Gearóid Ó Loingsigh writing in Substack on 28-September-2024.



The recent attack by the ELN against Colombia’s official army caused a crisis in the dialogues between this insurgent group and the Colombian state. The talks had been frozen for months by the ELN due to the breakaway of the Comuneros del Sur front of the organisation, violations, from the ELN’s perspective, of agreements by the state and other difficulties, amongst them paramilitary attacks against them that were supported by the official Colombian army. Now the talks have been frozen by both parts.

Many came out to condemn the ELN for the attack in and of itself, which is not surprising, and also for the crisis it provoked in the talks. Although various governments have negotiated in the midst of the war with different groups throughout the history of the country, the rebuke of the ELN is understandable given the blood spilt. Blood is blood and there are those who oppose violence in principle, though not all those who criticised the ELN can say that. Many of them defended the FARC in the process with Santos on this exact point. There is more than one bloodthirsty type amongst those who raise their voices against the ELN now. The ELN’s attack was not the first armed action following the end of the ceasefire.

There is no merit to exclusively blaming the ELN for the crisis. Marx in the 18th Brumaire of Luís Bonaparte said:

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.[1] 

Nobody makes history starting off from zero, that applies as much to the ELN as it does to Petro and various columnists who came out to defend the government and criticise the ELN, amongst the Yezid Arteta, the former FARC commander and current negotiator for the government with the so called FARC dissidents, i.e. criminal groups without any ideological direction. That apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The past weighs heavy on the living.

The recent history of the talks with the ELN seems more like a tragicomedy. Petro said in 2021 that he would wind up the ELN in three months of talks. The press reminded him now that he hadn’t done that, he didn’t achieve it. But from the word go it was a messianic declaration of a man convinced he was some type of messiah and was going to do the impossible. At the time of his declarations some pointed out how ridiculous it was.

To state that in just three months he could bring an end to a guerrilla group that has lasted for six decades, and from 2017 (after the disarming of the FARC) became the largest and most powerful guerrilla group in the west (an historic leftover from the guerrilla cycle of the cold war) and stronger in its operational ability and territorial control, sounds absurd.[2]

Petro, however, believed himself to be godlike, capable of miracles, that everything would be easy with the ELN, they would be an easy morsel for him. He partly believed this as he had surrounded himself with sycophants, incapable of telling him what he did not want to hear, perhaps aware that Petro usually sacks those who disagree with him.

Petro continued in his messianic zeal ignoring reality and declared a bilateral ceasefire between the state and the ELN without having discussed it with the ELN first. A bilateral ceasefire, imposed unilaterally. The jokes write themselves. He had to backtrack on his decree. After that he continued with his messianism and against the will of the ELN, hiding behind the figure of the governor of Nariño y began a negotiation with the Comuneros del Sur front of the ELN. That initiative led to almost the entire front splitting from the ELN. This provoked a crisis in the talks and the ELN deciding to freeze the talks. The ELN accused the government of carrying out an intelligence operation with that particular front. Perhaps, we have no way of knowing how many guerrillas had been compromised by military intelligence in that former ELN front. However, we are in a war, and wars requires military operations like the one carried out by the ELN but also military intelligence operations by the state. But behind that manoeuvre by Petro there is a hidden deep rooted ideological problem with that front whose commander is an historic figure in the organisation. He didn’t turn up yesterday.

Photo Gearóid Ó Loingsigh

History weighs down on the ELN. Nothing they did, was done in isolation from the history of the country and the current juncture. Yesid Arteta, went all out against the ELN following the attack. He said that many friends had rung him asking “Why did the ELN take it out on the government commanded by Petro? Why did they set such a high bar for negotiations?[3] To say that they set a high bar is nonsense, taking into account the two years of preparation that his friends in the FARC took for Santos and then the four years of negotiation to end up signing an accord so basic that a few drunken students could have written a better one over a weekend. But the high bar is explained more by the first question of taking it out on Petro’s government.

Arteta is close to the Petro government. It is not that first time that people like him have spoken thus. In 2014, Piedad Córdoba severely criticised the peasant organisations for organising a strike against the Santos government. According to her, he was going to bring us peace and progress and all should obey his commands and fulfil his desires. She said, “the strike can wait” and it had to wait because for her the peasant demands were secondary and it was “an opportunity to support a large mobilisation for the peace process.”[4] There are always reasons to discredit those who oppose government policies, it doesn’t matter whether it is with bombs or marches and protests. What is important is to support the government, so they say. Those that say that now the president is Petro and he has to be supported in everything without any criticism said similar things about Santos and called for a vote for him.

So, if Petro says he can demobilise the ELN in three months, it is viable and it is the ELN’s fault that it didn’t happen. If Petro says yes to agroindustry then you have to support it, even though the Left always opposed it. If Petro gives over the Colombian Amazon region to US military forces, you have to support it. If he puts a military base on the Gorgona Island, you have to support it. If he revives the state/paramilitary proposal of an inter-oceanic canal, you have to support it. So, for Arteta, Petro himself and a handful of former lefty cheap functionaries (some not so cheap) in his government the importance and gravity of the attack is not so much the violence itself, but that it was aimed at Petro’s government.

The ELN might not be right about the attack, but it is best that they don’t trust Petro, and not just because of how he acted in relation to them but rather in general with the demobilised FARC guerrillas and the social leaders. They are best to watch their back with him. His word is not worth much, according to the ELN who accuse him of not fulfilling what he had agreed to, but also Petro has no authority or power.

The unity of command within the ELN is frequently questioned, but does Petro have unity of command? Some say yes, but the figures say otherwise. Just in this year so far, 118 social leaders were murdered and a further 21 demobilised FARC guerrillas.[5] And in 2023, 188 social leaders were murdered and 44 demobilised FARC guerrillas.[6] In the first year of his government from August 7th onwards 68 social leaders and 10 members of the extinct FARC i.e. since he took over the presidency 374 leaders were shot and 75 former militants of the FARC. 

So, is Petro in charge? Is his word worth anything? Or is the ELN right to oblige him to fulfil what he agreed to? Who murdered all those leaders and what did Petro do to prevent it? Nothing, it would seem, he prefers to appear in the media appearing to sort things out but without actually sorting anything. His performance when it comes to protecting social leaders is abysmal. Those who criticise the ELN now, have nothing much to say about that, they limit themselves to taking note of the dead, but do not blame Petro, as you can’t fix the country in a few years, they tell the dead. Meanwhile good salaries are paid to those who count the dead but do not criticise the performance of the president when it comes to protecting them and they are the same ones who now criticise the ELN for the crisis in the process but ignore the state’s lack of compliance with agreements reached. As happened in the past there are those who will take advantage murdering people knowing that the media, Arteta and the NGOs will falsely blame the ELN just like they tried to do following the demobilisation of the FARC in 2016.[7]

The long and winding history of talks with the ELN

This is not the first time there are difficulties in talks or contacts with the ELN. They have almost always proposed models of negotiation different from those promoted by the FARC. The FARC like an elite wanted to negotiate in the name of people it did not represent such as the victims of the state, the false positives, amongst others. The ELN for its part pushed for their proposal of a National Convention (NC). The NC was announced in 1996 in a cassette that circulated with the voice of the commander of the José Antonio Galán front reading out the invitation. In the government of Pastrana (1998-2002) whilst they negotiated with the FARC in the Caguán, the ELN formalised the proposal of a Meeting Zone in Southern Bolivar and Yondó. The paramilitaries immediately said they would oppose the creation of a meeting zone and set up two NGOs, Asocipaz (Association for Peace) and No Al Despeje (No to military withdrawal), with both organisations receiving state funds and they managed to block the proposal.[8] In fact both were set up as a state backed response to the call for the NC and as a counterweight to the ELN with the blessing of the Minister of the Interior, Nestor Humberto Martínez.[9] The FARC were also opposed to the meeting zone i.e. Arteta who was still in an imprisoned member. Following this there were various attempts to engage in dialogue with all the governments, including Uribe.

When the FARC sat down with Santos in 2012, they did so as guerrillas. But in the negotiations, they accepted their criminal status and not that of rebels, provoking the withdrawal of one of their legal advisors and ended up signing an agreement as criminals. One of the problems with the ELN is they won’t accept this and consequently insisted that Petro removed them from the list of Organised Armed Groups. The FARC negotiated behind the backs of the people and negotiated land for their base (which the state did not fulfil), seats in Congress for 10 of them, bullet proof vehicles, expenses, projects and other perks. They even negotiated that the state would not extradite them, rather than a reform or derogation of the current Colombian legislation, to the benefit of the entire population. This is normal in peace processes. Petro himself was a beneficiary of the perks of the accord with M-19 and was appointed to a role in the Embassy in Belgium by president César Gaviria. When the EPL (People’s Liberation Army) demobilised they also got well paid positions and the Rural Department of Administrative Security in Urabá was set up to receive the demobilised guerrillas who as DAS agents massacred peasants.

The ELN would like something different, it would seem. What they want is more important than the amnesiac and absurd like discussion of people lacking in credibility such as Arteta and the world of the NGOs. Here is the problem. We know the FARC had very little going on upstairs and what little it had, it abandoned very quickly in the negotiations. The Artetas of the world have always wanted to talk of peace as an abstract concept and in this case they want a debate on violence itself and not on the proposals under discussion. Although the ELN wants a much more open process than the one with the FARC, there is very little discussion regarding their possible proposals for the country. The following article will deal with this aspect of the process, something much more important than the debate about who fired first or who is a pacificist and who is not.


[1] Marx, K. (1852) The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

[2] Las 2 Orillas (24/03/2021) Según Petro, en tres meses acabaría con el ELN: ¿es posible? Fredy Alexánder Chaverra Colorado. 

[3] Cambio (20/09/2024) ELN: defensa imposible. Yezid Arteta Dávila. 

[4] El Tiempo (28/04/2014) 'El paro agrario puede esperar': Piedad Córdoba. 

[5] See

[6] See

[7] Ó Loingsigh, G. (21/11/2016) The Wave of Killings and Peace in Colombia. 

[8] See Ó Loingsigh (2002) La Estrategia Integral del Paramilitarismo en el Magdalena Medio. España. 

[9] El Tiempo (18/02/2000) No al despeje, Sí a la convivencia. Editson Chacón 

⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.

The ELN At The Crossroads @ Part One

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh writing in Substack on 28-September-2024.



The recent attack by the ELN against Colombia’s official army caused a crisis in the dialogues between this insurgent group and the Colombian state. The talks had been frozen for months by the ELN due to the breakaway of the Comuneros del Sur front of the organisation, violations, from the ELN’s perspective, of agreements by the state and other difficulties, amongst them paramilitary attacks against them that were supported by the official Colombian army. Now the talks have been frozen by both parts.

Many came out to condemn the ELN for the attack in and of itself, which is not surprising, and also for the crisis it provoked in the talks. Although various governments have negotiated in the midst of the war with different groups throughout the history of the country, the rebuke of the ELN is understandable given the blood spilt. Blood is blood and there are those who oppose violence in principle, though not all those who criticised the ELN can say that. Many of them defended the FARC in the process with Santos on this exact point. There is more than one bloodthirsty type amongst those who raise their voices against the ELN now. The ELN’s attack was not the first armed action following the end of the ceasefire.

There is no merit to exclusively blaming the ELN for the crisis. Marx in the 18th Brumaire of Luís Bonaparte said:

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.[1] 

Nobody makes history starting off from zero, that applies as much to the ELN as it does to Petro and various columnists who came out to defend the government and criticise the ELN, amongst the Yezid Arteta, the former FARC commander and current negotiator for the government with the so called FARC dissidents, i.e. criminal groups without any ideological direction. That apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The past weighs heavy on the living.

The recent history of the talks with the ELN seems more like a tragicomedy. Petro said in 2021 that he would wind up the ELN in three months of talks. The press reminded him now that he hadn’t done that, he didn’t achieve it. But from the word go it was a messianic declaration of a man convinced he was some type of messiah and was going to do the impossible. At the time of his declarations some pointed out how ridiculous it was.

To state that in just three months he could bring an end to a guerrilla group that has lasted for six decades, and from 2017 (after the disarming of the FARC) became the largest and most powerful guerrilla group in the west (an historic leftover from the guerrilla cycle of the cold war) and stronger in its operational ability and territorial control, sounds absurd.[2]

Petro, however, believed himself to be godlike, capable of miracles, that everything would be easy with the ELN, they would be an easy morsel for him. He partly believed this as he had surrounded himself with sycophants, incapable of telling him what he did not want to hear, perhaps aware that Petro usually sacks those who disagree with him.

Petro continued in his messianic zeal ignoring reality and declared a bilateral ceasefire between the state and the ELN without having discussed it with the ELN first. A bilateral ceasefire, imposed unilaterally. The jokes write themselves. He had to backtrack on his decree. After that he continued with his messianism and against the will of the ELN, hiding behind the figure of the governor of Nariño y began a negotiation with the Comuneros del Sur front of the ELN. That initiative led to almost the entire front splitting from the ELN. This provoked a crisis in the talks and the ELN deciding to freeze the talks. The ELN accused the government of carrying out an intelligence operation with that particular front. Perhaps, we have no way of knowing how many guerrillas had been compromised by military intelligence in that former ELN front. However, we are in a war, and wars requires military operations like the one carried out by the ELN but also military intelligence operations by the state. But behind that manoeuvre by Petro there is a hidden deep rooted ideological problem with that front whose commander is an historic figure in the organisation. He didn’t turn up yesterday.

Photo Gearóid Ó Loingsigh

History weighs down on the ELN. Nothing they did, was done in isolation from the history of the country and the current juncture. Yesid Arteta, went all out against the ELN following the attack. He said that many friends had rung him asking “Why did the ELN take it out on the government commanded by Petro? Why did they set such a high bar for negotiations?[3] To say that they set a high bar is nonsense, taking into account the two years of preparation that his friends in the FARC took for Santos and then the four years of negotiation to end up signing an accord so basic that a few drunken students could have written a better one over a weekend. But the high bar is explained more by the first question of taking it out on Petro’s government.

Arteta is close to the Petro government. It is not that first time that people like him have spoken thus. In 2014, Piedad Córdoba severely criticised the peasant organisations for organising a strike against the Santos government. According to her, he was going to bring us peace and progress and all should obey his commands and fulfil his desires. She said, “the strike can wait” and it had to wait because for her the peasant demands were secondary and it was “an opportunity to support a large mobilisation for the peace process.”[4] There are always reasons to discredit those who oppose government policies, it doesn’t matter whether it is with bombs or marches and protests. What is important is to support the government, so they say. Those that say that now the president is Petro and he has to be supported in everything without any criticism said similar things about Santos and called for a vote for him.

So, if Petro says he can demobilise the ELN in three months, it is viable and it is the ELN’s fault that it didn’t happen. If Petro says yes to agroindustry then you have to support it, even though the Left always opposed it. If Petro gives over the Colombian Amazon region to US military forces, you have to support it. If he puts a military base on the Gorgona Island, you have to support it. If he revives the state/paramilitary proposal of an inter-oceanic canal, you have to support it. So, for Arteta, Petro himself and a handful of former lefty cheap functionaries (some not so cheap) in his government the importance and gravity of the attack is not so much the violence itself, but that it was aimed at Petro’s government.

The ELN might not be right about the attack, but it is best that they don’t trust Petro, and not just because of how he acted in relation to them but rather in general with the demobilised FARC guerrillas and the social leaders. They are best to watch their back with him. His word is not worth much, according to the ELN who accuse him of not fulfilling what he had agreed to, but also Petro has no authority or power.

The unity of command within the ELN is frequently questioned, but does Petro have unity of command? Some say yes, but the figures say otherwise. Just in this year so far, 118 social leaders were murdered and a further 21 demobilised FARC guerrillas.[5] And in 2023, 188 social leaders were murdered and 44 demobilised FARC guerrillas.[6] In the first year of his government from August 7th onwards 68 social leaders and 10 members of the extinct FARC i.e. since he took over the presidency 374 leaders were shot and 75 former militants of the FARC. 

So, is Petro in charge? Is his word worth anything? Or is the ELN right to oblige him to fulfil what he agreed to? Who murdered all those leaders and what did Petro do to prevent it? Nothing, it would seem, he prefers to appear in the media appearing to sort things out but without actually sorting anything. His performance when it comes to protecting social leaders is abysmal. Those who criticise the ELN now, have nothing much to say about that, they limit themselves to taking note of the dead, but do not blame Petro, as you can’t fix the country in a few years, they tell the dead. Meanwhile good salaries are paid to those who count the dead but do not criticise the performance of the president when it comes to protecting them and they are the same ones who now criticise the ELN for the crisis in the process but ignore the state’s lack of compliance with agreements reached. As happened in the past there are those who will take advantage murdering people knowing that the media, Arteta and the NGOs will falsely blame the ELN just like they tried to do following the demobilisation of the FARC in 2016.[7]

The long and winding history of talks with the ELN

This is not the first time there are difficulties in talks or contacts with the ELN. They have almost always proposed models of negotiation different from those promoted by the FARC. The FARC like an elite wanted to negotiate in the name of people it did not represent such as the victims of the state, the false positives, amongst others. The ELN for its part pushed for their proposal of a National Convention (NC). The NC was announced in 1996 in a cassette that circulated with the voice of the commander of the José Antonio Galán front reading out the invitation. In the government of Pastrana (1998-2002) whilst they negotiated with the FARC in the Caguán, the ELN formalised the proposal of a Meeting Zone in Southern Bolivar and Yondó. The paramilitaries immediately said they would oppose the creation of a meeting zone and set up two NGOs, Asocipaz (Association for Peace) and No Al Despeje (No to military withdrawal), with both organisations receiving state funds and they managed to block the proposal.[8] In fact both were set up as a state backed response to the call for the NC and as a counterweight to the ELN with the blessing of the Minister of the Interior, Nestor Humberto Martínez.[9] The FARC were also opposed to the meeting zone i.e. Arteta who was still in an imprisoned member. Following this there were various attempts to engage in dialogue with all the governments, including Uribe.

When the FARC sat down with Santos in 2012, they did so as guerrillas. But in the negotiations, they accepted their criminal status and not that of rebels, provoking the withdrawal of one of their legal advisors and ended up signing an agreement as criminals. One of the problems with the ELN is they won’t accept this and consequently insisted that Petro removed them from the list of Organised Armed Groups. The FARC negotiated behind the backs of the people and negotiated land for their base (which the state did not fulfil), seats in Congress for 10 of them, bullet proof vehicles, expenses, projects and other perks. They even negotiated that the state would not extradite them, rather than a reform or derogation of the current Colombian legislation, to the benefit of the entire population. This is normal in peace processes. Petro himself was a beneficiary of the perks of the accord with M-19 and was appointed to a role in the Embassy in Belgium by president César Gaviria. When the EPL (People’s Liberation Army) demobilised they also got well paid positions and the Rural Department of Administrative Security in Urabá was set up to receive the demobilised guerrillas who as DAS agents massacred peasants.

The ELN would like something different, it would seem. What they want is more important than the amnesiac and absurd like discussion of people lacking in credibility such as Arteta and the world of the NGOs. Here is the problem. We know the FARC had very little going on upstairs and what little it had, it abandoned very quickly in the negotiations. The Artetas of the world have always wanted to talk of peace as an abstract concept and in this case they want a debate on violence itself and not on the proposals under discussion. Although the ELN wants a much more open process than the one with the FARC, there is very little discussion regarding their possible proposals for the country. The following article will deal with this aspect of the process, something much more important than the debate about who fired first or who is a pacificist and who is not.


[1] Marx, K. (1852) The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

[2] Las 2 Orillas (24/03/2021) Según Petro, en tres meses acabaría con el ELN: ¿es posible? Fredy Alexánder Chaverra Colorado. 

[3] Cambio (20/09/2024) ELN: defensa imposible. Yezid Arteta Dávila. 

[4] El Tiempo (28/04/2014) 'El paro agrario puede esperar': Piedad Córdoba. 

[5] See

[6] See

[7] Ó Loingsigh, G. (21/11/2016) The Wave of Killings and Peace in Colombia. 

[8] See Ó Loingsigh (2002) La Estrategia Integral del Paramilitarismo en el Magdalena Medio. España. 

[9] El Tiempo (18/02/2000) No al despeje, Sí a la convivencia. Editson Chacón 

⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.

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