(Bogotá) The leader of the main FARC dissidence has abandoned peace negotiations with the Colombian government, announced Tuesday the negotiator in charge of discussions with this group, now openly divided between supporters and opponents of the continuation of dialogue.
The leader of the Central Staff (EMC), known by the nickname Ivan “Mordisco” (the bite), “is no longer at the negotiating table […]we don’t know where he is,” negotiator Camilo Gonzalez told reporters.
The government has been in talks since October 2023 with the EMC, the main faction of dissidents who never accepted the historic peace agreement signed in 2016 with the Marxist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Divisions
These negotiations have been going through a crisis since President Gustavo Petro ordered on March 17 the suspension of the military truce with this group in three departments of the southwest, after repeated violations of this same truce by the EMC, accused of have taken advantage of this to increase its territorial influence and continue to recruit. Petro then called “Mordisco” a “mobster”, a “drug trafficker disguised as a revolutionary” and ordered his capture.
Regular fighting and incidents have since taken place, particularly in the departments of Cauca and Valle du Cauca, where the army claims to have been carrying out offensive operations against the EMC for several weeks.
These last few weeks have also been marked by the emergence of divisions between different “fronts” of the EMC, even a clear split between supporters and opponents of dialogue with the government.
Representatives of the “fronts” deemed to be the hardest in the EMC, in particular those of Cauca and Arauca (north-east), did not participate in the last round of discussions on April 5.
In an April 12 interview with a local weekly, Andrey Avendano, at one time one of the EMC’s main negotiators, recognized “an internal problem regarding the ways of seeing and interpreting” the country’s current political situation. “There’s a big divide here.”
“There is no large-scale confrontation or difficulty, but some observations have been made,” he said.
“Dispute over the brand”
Negotiations with the Mordisco wing “are currently frozen”, but they continue with the supporters of dialogue who represent almost 50% of the EMC workforce, in particular with Andrey Avendano, the commander of a northern region. is, the government negotiator explained on Tuesday.
“We only have one process (with the EMC), negotiations are underway, with those who respect the ceasefire and all the protocols and agreements signed,” noted Mr. Gonzalez, judging that “for now, the priority was to strengthen these agreements with those who remain […]. »
On Monday, Ivan “Mordisco” appeared in a video to warn the government that the future of negotiations depended on the resumption of the truce. He also claimed that indigenous communities were joining his “revolutionary army” of their own free will, while the EMC killed a community leader in early March and that relations with the indigenous NASA, in the southwest, have since been particularly difficult. tense.
Notoriously involved in drug trafficking, illegal mining and other criminal activities, the EMC has more than 3,500 men, according to Colombian military intelligence.
The EMC “starts a dispute over the brand between the different factions that were grouped under this umbrella,” Jorge Mantilla, an expert in armed conflicts, told AFP. For him, the negotiations will now have a regional or more “territorialized” character.
Alias ”Calarca”, one of the most powerful commanders of the EMC, continues to participate in the discussions, alongside Andrey Avendano, even if he recently assured that his group would pose “immovable” conditions to the signing of a peace agreement, such as the refusal to hand over weapons or to submit to special justice.
Recently met by AFP in an isolated valley of Cauca, another EMC commander, “Gafas” (supporter of the hard line of “Mordisco”), assures that “weapons will be the last thing we give up”.
Elected in 2022 as the first left-wing president in the history of Colombia, Gustavo Petro is trying to follow an ambitious policy of “total peace” and to definitively put an end to the violence that has been tearing his country apart for more than half a century.
Discussions are underway with the Guevarist ELN, another FARC dissident faction, paramilitaries, drug traffickers and criminal groups. These talks are strongly criticized by the conservative opposition.