Stark figures show expansion of fighting groups under ‘Paz Total’.
Colombia’s illegal armed groups have grown by 84 per cent during the three years of the Petro government’s Paz Total plan, thinktank Fundacion Para Ideas para la Paz (FIP) announced last week.
The alarming data showed the country’s main guerrilla factions and organised crime gangs totalled 27,000 active members at the end of 2025, adding 5,000 new recruits in just 12 months.
And humanitarian crises associated with the expansion of illicit economies, such as combats, displacements or confinement of communities, attacks on social leaders and extortion were also on the rise.
According to Gerson Arias, co-author of FIP’s El Deterioro de la Seguridad Marca el Inicio de 2026 (Deteriorating Security Marks the Start of 2026), the endless peace talks played out under President Petro’s expansive Paz Total policy had only incentivised armed groups to grow in terms of fighters, weapons and territory.
“Paz Total was based on a state ceasefire – but without any conditions put on the groups, such as ceasing recruitment, including child recruitment, or ending expansion,” he told The Bogotá Post.
“As such, the policy gave a gigantic strategic advantage to the armed groups to strengthen their fighting forces.”
Big surge
The biggest surge was in the organised crime group Clan de Golfo, up by 30 per cent to 9,840 active agents, reported FIP (see chart below).
Next in terms of size was the ELN, the guerrilla group dominating the eastern borderlands of Colombia, with 6,810 members, an increase of 9 per cent.
Dissident FARC groups also grew, some by almost a quarter, such as CNEB (Coordinadora Nacional Ejercito Bolivariano) which despite drawn-out peace talks with the Petro government – and numerous plans for a disarmament – ended the year 25 per cent bigger than started, now numbering 2,089.
And these were probably underestimates, said Arias. The FIP figures were based on military and intelligence data collected annually since 2002,and generally considered to be lower than the actual numbers.
“We tend to undermeasure illegal activity. It’s impossible to say with precision, but we would say the real data could be 20% or 30% higher,” he concluded.
Unlucky 13
These numbers included both armed fighters – often uniformed and carrying heavy weaponry – and support members tasked with infiltrating civilian communities to “ensure compliance”, often carrying pistols. Armed groups were increasingly deploying explosives by drones.
According to the FIP report, none of the negotiation processes had managed to curb their recruitment capacity.
Territorial expansion had also triggered disputes over illegal gold mining, coca, and trafficking routes. The FIP report identified 13 zones where two or more groups were facing off, more than twice the number of disputed territories that Petro inherited from the Duque government in 2022.
Top in terms of combat last year were Catatumbo in Norte de Santander, and areas of Guaviare, Cauca, Nariño, Valle and Arauca (see map).
But even departments considered peaceful in recent years, such as Tolima and Huila, were being drawn back into the fray, said Arias.
This rise in conflict brought a host of humanitarian impacts. Armed groups strictly controlled their zones, at times displacing or confining populations, but also imposing daily controls such as travel permissions and ID cards.
Last year, according to UN figures quoted by FIP, one million mostly rural Colombians were affected by armed group controls, tripling the number recorded in 2024.
Civilians in the crosshairs
And according to Arias, the government had itself increased the risks to civilians by involving them as third parties in the peace talks while failing in any robust plan to pacify the zone.
“Petro reached partial agreements with the groups – even while they were still armed, still controlling, extorting, confining and pressuring civilian communities. There was no cost to the armed groups,” said the researcher.
Part of the problem was that Paz Total had initially failed to link to any coherent military strategy that could had protected civilian communities. This had put civic leaders “in the crosshairs of armed groups” as one side accused them of siding with the other.
The statement is backed by a graph showing a year-on increase since 2022 in attacks both between armed groups, and against civilians and state forces. Last year there were 150 attacks on civilian targets.
In fact, by Arias’s estimate Colombia had gone back to 2011 in terms of the numbers of non-state armed actors – 27,000 – potentially in conflict.
That compared to a recent low of 12,800 combatants in 2018, two years after former president Santos signed the 2016 peace deal with the FARC guerrillas.
From bad to worse
In fact, to explain the current situation, Arias pointed to failures in the both the current administration and the previous right-wing government under Ivan Duque.
Taking over in 2018, Duque rolled back many of the agreements made with the FARC sending many ex-combatants back to the bush along with a wave of new combatants.
But then left-leaning Gustavo Petro, taking over in 2022, surprised even his own military advisers by declaring a unilateral ceasefire. This was the opening salvo of the Paz Total policy which announced negotiations with armed groups and criminal gangs on multiple fronts – in some cases even without informing them.
Petro’s plan was conceived “with good intentions”, said Arias, but had put misplaced trust in armed groups busy enriching themselves by illegal activities and with little incentive to demobilize.
By comparison, during the 2013-16 process with the FARC, the military forces under Santos had continued operations against the guerrilla up until the final signing: “This pressure incentivised the FARC to take serious decisions in terms of the peace process,” he said.
Too little, too late
The failings of Paz Total were apparent on the ground in the first few months of inception in 2022, with community organisations raising the alarm over the increased fighting between groups.
It took until late 2024 for the state military to step up offensive actions in areas such as Cauca, with battles against the dissident FARC factions of Ivan Mordisco. Then, in early 2025, the Catatumbo region of Norte de Santander caught fire with fierce combat between the ELN and FARC 33, leading to the largest humanitarian crisis in Colombia’s recent history.
But it took until August last year for President Petro himself to acknowledge that the policy had “not achieved peace”.
During 2025 military actions increased by 30 per cent, but with reduced state forces – many experienced soldiers and commanders had left – facing stronger armed groups, said Arias.
“The offensive came slowly and without an analysis of what was required to combat the strengthened armed groups.”
“Years of intelligence capacity was lost, along with military presence and air deployment. This explains why – despite the offensives – there are few concrete improvements for many communities.”
For soldiers on the ground, the job got harder under Paz Total with a strengthened enemy and less military intelligence to rely on. According to President Petro’s own presentation to the Trump Whitehouse early this month, 360 state forces have been killed “in the fight against drug trafficking” in the last three years, with 1,680 wounded.
But even away from the front line, Paz Total was not up to the monumental task of negotiating peace with multiple armed groups given that most governments had failed to pacify even one.
At whatever cost
“Paz Total never evaluated the institutional capacity required. It’s good to say: ‘we have to negotiate with everyone’. But that requires a method,” said Arias.
The government often pushed talks ahead even without any legal framework that would allow, constitutionally, the state to make peace with certain criminal gangs, or groups of recycled combatants that had previously demobilised. This created a credibility gap which continued to undermine the peace initiative.
“Even today, no group has taken a serious position on disarming or demobilisation or reducing violence,” said Arias.
FIP also questioned the government’s own seriousness in finalizing any negotiations, terming Paz Total an “electoral peace”; endless rounds of talks through the upcoming election period.
It’s a strategy Arias condemned: “This government seems intent on continuing the process at whatever costs and put the burden of resolution on the next government. This is politically irresponsible.”
Lack of concrete results could also taint future processes, he said.
“The poor results have thrown doubt on the idea that political solutions to conflict is the best route, which is very worrying, and eventually exposes communities to more risk.”
His main message – and the key finding of the FIP report – was that ending conflict in Colombia required more than goodwill, he told The Bogotá Post.
“It’s incoherent to talk of ‘peace or security’. We need to talk of ‘peace and security’. Without that, we’ve gone backwards.”