Cocaine-funded gangs shake Colombia years after peace pact
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. BOGOTA, Colombia—Almost a decade ago, the most powerful rebel group Latin America had ever seen agreed to lay down its weapons and end its fight to overthrow the Colombian state. The accord with Colombia’s government earned a Nobel Peace Prize for then-President Juan Manuel Santos.
Today, the once-fearsome Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has turned to politics and farming. But it left a vacuum increasingly filled by armed gangs that have shaken Colombia with a violent, cocaine-fueled conflict raging across several provinces of the country where the government has little or no control. At least one armed group has a presence in nearly 400 of the country’s 1,100 municipalities, said the state’s human-rights ombudsman’s office.
That group and other militias fight each other and, on occasion, Colombia’s army, particularly in regions close to Colombia’s borders and other drug-producing regions. The 2016 peace pact was supposed to open the way for the government to build roads and schools in long-neglected areas, while offering social services and deploying police and soldiers. Instead, the demobilization of 13,609 members of FARC opened the way for other armed groups to eventually move in, animated by the billions of dollars made available by the prevalence of coca leaf, cocaine’s base plant.
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