Relations of victims pay respects on the website of an assault on the Pan-American Freeway in Cajibio, Colombia, Sunday, April 26, 2026, the place at the least a dozen folks had been killed in an assault authorities blamed on dissident teams of the previous FARC rebels.
Santiago Saldarriaga/AP
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Santiago Saldarriaga/AP
BOGOTA, Colombia — A spate of assaults in opposition to civilians and army bases in Colombia’s southwestern area has raised safety issues because the nation heads to a Might presidential election wherein crime is predicted to be one of many high voter issues.
Insurgent teams have staged 26 assaults with explosives and drones since Friday, together with a lethal blast Saturday on a freeway between the cities of Cali and Popayan, in accordance with Colombia’s protection ministry. The demise toll in that explosion rose to 21 folks on Monday.
Violence within the area is nothing new. Unlawful teams have sought to manage the realm for many years, deeming it strategic for illicit actions, reminiscent of unlawful mining and drug trafficking, together with the cultivation of coca leaf, the uncooked materials for cocaine.
Authorities blamed a gaggle often called the FARC-EMC for the deadly explosion, close to a tunnel on the Pan-American Freeway. The group is led by Nestor Vera — generally often called Iván Mordisco — a former member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, identified by its Spanish acronym FARC, who refused to hitch a 2016 peace take care of the nation’s authorities.
Sergio Guzmán, a political threat analyst in Colombia’s capital, Bogota, stated that Mordisco’s group might be making an attempt to exhibit that it has the capabilities to do critical harm, and is searching for to “establish its credibility” with Colombia’s subsequent authorities because it positions itself for future negotiations.
“Part of what they are doing is establishing leverage towards the future,” Guzmán stated.
Underneath President Gustavo Petro, a former member of a guerrilla group, the Colombian authorities has tried to stage peace talks with the nation’s remaining insurgent teams via a technique often called ” total peace.”
The federal government has supplied ceasefires to numerous teams in an effort to advertise peace negotiations, however analysts say the technique has failed, as a result of these teams used the ceasefires to regroup, rearm and strengthen their grip over communities.
Teams just like the FARC-EMC have been identified to tax residents in areas underneath their management, and likewise forcibly recruit youth into their ranks.
“The government’s peace policy has been naïve,” stated Javier Garay, a political science professor at Colombia’s Externado College. “They thought that if they had a condescending attitude towards these groups they would receive a positive response.”
In late 2023, the FARC-EMC entered peace talks with the Colombian authorities. However a faction led by Mordisco deserted the talks in April 2024, and has been preventing the Colombian authorities since then.
Elizabeth Dickinson, a Colombia analyst on the Worldwide Disaster Group, stated that Mordisco’s group is especially robust within the provinces of Cauca and Valle del Cauca, the place it is preventing for management of drug trafficking routes and unlawful gold mines.
For the previous two years, Mordisco’s group has additionally used drone assaults and automobile bombs, to reply to an offensive from the Colombian army within the Micay Canyon, a distant space coated with coca fields that’s underneath the FARC-EMC’s grip.
Dickinson stated that the most recent assaults in southwest Colombia are a method for the group to indicate that it could actually maintain its “asymmetrical war” in opposition to the federal government.
Colombia’s protection minister on Sunday stated that kidnappings and lockdowns enforced by insurgent teams on communities had decreased in Cauca over the previous yr due to the federal government’s actions.
In a nationally televised deal with Monday evening, Petro stated his authorities has fought drug trafficking and slowed down the cultivation of coca crops in Colombia, the place he stated 258,000 hectares (638,000 acres) had been planted with coca in late 2025.
However the authorities’s whole peace technique has come underneath hearth from the opposition, whose candidates are hoping to learn from the nation’s safety woes, as they promise to take a harder stance on crime.
Petro is barred by Colombia’s structure from working for an additional time period. However his celebration’s candidate, Iván Cepeda, has promised to proceed peace talks with insurgent teams.
Cepeda stated on X that he rejected the latest assaults in southwest Colombia, and urged authorities to research whether or not they had been a part of an effort to intrude with the election.
The request was echoed Monday evening by Petro, who requested safety forces in Colombia to research whether or not the explosives utilized in Saturday’s assaults got here from Ecuador, whose conservative authorities just lately began a commerce warfare with Colombia over safety points alongside their border.
“They want to sabotage our elections so that the extreme right wins,” Petro stated with out specifying who is likely to be making an attempt to undermine the Might election. “They are scared,” he stated in his televised deal with.
Voters in Colombia will head to the polls on Might 31 to select from 14 totally different presidential candidates, together with Cepeda, and conservatives Abelardo de la Espriella and Paloma Valencia.
Whereas Cepeda favors the continuation of Petro’s “total peace” technique, his conservative rivals have stated that they favor confronting insurgent teams and placing extra army strain on them earlier than resuming peace talks.
Guzmán stated that whereas this weekend’s assaults “deepen the discomfort” with the safety state of affairs in Colombia — the place a presidential candidate was killed final yr — each side will attempt to revenue from this new wave of violence.
“Government supporters will use the attacks as an opportunity to say that that this is exactly why we need to reach urgent agreements with (rebel) groups,” Guzmán stated. “Detractors will say this is why we need to more aggressively attack them.”
