Bogotá, Colombia – A military convoy heading into the Cañon de del Micay was attacked late on Tuesday near the town of Balboa, Cauca, in western Colombia, leaving five dead and 16 injured.
The soldiers died after their truck was hit by a roadside bomb on a rural road. The convoy then came under gunfire from combatants of the armed group Frente Carlos Patiño, according to a statement by the Ministry of Defence.
Graphic footage posted online showed the truck shredded by the explosion. The Colombian army has since offered a reward of 300 million pesos (USD $73,000) for information leading to the capture of those responsible.
The troops were intercepted 75 kilometers (45 miles) south of the town of El Plateado, a chokepoint in the Canyon del Micay which was in the spotlight last week when 29 uniformed officers were illegally detained by protestors in the nearby village of La Hacienda.
This followed riots in which thousands of civilians in La Hacienda attacked government forces with sticks and rocks and set fire to several armored vehicles. The police and one army soldier abducted by rioters during the confused events were released unharmed two days later after negotiations supported by the UN.
Read more: Mass detention of security forces puts spotlight on Colombia’s troubled Cauca region
Then just hours after the negotiations the military reported fresh attacks on installations in El Plateado.
“We regret that the agreements made with persons from the El Plateado area… were violated and that the Public Force was once again targeted,” said the Ministry of the Interior in a statement on renewed violence on Monday.
These incidents, and the Tuesday night attack, highlight the challenges faced by the government of President Gustavo Petro in bringing this area of Cauca under control. Large parts of the mountainous Andean department, including the lucrative coca fields, estimated to cover nearly 32,000 hectares as of 2023, are under control of armed groups.
The Cañon del Micay has been particularly contested as a strategic corridor between the highlands – where much of the coca is grown — and the Pacific coast, where cocaine is processed then smuggled by boats to Central America.
The troops killed Tuesday were reinforcements for Operation Perseo, a large military incursion under Colombia’s Third Division, which since October last year has been making incremental advances into the canyon.
This follows on-off and eventually failed peace talks with the powerful Estado Mayor Central EMC, which loosely affiliates smaller armed groups such as the Frente Carlos Patiño which is most active in the west of Cauca. Both groups are dissidents of the now demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The Colombian state and the ex guerrillas seem to be engaged in a hearts-and-minds struggle for the civilian community, mostly made up of farmers dedicated to growing coca in the canyon, while ramping up conflict rhetoric.
This stick-and-carrot approach was reflected by President Petro in a tweet this week in which he also blamed foreign influences in the Cañon del Micay.
“The Colombian army will never leave El Plateado or Micay. This is an irreversible decision because Micay does not belong to the Mexican cartels, but to Colombia…The military and social offensive must be doubled.”
“We expect the freed campesinos to join the massive payment program for the eradication of coca plants.”
Colombia’s president has said that armed groups in the area are acting as a “private army” for Mexican cartels.
Meanwhile the military were accusing the Frente Carlos Patiño of mobilizing thousands of coca farmers from further down the canyon to confront state forces in La Hacienda and El Plateado, the current front line between the two groups.
Farmers were being “coerced into violence” and were effectively “prisoners of the Carlos Patiño front, a population subjugated for more than eight years,” Third Division commander General Federico Mejía told La W Radio.
He stressed that these communities “did not rise up thinking of attacking the army, but rather defended cultivating coca because there is no other option.”
To address this, government ministries this week were proposing a raft of social programs for the El Plateado area under an X hashtag #AccionesPorElMicay. Proposals being posted online included new roads, educational institutes, energy networks, computers, justice departments, a complete overhaul of the farming industry and even new toilet and shower blocks for farmhouses.
These offers were accompanied by strong messaging, including by military commanders, that “State forces will not do forced eradication in the Cañon del Micay as we bet on voluntary crop substitution, rural development and social inversion.”
Colombian think tank Fundación Paz y Reconciliación (Pares) reported this week that these initiatives might not cut through to the canyon’s inhabitants who are ”irremediably devoted to coca cultivation.”
The Frente Carlos Patiño remained an “influential and decisive force,” it said.
“In this area of Cauca,” it concluded, “fear is once again the order of the day.”
Featured image credit: Colombian Ministry of Defense: https://www.mindefensa.gov.co/prensa/noticia-visualizacion/mindefensa-condena-atentado-en-cauca
