Colombia’s new defense minister vows to reclaim territory lost to rebel groups
BOGOTA ,Colombia (AP) — Colombia’s newly appointed defense minister said Tuesday that he will focus on taking back territory lost to rebel groups that have forced thousands to flee their homes this year.
In an address to the nation’s troops, Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez said that it was time for Colombia’s military to “strengthen national sovereignty and protect” the nation’s population.
The retired general hinted that Colombia’s military, which had been recently asked to refrain from attacking rebel groups by the nation’s government, will now take a more offensive role.
“We cannot continue to allow our police and military to be spat at, attacked and have their throats slit as if they were inanimate objects” he said.
The comments by Sánchez come just days after 28 police officers and a soldier were kidnapped by a group of civilians in the western Cauca province amid clashes with the FARC-EMC rebel group. The soldiers were released on Sunday.
Sánchez, a former air force general, was named defense minister in late February as the country faces its worst security crisis in a decade.
In January, more than 36,000 people were displaced from their homes in the northeastern Catatumbo region, following a wave of attacks by the National Liberation Army in which an estimated 80 people were killed.
The attacks prompted President Gustavo Petro to cancel peace talks with the rebel group that had begun in late 2022.
Petro, who was a member of a rebel group during his youth, has attempted to launch peace negotiations with various armed groups under a strategy known as total peace.
But while the strategy has led to some temporary ceasefires, it has failed to produce lasting results.
Analysts say that groups like the ELN and the FARC-EMC have also taken advantage of ceasefires to recruit more fighters and tighten their grip over remote areas where they extort local businesses and control drug trafficking routes.
“Our president has been very generous in searching for peace,” Sánchez said on Tuesday. “But that genuine generosity has been betrayed by those who have continued to exert violence against our citizens.”
In 2016, Colombia signed a peace deal with the nation’s largest rebel group, the FARC, in which more than 13,000 fighters laid down their weapons.
But smaller criminal groups have filled the power vacuum left by the rebels, promoting the drug trade and illegal mining.
Petro has accused the ELN’s leadership of betraying its revolutionary ideals and of becoming “greedy” drug traffickers.
Colombia’s President said last week that the government would pay farmers in the Catatumbo region to replace coca plantations for legal crops in a bid to boost the region’s development and starve ELN fighters in the area of cocaine funding.
Sánchez is the first retired member of the military to serve as defense minister in Colombia in three decades.
His appointment breaks with a tradition of selecting civilians to lead the defense ministry.
The 52-year-old became a local celebrity in 2023, when he led an effort to rescue four indigenous children who had survived a plane crash in a remote patch of the Amazon rainforest. Sánchez retired from the military in February, shortly after President Petro picked him to lead the defense ministry.
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By MANUEL RUEDA and ASTRID SUÁREZ
