{"text":[[{"start":9.85,"text":"Nora Taquanas thought that stability had finally come to her part of rural Colombia in 2016, when the government signed a peace deal with the country’s largest guerrilla group to bring half a century of insurgency to an end. "}],[{"start":24.9,"text":"A decade later, she says the conflict in Cauca province, in the south-west of the country between the Pacific Ocean and the foothills of the Andes, is “really much more intense now”. "}],[{"start":35.599999999999994,"text":"“In the past, you could point to a group, sit down with the people involved, talk things through,” says Taquanas, a 35-year-old leader of an indigenous community. “We’re now dealing with groups that are driven primarily by economic interests.”"}],[{"start":49.64999999999999,"text":"Today the leftwing rebels who signed the 2016 peace agreement, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), have been replaced by armed groups focused on trafficking drugs for profit rather than fighting for Marxism."}],[{"start":64.6,"text":"They have massively increased the production of cocaine and developed new markets for it. The result is that organised crime and violence are becoming defining issues from Antwerp and Dubai to Rio de Janeiro. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":77,"text":"At one stage in 2019, Taquanas had to flee her home while pregnant when gunmen looking to expand their territory killed five people in the village and threatened her."}],[{"start":87,"text":"The same pattern has been seen across large parts of Colombia, where cocaine output has more than trebled over the past decade, with much of the new output going to Europe. "}],[{"start":95.9,"text":"For Colombia itself, the surge in production demonstrates how the country’s long-running civil conflicts are now being driven by profit-making private armies, which are being financed by the world’s cocaine habit. "}],[{"start":109.60000000000001,"text":"This process accelerated under the government of outgoing president Gustavo Petro, himself a former leftist guerrilla, who launched a new negotiating initiative in 2022 with all the armed groups. "}],[{"start":122.00000000000001,"text":"Pedro Sánchez, defence minister since March last year, tells the FT that some organised crime gangs “took advantage of the goodwill of the government to increase their production”. "}],[{"start":133.20000000000002,"text":"Buoyed by soaring cocaine revenues, they have taken over more territory and expanded into illegal gold mining and people trafficking. About 50 per cent of municipalities in Colombia are home to an armed group, according to Acled, a research group. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":149.8,"text":"How to deal with the illegal armies will be a defining issue in a highly polarised presidential election run-off on Sunday between Abelardo de la Espriella and Iván Cepeda."}],[{"start":160.8,"text":"De la Espriella, a far-right former criminal lawyer with a flair for social media, is promising a new “military offensive” against the narco groups, while Cepeda, a leftwing senator and son of a Communist Party leader killed by armed groups, favours negotiations."}],[{"start":178.05,"text":"In the background is the Trump administration, eager to take a much more militarised approach to tackling what it calls “narco-terrorist” groups across Latin America."}],[{"start":187.85000000000002,"text":"Juan Manuel Santos, the former president who won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the 2016 agreement, says that the challenges of Colombia’s armed gangs have metastasised across the region. "}],[{"start":201.35000000000002,"text":"“The vacuum [in Colombia] should have been filled by the state but instead it has been filled by other criminal groups, who are really mafias,” says Santos. "}],[{"start":209.8,"text":"“It is not only a Colombian problem, it is a problem across Latin America.”"}],[{"start":214.35000000000002,"text":"The new generation of armed gangs in Colombia has introduced greater professionalism into cocaine production, which is operating on a much larger scale."}],[{"start":223.55,"text":"New varieties of coca crops have been developed, agricultural practices improved and more sophisticated processing methods adopted, allowing more cocaine to be produced from each leaf. In some places, drones are used to apply fertiliser to crops. Yields have doubled in the past two decades, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. "}],[{"start":244.45000000000002,"text":"Cocaine labs, once ramshackle structures hidden in the jungle, are now larger and more sophisticated. Two years ago, the Colombian military found a facility in Putumayo that could process five tonnes every month."}],[{"start":257.1,"text":"These techniques are now being applied across a much bigger area. According to the UN, the amount of land in Colombia where coca is grown increased by about half between 2018 and 2023, to 253,000 hectares."}],[{"start":272.05,"text":"Aerial fumigation of suspected coca plantations was largely banned following a 2015 court decision, helping to accelerate the expansion in production."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":281.40000000000003,"text":"The rapid rise in output caused a slump in coca prices in 2022, which at one stage had fallen by at least half. However, rather than forcing a shake-out in production, organised crime groups responded by finding new demand."}],[{"start":296.05,"text":"Europe in particular has seen a dramatic increase in the availability of cocaine and the incidence of drug-related crime. The continent now consumes almost as much cocaine as the US and, according to the European Drugs Agency, member states seized 419 tonnes of cocaine in 2023 (the last year for which there are figures), the seventh record year in a row. "}],[{"start":320.3,"text":"In one bust in 2023, German police in Düsseldorf confiscated 35.5 tonnes of cocaine, valued at €2.6bn, after a tip-off from Colombian counterparts. A judge in Belgium said last year that the country risked becoming a “narco-state” because of the infiltration of Belgian ports, police and even judiciary by organised criminals. "}],[{"start":344.3,"text":"“The expansion of consumption in Europe is the story of the last five years,” says Elizabeth Dickinson, deputy director for Latin America at the International Crisis Group in Bogotá. “US consumption is stable but Europe continues to grow.”"}],[{"start":360,"text":"Control over large swaths of territory and smuggling routes has provided a platform for drug gangs to move into other illicit industries. "}],[{"start":368.1,"text":"Many are now heavily involved in the illegal mining of gold, which has become a thriving business as the price of the metal has soared. Experts say there have been cases of drug gangs using the same logistics networks to export cocaine and import the mercury that is used in artisanal mining to extract gold from ore."}],[{"start":389.45000000000005,"text":"Human trafficking is another growing sideline. In recent years, hundreds of thousands of refugees have tried to reach the US through a remote area along the Colombia-Panama border known as the Darién Gap. "}],[{"start":402.1,"text":"The Clan del Golfo, which controls much of the territory on the Colombian side of the border, uses its dominance to extort substantial fees from would-be migrants. "}],[{"start":411.65000000000003,"text":"Sijifredo Paví, who like Taquanas hails from Toribio in Cauca, says that the area enjoyed two years of peace after the 2016 agreement with the Farc before other groups began jostling for control. "}],[{"start":425.70000000000005,"text":"“We were caught between different groups, and we didn’t understand,” says Paví. “And these groups were financed by narco-trafficking and mining interests.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":436.15000000000003,"text":"For the Farc, cocaine was more of a means than an end. Formed by landless rebels who embraced Marxism, the group financed its brutal struggle against the Colombian state through extortion and kidnapping before turning to drugs in the 1980s."}],[{"start":452.25000000000006,"text":"The Farc was not involved directly in manufacturing cocaine but, as well as taxing coca growers, it provided a range of services to drug traffickers, including protection for processing laboratories and smuggling routes. The Colombian police estimated in 2013 that the Farc in effect controlled 60 per cent of the cocaine trade."}],[{"start":471.65000000000003,"text":"When the group started to disarm in 2016, there was panic among the world’s drug traffickers. Groups ranging from the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico to the Albanian mafia travelled to the Colombian jungle to secure supplies and invest in new producers."}],[{"start":487.50000000000006,"text":"The new supply chain is much more fragmented and specialised, with niche operations providing specific skills. But three separate groups have emerged as the dominant sources of cocaine.  "}],[{"start":498.75000000000006,"text":"One is another guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), whose roots lie also in the violent leftwing politics of the 1960s and which also now has a substantial presence in Venezuela. "}],[{"start":510.75000000000006,"text":"The second group is made up of hardcore former Farc members who rejected the 2016 peace deal and have established dissident organisations that are now important players in the cocaine trade."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":522.25,"text":"Then there is the Clan de Golfo, founded by members of the rightwing paramilitary groups that emerged in the 1990s to fight leftwing guerrillas, but which has morphed into an organised crime group. "}],[{"start":533.25,"text":"It is the biggest beneficiary of the 2016 deal. A recent report in the Colombian media revealed it has a management structure like a multinational, with specific divisions for activities such as recruitment or supervising processing labs."}],[{"start":549.95,"text":"“The Clan de Golfo is now the biggest criminal enterprise in Colombia,” says María Victoria Llorente, executive director of Fundación Ideas para la Paz (FIP), a think-tank in Bogotá. “It is a synthesis of all the conflicts we have had in Colombia in the last 40 years, and all the errors that we have committed.”"}],[{"start":570.6500000000001,"text":"How such groups were allowed to take the place of the Farc is the subject of a fierce blame game in Colombia, in part because it happened under both Iván Duque, a conservative who was president from 2018 to 2022, and his successor Petro, who advocated a Paz total or “total peace” strategy involving talks with all the armed groups."}],[{"start":592.45,"text":"Rubiel Lis Velasco from Caldono, another municipality in Cauca that has seen a lot of conflict in recent years, says the 2016 peace deal sparked huge optimism in the region. "}],[{"start":604.3000000000001,"text":"“There was a lot of hope, because we thought there’d be social investment that actually reaches communities and improves people’s lives,” he says. “But what we saw instead was the peace process being torn apart. The governments at the time basically dismantled it.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":620.35,"text":"After rebuking Duque for not following the peace agreement, Petro launched his Paz total plan in 2022. The rationale was that unless every group was involved, some might be reluctant to disarm for fear that others would simply take over their territory. "}],[{"start":638.5,"text":"But critics say the implementation has been fatally flawed, with little co-ordination or clear goals."}],[{"start":644.35,"text":"“They really thought they could just sit down and have an honest chat with these folks and that the groups would not take advantage of this to expand their operations,” says Dickinson."}],[{"start":653.0500000000001,"text":"The homicide rate in the new narcotics business is well below the levels seen during the 1990s, when drug baron Pablo Escobar was battling with the Colombian state. But extortion and kidnappings have increased in the past four years as organised crime groups have expanded."}],[{"start":670.5000000000001,"text":"According to the Colombian authorities, the number of people involved in armed groups has increased from 12,883 in 2018 to 27,121 at the end of last year."}],[{"start":684.6500000000001,"text":"“The so-called total peace policy has been a complete failure,” says Humberto de la Calle, a former vice-president who was the lead negotiator of the 2016 agreement. “There is not a single group which is weaker than it was four years ago.” "}],[{"start":698.7,"text":"In Sunday’s presidential run-off, Colombian voters will be choosing between two very different visions of how to deal with the expansion of armed groups."}],[{"start":707.35,"text":"Cepeda, the leftwing candidate, was one of the architects of the Paz total strategy and still believes that only negotiations can resolve the crisis. But he has said little about how he would conduct such talks, nor given an explanation for why the Petro government’s approach failed so badly. "}],[{"start":724.7,"text":"De la Espriella’s plan is also thin on specifics but big on promises. He has ruled out any negotiations and set a target to “cancel or capture” 10 leaders of organised crime groups in the first 90 days. "}],[{"start":738.9000000000001,"text":"“I will wipe out narco-terrorism and those who I’ve declared a military target like cockroaches, like rats,” he told one interviewer."}],[{"start":747.7,"text":"A dual US-Colombian citizen, he also wants a Plan Colombia 2.0, a new version of the aid programme launched in 2000 under which Washington gave substantial military assistance to the government in Bogotá to pursue its campaign against the Farc. "}],[{"start":763.35,"text":"De la Espriella has received enthusiastic endorsement from US President Donald Trump, who called him an “intelligent, strong and tough leader” while denouncing Cepeda as a “radical leftist Marxist”. "}],[{"start":777.0500000000001,"text":"In March, the US conducted a joint military operation against an alleged drug group in neighbouring Ecuador, which some analysts believe could become a template in other countries. “The only way to defeat these enemies is by unleashing the power of our militaries,” Trump said in March at a summit of rightwing leaders from the region at his golf course in Doral, Florida."}],[{"start":798.4000000000001,"text":"But for many observers, there are limitations to what any new military offensive can achieve. While the Farc operated from encampments in the jungle, many of the current armed groups live and operate among the local communities they control. "}],[{"start":811.8000000000001,"text":"“The problem is much more difficult today because these are criminal groups which have a presence within the population,” says de la Calle, the former vice-president. “If you send the military into some of these areas, who are they going to shoot at?”"}],[{"start":825.2500000000001,"text":"Santos says that the only way to resolve the issue is to use the framework behind the 2016 peace deal with the Farc. That involved significant military pressure on armed groups — but was also supposed to include policies to promote economic development and crop substitution, a massively increased police presence and a process to adjudicate previous crimes. "}],[{"start":847.2500000000001,"text":"“That is the only way to recover control of the territory,” he says."}],[{"start":853.1500000000001,"text":"Data visualisation by Jana Tauschinski"}],[{"start":863.7500000000001,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1781788233_2349.mp3"}