In Colombia, Former FARC Rebels Rearming
Under a torn Colombian flag on a windy hilltop, a ragtag guerrilla militia gathers. One fighter is missing an arm. Another, a leg. A commander who can barely read but goes by the alias “the Poet” tells of a recent firefight with a paramilitary squad in the hills nearby.
The group the fighters say they belong to, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, laid down its arms after it signed a peace deal, in 2016.
The peace accords signed in 2016 by then- President Juan Manuel Santos and the rebels were meant to bring an end to five decades of fighting that left at least 220,000 dead and nearly six million people displaced from their homes.
Behind the agreement, though, loomed a fear: That many of the thousands of fighters granted amnesty under the pact might sour on civilian life and pick up arms again. It has already happened. “We doing the same work, we have the same ideals — and we’ll charge ahead, God willing,” said one commander, who goes by the alias Maicol.
These dissident guerrillas invited The New York Times to their camp, hidden in the mountains north of Medellín, to tell the story of why they abandoned the peace deal. But well before the visit, the agreement was already fraying.
The government, which had prom- ised to go into rebel lands behind the FARC, bringing health and education services and potable water, is barely seen in much of the country. President Iván Duque of Colombia campaigned against the accords and now says he will revise them.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of FARC fighters have resisted the deal. Insight Crime, a foundation that tracks organized crime groups, estimates that there may be up to 2,800 FARC fighters — about 40 percent of the number that fought before the peace deal.
One theme connected the fighters’ narratives here in the FARC camp: While the government had promised them a new civilian life under the accords, they found themselves under threat by a range of paramilitary groups that rushed to take control of territory the rebels left behind.
At least 75 former guerrillas have been killed since 2016, according to the political party founded by the demobilized guerrillas.
Some of the rebels now wear the insignia of the Virgilio Peralta Arenas Bloc, a mafia group accused by the authorities of killing civilians and trafficking drugs.
The group once fought the FARC, but the rebels said they now work together for mutual protection. It could mean the rebels will look more like an organized crime gang than the Marxist revolutionary army they were founded as in the early 1960s.
“This is just part of the tragic history of Colombia — one form of violence morphing into another in the absence of a legitimate state,” said Cynthia J. Arnson, a director at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
Guillermo Botero, Colombia’s defense minister, said recently, “The dissident FARC have spread far more than what’s been said and are in the process of growing.”
He also offered a warning to dissidents.
“Our armed forces will recover their combative character,” he said.
This is a more impoverished rebellion than the previous one. The old FARC was financed from taxing the coca crop. The area this group now operates in has few plantations and no illegal gold mines.
Many fighters do not have uniforms. Some sleep on the ground for lack of hammocks.
“Yes, we go hungry, we suffer everything, but we are clear about what we need to do,” said a fighter who uses the alias Piscino.
This latest rebellion in Colombia may grow, be crushed or fade away. The road ahead is likely to be rough — but no matter, said Piscino, who lost his left hand to a land mine.
These hardships are necessary sacrifices, he said.
“Those who have armed again,’’ he added, “we are ready to die in this struggle.”