Petro goes to war with EMC in Cauca
Colombia promises to bomb EMC encampments as a large-scale military deployment seeks to establish a foothold in the dissident group's stronghold
Early Saturday morning, a massive offensive by the Colombian military advanced into the town of El Plateado, a village in the region of Cañón del Micay in southeast Colombia that has acted as a stronghold of FARC dissident rebel group Estado Mayor Central (EMC) for the last 5 years.
More than 1,400 soldiers entered the town around 5 a.m. conducting a search for leaders from the dissident rebel group. EMC guerillas put up only light resistance, with some reportedly firing homemade mortars at military vehicles. An explosive-laden drone attack on an armored personnel carrier near the town killed at least 2 civilians and wounded at least a dozen more.
No casualties were reported among security forces.
The military released footage they say shows some EMC fighters fleeing El Plateado as soldiers from the army advance on the town.
Leftist President Gustavo Petro, once a member of the rebel group M-19 himself, was quick to draw attention to the operation on social media. After years of control by EMC, “Today El Plateado is Colombia”, he said, confirming that the operation was carried out on his orders.
He also stated that Colombia was “obliged”, due to the “law of proportionality” to bomb EMC positions in Cauca in response to the civilian deaths.
Almost immediately, footage both taken by residents of El Plateado and released by the army flooded national media coverage as well as social media, and top generals in the armed forces gave a series of immediate interviews to a press corp that has often been critical of Petro’s administration.
The offensive in El Plateado was clearly, at least in part, carried out with the hope that Petro could claim a much-needed “win” for his security efforts, which have suffered serious setbacks in rural areas across the country since he took office.
The Ministry of Defense has dubbed the operation “Operation Perseus”, named for the hero in Greek mythology who killed Medusa. The army also a offered a reward for information leading to the arrest of EMC leadership.
Petros' “Total Peace” plans for the country, have been on the back foot after the collapse of a series of ceasefires and negotiation processes, most recently with the largest remaining rebel group in the country, the National Liberation Army (ELN).
As talks have faltered he has increasingly begun to rely on the military strategies of his predecessors.
In May, Petro announced a “Total Military Offensive”, against EMC after the group killed a series of indigenous social leaders in the region. Since then, military operations have been ongoing across the region, including the use of artillery, a dynamic that has been extremely under-reported, even by Colombian media organizations.
However, some experts who study peacebuilding in Colombia believe that talks alone can’t solve Colombia’s stubbornly persistent domestic conflicts.
“I think the government has realized that unilateral ceasefires early in the administration, given to armed groups without demanding anything in return, were a mistake,” said Elizabeth Dickinson, Colombia analyst for the International Crisis Group.
“Negotiations have to be paired with military strategies to pressure armed groups,” she said. “Non-state actors were clearly negotiating in bad faith…in an attempt to buy time to consolidate their positions.”
“Military strategies alone cannot end conflict in Colombia,” she continued, explaining how conflict also increased under the previous administration of Iván Duque, who preferred military to social solutions, “but in order to extract real concessions at the negotiating table, they are a necessity.”
Nonetheless, some residents in Cañón del Micay tried to block the entry of military personnel into their communities. Others, in El Plateado, begged soldiers to leave, worried that their presence would make the community a target for EMC retaliations and further escalate an already dangerous situation.
Petro, in a reply to public statements from some members of the community, suggested they were acting under coercion from EMC fighters, and urged the community to support the operation. He also announced plans to visit the region and “plan a series of investments” in the community to offer alternatives to illicit economies.
EMC was formed in 2016 when FARC commander Néstor Gregorio Vera Fernández, alias “Iván Mordisco, rejected the peace deal negotiated with the national government. He was joined by other dissident FARC leaders, who brought many of the fighters from their battalions, or “fronts”, with them.
In 2019, the group began to consolidate their power in Cañón del Micay, in southwestern Cauca. Their growth in the region went largely unchecked, even during the previous administration of Duque.
The EMC engaged in preliminary talks with the national government as part of Petro’s peacebuilding programs, but a split within the organization derailed those talks as forces under the command of Mordisco resumed military actions against the government. At the same time, some fronts further north remain at the negotiating table.
As Petro’s military campaign has stretched on against Mordisco’s battalions in the south of the country, EMC has also carried out asymmetrical attacks against police stations and military installations across the department.
Further complicating the dynamic, EMC is openly at war with some of the more than a dozen armed groups that maintain territorial control in Cauca, including the ELN.
The presence of a large state military force in the region will very likely be a tempting target for further asymmetrical attacks in the coming days and months.
Unlike FARC rebels during the civil war, contemporary armed groups in Colombia do not seek battlefield confrontations with armed forces. In past military deployments, rather than direct attacks, EMC fighters have simply faded away, either blending in with civilian populations or retreating to remote rural areas.
Petro’s strategy is clearly evolving, but deployments of soldiers in unfamiliar territory make a tempting target for the types of attacks EMC prefers, such as suicide drones or unannounced rocket attacks on military infrastructure.
The situation in southern Cauca is delicate, and for the soldiers deployed as part of Operation Perseus, the situation is likely to get much worse before it gets better.
What we’re writing
In relation to our feature story this week, Joshua published a piece on peacebuilding in Cauca, and how communities long ignored by the federal government have taken ‘resistance’ to criminal groups into their own hands.
You can check it out here.
“Rising Cauca violence shows the scale of Colombia’s peacebuilding challenges.
‘Every young person who picks up a paintbrush, an instrument, or a pencil is one less person who picks up a gun.’”
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Spanish word of the week
Ya- already, now
When you type “ya” into a translator you’ll get the above definition. But that simplicity is woefully insufficient to describe the true versatility of the word in Latin America.
In Colombia, “ya” has about ten different meanings, depending on the context and intonation. It can mean: yes, okay, ready/done, whatever, go on, I see, stop, no way shut the fuck up, come on, and even “that’s bullshit”. You can see this warrants an entire blog post of its own, but here are a few examples for now.
¿Ya? ¡Estoy esperando! (Are you done? I’m waiting!)
YA! Deje de hablar mierda! (Enough! Stop talking shit!)
A: Logré terminar el maratón sin tomar ni una gota de agua… B: Yaaaa.. ¡No te creo para nada! (A: I managed to finish the marathon without drinking a drop of water. B: No way….! I don’t believe you for a second!)
When you finish a particularly important point in the heat of an argument you might even tag on “y ya!” at the end as a punctuation. The literal translation would be along the lines of “and that’s it!” but it also implies “there is nothing more to be said on the matter”.