ELN: The Pitfalls of War and Peace

The Central Command announced that it would freeze the dialogues with the Petro’s Government, because the Government was not complying with agreements that did not recognize the ELN Delegation and the ELN Central Command.

From several corners it was said that this was a “tantrum” that would eventually fade away and the ELN would end up giving in. In several spaces or “high politics” they cast doubt on what has been said in these columns or in communiqués from the Central Command in reference to the supposed regional dialogues in Nariño, with the so-called “Comuneros del Sur” (Communards of the South).

We repeat that in this group there are several State military intelligence agents infiltrated and that they managed to pass them off as commanders, the main one called Miguel A. carried out operations against ELN structures and commanders in several regions of the country. At the end of 2002, when he was exposed, he did not want to report for an investigation and took refuge in Nariño, where he soon sought protection from the State security agencies and with them they activated a plan B, where to protect him they set up a regional peace process, presented at the same time as a “division” in the ELN ranks.

The intelligence plan had a larger scope, but the “bare wires” were uncovered before Miguel A.’s very eyes, therefore, the haste to make public a process that had been going on in silence for several years.

The Government continued with the secret contacts during the first semester of 2023 preparing conditions to normalize their “mess”, then in August of 2023 they held a meeting disguising it as an event to evaluate the ceasefire in Nariño, when in reality it was a meeting with the “infiltrated intelligence agents” that appear in the photograph, and which they presented as a supposed process of regional dialogue. This fact was formally denounced at the Table before International Guarantors and Permanent Accompanying Persons. Since then, more than a year and a half ago, we have been dealing with this violation of agreements, and the Government has repeatedly turned a “blind eye”, saying that it did not know about the matter.

That the national government did not know about the matter? President Petro himself met with Otty Patiño and Álvaro Jiménez (military intelligence operator) to receive a first hand report, since it has been Jiménez together with General Rincón and Vice Admiral Romero, members of the Government Dialogue Delegation, who are the ones advancing the plan. In that meeting they told the President that “they had information of advanced contacts”.

Moreover, the Military Intelligence gave continuity to the intelligence operations that came from the previous governments, they sold the current government the idea that with such intelligence they would put an end to the ELN, by means of blows to the Command that would then make possible the demobilization processes of the structures. Petro assumed this plan and kept it parallel to the dialogue plan, a serious mistake, since in the Law of War this is called perfidy. Even more serious, the intelligence operations, being prohibited by the ceasefire agreement, they continued to advance them, and now they activated a plan to poison the commanders. How low have fallen the commanders of the Armed Forces of the State.

We are still alive, at least to leave testimony of the baseness.

That is why, after that meeting with Otty and Alvaro Jimenez, we heard the President say that the ELN commanders did not represent or know the regions where the illegal economies moved, in order to justify the media matrix that pretends to involve us with drug trafficking.

Of course, there is a lot of fabric to be cut and a long story to tell, but the hypothesis that was moving pointed out the interest of the Government to put on a Show, maybe not as the one they wanted, but at the end of the day they will try another course with the so called “regional processes”, of course lying about their true intentions to the Central Command, in order to say that they complied and that “things did not happen as they wanted”, in the long run they will protect Miguel A. and his “cronies”, since they are the same party in this dialogue of “me with me”. This will be a dialogue between confidants, since it has always been in charge of General Rincón and Vice Admiral Romero, members of the Government Delegation. With what has been presented we can conclude that the government’s peace policy is just another trap in a war strategy.

On the other hand, it is known since the Santos government, its famous “mining locomotive”, that there is a plan to exterminate the guerrillas from the national territory and give way to the mining exploitation plan developed by large foreign companies. The curious thing is that in this government, in the middle of this tangle of intelligence operations, of infiltrators, of setting up regional peace processes, the interests of foreign mining companies appear as…, with the usual contacts with high or very high officials of this government and some people in the social sphere, who one imagines will be talking about “how am I doing”, or the vile CVY. I am referring to mining projects in Nariño and Cauca, for any naive person this supposed “regional peace process”, brings with it good private business.

So in anti-extractivist policy, the insignia line of this government, we could say the opposite, that this is a peace trap.

Commander Antonio García

ELN