President Gustavo Petro said Monday that he ordered bombardments on the presumed location of dissident FARC guerrilla chief “Ivan Mordisco” in the jungles of southern Colombia.
In a post on social media platform X, Petro said that “I have ordered the bombing and military dissolution of the front line established by the military forces.”
The president responded to a post by Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez, who said that that military and police forces “are carrying out a forceful offensive operation in the jungles of Guaviare against the narcoterrorist structures” of the FARC dissident organization EMC.
According to Sanchez, Mordisco and his guerrillas “threaten and extort communities and farmers in” the southern province.
Mordisco is the commander of the oldest of at least four guerrilla organizations that were formed in opposition to a peace deal that was signed by the FARC and former President Juan Manuel Santos in 2016.
The EMC controls significant swathes of territory in the southeast of Colombia, where the group was founded, and in the southwest, where the guerrillas play a major role in the production and export of cocaine.
Peace talks between Mordisco’s group and the Petro administration fell apart in April of last year because of the EMC units’ alleged failure to uphold a ceasefire in the southwest of Colombia.
Since then, the military has been trying to weaken the guerrillas’ grip on coca-growing regions in the southwestern Cauca province and has been trying to take out Mordisco in jungle operations, so far without success.
The EMC commander has been a member of Colombia’s insurgencies for almost 30 years and is an expert in financing illegal armed groups through extortion and other organized crime activity.
