How many Colombian fighters are really inside Venezuela?

How many Colombian fighters are really inside Venezuela?

Photo: Insight Crime

 

Colombia’s top military commander says 40 percent of ELN and ex-FARC fighters operate in Venezuela, a figure that must be considered speculative but reflects important shifts in guerrilla dynamics, with consequences for both countries.

By Insight Crime

Oct 5, 2021

General Luis Fernando Navarro Jiménez, commander of Colombia’s Armed Forces, told Reuters recently that the four Venezuelan border states harbor up to 1,200 fighters of the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN). He estimated that the ELN, Colombia’s largest remaining rebel force, has a total of some 2,350 fighters.

Meanwhile, the region accounts for about 700 of an estimated 2,400 fighters belonging to dissident cells of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC), known as the ex-FARC Mafia, according to Navarro Jiménez.

It’s notoriously difficult to discern the number of Colombian fighters in Venezuela. Still, the general’s breakdown of ELN and ex-FARC members in that country gives an indication of the state of these groups in Venezuela. Both use the country as a strategic rearguard area and staging post for drug trafficking and other illicit activities – largely with the Venezuelan government’s toleration, if not outright complicity.

Below, InSight Crime explores three key considerations arising from Navarro’s estimates.

1. Fluctuating Figures from Few States

Estimates of Colombian guerrilla forces in Venezuela have fluctuated considerably in recent years.

A September 2019 report by the Colombian Foreign Ministry to the Organization of American States reported 1,043 ELN guerrillas and 231 FARC dissidents in Venezuela. However, the figures were far below intelligence numbers shared with Colombian media suggesting that there were 600 former FARC fighters in the country. A statement by Colombian President Iván Duque at that time claimed Venezuela was sheltering 1,438 ELN combatants.

More recently, El Tiempo reported in May 2021 that an intelligence document indicated 1,500 Colombian fighters in Venezuela.

These variations likely reflect the difficulty of intelligence gathering in Venezuela and the tendency of fighters to move freely over a porous border.

Meanwhile, it’s odd that Navarro’s most recent estimate of 1,900 fighters refers specifically to Venezuela’s western states of Zulia, Táchira, Apure and Amazonas. This may be, in a way, a tacit acknowledgment of weaker intelligence farther from the Colombian border.

2. Ex-FARC Mafia Expands, ELN Stagnates

Compared to the Colombian Foreign Ministry’s figures from 2019, Navarro’s estimate indicates that the number of FARC dissidents in Venezuela has tripled in the last two years, while ELN numbers have remained fairly constant.

Doubts about the accuracy of the figures notwithstanding, this trend is consistent with InSight Crime’s own investigations and research.

Although the ELN made rapid advances in Venezuela in the wake of the 2017 demobilization of its powerful cousins, the FARC, dissident FARC cells have since regrouped in the border region. The emergence in Venezuela of former FARC leaders who abandoned the peace process has also fortified the presence of certain factions there of ex-FARC.

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