a “reaction” to the attack against the public forces.
– Close-ups between bullets –
The first president of the left in the history of Colombia aspires to defuse half a century of armed conflict with a new policy of “total peace” that includes negotiations and submission to justice of the organizations up in arms.
Petro reiterated this Tuesday that “the possibility of dialogue today is not limited to the cessation of military operations.”
In June the army killed Leider Noscue, alias Mayimbú, who commanded the Jaime Martínez column and was honored in November by hundreds of residents of Cauca and dozens of rebels in colossal obsequies.
Without a unified command, these groups add up to some 5,200 members spread across different regions of the country, according to the Indepaz think tank, and are financed mainly from drug trafficking.
Defense Minister Iván Velásquez regretted that the soldiers who died were young men who were doing the mandatory 12-month military service imposed by law on Colombian men between the ages of 18 and 24.
“Regular soldiers, like those who died today in Buenos Aires, Cauca, should not be sent to conflict zones. The commanders of the military forces have to carefully review the places to which they can be assigned, minimizing the risks to their lives,” warned the head of the portfolio.
The ruling party advocates the elimination of compulsory military service, but the initiative failed in Congress.
– Drug trafficking –
After decades of a failed fight against drugs, Colombia remains the largest producer of cocaine, the engine of violence that leaves more than nine million victims in the protracted conflict.
Petro assured that the confrontations in Cauca have “to do with drug trafficking routes and others (illegal businesses) that use the difficult area of Naya,” a jungle corridor that connects the immense coca leaf fields in the mountains of the department with the Pacific Ocean, where drug traffickers ship cargo to Mexico and Central America.
In the Putumayo and Arauca regions, on the border with Ecuador and Venezuela respectively, the public forces are also deployed due to “conflicts” with dissidents, the government reported.
After the peace agreement with the bulk of the FARC, factions that opposed the pact continued to be armed and took advantage of the fragility of the State in their regions of influence where today they dispute the production and trafficking of cocaine with other organizations with blood and fire.
The dissidences today are part of the amalgamation of armed groups with which Petro wants to talk to achieve their disarmament within the framework of his “total peace” policy.
The National Liberation Army (ELN), the last recognized guerrilla in the country, is currently negotiating with government delegates in Venezuela.
Two urban gangs from Buenaventura, Colombia’s main port on the Pacific Ocean, are also approaching Petro to de-escalate the violence.
