Colombia Closes Its Last Peace Table and Strips Armed Groups of Political Status
COLOMBIA · SECURITY
Key Facts
- —The act Resolution 391 revokes the government’s thirteen representatives at the ELN table. It was signed on 9 September.
- —The words “Se acabó la falsa paz,” the president said on Friday. Criminals will have no political status, he added.
- —The reach Every dialogue process and legal space inherited from the previous government has now been closed.
- —The law Political status is what makes pardons possible in Colombia, and what blocks extradition for rebellion.
- —The catch The statute authorising all of it was extended for four years in November 2022. It lapses this November.
- —The ground ELN units destroyed a police substation at Guamalito over three attacks, then occupied the ruins.
Abelardo de la Espriella told Colombians on Friday that the false peace was over. The statute the whole framework rests on runs out in under two months.
Colombia’s president closed the last of the peace tables this week. He also stripped armed groups of their political status, which carries further.
“Se acabó la falsa paz,” Abelardo de la Espriella said in a video on Friday. In his government, he added, criminals will have no “estatus político, contemplaciones ni impunidad.”
In Colombia that middle phrase is not rhetoric. It names a legal category that controls who can be pardoned and who can be extradited.
What Was Signed
The instrument is Resolución Ejecutiva 391 of 2026. It revokes the designation of the thirteen people who represented the government at the talks with the ELN.
Among them were Vera Grabe, who led the delegation, and the senators Iván Cepeda and María José Pizarro. The resolution was signed on 9 September.
It was reported in Colombia the same day. Friday’s video was the president confirming it, not disclosing it.
Two companion resolutions were signed alongside. One revoked the five representatives to the legal space with the Clan del Golfo.
The other ordered the closure of a temporary location zone at Valle del Guamuez, in Putumayo, by 30 September. About 99 former combatants of a FARC dissident structure are housed there.
Nine further resolutions had already gone out on 28 August, and two more on 3 September. Between them they ended the processes with the bloc led by the man known as Calarcá and two other armed structures.
The September pair closed the talks with Comuneros del Sur and with criminal gangs in Medellín. Nothing inherited from the last government is still open.
Why Political Status Is the Real Story
Colombian law treats rebellion and sedition as political offences. The Constitutional Court restated that in a 1997 ruling and has returned to the question since.
The 1991 constitution attaches concrete privileges to that category. Congress and the president may grant amnesty and pardon for political offences.
Extradition is barred for them. A conviction for one does not bar election to Congress.
That exemption is written office by office. It is not a general immunity from public service.
The bridge is recognition. It is the national government that decides which armed organisations it treats as political, and that decision is taken by resolution.
The Deadline Nobody Is Discussing
There is a problem underneath all of this. The statutory framework was not permanent.
Colombia’s peace law dates from 1997 and has to be renewed. The last renewal came in a law promulgated on 4 November 2022, which extended it for four years.
That same law gave several of its own core articles a four-year life from the date of promulgation. On the plain text, the authority lapses in early November.
Congress can extend it again, as Congresses have done repeatedly since 1997. If it does not, the tools for recognising or de-recognising anybody expire with it.
That makes the argument about political status narrower than it sounds. Both the granting and the withdrawing rest on a law with under two months to run.
The Ground the Decision Sits On
The ELN has spent a fortnight attacking police buildings. On the night of 31 August a car bomb struck the police station at Los Patios, in Norte de Santander.
One person was killed, a Venezuelan civilian. Injury counts differ by outlet, from eleven to fifteen, and include police officers.
The ELN claimed the attack in a communiqué on 2 September. In it the group said the president had closed off any political and negotiated solution.
That communiqué answered the August round of closures, not Friday’s video. The sequence matters because it shows the rupture predates the announcement.
On 2 September explosives dropped by drone hit a police substation at El Burro, in Pailitas, Cesar. Semana and La FM attributed it to the ELN; El Tiempo reported that authorities were still identifying the structure.
Nobody was hurt there. The substation had held no permanent police presence since an earlier attack about a month before.
Guamalito
The clearest case is a village substation in El Carmen, Norte de Santander. Guamalito was attacked on Friday 4 September and again on Monday 7 September.
Vanguardia reported that the second attack destroyed it. Twenty-one officers were airlifted out in the early hours of 9 September.
A third attack followed on 10 September. What was left, including an anti-drone bunker, was dynamited the next day.
On 11 September residents said presumed ELN fighters had taken over the ruins. The state had left and the guerrillas had walked in.
On Friday the government agreed with the department to rebuild it. The interior and defence ministers met the governor of Norte de Santander.
They promised reinforced military and police presence in priority Catatumbo municipalities. The substation will go back up where it was.
Why This Matters Beyond Colombia
Colombia has negotiated with armed groups, on and off, for forty years. The legal machinery for doing so was built deliberately and used by governments of both sides.
Removing recognition does not dismantle that machinery. It puts it out of use, and the statute behind it may lapse before anyone tests the point.
For investors and neighbours the signal is about method. Security policy has moved from negotiation to force, and the border departments are where that will be measured.
Venezuela lies on the other side of that border. Every ELN front now under military pressure in Catatumbo has somewhere to go.
More: Colombia news in English, every day from The Rio Times.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is ‘political status’ in Colombia?
It is official recognition that an armed group is a political actor rather than a purely criminal one. That recognition is what opens the way to dialogue and, for individuals, to clemency for political offences.
Why does it affect extradition?
Because Colombia’s constitution bars extradition for political offences such as rebellion. If conduct is treated as ordinary crime instead, that protection does not apply.
Can the decision be reversed?
Recognition is granted and withdrawn by executive resolution, so in principle a later government could restore it. The complication is that the enabling law itself expires in November unless Congress renews it.
What is ‘paz total’?
It was the previous government’s policy of opening simultaneous talks with every armed group in Colombia, guerrilla and criminal alike. Those processes have now all been closed.
Sources: Semana, Infobae, El Tiempo, El Colombiano, El País, Vanguardia, La Silla Vacía, La FM, Pares, Corte Constitucional de Colombia, Función Pública, Comisión de Regulación de Comunicaciones.
This article was produced by The Rio Times’ automated newsroom system. How we use AI · Report an error
Read More from The Rio Times