The humanitarian crisis in Venezuela has overflowed across the border into Colombia, an area where left-wing guerrilla groups, right-wing paramilitaries, and drug traffickers concentrate on attracting migrants to reinforce their ranks, said high-level military officials to the news agency Reuters.
Despite the peace agreement signed in 2016, which succeeded in demobilizing the ranks of the FARC, Colombia continues to face violence by armed groups.
Dissenting fighters from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the National Liberation Army (ELN), paramilitaries and drug-trafficking gangs implement plans to attract the Venezuelan “walkers.”
According to military officials, human rights officials, and the immigrants themselves, Venezuelans are recruited while crossing the 2,219-kilometer border through illegal passes known as “trochas” or trails.
Five military commanders told Reuters that up to 30 percent of fighters from illegal armed groups in the eastern border region of Colombia are Venezuelan.
“The recruitment of Venezuelans appears in the two groups, the ELN and the FARC’s dissidence,” said Col. Arnulfo Traslaviña, commander of the Task Force Chiron, a unit that fights illegal armed groups in the region of Arauca, on the border with Venezuela.
According to a report made by Colombian military intelligence, the last official count reported that by the end of May, of the 2,296 dissident combatants belonging to the FARC and of the 2,402 belonging to ELN in Colombia, 239 and 234, respectively, are Venezuelans.
