Despite agreement – ​​Colombia’s drug production has tripled

 

Malin Carlsson/TT

 

Published 05:50

 

One of many sacks of coca leaves harvested each year in Colombia. The picture is from 2024. Photo: Fernando Vergara/AP/TT

Colombia’s cocaine production has tripled in ten years. But it is no longer the leftist guerrilla group Farc, previously closely associated with production, that is behind it, but armed groups with other motives.

– Now we are dealing with groups that are primarily driven by economic interests, says Nora Taquanas, leader of a community of indigenous Colombians.

A decade after the Farc guerrillas and the Colombian state signed a peace agreement, Colombia’s cocaine production is thriving more than ever.

– In the past, you could point to a group, sit down with them and discuss things, Nora Taquanas tells the Financial Times (FT) and continues:

– Now we are dealing with groups that are primarily driven by economic interests.

For the FARC guerrillas, cocaine was more a means than an end. The group was formed by rebels who embraced Marxism and waged a brutal struggle against the state. From the late 1980s, it financed itself through the cocaine trade, although not directly at the production stage, but rather by taxing coca growers and protecting smugglers.

But when the FARC began to disarm in 2016, panic spread among the world's drug traffickers. It was unnecessary.

Further developed production

The new generation of armed groups in Colombia has further developed cocaine production, taking it to new heights and conducting it for financial gain.

First, new varieties of coca leaf have been cultivated, and second, processing methods have been refined, which means that more cocaine can be extracted from a single leaf than before. Profits have doubled in the past 20 years, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Colombia’s former vice president Humberto de la Calle was the chief negotiator for the 2016 agreement. Today he calls it a “complete failure” and says the problem is more difficult today because the armed groups are present among ordinary people in a different way.

“If you send the military into these areas, who will they shoot at?” de la Calle tells the FT.

Consumption in Europe

One of the reasons for the increase in cocaine production in Latin America is spelled Europe. The continent has broken records in drug seizures for several years in a row. For example, 419 tons of cocaine were seized in Europe in 2023, according to the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The agency states that almost as much cocaine is now consumed in Europe as in the United States.

The FARC guerrillas, Colombia’s armed revolutionary forces, have long been strongly associated with kidnappings and drug trafficking. In 2016, the group signed a peace agreement with the state, ending a 52-year, bloody conflict that claimed more than 200,000 lives and displaced millions.