Andean Group - September 2026

The 7.4-magnitude earthquake which shook western Colombia on 10 August, just three days after President Abelardo de la Espriella took office, meant that his security plans took a backseat during his first weeks in power. Nevertheless, he has already torn up the security and counternarcotics playbook that was drafted by his left-wing predecessor, Gustavo Petro (2022-2026). Promises of a tougher stance on these issues have been applauded by Washington but also seem to have generated pushback from the country’s guerrilla groups, which carried out a wave of bombings and drone attacks in the weeks after the change of government.

Underlining his promise to place security policy at the heart of his agenda, De la Espriella broke with tradition for the 7 August inauguration ceremony. Rather than receiving the presidential sash in the congressional building in the capital Bogotá, legislators decamped to Cali, the capital of the southwestern department of Valle del Cauca, where the ceremony was conducted at the Universidad Santiago de Cali before De la Espriella departed to a nearby military base to deliver his first speech as president. The decision to hold the inauguration in Valle del Cauca was portrayed by De la Espriella as a sign of his commitment to Colombia’s southwest, one of the epicentres of the internal conflict. He had originally intended to be sworn into office in the more conflictive neighbouring department of Cauca, but his team abandoned these plans citing concerns about ashfall from the erupting Puracé volcano.

De la Espriella told the troops assembled for his inaugural address that “the time of recovery of order, authority, and freedom has begun”. This, he said, would entail the scrapping of Petro’s flagship ‘total peace’ policy, which aimed for the negotiated demobilisation of all armed groups but is widely considered to have been a failure. De la Espriella said that talks with insurgent and criminal groups have been “exhausted” and called on their members to “submit to the rule of law or face the decisive strength of the Colombian State”. The U-turn on peace talks was driven home on 26 August when De la Espriella approved the extradition to the US of five members of armed groups who had been involved in negotiations under Petro.

On drug policy, De la Espriella’s main announcement was that his government would reintroduce the aerial fumigation of coca crops using herbicides. This practice was suspended in 2015 by the constitutional court due to concerns about its environmental and health impacts. Efforts to revive it under Petro’s right-wing predecessor, Iván Duque (2018-2022), were unsuccessful due to his government’s failure to explain to the court how these concerns could be mitigated. Duque’s experience raises questions over whether De la Espriella will be able to follow through on his pledge, although he said that the use of “latest generation” herbicides would enable the revival of aerial fumigation.

De la Espriella also announced on 24 August that all illegal armed groups will be regarded as terrorist organisations, which he said would end special treatment for some groups – an apparent reference to the ideological origins of guerrilla groups, which has facilitated their inclusion in peace talks. “That distinction ends now,” De la Espriella said, adding: “When it comes to combatting crime, there won’t be any differences in the actions or response of the State, and certainly not according to a categorisation invented by sectors trying to protect those criminals so that the State can’t exercise its legitimate use of force”. He added that “they’re all terrorists and we’re going to treat them as such”.

This harder stance has been met with defiance from guerrilla and drug trafficking groups, which have persisted under various guises despite successive administrations’ efforts to rein them in either through force or via peace talks. There is a long road ahead if De la Espriella is hoping to bludgeon them into submission. The most hardline security strategy in recent memory – the ‘Democratic Security’ model of former president Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) – turned the tide against the main security threat at the time, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc), but did not result in its disintegration. Instead, Uribe’s strategy made the Farc more inclined to seriously participate in peace talks offered during the next government, led by Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018). Even a full decade after the 2016 peace agreement, dissident Farc outfits remain a force to be reckoned with. Expectations of a rapid improvement in security during De la Espriella’s term should therefore be tempered.

Indeed, pushback from armed groups could result in an upswing in violence. In the final hours before the presidential transition, Petro’s former defence minister Pedro Sánchez (2025-2026) said that there had been eight guerrilla attacks that day. Of these, three occurred in Cauca department, two in Antioquia, and one each in Norte de Santander, Tolima, Huila, and Cesar. The first weeks under the new government saw an uptick in bombings and drone attacks targeting security forces and the highway network. These included drone strikes which killed two soldiers in Algeciras municipality, Huila, on 12 August; another in Ábrego, Norte de Santander, on 15 August, which left one soldier dead and five injured; and a third in Norosí municipality, Bolívar, in which nine police officers were wounded on 19 August.

• Drones bring new security challenges

A report published by the human rights ombudsman on 24 August stated that drone attacks increased by 146% between January and May this year, rising from 13 in January to 32 in May. Over that period, 121 drone attacks killed 21 people and left 145 injured. The report states that “the expansion of those attacks into new departments and their use in populated areas demonstrate a transformation of the armed conflict”. A 6 August report by British newspaper Financial Times cited then defence minister Pedro Sánchez (2025-2026) as saying that “the drone industry has exploded and criminals have adapted the technology for attacks, which is a major challenge to battlefield aerial supremacy”. He described this as “a dramatic change that has affected mobility and survival on the battlefield”.

US welcomes security U-turns

The administration of US President Donald Trump made no secret of its dislike of the Petro administration’s efforts to pursue a less militarised response to guerrilla groups and narco violence, even taking the radical step of decertifying Colombia as a counter-narcotics ally in September 2025 [SSR-25-11]. In contrast, the Trump administration has seemed delighted by the pendulum swing that resulted in De la Espriella’s election, with the State Department hailing a “new era in US-Colombia relations” after he took office on 7 August.

The State Department announced US$1bn in security assistance to Colombia, pending approval from the US congress, and said that closer security alignment would include “deploying unmatched US technology, scoping defence spending to be more efficient, building interoperability, and executing coordinated operations with US forces”. The statement also signalled cooperation in coca eradication, tackling illegal immigration, and rebuilding the presence of the State in areas plagued by armed groups. All of this could amount to an effective relaunch of Plan Colombia, which saw the US pump around US$10bn into the country’s security efforts between 2000 and 2015.

On the campaign trail, De la Espriella said that he would push for direct US military involvement against guerrilla and drug trafficking groups. At the time of writing in late August, there had so far been no announcements on this by the Colombian government. However, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth indicated on 12 August that a plan is being developed. Responding to a journalist’s question, Hegseth said that “designated terrorist organisations, with partnered governments, will be legitimate targets ​of the United States government”. He was speaking during a summit in Panama of the US-led Shield of the Americas security alliance, of which Colombia became a member shortly after De la Espriella took office.