For decades, Colombia’s civil war has been a distant headline for most Britons, a conflict fought in jungles and mountain villages that seems to belong to another age. But this week, the war has done something new: it has stepped into the presidential race, and the UK government is rattled. Foreign Secretary David Lammy issued a stark warning on Monday that the violence risks becoming a regional contagion, spilling over borders into Ecuador, Peru and beyond. The immediate cause for alarm is the rapid escalation of fighting between the Marxist guerrilla group ELN and government forces in the Catatumbo region, a coca-producing area near the Venezuelan border. But what has truly shifted the dynamics is the way the conflict has become a weapon in Colombia’s domestic politics.
The presidential campaign of leftist candidate Gustavo Petro, once a guerrilla himself, has been thrown into chaos by accusations that his past links to the M-19 group make him soft on terrorism. Meanwhile, his right-wing rival, Federico Gutierrez, has been filmed visiting army units in the conflict zone, promising a crackdown that would make the hardline policies of past administrations look mild. In Bogota, the middle classes are nervously watching their grocery bills rise as food supply chains buckle under the weight of roadblocks and landmines. In Medellin and Cali, a new kind of fear has taken hold: the fear that the war is coming to the cities.
But the human cost is most visible in the rural towns that have become battlegrounds. I spoke via WhatsApp to a teacher in Tibu, a town that has changed hands three times in the past month. She told me: "We do not know who will be in charge tomorrow. The children are afraid to go to school because they are afraid of being caught in a crossfire. The adults are afraid to speak because they do not know which side will be listening." This is the reality behind the political posturing. The conflict, which has already displaced 8 million people and killed 260,000, is grinding on with a new intensity that is forcing neighbouring governments to rethink their own security postures.
The UK’s warning, issued through the Foreign Office, is likely to translate into increased support for Colombia’s peace process and perhaps a subtle shove towards dialogue rather than escalation. But on the streets of London, where many Colombian exiles now live, the news has been met with a grim sense of inevitability. "The war never really ended," said a café owner in Elephant and Castle, who fled Bogota in the 1990s. "It just changed its name." As the campaign heats up, the question is whether any candidate can truly offer peace, or whether the war has simply become another tool in the electioneering machine.