A few years ago, one of the greatest risks of driving through Colombia’s southern Guaviare region was getting a tire hopelessly stuck in the mud along its tortuous, unpaved roads. A former stronghold of leftist insurgency, Guaviare shook off decades of rebel control in 2016, when Bogotá signed a peace deal to demobilize the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Rural residents looked on in hope and disbelief as police, rather than guerrilla fighters, patrolled their towns. Peace, it seemed, had finally arrived.
Less than a decade later, that peace is gone. Land mines line many of the muddy byways. Residents clutch unofficial ID cards mandated by armed groups to distinguish friends from enemies. “There are three options now,” a young community leader told me recently. “Either you do what the armed group says, you leave, or they kill you.”
Guaviare’s short-lived tranquillity is part of an alarming deterioration in security across Colombia. The 2016 peace agreement ended half a century of war and dramatically reduced violence. As guerrilla fighters handed over their weapons, nationwide homicide rates — once among the highest in the world — fell below those of many American cities. Many former FARC members, who for decades used the drug trade to finance their rebellion, left cocaine trafficking behind.
Colombia today is still far from the brutal chaos of the 1990s and early 2000s. But a new host of armed groups has expanded and multiplied across the country, fueling an explosion in violent crimes ranging from extortion to kidnapping and child recruitment. The assassination this summer of the presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay and a recent wave of terrorist-style bomb and drone attacks augur further violence ahead of the 2026 elections.
Colombia’s return to conflict is not proof that the 2016 deal failed, but a lesson in how hard it is to sustain progress toward peace. The government has struggled to control the regions that the FARC left behind, and new criminal groups have since retaken lucrative drug and human trafficking routes. To regain that lost ground, Colombia needs to return to the principles that so successfully reduced violence in the first place: dialogue, measures to remedy the inequality and political exclusion that provide a foothold for criminal activity, plus a strong security strategy to pressure armed groups.
The backslide into violence has multiple origins. Although the FARC was formally disbanded in a matter of months, political battles over contentious parts of the agreement, such as transitional justice and victims’ rights, have dragged on for years. The state’s bureaucracy was unprepared for the challenges of following through on some of its more complex commitments, such as addressing rural inequality, weaning farmers off coca cultivation and ensuring political rights for all Colombians.
Armed groups and ambitious new criminal enterprises promptly filled the power vacuum in many former rebel territories, spotting opportunities in areas where the FARC had relinquished control — and where the government had long been absent. Where the state could not provide services quickly enough, new rebel groups arrived with medical missions and funds to build roads. Where no judges could be found to try cases, criminals imposed their penalties for offenses such as domestic violence, gossiping and breaking curfew.
The government in Bogotá has struggled to respond. By the time President Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla fighter, took office in 2022, this new generation of criminals was already vying for dominance. Mr. Petro correctly argued that the FARC’s demobilization had opened space for criminal spoilers, and his flagship policy, dubbed “total peace,” proposed simultaneous negotiations with all remaining armed groups, alongside a pause in most military campaigns against them. Implementation of the 2016 deal slowed as attention was focused on new talks.
Now Mr. Petro’s strategy has also stalled, in part because the conflict has changed. Unlike the FARC, which sought to take power in Bogotá, today’s armed organizations are focused on controlling an illicit economy that goes well beyond the drug trade. They have learned that fighting the state is costly, but intimidating and co-opting the civilian population is cheap — and effective. Most violence in Colombia is now concentrated in fights between armed groups over territory and income, or against civilians who dare to oppose their criminal rule.
Communities in occupied regions say that armed groups’ role in their daily life is oppressive and meticulous. In Guaviare, for instance, the simple act of walking without an ID card can result in a penalty of forced community labor. Members of the groups often don’t wear uniforms. They live among and recruit from the local population, which they govern in the service of their business interests. No military strategy alone can dismantle this deep level of social infiltration.
The Petro administration has talked peace with many of these groups and has learned vital lessons about how to adapt to this new kind of conflict. In talks with one group in Guaviare, for instance, the government initially offered investment in community development projects in exchange for criminals ending deforestation and reducing violence. Yet in the short term, this experimentation has come at a cost: In just three years, the number of armed combatants and auxiliaries has grown by an estimated 45 percent.
With one year left in office, Mr. Petro can still turn the security situation around. But his job will be made even more difficult if the United States — Colombia’s most important military ally, largest donor and biggest trading partner — walks back its longstanding support.
By mid-September, the White House is expected to decide whether to “decertify” Colombia as a partner in the U.S. war on drugs for its alleged failure to successfully fight international drug trafficking, which would allow America to slash military and other aid. Such a move would deal a devastating blow to Colombia’s ability to combat rising insecurity and could undermine the U.S. military’s own efforts to counter organized crime — a stated priority of the Trump administration.
Colombian support of American drug policy has for years helped the United States to seize narcotics, capture and question kingpins and work toward unraveling global trafficking webs, without the need for the gratuitous casualties of last Tuesday’s strike on what U.S. officials said was a drug vessel in the Caribbean. The loss of USAID funding has already eliminated hundreds of millions of dollars from Colombia’s budget. Further cuts would hurt decades of progress toward a fragile equilibrium — and embolden criminal networks whose illicit markets stretch all the way into the United States.
As decades of experience have shown, there is no exclusively military solution to Colombia’s violence. Meaningful dialogue and investment in conflict-prone parts of the country are essential to dismantling armed groups’ control. By linking its continuing talks to robust social programs and a targeted security strategy, Mr. Petro can still revive the 2016 accord and work toward the “total peace” he has promised. For the residents of Guaviare, peace can be more than just a fleeting illusion.
Elizabeth Dickinson is the Senior Analyst for the Andes at International Crisis Group.
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