Introduction

The armed conflict between the State and FARC is probably center of diplomatic and military consolidation in Colombia. By 2016, when the peace agreement was signed, there were more than 7 million victims of the conflict, ranging from murders to kidnappings and disappearances (Chará 2015, p. 50). From them, more than 6 million were displaced from rural areas (Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica 2015, p. 24). Adding to this grim picture, environmental and energy impacts as well as the process of social decomposition, indicated the role of violence as the main mechanism of social regulation.

Furthermore, the conflict presented strategic changes as well as narrative and operational evolutions. FARC started as a Marxist-LeninistFootnote 1 subversive group based on peasant communities (Graaf 2021), which slowly shed away its insurgent purism to penetrate the arenas of terrorism and transnational organized crime (International Center for Transitional Justice 2009, pp. 1–2) through territorial and operational control of drug trafficking, possession of chemical precursors, arms trafficking and smuggling, among other criminal practices.

This resulted in guerrilla decomposition where the political idealism did not surrender to the State, but to the enormous economic returns of organized crime. The guerrilla transformed its political and ideological vocation as well as into an armed groups with interests associated with the economic return of illicit income and the strategic use of terrorism to weaken the land control of the State, suffocate peasant populations and strengthen their power and influence in strategic areas to foster the flow of illicit goods. Among them, the border areas and some strategic corridors turned out to be the most vulnerable territorial enclaves, affected by the operational and criminal logic of the FARC and other insurgent armed groups (International Crisis Group 2020, p. 10).

The pinnacle of armed power of the FARC came around 1998 and 2002, when its men-in-arms numbered more than 20,000 (International Crisis Group 2014, p. 5), the hectares of illicit crops were over 150,000 (UNODC 2019a, b, p. 14) and international support also came from different state and non-state actors in Latin America and overseas (Trejos 2013, p. 111). The Colombian State did not have the technical, operational, military and technological capacities to face the problem. Plan Colombia, developed alongside with the United States, was aimed at closing capacity gaps and subverting the relationship of powers, especially in the most affected territories. For twenty years this special program has been in force and its results are seen in the progressive victories of the State over this armed group, which finally led to a negotiating table that would lead to the real end of the conflict between both factions.

The Havana peace accords were supported on six points: i) Full rural reform, ii) political participation, iii) end of the conflict, iv) solution to the issue of illicit drugs, v) reparation of victims and vi) implementation. Once the bases were set and agreed, the document was signed, but its effective execution has revealed many flaws that indicate an adverse transition of conflict. Neither the issue of drugs, nor the reparation of the victims, nor the effective end of the conflict is being evidenced so far. This signifies the signing of the peace agreement represented a turning point for the transformation of the armed conflict within the country, rather than a true roadmap to the consolidation of peace conditions (Ahumada 2020, p. 39).

In this way, from the political sphere, the challenge is to implement a peace agreement in a country that is still at war where the FARC has become a three-headed hydra: a political one, an insurgent one that is perpetuated from the Venezuelan border, and a criminal one made up of guerrillas who did not join the demobilization process and decided to continue with organized crime activities. They are mutually unfamiliar with each other and have done their best to shed anything that associates them with their political, insurgent, and criminal counterparts. However, the trunk that originated this new version of the phenomenon is only one and is still present in the political, insurgent and criminal arena and it’s the aim to control the politics, the people and the territories.

The objective of this article is to demonstrate the 2016 agreement does not effectively lead to achieving peace, and instead is the mechanism for reissuing and transforming the Colombian internal conflict. FARC is at a crossroads between its own transformative potential towards peace, the return to armed confrontation, and the seductive power of transnational organized crime, affecting stability in the territorial areas of historical presence and the communities present in those geographical areas.

This article is part of the author's doctoral research on the transformation of the armed conflict in Colombia and its regional implications from the peace process and the polysemy of the FARC after its bifurcation as a political and criminal entity.

Theoretical framework

Understanding a complex phenomenon that involves history, territory, ideology, criminality, terrorism, politics, society and concurrent third parties, two theoretical approaches to international relations and political science are used.

The first of them is neorealism, which postulates anarchy as a state of high uncertainty. Persistence and criminal hybridization in the FARC case feeds that anarchic condition in the face of the impossibility of generating an internal systemic organization (Powell 1994, p. 314) due to the lack of capacities of the regulatory power of the State. At the same it makes possible to understand the general context in terms of national and regional security as gravity center.

Thus, Kenneth Waltz's postulates about how systemic conditions are those that modify the behavior of the actors in international system (Waltz 1979, pp. 88–97) are suitable. This is explained deeply in the analysis of the dependent and independent variables identified in the article.

In this way, according of Waltz's thesis, it’s possible to see the current nature of the international system as strongly biased by elements associated with terrorism and transnational organized crime; and because of this, the behavioral hypothesis of the actors is defined. In the case of the FARC after the signing of the peace agreement, we are talking about the hybridization of political, criminal, terrorist and insurgent elements that are the result of the pressures and opportunities of the system on this specific actor.

In addition, there are other postulates of the author who understands the international system as the result of a market interposed between economic actors (Waltz 1979, p. 90). This approach makes it possible to explain the component of actors (legal and illegal), modus operandi in the market (organized crime and legal trade) and the results of the interactions between the two, expressed especially in the war on drugs, the fight against organized transnational crime, and the general division of the market between the legal economy and the illicit markets. The aforementioned is present in the context this article analyzes, both from the study carried out by FARC and its bifurcation into criminal, political and insurgent components, as well as from the analysis of third parties such as Venezuela and the United States, whose interests are instrumentalized within the framework of Waltz’s logics by seeing the world as the dialectical confluence of economic actors.

Another neorealist postulates associated with the uncertainty regarding the conduct of other States makes it possible to explain the processes associated with the lack of cooperation (Hobson 2001, p. 406) and the sponsorship of third parties to illegal armed groups, especially in the Venezuelan case.

The second theoretical approach in this context is critical geopolitics, which offers a special enlightenment to the territorial component present in the case of the Colombian conflict, since the control of the territory, of the strategic corridors passage of illicit goods and sovereign displacement outside border enclaves are essential to understand why the new trends of internal conflict are configured in the way they currently are. The value of land in the insurgent struggle and in criminal activity is the key of the violent practices of the FARC phenomenon after the signing of the peace agreement.

Another postulate of critical geopolitics implies the multiplicity of actors as units of analysis (Cabrera 2020, p. 79), which enable us to understand the criminal geopolitical projections of state and non-state actors. For the specific case of the Colombian context, it is useful considering the spectrum of actors: The Colombian State, FARC, other armed groups and other States with influence and participation, such as Venezuela and the United States.

Just like Simon Dalby observes (Dalby 2012, p. 2):

Rather than a single analytical or methodological endeavor, critical geopolitics encompassed various ways of unpacking the geographical assumptions in politics, asking how the cartographic imagination of here and there, inside and outside, them and us, states, blocs, zones, regions or other geographical specifications, worked to both facilitate some political possibilities and actions and exclude and silence others. These writings all challenge common sense and “modern” assumptions that national identities and the states that govern populations are the necessary starting point for either policy discussion and scholarly analysis

In that sense, critical geopolitics enables us to interpret the political and social context in the post agreement scope in Colombia from a geographical approach, helping us to understand the wider range of related problems.

State of the question

The debate on the peace enforcement has focused on the responsibility of the national government. This is due to a clear trend of rejection of the nature of the peace accords by several layers of civil and political society, business, union, religious and military sectors (García 2020, p. 2). The failure of the plebiscite for peace promoted by former President Juan Manuel Santos and the intention of former President Iván Duque to renegotiate the agreements, are indicators of how poorly prepared is the State and society to assimilate the commitments and assignments that a negotiation implies.

Many understood the agreements as a surrender of the narco-terrorist guerrillas to the State, and that perverted expectations regarding transitional justice for peace (Farris 2019, p. 51), opportunities for political participation and reparation to the victims. A social discontent was generated based on the idea that the country was handed over to the ex- combatants (Gómez 2017, p. 242), the results of negotiation did not end in exemplary punishments for FARC members and, in addition, certain conditions were guaranteed to them in order to enter to democratic game.

In that sense the Duque government's agenda was plunged into a dichotomous condition where he had the commitment to comply with the agreement and the need to satisfy the interests of his political party, against the obligations to peace. This generated an ambiguous and unclear agenda, whose opacities are where noted by observer actors of the peace agreement and the donor States of technical and financial resources for the peace enforcement, who have directly urged the government to comply all the commitments (Kroc Institute 2019, pp. 1–2).

Yet, the debate has revolved very little around the interests and fulfillment of the obligations of the guerrilla, which could be summarized in economic reparation to the victims, the commitment for the truth regarding the disappearances, and the acknowledge of their criminal acts in the presence of justice. Far from it, the finances of the FARC remain a mystery and there is evidence of bank accounts in Switzerland (Eddy 2020, p. 5). Besides, it is possible to observe the reluctance of the FARC political leadership to recognize the recruitment of children in the conflict (Nabuco and Duarte 2018, p. 388), the sexual and gender violence applied against guerrilla women and civilians in the conflict. Additionally two of the most important leaders and former negotiators of the agreement, Iván Márquez and Jesús Santrich retook arms betraying the peace agreement, calling for a new armed mobilization (Gutierrez 2020, p. 227).

According to Rousseau's disquisitions, the State is a morally superior actor and on it must fall a special control and higher expectations (Dunning 1909, p. 377). Nevertheless, actors who adhere to the norms of International Humanitarian Law and then ignore them commit the crime of perfidy, regardless of whether or not it is a state actor. In the current context, the Colombian State and the FARC are in opposite positions, failing to comply to the agreement from their ideological and material shores, thus giving an opportunity to the strength of criminal practices, institutional instability, socio-political polarization, and territorial vulnerability in areas structurally needy and inefficiently intervened.

Methodology

This article uses a simple correlational analysis estimating how violence, crime, and territory have been influenced by adverse transition of conflict, the non-compliance of peace agreement and the polysemic transformation of the FARC. In that sense, the situation after the peace agreement tends to generate more violence instead of generalized well-being; not because of the nature of the agreement, but because of its systematic and deliberate non-compliance by both parties, specially by the FARC.

Dependent variables

Violence and internal conflict

The current terrorist practices are the result of the adverse transitions of conflict in Colombia due to the breach of the peace agreements and the reconstruction of the insurgent and criminal branch of the FARC, especially in border rural and scattered areas (Lamaitre Ripoll and Restrepo Saldarriaga 2019, p. 8).

The main changes presented by the context of the Colombian conflict can be understood from the categorization developed by the Ideas para la Paz foundation taken as a baseline as explained in Tables 1.

Table 1 Change on armed conflict practices before and after the peace agreement in Colombia
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Thus, the context of the internal conflict has been influenced by the peace process ebbs, which are one of the more important triggers of violence after the agreement, since the illegal armed factions opposed to its implementation. Since the signing of the agreement in 2016 until December 2020 more than 1,000 human right leaders, former combatants and social activist were killed by FARC dissident groups (Indepaz 2020, p. 6).

Territorial stability

This is the other dependent variable, since the levels of violence, threat and vulnerability that a territory receives, depend entirely on the nature, presence and interests of the actors who settle there. In the case of Colombia’s post-agreement scope, criminal factions of the FARC never demobilized. These are known as residual organized armed groups (GAOR in Spanish). They include the dissident group led by alias Gentil Duarte known as “Primera Facción” and the dissident group led by Iván Márquez known as “Segunda Marquetalia” movement, derived from the armed remobilization of peace signers who abandoned the process to return to subversive activities supported by the commission of terrorist acts and financed with illicit income from organized crime.

From the signing of peace agreement, the GAOR Primera Facción and Segunda Marquetalia sought to rearrange their presence in areas of historical influence of the FARC in Colombia, especially in the regions of Santander, Antioquia, Córdoba, Nariño, Putumayo, Cauca, Caquetá, Meta and Guaviare (Cabezas et al. 2020, p. 55) (Maps 1).

Map 1
figure 1

Presence of the FARC dissidence in 2023. Note. Light blue zones are the territories of FARC dissidents groups. Encircled areas in red are the territories of convergence of the FARC dissident groups and other criminal organizations such as ELN and Clan del Golfo. Green zones are the lands with bigger coca crops. Yellow points are zones of illicit gold mining. Encircled areas in yellow are the new problematic areas of violence and criminal convergence. Lines and arrows outside Colombian territory are the routes of trafficking. Source (Fuerzas Militares 2023)

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Several of these Departments concentrate the largest territorial extensions of illicit crops, as well as areas of illegal extraction of mineral deposits, especially gold (UNODC 2019a, b, p. 73). The bulk of the attributed shares have been concentrated in five departments: Guaviare (23%), Nariño (18%), Cauca (16%), Caquetá (12%) and Meta (14%).

The most active group is the dissidence of FARC Primera Facción- Front 1, with 26% of the cases of violence related to drug trafficking, followed by Front 7 (14%) and the Oliver Sinisterra Front with 11%. In any case, there are 22% of actions with unidentified authorship. The main dissidents of Nariño Department, the Oliver Sinisterra Front (FOS) and the Guerrilleras Unidas del Pacífico (GUP), account for 16% (UNODC 2019a, b, p. 16).

These actions have had a considerable impact, particularly on indigenous and Afro- descendant populations (Benavides 2019, p. 2). Some of these dissidents have followed the logic of territorial expansion in Colombia and towards the border areas with Venezuela, Ecuador and Brazil, in order to maintain control over illicit trafficking corridors and to resume contacts with mafias and international crime organizations. In the same way, they have opted for effective control of the rivers as natural routes through which they mobilize, articulate actions, and connect regions within the country (UNODC 2019a, b, p. 93).

Studies carried out by the Externado University and the National Planning Department of Colombia yielded interesting results identifying the border as a multiplying area of actions that violate security in lethal and non-lethal activities, presenting a membrane effect caused by the displacement and enthronement of illegal activities in border strips. This implies the systematic intervention of other types of actors in these areas (Badrán 2017, p. 15). This is evident in practices such as the reproduction of illicit crops in Colombia, which are found along the border with Peru, Venezuela and Ecuador.

In this sense, the rearrangement and strength of some criminal practices is another important change after the peace agreement. As the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime observes, coca crops decreased in almost the entire central nucleus, but increased in the productive enclave of Putumayo border. This is located in Lower Putumayo, at the border with Ecuador in the municipalities of Valle del Guamuéz, San Miguel, and Puerto Asís and a sector of Ipiales (Nariño), surrounded by the Guamuez and San Miguel rivers.

The populated centers that are located in the areas most affected by coca crops are Jordán de Guisiala, El Maizal, Jordán Ortiz, El Chiguaco, among others. The Putumayo border strip occupies 9% of the region's territory and contains 25.5% of the region's coca (UNODC 2019a, b, p. 94). In Putumayo, very close to this zone, there are two enclaves in the process of consolidation: Villagarzón-Orito, which between 2015 and 2019 reported an increase of coca by 95% in the area.

In the same way, the reports of security and citizen plans made by National Police in the country's border areas share a categorization of criminal activities attributable to the FARC dissidents groups and other organized armed groups, such as homicide and extortion, in almost all the affected Departments. According to data from the National Planning Department of Colombia, the border strips have territorial vulnerability rates 50% higher than other areas of the country. One of the most relevant components for this estimate is precisely the presence of illicit crops and the associated dynamics of violence (Departamento Nacional de Planeación 2013, p. 14).

Independent variables

Peace process

The negotiation and signing of the agreement is the main catalyst of the current panorama of organized crime and the internal conflict in Colombia (Troyano and Restrepo 2018, p. 11). The recognition of internal conflict made by former president Santos, not only returns the status of combatants to the FARC members, but also obliges the State to adhere entirely to the rules of International Humanitarian Law (International Crisis Group 2010, p. 13), which presented a period of opacity in its compliance during the former president Uribe administrations.

The aforementioned entailed a series of changes in the political and military context, diplomatic and insurgent. On the political level, the Santos's break with Uribe's axioms generated secession and transformation of the political landscape in the country and in Congress, identifying the emergence of a more radical right against the more centrist positions of Santos.

In the military sphere, the enlistment is arranged to have a presence and territorial control in the areas that would be abandoned by FARC, this adds to processes of transformation in the institutional architecture and the medium-term projection of the roles and missions of the Military Forces to anticipate their activities in a state without guerrillas (Pastrana and Vera 2019, p. 274).

The international context is also affected by the new agenda for peace promoted by Santos, leaving behind a long period of drug trafficking in Colombian diplomacy (Sanchez and Campos 2019, p. 91). The Plan Colombia, which served to increase the capacities of the Public Force, was renamed as “Paz Colombia” and its orientation changed to be a support for the enforcement of the agreements. In that way, there were financial and non- profit donors in international organizations such as the European Union, the UN and the OAS; and also state-type donors such as United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Norway, among others.

With regard to the combatants, the elites were reorganized, after the constant military casualties of their leaders and the zones of historical presence began modest processes of rearrangement of illegal armed authorities with a substantial reduction in armed confrontations with the Military Forces, murders and kidnappings.

In its political and moral precepts, the agreement complies with the basic elements for establishing the bases for peace. However, the route of the agreement implementation began to generate execution gaps due to several factors that were not previously foreseen in the agreement. The most representative and influential were:

  • 1. The rejection and social polarization of the agreement: Contrary to the expected after 50 years of conflict, the peace agreement did not unify the national aspirations of the citizens in Colombia and actually fragmented positions on the matter, not only from a political perspective, but also from a territorial approach (Muñoz and Pachón 2021, p. 99). The regions most affected by the armed conflict, within them, the border regions, voted in favor of the peace plebiscite, while the large cities voted against it (Pechenkina and Gamboa 2019, p. 8). The plebiscite was the instrument projected as a social validation mechanism after the signing of the agreement between the government and the FARC representatives (Matanock and García 2017, p. 157). This result was out of all calculation of the national government, which trusted in the moral superiority of peace and did not worry about the public pedagogy that should be attached, in a society eager for exemplary justice for ex-combatants and historically accustomed to violence as a social regulatory mechanism parallel to the state.

  • 2. The absence of the total participation of the FARC leadership for the laying down of arms and the signing of peace: Since the late 2000s, a fragmentation and internal lack of coordination of the FARC was already being noticed among its members in several territories. There were blocks and fronts much richer and more stable than others, friction between middle managers, and deep communication gaps from the central command. However, the objective in the peace talks scope was the FARC leaders would be able to unite the wills of their men-in- arms to enter as new citizens in a legal social life.

As it has happened in the previous case, with the FARC it was found that more than 10% (around 1,500 guerrilla fighters in 2016) did not accept the agreement and chose to continue in arms (Agencia Colombiana para la Reintegración 2016, p. 10). Its objective was to retake illicit business and that was the starting point of the dissidents groups that by 2020 will add up to 4,000 members in the country (Gonzalez 2020, p. 109). This lack of unity led to the call for the “Segunda Marquetalia” made by several of the FARC leaders who retook arms and slipped away to Venezuela, denying the values of the peace agreement, breaking relations apart with the political leadership of the ex- combatants and facilitating the attack of the peace agreement by all its political enemies. In this regard, in 2020 Iván Márquez who was already in armed rebellion from Venezuela, wrote and published online his own book of more than 300 pages entitled "La segunda Marquetalia" in which he collects the insurgent narrative and a series of iconographic elements to justify the return to arms and to radicalize those who has a sympathy for that kind of revolutionary ideas.Footnote 2

  • 3. The 2018 presidential elections: Heated spirits in the political and social arenas after the signing of the peace agreement led to the enthronement in power of the candidate of the opposition party to President Santos. That evidenced the rejection of broad sectors of society and the economy to peace process. The return to power of the radical right implied strong challenges to the peace enforcement that generated an adverse effect on the military and security from the systematic increase in massacres, murders and threats to people protected (BTI 2020, p. 9), in transitional justice that has been constantly confronted with the national government, underfunded and questioned (Carr Center 2020, p. 5); in the construction of historical memory that had a setback and a tendency to deny the conflict (Quintero 2019, p. 1), in the design of the foreign agenda that returned to the traditional approach of illicit crop substitution through a logic of war on drugs (Felab-Brown 2020, p. 7); and in the effective capacity to protect and look after the victims of the conflict in a timely manner.

FARC as a political party, insurgency and criminal group

The construction that FARC has made of itself from narrative and practice is the central axis of the discussion, since the polysemy and multiple nature of the FARC figure, forces us to understand the Colombian context after the agreement from multiple approaches depending on the side of FARC that is being discussed.

Thus, FARC as a political party started firmly in 2017. They had the idea of signifying its acronym to stop calling itself the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and to anoint itself as the Common Revolutionary Alternative Force.Footnote 3 In any case, for the people they were still FARC, resulting in severe antipathies in a society that understood the gesture more as a mockery and an euphemism rather than a sincere purpose to transform the raison d'être of the political party (Olave Arias 2021, p. 32).

In such a way, FARC as a party grouped its negotiating chiefs who were distributed the quotas of power guaranteed by the State and began the construction of a political programmatic axis oriented to the seizure of power from the democratic arena, but defending atavistic axioms typical of absolutist states. Within this agenda are the basic precepts of the Marxist - Leninist thought that originated their armed struggle: collectivization of the land and the production factors, co-opting social movements, especially in the countryside where the presence of the State is weak or null; construction of political community collectives for electoral and social control purposes in regard of regional elections, anti-institutional revolutionary narratives construction based on the “Resistance” concept, rejection of cooperation initiatives by the United States, United Kingdom and other countries demonized by the "anti-imperialism”, etc.

According to their own words, the FARC party proposes:

[…”to contribute in shaping a new political and social power, transforming and overcoming the existing social order, for which electoral participation in the dispute for political power and spaces of representation is imperative, while advancing in "the production of new social power 'from below' by the whole of the various social sectors ”, which they conceive as a constituent process”Footnote 4 …] (Estado Mayor Central de las FARC- EP 2017, pp. 7-8)

There is no real modern political proposal coherent with the productive, social, institutional and international context of the country. On the contrary, in the website and official sources of the FARC political party, as well as in the 100% of former spaces of reincorporation of ex-combatants settled by the Government, strong iconographic and narrative elements persist making direct apology to the armed struggle, terrorist leaders and the insurgent demand. The use of the revolutionary languageFootnote 5 has not been put aside and is still endorsed by the FARC party members, which is clearly intentioned and aimed to perpetuate the armed legacy in the political arena.

This take us to the Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis about the language as a market and tool of symbolic power where the control of the masses is based (Bourdieu 2014).

For its part, FARC as an insurgency, embodied in the Segunda Marquetalia dissidence, seeks to retake the 14 precepts of the “Revolutionary Rebirth of Masses” (Plan Revolucionario de las Masas) erected in 2008 with the already known objective of defeating the establishment through armed struggle (Gutiérrez 2020, p. 234); for that, the border area as a strategic rearguard is essential; as well as the international support and financing, from multiple donations, international diplomatic lobbying, and transnational crime as a financing mechanism. The Segunda Marquetalia dissidence has been called to join, at the end of the day, as an attempt to try to return to the status quo of the armed confrontation prior to the signing of the agreements (InSight Crime 2020, p. 1).

On the other hand, FARC as a criminal organized crime expression represented in the Gentil Duarte’s dissidence, “Primera Facción” no longer concentrates on seizing political power through democratic play or armed struggle. Their main vocation is to retake the presence and seigniorage of the historical presence zones of the insurgent group (MAPP OEA 2018, p. 60), reaching more than 100,000 hectares of illicit crops, gold mining quarries, clandestine oil refineries, smuggled goods crossing points along the border and the natural corridors of passage of illicit goods to the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean (UNODC 2019a, b, p. 28). They are finally the criminal enterprise they were destined to be since they associated with the gangsters of the 1970s and 1980s. Like any organized crime group, they handle variable relationships of violence and corruption to inhibit the state's control and consolidate vast areas of parallel social, electoral and economic regulation.

Each of the three expressions or epiphenomena of FARC involves a complex network of consequences, interactions and interests regarding the use of the territory, the utility of society, its strategic assets and operational advantages (Torrijos and Abella 2018, p. 44) that could be summarized as follows Table 2.

Table 2 The expressions of FARC after the peace agreement
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This composition of the FARC's characters turns out to be the axis that enables to understand the future road map of violence, crime and peace in Colombia after the signing of the final agreement.

External interests

External interests are the last independent variable considered in this document. The expressions and influence of actors such as Venezuela, the United States, or Ecuador have a high incidence in the outcome of the scenes of violence and organized crime in Colombia after the signing of the peace accords.

First of all, the role of Venezuela is directly destabilizing, both from a political and territorial perspective. Since 2012, border incidents with Venezuela have increased by more than 60% according to the Colombian Ministry of Defense. Venezuelan geopolitical interests are clear and a threat of Colombian territorial integrity (Badrán 2019, p. 464). In the same way, since 2003 the importation of high-performance war material in Venezuela has increased by more than 550% (Sparrow 2012, pp. 1–2) as a deterrent against Colombia and the United States (SIPRI 2009, p. 306). Furthermore, the Venezuelan support to FARC members is clear, before and after the signing of the peace accords, as territorial protection, the supply of war material and the financing of armed activities (McDermont 2012). In addition, the non-existent bilateral cooperation in border control and territorial security management between the two States between 2005 and 2022 has served as an opportunity for the increase in criminal activities in the border area (Avila 2020, pp. 73–74).

As for the United States, the firm implementation of the agreement coincided with the Donald Trump administration, generating a change of the agenda to the minimum aspects such as the fight against drugs through the eradication of illicit use crops, leaving peace efforts in the background, and forcing Colombia to intensify armed confrontations in order to generate visible results in war on drugs.

In this sense, if violence and conflict are variable z, territorial stability is variable v; and the peace process, added to external interests and the polysemic nature of FARC are the variables x, y & aa, we then have that:

$$Z+V=(f)X+Y+AA$$

In other words, the variations in the practices and representations of the armed conflict and territorial vulnerability in Colombia, after the peace agreements, are the result of the (adverse) processes of the implementation of the agreements, the multidimensional nature of the FARC phenomenon, the organized crime presence in the FARC division, and competing external interests in this context.

Variable Z, holds the conflict and violence, brings together the most significant and evident changes in the Colombian case. A first change is the transformation of the FARC into a three-faceted actor (political, insurgent and criminal) in conflict with the State and with itself to strength the administration of illicit businesses and organized crime through land control. Here, the armed confrontation between the dissidents of Primera Facción and the dissidents of Segunda Marquetalia, stands out in a special way, as their struggle is based on the rearrangement of power and influence within the areas considered of FARC's historical presence.

As a result of this armed confrontation, the Segunda Marquetalia dissidence has lost several of its strongest and most representative members, both on the armed and political levels. Among them, alias Jesus Santrich, alias Romaña, and alias El Paisa. For its part, the Primera Facción dissidence has lost its ringleader, alias Gentil Duarte (BBC 2022). Besides the armed confrontation between dissidences there are other criminal groups such as the National Liberation Army—ELN and Clan del Golfo, whose interests are the same of FARC’s dissidences: illegal market control of drugs, weapons, explosives, minerals, and contraband, among others.

Another change in variable Z has to do with the rising constraint on the population in rural areas, especially those settled in zones of historical FARC presence, which overlaps with large areas of illicit crops or characterized by unregulated activities such as gold mining. In these areas, the State's capacity for land control is still low, leaving the populations and local governments at the mercy of parallel mechanisms for social regulation through the armed coercion of FARC dissidents and other armed groups.

Cases such as the municipalities of Buenos Aires, Miranda and Suárez in the Department of Cauca, or Tibú, Ábrego, Gramalote and Sardinata in the Department of Norte de Santander turn out to be difficult to manage (UNODC 2017) and in cases such as Buenos Aires, there are failed municipalities that must govern from another place due to the constraint of the armed groups, within them, the FARC dissidents who obstruct the rule of law, and the monopoly of force (Tuirán Sarmiento and Trejos Rosero 2018).

Social coercion is also expressed in the forced planting of illicit crops by FARC dissidences. Peasants are forbidden to access government crop substitution programs and, must pressure the national and local governments to reduce the illicit crops eradication. This is known as the coca growers' strikes which have been a strategy that has been carried out since the mid-1990s (Abril Bonilla et al. 2019, p. 10), when the first policies of eradication and substitution of illicit crops began. It is no coincidence that in municipalities such as Sardinata in Norte de Santander, on the border with Venezuela, the number of planted hectares has increased, going from 700 in 2017 to more than 8,000 in 2022 (Rivera 2022). The same happens with municipalities such as Buenos Aires, Corinto, Caloto in Cauca, La Hormiga in Putumayo and Tumaco in Nariño.

For its part, variable V, which comprises territorial vulnerability, is expressed in a incapacity of territorial control and social regulation by the State, which implies access to justice, the physical infrastructure, the provision of public services and access to quality health and education in all the municipalities of the country.

The Colombian State has not been able to guarantee these rights and the remote areas of urban centers are the most vulnerable. This weakness of land control is represented in several phenomena. The first is the increase in multidimensional poverty gaps where peripheral and especially border areas, have poverty rates 50% higher than those of urban centers. The second has to do with the competitiveness of economic production, because, according to Fedesarrollo studies, the absence of infrastructure undermines the competitiveness of agricultural undertakings, increasing poverty levels (Villar 2014, p. 13) and backing the development of illicit crops which do not require large infrastructure for their production and trade.

The third phenomenon is the forced and voluntary recruitment of children into criminal armed structures. Analysis of the Human Rights Office of Colombia, estimates that border areas, for example, present an additional child recruitment than other areas and urban centers of the country (Consejería Presidencial para los Derechos Humanos 2021, p. 114). The fourth phenomenon is the consolidation of areas of influence of the FARC dissidents through the establishment of strategic passage corridors for narcotics, weapons, and chemical precursors between the Pacific Ocean and Venezuela, creating two main passage belts; one for the departments of Arauca, Casanare, Meta, Caquetá, Cauca, Valle del Cauca and Nariño, and another for the departments of Guajira, Cesar, Norte de Santander, Antioquia and Chocó (Defensoría del Pueblo 2018, p. 29) (Map 2).

Map 2
figure 2

Main corridors and trafficking routes in Colombia in 2023. Note. Green arrows are land routes. Yellow arrows are maritime routes. Pink arrows are air routes. Red encircled zones are convergence areas of criminal economies. Yellow encircled areas are the new convergence zones of illicit economies. Source: (Fuerzas Militares 2023)

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Areas of historical conflict such as Catatumbo, La Mojana, Bajo Cauca Antioqueño, Cauca and Nariño are still a challenge to the State in terms of land control. They are a strategic area for the criminal actions of the FARC dissident groups who are currently in dispute for the control of several of those zones with projection to Venezuela and the Pacific Ocean.

Another consequence for territorial vulnerability is related to control of indigenous reservation zones, nature reserves, and Afro-Colombian zones where are concentrated 47% of illicit crops in the country (UNODC 2020, p. 35).

Finally, variable V includes a poor control of border areas where the strips with Ecuador and Venezuela represent the greatest challenge. Border control is based on joint action between neighboring countries. For more than 10 years, Colombia's bilateral relations with Ecuador prevented effective control of the border, which caused a membrane effect of crimeFootnote 6 (Rivera Rhon and Bravo Grijalva 2018, p. 13) in both countries. This topic was only addressed until President Guillermo Lasso came to power in Ecuador.

In Venezuela, the scenario is still difficult. During 17 years there were no bilateral relations and the security forces of both states have not met in more than seven years to ward off the effects of cross-border crime. As a result, there is also a membrane effect of crime, expressed in an increasing trend of drug production in Venezuela, and a change in the territorial callings of that country to organized crime, going from being a zone of passage, storage and shipment of illicit goods to become a producer, generating problems of violence and consolidation of armed presence by illegal Colombian groups, among them, FARC dissidents.

The variables V and Z are affected by the independent factors X, Y & AA; that is, the peace agreement, the external interests of some States such as Venezuela, China, Russia and the United States; and the newly acquired multidimensional nature of the FARC, expressed in its political component, its subversive dissident faction, and its dissident faction attached to organized crime as its raison d'être.

Furthermore, the peace agreement plays an important role in the current panorama of violence and territorial vulnerability in Colombia, because more than 13,000 ex-combatants have laid down their weapons to start a reintegration process in several zones that have been hit by the violence of the FARC dissidents. Since the signing of peace agreement, more than 300 ex-combatants have been killed. Although this is just over 3% of the total number of demobilized persons, it is important to note that ex-combatants have a high symbolic value in the peace enforcement. They are also people with reinforced constitutional protection and most of the murders have occurred in the vicinity of their places of settlement, which are close to drug trafficking routes.

In the same way, the peace agreement requires the construction of a comprehensive rural reform that implies the restitution of land to peasants, indigenous groups, and victims of the conflict in general, which revives social conflicts in areas with low state presence. Just in 2020 and 2021, 387 land claimants were killed in the restitution process (Defensoría del Pueblo 2022). In the same way, the armed groups, among them the FARC dissidents, constantly threaten officials and entities in charge of ensuring land order and the allocation, such as the National Land Agency—ANT (SEMANA 2018, p. 1) or the Agustín Codazi Geographical Institute – IGAC (Zambrano Benavides 2018, p. 1); all of this with the aim of preventing the enactment of the commitments derived from the peace agreement.

For its part, external interests are represented in espionage, and in a military strategic logic of interference, in other words, the processes of obstruction to the governability of Colombia sponsored or executed by other actors outside the country's borders. This is what is happening especially from Venezuela, which since mid-2006 has served as a strategic rearguard for the FARC and ELN, and today continues to provide its territory to shelter the dissidents of Segunda Marquetalia and Primera Facción. As for espionage, it is known of the presence of Cuban, Venezuelan and Russian spies making an active presence in Colombia (Bronner and Fieser 2019, pp. 1–3), several of whom have been captured by the Colombian authorities and deported. Behind this espionage exist a plan against Colombia´s territorial integrity, as well as the support for anti-government groups such as the ELN, FARC dissidents and the so-called "front line" an urban group infiltrated and financed by ELN terrorism to destabilize the state, according to statements made by the National Police Director (Ospina Zapata 2021. P. 1).

Finally, the multiple nature of the FARC is one of the most influencing variables of conflict and territorial vulnerability. This, because the Segunda Marquetalia and Primera Facción dissidences are the clearest and most obvious epiphenomenon of the peace agreement. Today FARC is a political party that seeks to impose its agenda and its Marxist-Leninist programmatic axis in a democratic scope. FARC is also an insurgent group led by people who betrayed the peace agreement by committing perfidy to return to an armed struggle for political power, using Venezuelan territorial protection and financing through organized crime in order to achieve their goals. FARC is also a dissidence with essentially economic objectives that seeks to control the production of illicit income, strategic corridors as well as national and international markets for drug consumption, trafficking in minerals and other goods. This multiple nature in the composition of the FARC is what has largely set the tone for national security policies, the current state of territorial vulnerability, the challenges of reincorporating ex-combatants, foreign policy, especially with those offering peace aid, and the dynamics of social and territorial control in areas located far from urban centers, rich in coca crops, poor in development, infrastructure. and opportunities.

Naturally, the equation presented here is not capable of covering all the elements, actors and phenomena present in the configuration processes of the conflict in Colombia. There are heavyweight actors such as the ELN and Clan del Golfo, who are responsible for much of the violence in the country. Nor are aspects such as the corruption of some politicians and officers of the military and police forces that favor the strengthening of armed groups analyzed in depth. In the same way, the issue of social support for criminality and the culture of illegality strongly ingrained in various regions of the country, which have historically favored armed groups such as FARC, ELN and Self-Defense Forces, is not addressed here.

Each of these aspects deserves an in-depth analysis that, however, transcends the object of study of this document, which sought to identify the most relevant aspects in which the peace process and the reconstitution of the FARC affect the context of Colombian national security and the related framework of transnational organized crime.

Discussion and conclusion: Old wine in new wineskins

Colombia is still at war. Historical and structural basis of internal conflict persist nowadays. The peace agreement is not the start of the end of conflict but a catalyst of the warfare in the country, denoting a series of transformations in the violent practices and representations related to transnational organized crime and terrorism. The multiple nature of FARC fosters new reissues of violence alternating between the return to the insurgent status quo, the consolidation of the criminal enterprise, and the search for political power through a strong narrative and iconographical use aimed at radicalizing social postures in civil society. These are the new wineskins that are necessary to identify and study in order to anticipate and base the analysis and decision-making of public policy in regard of the universe of threats facing the country.

However, no matter how novel the forms of expression of violence in Colombia after the peace accords, the results will tend to be the same: desecration of structurally weak territorial enclaves under state control, victimization of peasants, ethnic, and racial minorities, manipulation of social sectors devoid of opportunities in the new criminal, political and insurgent companies, perpetuation of illicit crops in zones with more than 40 years of coca consolidation. These are accompanied by other criminal businesses that are supported in the absence of State control and social regulation through violence especially at the border areas where it is possible to see the dynamics of organized crime, illicit actors, and contested relations among them (García Pinzón and Mantilla 2021, p. 267). This is the old wine that is transferred to the new wineskins without a disruptive solution being foreseen at first glance, regardless of whether it is through the implementation of the peace agreement or not.

Thus, the impacts of the peace agreement on national security and organized crime are evident. On the one hand, there are flaws in the national security and defense policy. It has not been possible to guarantee effective land control by the military forces and the police, especially in the areas of historical presence of the FARC that match the zones with the greatest tendency in the reproduction of illicit crops and the border strips.

In that scenario the support and commitment of neighboring countries is required. Only in the Ecuadorian case, the problems resulting from more than 10 years have been corrected lack of security cooperation. These failures in the land management of security to prevent crime, violence and break down the large armed groups, have served as an incentive for violent actors to take the place that the State has not taken so far, making illegal social regulation mechanisms based on fear and violence; as well as a growth of illicit crops that are today at higher levels to those of the late 1990s, when Plan Colombia began.

On the other hand, the security and defense policy presents serious doctrinal and operational lags to address border areas, which are a symptom of the poor dialogue between the national security policy and foreign policy, The Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has authorized the entry of diplomats to the country who really where Russian, Cuban, Venezuelan, and Iranian spies, has not managed the security problem in the border area with neighbor countries and does not include in the international peace agenda the national security needs, essential to support the peace enforcement, resulting in an adverse process characterized by violence against victims, former combatants and against the institutions responsible for guarantee that peace.

As for organized crime, there are also implications that need to be highlighted. Venezuela has become a producer of coca and chemical precursors. In fact, the production areas today tend to move away from the typical production climates and altitudes to enter other spaces through coca strains that are more resistant to altitudes other than 1,000 to 1,200 m; such is the case of the Apure region (InSight Crime 2022. P. 10) where, coincidentally, one of the largest presences of the FARC dissidents Segunda Marquetalia and Primera Facción is registered.

The foregoing confirms in Venezuela what Peter Lupsha identifies as an evolution of organized crime’s level of interweaving, passing from a parasitic stage to a symbiotic stage which means the existence of a criminal State, directly responsible and administrator of the illegal income that is produced in its territory (Lupsha 1996), which is executed through actors such as the Cartel de los Soles, Tren Aragua and the Pranes Cartel alongside with high government members and its military forces.

Protection for illegal armed groups and FARC dissidents in Venezuela has been present since the mid-2000s. However, the contagion of cocaine production has been a trend since 2014 and it is a natural result of the existence of these groups in Venezuelan territory.

Another key implication in terms of organized crime has to do with the capture of empty spaces left by the FARC combatants who demobilized. The intention to generate more ambitious passage routes that connect the east and the exit to the Pacific Ocean in search of drug markets, minerals and other goods is clear. This spawn different processes of violence and cooperation between armed groups. The Putumayo case was representative because there were agreements between criminal groups to divide their zones of influence and moderate the levels of violence for years. Nevertheless, cases such as Norte de Santander, Arauca and La Guajira denote violent struggles between criminal groups in predatory logic of organized crime where actors in dispute are forced to use deep violence in order to establish land control. Besides, an increase in illicit crops is expected due to failures in security policies and eradication and substitution strategies. As well, social coercion displaces the institutional presence through coca grower strikes, which provide opportunities for armed actors to strength organized crime activities in those zones and new ones.

Therefore, the practices of organized crime resulting from the criminal transitions from the peace agreement are guiding the interactions among local governments, peasant and indigenous societies. As well, is an element of social regulation, an illegal authority with the capacity to use violent force, and an actor that generates (illicit) resources and wealth. In other words, organized crime in some regions of Colombia emulates the basic functions of the State: generating wealth, administering justice, and enacting authority and social regulation through force.

Hence, the peace agreement is an element with a high potential for transforming the conflict, violence, and criminality in Colombia. Yet, more than five years after its signing, the implementation is proving to be more complex than previously thought. Meanwhile, the political and armed reconfigurations of the FARC and the irruption of interests of third are getting stronger affecting contexts of violence and territorial vulnerability that the peace enforcement seeks to deal with. At the same time, the existence of insufficient security policies leave the institutional efforts for peace in a compendium of intentions that are not compatible with a reality characterized by the reissue of violence and conflict and not by a real will of the FARC to bet effectively for peace from a framework of lawfulness and democracy.