Opinion

25 years after 9/11, war is still not the answer

(RNS) — It pains me to consider how much harm my government has inflicted abroad and within our own communities since 9/11.

The twin towers of the World Trade Center burn behind the Empire State Building, Sept. 11, 2001, in New York. (AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler, File)

Bridget Moix

September 8, 2026 

RNS

(RNS) — I was 27 years old, living in New York City and early in my career as a Quaker peace advocate, when the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, shook our country and the world. Days later, the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) — where I began my career and which I now run — issued a statement mourning the thousands of lives lost and calling for those responsible to be brought to justice through the rule of law.  

FCNL also warned against backlash targeting innocent Muslim and Middle Eastern communities and urged the U.S. government not to “commit the same sin by compounding the hatred, violence, and injustice of these attacks with its own acts of terror and war against another people.” Even amid profound national grief and uncertainty, FCNL offered a clear and steadfast witness: “War is not the answer.”  

Sadly, many of the concerns we raised after 9/11 became reality — and then became normalized through the Global War on Terror. While the U.S. has a long history of military interventions abroad and racialized oppression at home, our government’s response to 9/11 ushered in decades of endless war and entrenched discrimination, codified through the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force, the Patriot Act and other shortsighted policies. We also saw this war-first approach take root domestically with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which folded immigration enforcement into the post-9/11 national security apparatus and helped bring the tools and logic of wars abroad to immigrant communities here at home.    

Rather than making us safer, these laws deepened the militarization of U.S. policy. The result has been decades of failed wars and military interventions far beyond the countries connected to the 9/11 attacks, alongside increasingly punitive treatment of immigrants within our own borders. A recent FCNL Education Fund report, for example, documents how U.S. military-first approaches since 9/11 have undermined stability and fueled violent conflict in Somalia. Meanwhile, Somali communities in Minnesota, many of whose members came to the U.S. seeking safety, have come under direct attack recently as part of the administration’s campaign against immigrant — particularly Muslim — communities. 

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The Trump administration’s reckless use of military force, cruel mass deportation campaign, erosion of core democratic protections and blatant disregard for the rule of law demand unequivocal opposition. But these abuses did not begin with President Trump. For decades, Democratic and Republican administrations alike have invoked the “war on terror” and national security to justify expanding military action abroad and curtailing immigrant rights at home.  

Friends have long rejected the premise that we must choose between protecting our communities and upholding the rights and dignity of people seeking safety; instead, we have called for policies that advance security for all. For 25 years, fear and violence have too often driven U.S. policy. We need not allow them to dictate what comes next. 

A fully armed MQ-9 Reaper drone taxis down an Afghanistan runway Nov. 4, 2007. (Photo by Staff Sgt. Brian Ferguson/U.S. Air Force/Creative Commons)

It can be difficult to remember that it did not have to be this way. A different response was possible. Rather than invading Afghanistan and Iraq and launching military operations across the globe, the United States could have pursued accountability for the 9/11 attacks through U.S. and international law. It could have strengthened human rights at home while investing in diplomacy, development and peacebuilding abroad. And it could have honored the victims of 9/11 and their loved ones by choosing a path that upheld human dignity and protected innocent lives from further violence.  

Research and experience show that such alternatives are not simply aspirational. The landmark 2008 RAND study, “How Terrorist Groups End,” found that terrorist groups were most often brought to an end through the work of local police and intelligence agencies or through negotiated political settlements—not military force. In other words, the tools most effective at reducing terrorism have often been those that treat it as a matter of law enforcement or political conflict rather than war. 

We have seen that approach work around the world. From the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, negotiation and diplomacy have helped end or dramatically reduce decades of violence involving non-state armed groups. These examples are reminders that pursuing security does not require defaulting to war.

At 52, I still remember the attacks vividly. It was a defining moment for my generation, our country and the world — one that ushered in dangerous and costly changes to U.S. policy, along with new restrictions on our civil liberties and everyday freedoms. I remember a time before security lines and metal detectors became routine at airports, and before the prospect of deployment to war loomed over so many young people.   

It pains me to consider how much harm my government has inflicted abroad and within our own communities since 9/11. Yet when I look back over these 25 years, I am also reminded that the story is not only one of violence and loss. We have made meaningful progress toward peace — and that progress offers both a lesson and a reason for hope.  

Our world is more connected, and civil society has found new ways to organize and advance change across borders and in our own communities. Nonviolent movements have toppled long-standing dictators, more people are challenging racism, sexism and ableism; and our own Congress has grown more diverse than ever before. Younger generations, too, are building movements for greater justice. Even as the promise of a more peaceful, just and sustainable world has sometimes seemed to recede, the work of creating it has grown. 

We have seen that persistence translate into policy change. Last October, Congress repealed the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, ending the Iraq War authorization after decades of advocacy and bipartisan cooperation. And this year, growing public outcry — including from faith leaders standing with their immigrant neighbors — helped stall funding for the administration’s cruel mass deportation campaign for months.   

In 2001, Rep. Barbara Lee stood alone in Congress in voting against the authorization that opened the door to the Global War on Terror. Today, more lawmakers recognize the danger of leaving that law on the books, and momentum for repeal is building. The House recently passed a resolution to end U.S. military action against Iran, which narrowly failed in the Senate. Slowly but surely, Congress is beginning to reclaim its constitutional authority over war. 

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RELATED: Cardinal Robert McElroy explained best why the Iran war is immoral

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It is also long past time to reject an immigration system that treats migrants, families, asylum seekers and entire communities as threats. That fear-driven framework has helped enable the indiscriminate mass deportation campaign we see today. Armed federal agents have no place roaming our streets masked, detaining people without cause or accountability. Congress must confront these abuses, hold Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol accountable and ensure that armed federal agents are not used to intimidate communities — including at or near polling places.  

Twenty-five years after 9/11, another world is still possible. Congress can honor this anniversary by rejecting policies rooted in fear and violence, reasserting constitutional authority over war and protecting the rights and dignity of all people in this country. We do not have to choose between security and justice; lasting security depends on pursuing both.   

At FCNL, our advocacy for a better world continues, just as it did in the grief and uncertainty following 9/11. After 25 years, our conviction remains unchanged: War is not the answer — at home or abroad. 

(Bridget Moix is the general secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation and leads two other Quaker organizations, Friends Place on Capitol Hill and the FCNL Education Fund. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Facebook, TikTok promoted Colombian armed groups’ content to recruit children: HRW

AFP
August 24, 2026

At a press conference in Bogota, Human Rights Watch discussed its report accusing Facebook and TikTok of failing to stop child recruitment online by Colombian armed groups – Copyright AFP Raul ARBOLEDA

Facebook and TikTok failed to prevent the spread of content produced by Colombian armed groups to recruit children and in some cases even “appeared to promote these posts,” Human Rights Watch reported on Monday.

HRW said the circulation of social media content by armed groups “glorifies life in armed group ranks” and promotes “deceptive job offers.”

Since 2021, around 1,500 children have been recruited by armed groups, according to the non-governmental organization.

Armed groups use children for combat, handling weapons, drones and explosives, and intelligence gathering, the HRW report said.

In some cases, children without combat training are used as “cannon fodder,” it said.

“Digital platforms must recognize that they are being used for the recruitment of children” which means they are being used to commit crimes, “including committing war crimes,” HRW Americas director Juanita Goebertus told a press conference in Bogota.

According to the report, almost half of child recruits are Indigenous children, despite Indigenous people only representing around four percent of the population.

Girls account for around 40 percent of child recruits, and are “particularly exposed to sexual violence.”

In the report, HRW described social media posts showing members of armed groups flaunting wads of cash and jewelry.

In other posts, they appear in training camps or listening to “narcocorridos” — a Mexican music genre which celebrates the exploits of infamous drug traffickers.

“What armed groups do really well on social media is to sell a lifestyle,” Mathew Charles, founder of the Mi Historia foundation which works with child victims of conflict, told reporters.

They project “tough-guy masculinity” and the possibility of earning “easy money,” he said, calling on the state and other NGOs to combat “these lies and create counter-narratives.”

HRW said dissident groups that emerged from the now-defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have been responsible for 74 percent of child recruitment cases documented between 2021 and 2025.

HRW said it had informed Meta, Facebook’s parent company, and TikTok’s owner ByteDance of the problem. Both said they had removed the specific content mentioned.

Meta said it “constantly strives to refine (its) approach to combating” child recruitment efforts across its platforms.

TikTok said it “proactively (prevents) illegal armed groups and organized criminal groups from using TikTok, including to target, exploit or recruit minors.”

The historic 2016 peace agreement ended a half-century of war between the government and FARC guerrillas, but remaining armed groups continue to control large swaths of territory in remote parts of Colombia’s northeast and south.

Newly inaugurated President Abelardo de la Espriella has vowed to crack down on armed groups and plans to forge a military alliance with the United States and Israel.

The New Battle For Critical Minerals In The Amazon – Analysis

CRIMINALIZING ARTISANAL MINING


An aerial view of an area degraded by illegal mining in Novo Progresso, in the Brazilian Amazon, during Operation Gold Route, launched by Brazil’s Federal Police in early June 2026 to combat illegal gold mining. (Photo: Brazil Federal Police)

August 18, 2026
Diálogo Américas
By Eduardo Szklarz

Key Takeaways

Criminal organizations long established in Amazonian drug trafficking and illegal gold mining are adapting their territorial control, logistics (airstrips, river routes), middlemen and money-laundering channels to enter the high-value critical-minerals trade driven by global demand for batteries, semiconductors, defense and clean-energy technologies.

Analysts describe an emerging “narco-mineral complex” in which drugs, gold, coltan, cassiterite and other commodities form a single diversified criminal ecosystem that can blend illicitly extracted minerals into legitimate supply chains through forged documents and trade triangulation.

Preventing criminal capture of these strategic resources will require more than dismantling mining camps; it demands stronger financial intelligence, mineral traceability, border controls, disruption of logistical and commercial networks, and expanded international cooperation.

In the Amazon, where criminal organizations have spent decades building networks dedicated to drug trafficking, illegal gold mining, and smuggling, a new economic frontier is emerging. As global demand rises for critical minerals used in batteries, semiconductors, defense systems, artificial intelligence, and clean energy technologies, resources such as coltan, cassiterite, nickel, lithium, niobium, and rare earth elements are becoming increasingly strategic. While illegal gold remains the criminal underworld’s primary mining economy, analysts warn that the same networks controlling its extraction and trade are now well positioned to expand into other high-value minerals.

“These networks are beginning to adapt the infrastructure they use for cocaine and gold trafficking to minerals that power the energy transition, defense systems, and artificial intelligence,” Robert Muggah, co-founder of the Brazil-based Igarapé Institute, a think tank specializing in security and environmental policy, told Diálogo. For criminal organizations, the advantages are clear: They already control territory, clandestine airstrips, river corridors, middlemen, and money-laundering channels that can be rapidly repurposed to support new, high-value illicit markets.


For now, major criminal organizations are not involved in the critical minerals sector to the same extent that they dominate the illegal gold trade. Nevertheless, the trend is raising growing concern. “Gold prices have increased roughly eightfold over the past two decades, and rising prices for critical minerals are beginning to attract more sophisticated criminal groups into this market,” Muggah said.

A testing ground for organized crime

Illegal gold mining has become one of the principal sources of financing for Colombian guerrilla groups, Venezuelan criminal syndicates, Brazilian criminal organizations such as the First Capital Command (PCC) and Red Command (CV), networks linked to the Tren de Aragua, and international money-laundering organizations. Across many border regions of the Amazon, these groups not only exploit illegal mining sites but also exercise forms of criminal governance by controlling access to territory, collecting taxes, regulating mining activities, and providing armed protection for operations.

In June 2026, Brazil’s Federal Police launched Operation Gold Route (Operação Rota do Ouro) in Novo Progresso, Pará state, identifying a site where nearly 80 kilograms of gold are believed to have been extracted illegally over the previous three years. The case illustrates how illegal mining has become integrated into highly organized logistical and financial networks.

The model closely resembles the one that has characterized drug trafficking for decades. “The same groups, corridors, and financial systems that move cocaine, gold, mercury, timber, weapons, and money are now positioned to move critical minerals as well. This is the essence of the narco-mineral complex,” Muggah explained.

Operations carried out in recent years in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory clearly illustrate the complexity of the problem. Authorities discovered that illegal mining sites were supported by networks operating clandestine airstrips, fleets of boats, fuel supply systems, heavy machinery, and intermediaries responsible for funneling illegally mined gold into legitimate commercial supply chains. Destroying excavators and mining camps produced immediate results, but many operations quickly resumed because the underlying logistical and financial infrastructure remained intact. The experience demonstrated that dismantling camps and seizing equipment, while necessary, is not enough if the financial, logistical, and commercial networks sustaining the entire illicit supply chain remain untouched.

It is precisely this adaptability that makes critical minerals particularly vulnerable to criminal infiltration. Unlike narcotics, they can easily be blended with legally mined material. Through forged documentation, trade triangulation, and corporate laundering schemes, illegally extracted minerals can enter global supply chains appearing entirely legitimate.

A single criminal ecosystem

This trend reflects a broader transformation of transnational organized crime in Latin America. Increasingly, hybrid criminal structures no longer rely exclusively on drug trafficking but operate as diversified criminal enterprises. Drugs, gold, coltan, cassiterite, timber, smuggling, financial laundering, and institutional corruption are no longer separate illicit markets but components of a single criminal ecosystem.

Growing demand for critical minerals from the Amazon has accelerated this transformation, giving rise to what Muggah describes as the “narco-mineral complex.”

“It is a broad and enduring ecosystem involving armed groups, illegal miners, logistics operators, informal traders, political actors, public officials, and seemingly legitimate companies,” he said.

According to Muggah, the phenomenon rests on several pillars. The first is territorial control by armed groups over mining areas. In eastern Colombia, for example, dissident factions of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) impose taxes and provide armed protection.

The second pillar is the repurposing of infrastructure originally built for cocaine and gold trafficking. “These systems have been refined over many years to move drugs, gold, mercury, weapons, and money. They can now also be adapted to transport cassiterite and coltan,” Muggah said.

The third pillar consists of commercial and documentary laundering mechanisms. Operation Hephaestus Forge (Operação Forja de Hefesto), conducted by Brazil’s Federal Police in 2023, demonstrated how cassiterite illegally extracted from the Yanomami Indigenous Territory could be sold through intermediary companies, processed by industrial operators, and ultimately exported to international markets, reaching major multinational corporations without revealing its illicit origin.


The fourth pillar is the ability to move minerals across jurisdictions, mix them with legally mined production, and assign them a new origin. The growing international demand for these resources further increases the profitability of this model. One example occurred in April 2025, when Colombian authorities seized nearly 49 metric tons of coltan and tin extracted from areas controlled by armed groups. According to the investigation, the minerals were destined for illegal export to China.

The challenge is no longer limited to combating illegal extraction. It also requires identifying and dismantling the logistical, financial, and commercial networks that allow illicitly sourced minerals to enter international supply chains.

Protecting the supply chains of the future

All indications suggest that the race for the Amazon’s critical minerals is only beginning. As these resources become increasingly important for defense industries, semiconductor manufacturing, advanced technologies, and the global energy transition, criminal organizations will have greater incentives to incorporate them into their illicit economies.

For Amazonian countries, the challenge extends well beyond protecting mineral deposits or combating illegal mining. It will also require strengthening financial intelligence, improving mineral traceability, tightening border and customs controls, dismantling criminal logistics networks, and expanding international cooperation to prevent illegally extracted minerals from entering global supply chains.

If illegal gold demonstrated how organized crime can capture entire extractive industries, critical minerals present an opportunity to act before that model becomes entrenched. Preventing criminal organizations from replicating this pattern in strategically important resources will be essential not only to protecting the Amazon but also to strengthening regional security and safeguarding the integrity of the supply chains on which future economies and advanced technological capabilities will depend.

This article was published by Diálogo Américas

About Diálogo Américas
Diálogo Américas is a professional magazine published by U.S. Southern Command as an international forum for security issues in Latin America.
View all posts by Diálogo América

AU

Dirty gold overtakes cocaine as crime’s cash machine

Cecilia Jamasmie | August 3, 2026 | 

Artisanal miner shows gold produced from ore mixed with mercury. (Stock image by Christophe | AdobeStock.)

Illegal gold mining has become one of organized crime’s most profitable businesses, surpassing cocaine as a source of revenue for some criminal groups and exposing financial institutions, refiners and governments to a rapidly growing illicit finance threat.

For decades, cocaine defined organized crime across Latin America. Today, soaring gold prices and weaker enforcement have transformed illegal mining into a lower-risk, higher-return enterprise, according to Julia Yansura, Program Director for Environmental Crime and Illicit Finance at the FACT Coalition.

“Illicit gold has become a low-risk, high-reward business,” Yansura told MINING.COM. “It generates enormous profits with a much lower likelihood of detection or prosecution than the illicit drug trade.”

The shift reflects a broader transformation in organized crime. Rather than relying primarily on narcotics, criminal organizations have diversified into businesses that include illegal mining, extortion, weapons trafficking and other illicit activities, choosing whichever markets offer the highest returns with the lowest chance of detection.

Governments, however, have been slower to adapt. Decades of investment in anti-narcotics enforcement have left illegal mining comparatively overlooked, allowing criminal groups to expand into a business that finances broader criminal operations while causing extensive environmental damage.

Ecuador has become one of the clearest examples of that shift. The country’s 2026-2029 National Security Plan elevates illegal mining from an environmental and regulatory problem to a national security threat after concluding criminal gangs have infiltrated the gold supply chain from extraction to export. 

Authorities say illicit gold now finances organized crime, fuels money laundering and is increasingly replacing cocaine as a key source of criminal revenue.

Laundering gold

Unlike cocaine, illegally mined gold can be integrated into legitimate supply chains, making it uniquely attractive to organized crime.

Yansura said illicit gold is often laundered close to the mine using forged paperwork or false identities before entering legitimate markets. By the time refiners, traders or banks encounter the metal, it frequently appears legitimate on paper.

Another vulnerability is what she calls the “hand-carry” loophole. While travellers entering or leaving the US must declare cash exceeding $10,000, comparable reporting requirements do not apply to gold bars, allowing criminal organizations to move high-value gold across borders with far less scrutiny.

The financial risks extend well beyond mining regions. Although transactions near illegal mines often involve cash, gold or cryptocurrency, exports are typically financed through the international banking system, exposing financial institutions to illicit finance risk.

A recent WWF-UK and Themis survey of more than 600 financial professionals in 22 countries found that more than 80% of financial institutions are exposed to illicit finance risks linked to illegal mining, yet 40% have not taken steps to address them.

The exposure is particularly significant in the US. FACT Coalition research found the country is the largest destination for Colombian gold exports, even though an estimated 80% of Colombia’s gold is believed to be illegally or criminally sourced.

Yansura said the response should focus as much on financial crime as environmental enforcement. She called for stronger beneficial ownership rules to prevent shell companies from concealing illicit transactions, making transnational illegal gold mining a predicate offence for money laundering under US law and closing customs loopholes that allow high-value gold to cross borders with limited disclosure.

“Governments need to follow not just the gold, but the money,” Yansura said. “That’s how we disrupt the criminal networks behind this trade rather than simply addressing the immediate environmental consequences.”

Gangs hijack Ecuador’s gold mining supply chain

Staff Writer | July 30, 2026 |

Gold panning on the River Anzu, Ecuador. (Stock image by Goran.)

Ecuador has elevated illegal mining to a national security threat after concluding that criminal gangs have infiltrated the country’s gold supply chain, from extraction to export, turning the sector into a major source of financing for organized crime.

The 2026-2029 National Security Plan identifies illegal mining as a strategic security challenge rather than simply an environmental or regulatory issue. 

The government says criminal organizations use illicit gold production to launder drug trafficking proceeds, while financing mining operations with machinery, chemical supplies and armed protection.

Ecuador’s new strategy reflects growing concern that illegal mining has become one of organized crime’s most lucrative businesses in the country, fuelling violence, money laundering and environmental destruction while exposing weaknesses across the local mineral supply chain.

Entering supply chains

The plan identifies Los Lobos as Ecuador’s dominant criminal organization in illegal mining and says the gang has expanded across the gold value chain. A report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) similarly concludes that Los Lobos is involved from extraction through exports via the ports of Guayaquil and Puerto Bolívar.

Authorities say illegally mined gold is blended with legally produced metal before entering formal markets, allowing criminal groups to launder proceeds from drug trafficking. The plan also links illegal mining to fuel theft, saying stolen diesel powers mining equipment used at illicit sites.

Official figures illustrate the industry’s rapid growth. Complaints of illegal mining rose to 393 in 2025 from 249 in 2021, an increase of about 58%, according to the Office of the Attorney General. 

GI-TOC estimates the number of illegal mining sites expanded from fewer than 60 before 2018 to more than 600 by 2024.

Nearly 70% of Ecuador’s protected areas are located in the Napo province, where most illegal miners are active.

Trade data also point to booming exports. UN Comtrade shows Ecuador exported 19.2 tonnes of gold worth more than $900 million in 2022, while the country’s central bank recorded exports of more than 27 tonnes of doré gold in 2023.

Ongoing crackdown

Ecuador has already intensified its campaign against illegal mining over the past year, particularly after 11 soldiers were killed in an ambush in the Amazon last year during an operation targeting illegal mining groups.

The government blamed the attack on the Border Commandos, a dissident faction of Colombia’s former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, which authorities say operates alongside local criminal organizations.

To combat the surge, the government plans to tighten controls across the mining logistics chain, formalize artisanal mining, dismantle illegal fuel networks and expand military operations against illicit mines. 

It also aims to establish a nationwide monitoring system by 2027 and introduce a mineral traceability system between 2028 and 2029 covering all mining resources transported to ports and processing plants. The broader goal is to disrupt 88% of organized crime structures by 2029.

Gold flows to Hong Kong hit decade-high before clearing launch

Bloomberg News | July 29, 2026 

Stock image.

Hong Kong’s imports of gold surged to the most since late-2014 in June, driven by preparations for the city’s recently launched clearing system as well as solid demand from mainland China.

Bullion inflows surged to more than 130 tons, according to the city’s customs authority. Net imports, which indicate how much of the precious metal is staying within Hong Kong, were at their highest since December 2023.

Hong Kong began trial operations earlier this month for a clearing mechanism aimed at boosting the city’s role in global trading and pricing of bullion. Ahead of that, banks had to build up inventories of large gold bars to allow physical delivery into the system.

But part of the increase was also likely driven by appetite for bullion over the border in mainland China. The city functions as a key transit point for gold to be processed or traded before being re-exported, and the mainland accounts for the bulk of outbound volumes.

China’s gold imports hit a two-year high last month, as cheaper prices and a stronger yuan kept investors interested, while banks were motivated to use up import quotas and stock up on bullion to meet retail commitments.

(By Yihui Xie)

Zijin’s $4B Allied Gold takeover collapses, but it still buys in

Cecilia Jamasmie | July 29, 2026 | 

The CDI complex. (Image courtesy of Allied Gold.)  

Zijin Gold’s planned $4 billion acquisition of Allied Gold (TSX, NYSE: AAUC) has collapsed after Chinese regulators failed to approve the transaction before the deadline, leaving the state-backed miner with a 9.2% stake instead.

Shares of Allied fell nearly 18% in early morning trading in Toronto after the companies said Wednesday they had mutually agreed to let the July 29 deadline expire because there was “no reasonable likelihood” the remaining closing conditions would be satisfied within a reasonable period.

The stock dropped to C$24.27, valuing the Canadian gold miner at just over C$3 billion ($2.1 billion). In New York, the shares were down 16% at $17.68 as of 10 a.m. local time.

While the deal secured approvals in Canada and other international jurisdictions, it remained stalled in China. Other outstanding issues, including security and streaming arrangements, capital investments and lending agreements, also remained unresolved.

The collapse ends what would have been one of this year’s largest gold mining acquisitions. Zijin, which is indirectly owned by the Chinese government, offered $44 a share in cash for the Toronto-based miner in January, valuing Allied at about $4 billion and marking an all-time high for its stock.

Instead, Zijin agreed to subscribe for about 12.8 million newly issued Allied shares at C$32.55 each in a private placement worth about $295 million, with the transaction expected to close on or about Aug. 10.

The failed takeover underscores the growing challenges facing large cross-border mining transactions as geopolitical tensions and regulatory scrutiny increasingly complicate deals involving Chinese buyers. The financing nevertheless provides Allied with fresh capital as it ramps up production across Africa.

Growth plans

Allied said it will use the proceeds to complete and ramp up the Kurmuk mine in Ethiopia, expand the Sadiola mine in Mali, increase production at its Côte d’Ivoire operations and fund exploration across its portfolio.

The company operates gold mines in Mali and Côte d’Ivoire that produce about 375,000 oz. of gold annually and is preparing to begin production at Kurmuk. Allied went public in 2023, with executive chairman Peter Marrone investing about $50 million of his own money.

Marrone founded Yamana Gold in 2003 and later oversaw its $4.8 billion sale to Agnico Eagle Mines (TSX: AEM)(NYSE: AEM) and Pan American Silver (TSX: PAAS)(NYSE: PAAS) in 2023.

Brazil court issued final ruling on Belo Sun gold mining project

Staff Writer | July 28, 2026 |

The Volta Grande gold project is situated in the Pará State. (Image courtesy of Belo Sun.)

Canadian miner Belo Sun Mining Corp. (TSX: BSX) has secured a final court ruling that permanently dismisses a class action challenging the Indigenous licensing process for its proposed $300 million Volta Grande gold project in Brazil.

Brazil’s Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region unanimously ruled the lawsuit must be dismissed because it duplicated an earlier case involving the same claims and requested remedies.

The Federal Public Defender’s Office (DPU), which sought to suspend the project’s installation licence pending additional consultations and studies with the Araras da Volta Grande and Jurunas da Paquiçamba Indigenous communities, did not appeal before the statutory deadline, making the decision final and binding.

Brazil names Belo Sun’s Volta Grande “strategic” project

“This final court ruling is a major milestone for Belo Sun and a clear validation of our legal position,” CEO Clovis Torres said. “Other repetitive lawsuits will certainly have the same fate. It reinforces our confidence in Brazil’s judicial framework as we remain focused on advancing the project responsibly, while maintaining open communication with local stakeholders, and delivering long-term value for our shareholders.”

The decision removes a significant legal obstacle for the Volta Grande project, which Belo Sun says has the potential to become Brazil’s largest open-pit gold mine. The ruling also strengthens the company’s position against similar legal challenges as it continues to pursue environmental licensing and project development.

Belo Sun said it will continue defending its legal position in Brazilian courts while advancing the project through the remaining permitting process. The company said it will provide further updates as developments warrant.

Illegal Gold Mining Fuels Evolution Of Criminal Networks In Peru – Analysis

File photo of Peruvian soldier participating in "Mercurio 2019" Operation against illegal mining. Photo Credit: Peru's Ministry of Interior

July 25, 2026
Diálogo Américas
By Oliver Lawson

Key Takeaways:

Illegal Gold Mining Surpassing Drug Trafficking in Scale: High gold prices, easy laundering into legal markets, and weak enforcement in remote Amazonian areas have driven rapid expansion; cumulative mining-related deforestation reached 139,169 hectares by mid-2025, and by some estimates the illicit gold economy now exceeds narcotics in financial value.

Convergence of Criminal Economies: Traditional coca-producing networks from the VRAEM and elsewhere are diversifying into illegal mining through capital investment, shared logistics, supply chains, and personnel, creating cross-regional alliances rather than hierarchical national cartels.

Enforcement and Laundering Challenges: Gold’s untraceable nature after processing enables effective money laundering (55% of suspicious financial transactions linked to illegal mining); authorities face difficulties policing vast river systems, distinguishing legal from illegal operations, and countering the adaptability of criminal groups that shift locations after crackdowns.

The rapid expansion of illegal gold mining in Peru’s Amazon and border regions is reshaping criminal dynamics across the country as traditional coca-producing networks in the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro Rivers Valley (VRAEM) and elsewhere increasingly invest capital and manpower in illicit mining operations.

High global gold prices, the ease with which illicit gold can be laundered into legal markets, and the challenges of policing vast Amazonian territories have accelerated the growth of illegal gold mining. The Monitoring of the Andes Amazon Program (MAAP), using satellite imagery, found that cumulative gold mining-related deforestation had reached 139,169 hectares across nine Peruvian regions by mid-2025. As illegal gold mining expands, it is becoming one of Peru’s largest criminal economies, and by some estimates, now exceeds drug trafficking in financial scale.


The expansion of illegal mining has been particularly pronounced in Peru’s Amazonian regions, where alluvial deposits are easier and less costly to exploit than hard-rock deposits in the Andes. According to Professor Ricardo Soberón, former director of the Center for Research on Drugs and Human Rights (CIDDH), “In the Andes you have to move 10 tons of earth to extract 10 grams of gold. In the jungles and the rivers, you move 3 tons of earth to get the same yield.”

Cross-regional criminal networks

The rise of Illicit gold mining is creating new cross-regional criminal networks as organizations traditionally associated with coca production diversify their investments. According to Dr. Cesar Ipenza Peralta of the Universidad del Pacífico, “many people from the VRAEM have migrated to different zones of the country… many drug traffickers see an opportunity,” because gold is more easily introduced into legal markets.

He continues, “many drug traffickers who were associated with the VRAEM and had operations in zones distant from or near the VRAEM are today linked to illegal mining… For example, drug traffickers from the VRAEM who were in Puerto Inca, in Huánuco, in another department of the Central Amazon, today dedicate themselves to illegal mining.”

Peru’s criminal structures generally consist of decentralized local networks rather than the nationwide, hierarchical structures seen elsewhere in the region, such as Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN), dissident factions of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the Clan del Golfo. “We have never had a cartel in Peru, and we don’t have a structured group that controls the entire country; rather, alliances between groups supply them with inputs,” observed Dr. Peralta.

Rather than seeking territorial control across multiple regions, Peru’s criminal structures are increasingly integrating through financial investment and operational alliances, laundering profits from coca production in the VRAEM through illegal mining in the Amazon. The expansion is economic rather than territorial.

In areas where both gold mining and coca production occur, the two illicit economies increasingly share supply chains, logistics networks, transportation routes, and local intermediaries. According to Soberón, “the capitals of cocaine that are received within Peru are easily invested in buying the machinery and the supplies for the auriferous activity… the two industries share logistics, they share supplies, they share territory, they share social actors, they share exit routes.”

Money laundering

Illegal gold mining has become particularly attractive to coca producers and drug traffickers because it offers an effective mechanism for laundering illicit proceeds. Once extracted, gold is difficult to trace, exists in multiple forms, and cannot be distinguished on international markets based on whether it originated from legal or illegal operations.

According to Soberón, “It’s very simple: Once you take the rock to the processing plants that are on the coast of Peru, the gold that comes out is already legal. There is no way to prevent it from entering the market as traditional export.”

The value of gold can also be manipulated by misclassifying its purity or form, allowing criminal organizations to conceal illicit profits through apparently legitimate commercial transactions. An investigation by Peruvian investigative outlet Ojo Público documented supply chains that relied on falsified documentation to disguise the origin and value of illegally extracted gold products. Once laundered into legal supply chains, the metal can be exported to international markets, including China, once of the world’s largest importers and processors of gold, making the illicit origin of the metal difficult to detect.


The scale of these illicit financial flows has made illegal mining one of Peru’s principal money-laundering mechanisms. According to Peru’s Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF), 55 percent of suspicious financial transactions linked to predicate offenses between January 2015 and June 2025 were associated with illegal mining.

The challenges of enforcement

The Peruvian government faces a difficult challenge in confronting the convergence of narcotics trafficking and illegal gold mining. The country’s extensive Amazonian river system spans thousands of kilometers, making sustained surveillance and enforcement both operationally complex and resource intensive.

From 2015 until 2019, Peru deployed police officers and military personnel to ranger posts throughout Madre de Dios to strengthen the state’s presence in key mining areas. Maintaining those remote positions, however, proved costly and logistically demanding, while only a small portion of the region’s river network could be effectively monitored.

Building on those efforts, the government launched Operation Mercurio in 2019, combining the Armed Forces, National Police, prosecutors, and environmental authorities in a sustained campaign to dismantle illegal mining camps in La Pampa. While the operation significantly reduced illegal mining in the immediate area, criminal groups adapted by shifting activity to other remote locations and protected areas. More recently, in early 2026, Peruvian authorities conducted joint military and police operations targeting renewed illegal mining activity in and around Tambopata National Reserve, underscoring both the government’s continued efforts and the adaptability of criminal networks.

Enforcement is further complicated by the blurred boundaries among illegal mining, legal operations, and artisanal mining. Some operators simultaneously participate in legal and illegal activities, while the legality of mined gold often depends on documentation and permitting rather than the extraction process itself. These overlapping systems make it difficult for authorities to determine the legal status of mining operations during inspections and create opportunities for criminal organizations to integrate illicit gold into legitimate supply chains.

For Peruvian security forces, the challenge is no longer simply combating narcotrafficking or illegal mining as separate crimes. Increasingly, the same criminal actors finance, transport, and protect both activities. Disrupting these interconnected networks will require sustained intelligence sharing, interagency coordination, and continued cooperation with regional partners to deny transnational criminal organizations the ability to diversify and expand their illicit operations.

This article was published by Diálogo Américas

About Diálogo Américas
Diálogo Américas is a professional magazine published by U.S. Southern Command as an international forum for security issues in Latin America.
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Colombia and Latin America: A new stage of the struggle

By Ted Zuur

Published 29 July, 2026

First published at Against The Current.

Sprawling over the southern hills of Bogotá, Ciudad Bolivar is a vast proletarian neighborhood of 700,000 people. On July 20, the first of Colombia’s two Independence days, it was the center of a national celebration of the country’s independence, replete with military ceremony — combined with the start of a mass campaign of resistance against the unprecedented attack against Colombian sovereignty represented by U.S. interference in the presidential election that appears to have placed an extreme rightwing candidate, Abelardo de la Espriella, in the office of the presidency of this country.

More than 100,000 people filled the parking lot of the Gran Plaza El Ensueño shopping mall and all the surrounding streets for blocks, to hear the farewell speech of outgoing President Gustavo Petro, the first ever leftwing president of this country and a central leader of the party known as the Pacto Historico (Historic Pact).

Simultaneously, demonstrations were held in every city of the country and in many small towns.

Colombia remains a key epicenter of the class struggle in Latin America and of the struggle between the United States and Latin America, but following this year’s elections, the conditions of that struggle have radically changed.

Legislative elections on March 8 made the Pacto Historico, the rising leftwing party here, the biggest party in Colombia in almost every respect. However, in the first round of the presidential election on May 31, the extreme rightwing dark horse, Abelardo de la Espriella, came in first with 10,361,499 votes to force a runoff with the Pacto Historico’s Senator Ivan Cepeda, who came in second with 9,688,361 votes.

The official candidate of the rightwing Centro Democratico, the party of former rightwing authoritarian President Alvaro Uribe, came in a distant third with only 1,639,685 votes.

Then in the June 21 runoff, the National Election Council’s official vote count gave Abelardo de la Espriella 12,959,542 votes, less than 1% more than the 12,708,712 votes of Senator Ivan Cepeda. (There were 13 candidates on the ballot.) The voter turnout of 63.6% was a record for this country.

De la Espriella is a lawyer who has specialized in defending corrupt politicians and businessmen, paramilitary leaders and drug dealers. For most of the last 20 years he has lived in Florida and Tuscany; he is a citizen of the United States and Italy as well as of Colombia.

His made-in-Miami candidacy was advised by MAGA senator from Ohio Bernardo Moreno (a dual U.S./Colombian citizen like De la Espriella) and endorsed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Donald J. Trump.

When the election results were announced, Trump tweeted, “He Won, BIG!”

Election fraud

The final official results were announced without addressing the more than 57,000 challenges to irregularities such as vote buying and electronic fraud that had already been filed.

President Gustavo Petro, elected as the candidate of the Pacto Historico in 2022 and the country’s first ever leftwing president, announced that he did not recognize the election as valid.

Petro asserted that it had been marked by fraud at the highest level, and subsequently he and others have sued the National Electoral Council, the Registrar of Voters, and the individuals whom they declared victorious. Altogether more than 30 lawsuits have been filed.

The central lawsuit targets the actions of the Registrar and the private contractor Thoms Greg and Company, which control the election process from the printing of forms to the software used to compile, count, and record votes. The Registrar, and the majority of the National Electoral Council, are members of political parties opposed to the Pacto Historico.

A seemingly mundane change made after the 2022 election of Petro, enlarging the E-14 form used at polling stations to record votes from one to two pages, is at the heart of the lawsuit. The change puts the signatures of witnesses and poll workers on a separate page from the record of votes, which creates the possible of falsifying the vote records scanned into the system’s computers.

That change, combined with the massive last-minute addition of hundreds of thousands of voters to the rolls, were the most important elements of a massive fraud according to the suit. The suit also alleges that the new form has also made it impossible for citizens and independent observers to verify any election results.

The lawsuit asks the Council of State, one of the country’s three Supreme Courts, to nullify the election results, conduct a recount or new election, and order changes to prevent future election fraud.

An attack on national sovereignty

At the same time, Ivan Cepeda announced that the Pacto Historico did not recognize the legitimacy of the election of De la Espriella, on the grounds that De la Espriella is a naturalized citizen of the United States who swore an oath to renounce all loyalties to countries other than the United States in order to become a U.S. citizen, thereby making him ineligible to serve as President of Colombia and Commander in Chief of its military forces.

Cepeda announced the beginning of a campaign of peaceful civil disobedience against the election fraud, against the attack on Colombia’s national sovereignty, in defense of the democratic and human rights of Colombians and the people of Latin America, and in defense of the significant gains made by the working class and oppressed of Colombia during Petro’s government.

Despite the official declaration that Abelardo de la Espriella won the presidential election, Colombia is far from being under the control of the United States and Trump’s Viceroy, Secretary of State Rubio.

No return to guerrilla warfare

The Pacto Historico has emphatically rejected the legitimacy of De la Espriella’s election and has begun a campaign of resistance based on mass protests, peaceful civil disobedience, and legal challenges in court. Part of this campaign is a battle to expand the Pacto’s organization through a membership drive and by preparing to run the largest possible number of candidates in next year’s local elections.

Despite the heightened political and social tension within the country, and between Colombia and the United States, what is not in the cards is a return of the left to guerrilla warfare or the preparation of an insurrection.

Colombia’s long history of armed conflict has left the country with a powerful desire for peace, which was the basis of Petro’s policy called Paz Total or Total Peace.

The history of the long series of armed conflicts here began with civil wars between factions of the ruling class organized into the traditional Liberal and Conservative Parties, devolving into local wars for land between poor peasants and large landowners. The peasant forces became part of the organized left, and the landlords’ private armies became rightwing death squads and paramilitaries.

Beginning in the 1970s, the rise of illegal drug production created an intersection between the old conflict and a new conflict for control of drug production and drug shipment routes. Profits from cocaine and other drugs were used to finance an arms race among armed groups which no side could win.

In 1990, M-19 — one of the principal guerrilla groups — made a peace agreement and came in from the cold to participate in that year’s elections. Shortly after the signing, Carlos Pizarro, the presidential candidate of M-19 and father of current Pacto Historico Senator Maria José Pizarro, was assassinated. Nevertheless, that peace agreement led to the constituent assembly which produced the current Colombian Constitution.

It did not lead to peace, however, as the government and the paramilitaries systematically assassinated over 6000 leftwing, social and union leaders, especially members and supporters of the Unión Patriótica, a political party that included supporters of the Communist Party as well as the FARC, the country’s largest guerrilla group.

One of those assassinated was a UP leader Manuel Cepeda, the father of the current Pacto Historico leader Ivan Cepeda. The terror campaign drove the FARC back into the armed struggle and into reliance on the profits of the illegal drug trade to arm itself.

Between 1999 and 2002, the government of President Andres Pastrana negotiated with the FARC while he worked with the United States to reorganize, retrain and rearm the Colombian military for an offensive against the FARC. The joint effort became famous as Bill Clinton’s Plan Colombia.

The military offensive was carried out under the leadership of the next President, Alvaro Uribe, and his Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos. Santos succeeded Uribe as president, and the offensive finally culminated, after the deaths of many FARC leaders and fighters, with a peace agreement in 2016.

Santos won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts and the FARC received various guarantees including seats in the Congress. As a result of the agreement, Colombia established its current system of transitional justice.

Since then, low-level armed conflict has continued with the ELN, with former FARC groups which did not support the peace agreement, and with armed drug gangs descended from the rightwing paramilitary groups, most notably the Clan del Golfo some of whose leaders have been clients of Aberlardo de la Espriella’s law firm.

President Petro’s Paz Total offered peace negotiations with all these groups regardless of whether they have any kind of political orientation or are simply criminal gangs. Despite some agreements which led to demobilizations, and some continuing negotiations, most of these groups continue in the illegal drug business — which is their reason to exist.

Nevertheless, for most Colombians, the armed struggle is just as far away as it is in the United States or western Europe, and that is a reality that they fervently want to continue.

One good measure of just how far Colombia is from its past of armed conflict is tourism, which has boomed during the Petro years. Domestic vacation trips have skyrocketed. In 2025, they grew 8% to reach a record of 50.8 million vacation trips by Colombians within the country.

Foreign tourist visits have grown from 0.6 million in 2007 to 6.49 million in 2025. This economic sector, which was almost completely moribund for decades, now accounts for almost 2.8% of Colombia’s GDP.

De la Espriella and Trump’s threats

All around the world, rightwing media and political parties continuously spotlight violent crime to gain support for more and more funds for police and military forces, which can then be used to defend private property and the political systems of capitalism.

In Colombia, stoking fears of violent crime in the cities and armed conflict in the countryside is the bread and butter of the mainstream media, despite statistics showing that both have declined in the last four years. What Colombian media outlets like RCN and Caracol produce is then recycled by the international media and press from CNN and The New York Times to Fox and Al Jazeera.

Petro’s Paz Total has successfully isolated the armed groups, dramatically reduced their remaining popular support, and diminished the scope of the armed conflict to a few areas of coca production and drug transportation routes well outside of almost all of the country’s population centers.

Despite these facts the right wing in Colombia, the United States and elsewhere have loudly and falsely portrayed Paz Total as a failure. De la Espriella has just as loudly announced that he plans a military offensive as soon as he is in office.

De la Espriella’s real target is not in the countryside, but rather the vibrant and growing political left in Colombia’s cities: the Pacto Historico and its ally the Alianza Verde (Green Alliance.) They represent the most important obstacle to the plans of U.S. and Colombian big business.

Petro’s government banned fracking and halted exploration and drilling for oil and natural gas, while many strip mining and forestry projects in sensitive environments have been successfully blocked by local activists and indigenous communities.

One of De la Espriella’s first priorities is to follow Donald Trump’s lead, immediately end the ban on fracking, and “drill baby, drill.” At the same time, De la Espriella has vowed to roll back and reverse the gains made by the mass movements during the Petro years.

These included historic increases in the minimum salary, expansion of the pension system to cover most of the population, major improvements in public education, and a labor reform that has reduced the work week and restored rights that had been taken away from workers during the Uribe administration.

The Pacto Historico and the Alianza Verde, the electoral expressions of the mass movements which won those gains, are the main targets of U.S. intervention into Colombia and of De la Espriella’s proposed militarization of Colombian society.

De la Espriella has promised to “gut” the left and has proposed to form urban militias reminiscent of the Convivir movement of the 1990s that served as the legal front of the paramilitary groups. He wants to take an Elon Musk-style ax and a Javier Millie-style chain saw to radically reduce the size of the Colombian state, while simultaneously increasing the size of the police and military.

He proposes to remove all restrictions that currently prevent the military from attacking civilian populations. He has promised a witch hunt against the left, the extradition of President Petro and others to the United States, and has proposed the construction of 10 mega-prisons modeled after Bukele’s infamous CECOT in El Salvador.

The witch hunt began in the United States rather than in Colombia when Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally ordered ICE to arrest a Colombian citizen named Beto Coral.

A former candidate of the Pacto Historico, Coral had been living legally in the United States and participating in the Colombian election as a poll watcher at Colombian consulates there. He has since been deported to Colombia. The arrest was reportedly made at the request of De la Espriella.

As soon as the election results were in, and while the persecution of Beto Coral was underway, the presumptive Vice President elect led a group of Abelardo de la Espriella’s closest collaborators to the United States. There they met with Rubio, Senator Bernardo Moreno, and a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Despite photographs, handshakes and praise from Rubio, Moreno and others, they flew home almost empty-handed. Rather than hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, all that Rubio and his coterie promised them was that the United States would help establish quasi-military police logistics centers in isolated rural areas to help with the war against drug dealers.

Although the Colombian right wingers’ dreams of a rebirth of Plan Colombia were dashed, their visit has provided the United States with a pretext for any future military intervention it may decide to undertake in the future.

A frightened new president

Abelardo de la Espriella’s campaign nickname was the tiger, but despite his nickname and war-like rhetoric, he has consistently exhibited extreme fearfulness of being in Colombia, and particularly of being in public in Colombia.

During the campaign, he also spoke behind a curtain of bullet-proof glass. As soon as the election campaign ended, he disappeared from public view, and his place in the public eye was taken over by his presumptive Vice-President elect, Jose Manuel Restrepo. Now, “the tiger” refuses to have his inauguration in the Colombian Congress where such events are traditionally held but instead wants to be inaugurated within the safety of a military base.

The transitional handoff of government between the outgoing administration and the incoming one is governed by law, but De la Espriella has not only boycotted the proceedings, he has ordered his minions to boycott them as well.

This led to the surreal spectacle of transition events in every ministry of the government, televised live on national TV, which feature presentations by the outgoing ministers and vice ministers, chairs reserved for other outgoing appointees full — and a row of empty seats at the table reserved for representative of the incoming De la Espriella government.

To mask the public impression of the effects, De la Espriella has organized a series of meetings with Governors of Departments and Mayors outside Bogotá under the name of a regional transition. Part of his attack on the central government involves plans to move government ministries and agencies out of Bogotá and to relocate them in cities such as Medellin and Barranquilla, where the local governments are run by his political allies.

Part of De la Espriella’s fear is undoubtedly related to his record of routinely betraying his friends and allies. As a lawyer representing Colombian drug dealers, he gained a reputation for betraying them to the DEA.

Leading up to the election campaign, he infuriated his ally former President Alvaro Uribe by opening the door to Ivan Cepeda gaining evidence that helped prosecute Uribe and resulted in the conviction of Uribe’s brother who is now facing a very long prison term.

His political position is precarious. His own political party has only four seats in the Senate, and none in the chamber of deputies. His supporters have put together a rag-tag coalition of rightwing parties divided by personal hatreds and jealousies, but united by fear of the rising tide of the Pacto Historico.

The largest of the rightwing parties, Uribe’s Centro-Democratico, has already defected on the first important vote in the new Senate, election of its presiding officer.

De la Espriella’s legislative coalition nominated a member of the Partido de la U who is well known for two things: extreme corruption and enmity towards Alvaro Uribe. The Centro Democratico balked, nominating one of its own who was surprisingly elected.

The entire bloc of the Pacto Historico along with 13 others, voted for Uribe’s candidate. Although many people on the left were outraged, the result is likely to be that the Senate is going to be even more chaotic and unmanageable than it already appeared to be.

Los que Nunca y Los que Siempre (Those who have never, and those who have always)

In keeping with his reputation for betraying his friends and allies, De la Espriella has already betrayed the people who voted for him. He campaigned as a political outsider, using as his templates the campaigns of Donald Trump in the USA, Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, Javier Milei in Argentina, and Rodolfo Hernandez here in Colombia (the candidate of the Colombian right who lost the 2022 presidential election).

His campaign was built on lies. Knowing that the conservative petty bourgeoisie of the country had turned their backs on the traditional rightwing leadership, he promised to make no deals with the traditional political parties and form a government of “los que nunca” (‘Those who never’ which means something like “the have nots” in English.)

The slogan was a promise to rid the country of the corrupt rightwing politicians while remaining true to conservative values.

His choice of a vice president should have told his voters that this was a lie. The new Vice President, Jose Manuel Restrepo, is a Colombian blue blood who is the descendant of three presidents and was Minister of Finance in the scandal-ridden government of Ivan Duque.

Restrepo appears to be the de facto leader of the new government. Since the election, de la Espriella has disappeared from public view while Restrepo is constantly in the news and is leading the transition team of the new government.

If the choice of Restrepo did not alert de la Espriella’s voter base to his bait and switch game, his cabinet appointments have.

The Cabinet of Los que Siempre (Those who have always)

Party	Name	Ministry	Notes
Cambio Radical*	Elsa Noguera	Minister of Transportation	Key member of the Char family machine, former Mayor, Governor and cabinet minister. Husband is a convicted drug dealer.
Cambio Radical*	Rodrigo Lara Restrepo	Minister of the Interior	Key member of the Char family machine. Long serving member of Congress and the Senate and a former Minister. His father was a Minister of Justice who was assassinated at the orders of Pablo Escobar.
Liberal party*	Mauricio Gómez	Minister of Foreign Commerce	Key member of the Char family machine. Long serving Liberal party member of the Congress and Senate.
Conservative Party, Partido de la U*	Miguel Gómez Martínez	Minister of Finance	Key member of the Pastrana family machine. Long-serving member of Congress and the Senate and minister in the governments of Andres Pastran and Alvaro Uribe. Grandson of Laureano Gomez, the most extreme rightwing President in the history of Colombia.
Liberal Party*	Iván Cancino González	Minister of Justice	Alvaro Uribe’s long-term personal lawyer who also represented Colombian financial oligarchs of the Gilinski family and various corrupt politicians in the Odebrecht scandal.
Partido de la U Alexandra	Falla Zerrate	Minister of Technology, Information and Communications	Vice Minister of Digital Transformation in the government of Ivan Duque.
Independent	María Nohemí Arboleda	Mines and Energy	General Manager of XM which operates the national electrical grid.
Liberal Party, Party of the Regions*	Viviane Morales	Minister of Education	Former Chief Independent Prosecutor, Evangelical leader who is an opponent of public education and favors government subsidies of private schools. Married to Carlos Alonso Lucio López, an M-19 guerrilla who became a paramilitary leader. Convicted by the Supreme Court of fraud and connections to drug dealers. Currently an evangelical pastor.
Partido Colombia Justa Libres and the National Salvation Movement	Jaime Andres Beltran	Minister of Housing	Evangelical pastor, former Mayor of Bucaramanga removed from office for violating election laws, convicted of theft of city property.
Centro Democratico, National Salvation Movement	Retired General Jorge Eduardo Mora López	Minister of Defense	Career military officer closely connected to DEA. Removed by Petro from chain of command after he was investigated, but not convicted, for corruption. Senatorial candidate for the extreme rightwing National Salvation Party. Brother of a commanding general connected to the paramilitaries.
Independent	Fabio Alberto Arjona Hincapié	Minister of the Environment	A supposed environmentalist who supports fracking as well as strip mining of sensitive environments in the Andes.
Defensores de la Patria	Omar Bula Escobar	Minister of Foreign Relations	Lifelong admirer of Laureano Gomez who advocates conspiracy theories about the 2020 US elections, global warming, and the Great Replacement. Career in foreign relations and academia.
Centro Democratico	Indalecio Dangond Baquero	Minister of Agriculture	Family is a major producer of plan oil. Dangond spent his career in the Ministries of Agriculture and Commerce and in public owned banks and credit institutions.
Creemos Colombia	Juliana Gutiérrez	Minister of Sports	Sister of the Mayor of Medellin.
Centro Democratico, Creemos Colombia	Paola Holguín Moreno	Minister of Culture and Art	Former Senator and Advisor to Alvaro Uribe. Her career was in military issues rather than culture and art.

*These cabinet members were longstanding leaders of traditional parties but switched party affiliations to join one of the two tiny extremist parties controlled by De la Espriella, the National Salvation Movement and Defenders of the Homeland.

 

Challenges and opportunities for the left

The struggle against the new government began almost as soon as the election results were announced and will continue on August 7, the day that Abelardo de la Espriella is scheduled to take office and the second of Colombia’s two independence days.

It will be a day of protests announced by the Pacto Historico, starting with civil disobedience in the city of Barranquilla led by Senator Ivan Cepeda.

De la Espriella has threatened a military offensive that is likely to be the way he brings U.S. military into Colombia. He also says he will eliminate corruption from the government by firing and prosecuting every corrupt government official during the same period of time. This will be the cover for his attack on government social services and against unionized government employees.

The threats are likely to be difficult to carry out because the new government will start in a very weak position.

• It has no clear legislative majority, and its base of rightwing parties is fragmented and divided. There are currently 28 parties represented in either the Senate or Chamber or both. The largest is the Pacto Historico which with its allies, the Green Alliance and representatives of smaller parties, is likely to be able to block Se la Espriella’s legislative initiatives as shown by the vote on the new President of the Senate.

• De la Espriella lacks full control of any of the institutions of the state including the military and judiciary.

• There is still a potential that the Constitutional Court will nullify his election.

• There is a growing sense of betrayal by De la Espriella among those who voted for him.

• De la Espriella is unlikely to receive any significant help from his mentors and handlers in the United States.

The first 100 days will be the first test of the left under the new government. Defending itself against repression, legal and illegal, up to and including the possible arrest and deportation of President Petro, will be the first, but not the only priority. The defensive struggle will require a combination of action by the Pacto and its allies in the Senate and the Chamber of Representative with the ongoing fight in the judicial system, but the most important ingredients will be the mobilization on the streets in demonstrations and strike action.

The Pacto Historico and the rest of the left are in a strong position to fight back if they can mobilize those who voted for the Pacto. In the legislative elections held on March 21, the candidates of the Pacto Historico received 4,471,238 votes (21.4%) out of the total of 20,900,614 total cast.

In the first round of presidential voting, the Pacto’s candidate Ivan Cepeda received 9,688,361 votes (31.2%) out of a total of 23,978,304, and in the second round, Cepeda, received 12,708,312 out of a total of 26,344,960 votes cast.

The social base of the Pacto Historico is the urban working class, especially the organized labor movement. While the combined membership of the three union federations, the CUT, CGT and CTC, amounts to only about 850,000 workers out of a working-age population of about 35,000,000, the unions have a huge following beyond their membership because the unions negotiate with the government every year to determine the next year’s annual minimum salary.

Both within and beyond the working class, the Pacto has also grown through the rise of the self-conscious mass movements of Afro-Colombianos, the Indigenous Minga, and the feminist, LGBTQ+ and environmentalist movements.

A good approximation of the ascendant growth curve of the left in Colombia is found in its presidential election results. Over the course of the last seven presidential elections from 2002 to 2026, the left’s candidates progressively increased their vote totals from 680,000 votes (6.6%) to 12,708,712 votes (48.70%).

Beyond surviving threatened repression and defending the gains made during the Petro years, the Pacto faces the challenge of continuing to grow. Its greatest weaknesses lie in its failure to build a membership party, and its failure to develop broad new layers of leaders.

The Pacto is now addressing both of these issues with a membership drive and a drive to recruit candidates to run for local offices from city council seats to the offices of mayors and governors.

To get some idea of the size of this challenge, you only have to look at the fact that currently 142 members of the Pacto serve as city council members out of a total of 12,072 city council members in the country. Their allies, the Greens, have only 10 city council members.

Meanwhile the parties of the right all have hundreds or thousands of council members: the Centro Democratic has 1876; Cambio Radical has 1243; the Partido de la U has 1246; the Liberals have 1834¸the Conservatives have 1710.

Colombia’s left has enormous experience fighting under adverse conditions of violent repression, and it has not only survived but grown to become the most significant political force in this country. Now, the next year will be a serious test of its resilience.