In Colombia, Two Rebel Groups Take Different Paths

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — The crowd gathered here in the capital, wearing white shirts and waving campaign signs, as what had once been Colombia’s largest rebel group opened its campaign for the presidency.

But at a northern port, bombs exploded as a different group continued to attack. Five police officers were killed and more than 40 were wounded in the city of Barranquilla in a bombing at a police station. A faction of the National Liberation Army, the guerrilla organization known as the ELN, claimed responsibility.

The contrasting scenes this weekend highlight the challenge Colombia now faces in its road to peace. While the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, have signed a peace deal with the government and entered politics, many guerrillas of the ELN seem bent on pressing their long battle against the state.

On Monday, President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, whose government had been negotiating with the rebels in Ecuador, said he was suspending the talks.

“My patience and the patience of the people has its limits,” Santos said to applause from residents of La Palma, a town he was visiting about 50 miles from the capital. Santos said the negotiations would remain frozen until “there’s a coherence from the ELN between their words and their actions.”

For Colombians, it was more bad news about the prospect for peace. Earlier in the month, members of the ELN said they would not extend a short-lived cease-fire that expired this month. Now, some feared more killings are looming.

“I think Colombia is in for several weeks of pointless bloodletting,” said Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, a Washington-based human rights organization.

Isacson recalled a similar incident in 2015 when the FARC, during its negotiations, killed 11 soldiers, setting off an outbreak of violence that rocked the country.

Ending the conflict with the ELN, most here agree, will most likely prove to be even more of a challenge than ending the one with the FARC was.

The ELN, a Marxist-Leninist organization founded in the 1960s, is more ideological than the FARC and is considered less hierarchical. Individual factions often acting autonomously — at times over the objections of commanders.

Some leaders have joined peace talks, while others openly reject any negotiation. All seem increasingly desperate in a war that seems unwinnable, analysts say.

“The ELN seems lost, even trapped, with limited options, which makes them take erratic steps in different directions,” said Kristian Herbolzheimer, who follows the group at Conciliation Resources, a nongovernmental group that focuses on conflict reduction.

That disorder was on display in the bombings this weekend.

They began Saturday when two motorcyclists threw explosive devices at a police station in Barranquilla, killing five and wounding 40. In a second strike, two officers were killed and a third was wounded in the rural state of Bolivar. Then early Sunday another station was attacked, this time leaving four police officers and three civilians wounded.

At first the authorities blamed organized crime groups, but late Sunday evening, a branch of the ELN, identifying itself as the Front of Urban Warfare, released a communiqué claiming responsibility for the first attack. Colombia’s government later blamed the ELN for the other two attacks.

For many Colombians, the communiqué marked the first time they had heard of the ELN faction. Even some guerrilla leaders were baffled.

“We know about the same as you through media reports and the communiqué,” said one guerrilla commander, who identified himself as Uriel Gómez, in a text message to The New York Times.

It was a contrast to the FARC political party, which spent the weekend unified under its former commander, Rodrigo Londoño, who launched his presidential bid in a downtrodden Bogotá neighborhood.

While Londoño, who is still wanted in the United States on drug trafficking charges, is considered a long-shot to win in the first round of voting in May, his campaigning emphasized the rebel group’s continued commitment to peace.

“I promise to lead a government that propels the birth of a new Colombia,” Londoño told a crowd of FARC members and supporters, who waved flags emblazoned with the group’s new logo — a red rose. “A government that at last represents the interests of the poor.”

Yet the speech was overshadowed by the rebel attacks, which other presidential candidates seized on as evidence that Santos has been too soft on both FARC and ELN guerrillas.

“I’ve been condemning it for a long time, and I will keep doing so, that the ELN is taking advantage of the dialogue in Ecuador to strengthen itself militarily in Colombia,” said Germán Vargas Lleras, a presidential contender who was Santos’ vice president during the peace negotiations.

Few politicians openly support the peace deal, which remains deeply contentious among Colombians who rejected it in a 2016 referendum. And with only months left in Santos’ term it seems increasingly likely that ending the conflict with the ELN will fall to the next government.

“The ELN know that this government only has five months left — there’s nothing for them to negotiate with this government, so they say why bother?” said Ariel Avila, deputy director of the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation, a Bogota-based think tank.