Colombian authorities: More than 200 members of the world's largest drug cartel arrested

Colombian authorities announced today that more than 200 members of the largest drug cartel in the country and the leading one in the world, the Clan del Golfo, which Bogota accuses of targeted killings of police officers, have been arrested.

The increase in armed violence in Colombia is the largest in the last decade.

In late April, President Gustavo Petro accused the Clan del Golfo of implementing a "plan of armed struggle" with the police, similar to that of drug lord Pablo Escobar (Escobar, 1990-1949) in the 1993s, who in an open war against the state paid for the murders of police officers.

The Commander of the Armed Forces, Admiral Francisco Cubides, told reporters today that in a "coordinated" response by authorities since April 15, "217 individuals from the organized armed group" Clan del Golfo have been arrested, 15 drug traffickers have been killed, and 6,8 tons of drugs, around 100 firearms and more than 15.000 bullets have been seized.

The offensive by the Clan del Golfo, based on the remnants of former far-right militias demobilized in the 2000s, has killed 16 police officers and five soldiers since mid-April, the admiral said.

The more than 7.500-member del Golfo clan, considered the largest cartel in the world, is a leading cocaine producer, and insists it is not a gang, but a political organization called the "Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia" (Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia – AGC).

Gustavo Petro, was elected the first leftist president in 2022 on the basis of promises of "total peace" and a strategy to calm the armed conflict that has lasted six decades, through dialogue with several groups - guerrillas, paramilitary formations, drug traffickers.

But with one year left in office, his government is only holding talks with two of the five dissident groups of the former guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), an organization that signed a peace agreement in 2016, and with the small National Liberation Army (ELN) front.

The government has failed to successfully negotiate with the most powerful groups: the Clan del Golfo drug cartel, but also with most of the ELN and the Central General Staff (EMC), the main dissident group of the FARC.