How to Talk to Colombia’s Largest Criminal Group

In late December 2023, Colombia’s largest armed group began to overrun Briceño, a village in the Andes. Residents later told me that the militants carried latest-issue weapons and called themselves the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces. Briceño’s inhabitants said the camouflaged fighters gathered them with a simple message: “We’re in charge now”.

For years, this scene has taken place in towns across Colombia, as the Gaitanistas, an illegal organization that oversees a majority of the country’s drug shipments and migrant trafficking through the Darién Gap, has become one of the most powerful organized criminal groups in South America.

How to Talk to Colombia’s Largest Criminal Group
Joaquin Sarmiento/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In December 2022, President Gustavo Petro announced cease-fires with five armed groups, including the Gaitanistas, with a goal of opening peace talks. But in March 2023, Mr. Petro canceled the cease-fire with the Gaitanistas, having previously accused them of taking advantage of the deal to continue their illicit economic activities. After the cancellation, military activity against the Gaitanistas increased, with the newly formed Joint Military Command — supported by 30,000 troops, aerial capabilities and the Colombian Navy — striking at the armed group.

In August of this year, the Colombian government announced it would enter talks with the group. The Gaitanistas — widely known as the Gulf Clan — and the administration of Mr. Petro have now agreed to what they’re calling a “socio-judicial” conversation, talks that aim to improve conditions for local communities and have fighters lay down their arms.

The talks, which are not yet scheduled, are the latest step in Mr. Petro’s plan to negotiate with armed groups operating in Colombia in a quest for “total peace”, after a half-century of internal conflict with guerrilla and criminal groups. The government is also in negotiations with other rebel insurgencies, the National Liberal Army, or ELN, and two breakaway factions of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which laid down arms as part of a peace deal in 2016. But talks with the Gaitanistas will be the most complex. Earning an estimated $4.4 billion a year and with as many as 9,000 fighters, the Gaitanistas are organized and entrenched.

I have seen firsthand the extent of this armed group’s influence and the threat it poses. Over the past year, I visited a dozen communities under Gaitanista control, interviewed current and former members — including jailed commanders — and spoke to members of the Colombian security forces and regional governors, mayors and elected neighborhood councils. These are places where the organization’s control is so complete that fishermen must ask their permission to go out on the waters. Residents abide by curfews set by the Gaitanistas on major roads. The group’s militants stand at town entrances and exits to monitor who comes and goes.

The Gaitanistas’ reach for territorial domination is financially motivated. After taking over an area, the group monetizes every aspect of life. Businesses located on Gaitanista-controlled land must pay a tax or face violent consequences. Farmers told us they were obligated to pay for every cow they owned or sack of potatoes they produced. Even development projects are extorted, with the Gaitanistas charging a percentage on government infrastructure contracts. The group also charges a tax before migrants cross the Darién Gap, which more than half a million people traversed last year.

The Gaitanistas do not stop there. Any word that runs counter to the group can lead to a violent penalty. Once established in an area, they build a network of informants to report on neighbors and often threaten or co-opt local authority figures. It’s common for fighters to stop wearing camouflage and live among the local population.

Alarmingly, many large businesses and landowners have come to prefer having the Gaitanistas around because they offer protection from other armed groups who may kidnap, steal or extort with less discipline. This symbiosis gives the Gaitanistas deep and permanent roots in the society.

This perception is part of the group’s strategy. Often upon entering a new area, “they try to look like good guys”, an Afro-Colombian community leader told me. They promise to pave roads, electrify the village or renovate schools. They do those things and more. The Gaitanistas recruit and pay salaries that are both better than the minimum wage and more reliable than what’s available in the predominant informal economy. Some midlevel commanders earn more than a Colombian senator. “The population sees them as an employment agency”, a regional police commander told me.

Since 2022, they have controlled a majority of cocaine exports, guaranteeing the delivery of 60 percent of the drug that leaves Colombia for the international market — from the world’s largest supplier country. Drug traffickers pay the Gaitanistas at every step of the supply chain, while their fighters provide security along the trafficking routes. Indeed, the Gaitanistas had been eyeing Briceño as a vital connector in a trafficking route stretching from Colombia’s geographic center, near the Magdalena River, all the way north to the Atlantic coast near Panama. To win the route, the Gaitanistas had to push against the ELN in the hills and the FARC in mountainous trafficking corridors. The Gaitanistas control Briceño as much as they need to for it to be a significant part of their route. The military and a FARC dissident armed group have been trying to retake it for months, but the Gaitanistas are still there using the area for operations.

The prize is clear: The Gaitanistas want to control the entire north of Colombia. If they do, they will be positioned to move down the Pacific Coast and toward the border with Venezuela.

By opening talks with the Gaitanistas, which Colombia has classified as an organized crime group, the government hopes to gradually reduce violence in areas under their control, while discussing a route toward full demobilization. This will certainly take time, with a likely formula being high-level commanders trading full confessions for reduced legal sentences and lower-level fighters needing guarantees that they can reintegrate into the legal economy.

The strategy has risks. Many Colombians and foreign partners are wary of discussions with a group they view as violent and unlawful. The Petro administration should go into these negotiations carefully and assess their value at each step. Their priority must be protecting civilians.

To begin, the government should gauge the Gaitanistas’ true interest in peace and what it expects in return. This is feasible, as the Gaitanistas’ team of six negotiators includes its top leadership. But the government must be ready to walk away if the group takes advantage of dialogue to expand or consolidate. Despite the challenges, negotiations are necessary to unwind an organization that now has a deep foothold in about 30 percent of Colombia. Force alone cannot address the overwhelming threat the Gaitanistas pose.

The government needs a plausible strategy to manage all of these challenges. It could ask the Gaitanistas to demonstrate they really want peace by, for example, ending their threats to social leaders in areas where they operate.

But part of the picture also involves force. The military and the police are working to combat the Gaitanistas and dismantle trafficking routes. This pressure is fundamental both to protect civilians and to give the group real incentives to consider laying down their arms. By itself, however, it is not enough to stem devastating levels of violence against communities. This is where dialogue is vital.

To facilitate the talks, Colombia’s Congress should pass legislation laying out terms for demobilization. Low-level armed Gaitanista members need guarantees that if they confess their crimes and pledge not to repeat them, they can safely rejoin civilian life. Law enforcement will need to remain ready to counter those who choose not to do so, which may be a large number.

As confidence builds, the Gaitanistas would need to end violence and pull fighters back from populated areas, in exchange for slow and measured reductions in the government’s military offensive. These efforts should build up to regional cease-fires, aimed at protecting the civilian population.

For too long, the United States and Colombia have been confounded by the separate, if related, challenges of illegal economies and the violence they produce. The Gaitanistas’ pre-eminent role in migrant and drug trafficking will remain a law enforcement challenge. But Colombians living under this group’s control need protection, and a cautious and careful negotiation could be Colombia’s best chance at safety for its people.

Elizabeth Dickinson is the senior analyst for Colombia at International Crisis Group. Before joining Crisis Group in 2017, she worked for a decade as a journalist, covering conflicts in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.

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