Around 4:40 a.m. on Jan. 6, just a few days after the U.S. capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, armed men intercepted a bus carrying civilians and several policemen on the main highway near Tibú, a town on the Colombian side of the border with Venezuela. They ordered passengers to hand over their phones for inspection, and then proceeded to kidnap five police officers.
The assailants were members of the National Liberation Army, or E.L.N., a Colombian guerrilla group that started off mounting a leftist insurgency in the 1960s but has since expanded into criminal enterprises. As many as half of its roughly 6,300 fighters are now based in Venezuela, where they have, at least until this month, enjoyed an alliance of mutual convenience with the government.
In the lead-up to the U.S. raid in Caracas, it appears the Maduro regime gave the group a green light to expand its control of the border, fearing, according to Colombian military officials, that Colombia might serve as a back door for U.S. military operations. The E.L.N., which dominates the area’s illicit economies and uses the frontier as a safe haven, has taken advantage of the opportunity to consolidate its grip along the perimeter, which stretches from the Atlantic coast down to the Amazon jungle.
Now the E.L.N. stands emboldened to challenge the authority of the Colombian state — and U.S. ambitions in Venezuela. The borderlands are webbed with lucrative corridors where the E.L.N. and other armed groups move seamlessly and often exercise more control than the government. With profits flowing from illegal mining, drug trafficking and human smuggling, both the Colombian guerrillas and complicit members of Venezuela’s security forces have deep interests in maintaining the status quo in Caracas and resisting attempts to bring rule of law to these territories.
In advance of Mr. Maduro’s capture, the E.L.N. was taking steps to ensure its interests in the borderlands were safe, regardless of what happened in Caracas. Since mid-December, it has gone on the offensive in the Colombian region of Catatumbo, displacing thousands of civilians in the process. It has also clashed with a local criminal group known as the 33rd Front, a dissident faction of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which has repeatedly angered the E.L.N. with attempts to control key rivers used for trafficking in and out of Venezuela. President Gustavo Petro’s announced deployment of some 30,000 troops to the border has done little to stop the fighting.
But rather than anchoring the region with America’s longtime partner in Bogotá, President Trump turned on Mr. Petro, threatening direct attacks on Colombia the day after Mr. Maduro’s capture on Jan. 3. Although a phone call last Wednesday between the leaders lowered tensions, the détente is fragile.
Mr. Trump’s threats are part of an astonishing about-face in U.S. policy. For a quarter of a century, Colombia was one of the United States’ closest allies in Latin America. While Washington provided funds, training and military equipment to help Bogotá counter armed groups, Colombian forces fed back real-time intelligence that proved critical to record-breaking drug seizures, kingpin captures and investigations into trafficking networks that span the globe.
But for much of the last year, that partnership has been traded for a personal feud, with Mr. Trump and Mr. Petro clashing over U.S. migration policy, the war in Gaza and U.S. attacks on speedboats allegedly carrying drugs.
Such sparring comes at an especially bad time. Colombia’s leaders have been bracing for the possible fallout of a U.S. attack against Caracas, fearing it could lead to a violent escalation by armed groups, a humanitarian crisis, or both. Now those fears seem to be materializing.
To purge rivals — and any civilians accused of working with them — the E.L.N. has set up checkpoints on main roads in Catatumbo, where they forcibly scour travelers’ phones for evidence of links to their foes. The group has deployed drones to bomb not only military bases but also hospitals and neighborhoods that, it alleges, serve as hide-outs for E.L.N.’s criminal adversaries.
In places where the 33rd Front has fought back, combat has shuttered communities, with residents either fleeing or sheltering indoors. Already drawing profits from illicit trafficking in these border regions, the group is seeking to consolidate control over larger prize: gold and rare-earth mines in southern Venezuela. As they have done for some years, members of the Venezuelan military are likely to play along, aligning with the E.L.N. to ensure a piece of the profits lines their own pockets.
The threat from empowered armed groups and their backers will persist as Mr. Trump endeavors to exert control over Venezuela. As of now, the E.L.N.’s most likely allies in the Venezuelan government, including the ministers of defense and interior affairs, remain in their posts. But the E.L.N. has repeatedly said that it stands ready to attack U.S. interests if they threaten the Chavista regime in Venezuela.
The Trump administration should take the warnings seriously: The E.L.N.’s ranks are filled with skilled guerrilla fighters with deep expertise in improvised explosives, terrorist-style bombings, drones and infiltrating protests. They could turn those tools on what they consider to be Western targets in both Colombia and Venezuela, where the United States has been considering re-establishing an embassy and a diplomatic presence.
Should the government in Caracas split into factions or collapse altogether, or already sky-high inflation sets off another humanitarian disaster, violence and instability would very likely spread from the border region deeper into Colombia. The country already hosts the largest Venezuelan diaspora in the world, numbering some 2.8 million people. Services are stretched, and Colombia’s program for temporary protective status effectively stalled in 2023, meaning many new arrivals might not be able to receive legal protections or work permits. In the past, migrants fleeing Venezuela have proved to be easy prey for the recruiters of the E.L.N. and its ilk.
An emboldened E.L.N. could also seriously complicate U.S. ambitions in Venezuela, especially if the Trump administration’s economic interests extend beyond oil to the mineral wealth the E.L.N. covets and already partly controls. U.S. intervention in Venezuela has opened a field of opportunities for the E.L.N. to expand, taking advantage of a confused situation in Caracas and widespread anti-imperial sentiments among local populations.
American pressure on Bogotá — be it bullying from Washington or new U.S. airstrikes on land — is both dangerous and potentially self-defeating. The real solution to the rising insecurity in Colombia isn’t a show of force; it’s the grinding, vital work of diplomacy, intelligence sharing, judicial investigations and humanitarian aid.
The phone call between Mr. Petro and Mr. Trump was a start. The White House should continue to walk back its bluster with its longtime ally and face up to the real regional security risks that its Venezuelan intervention has already unleashed.
Elizabeth Dickinson is the deputy program director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the International Crisis Group.
Source photographs by Thepalmer and Daniel Munoz/Agence France-Presse, via Getty Images.
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