Return of the Farc guerilla: "Colombia is back at war"

It is a scene that should not really exist: Deep in the south of Colombia, near the border with Ecuador, trained a group of 20 men and women in the jungle for a war that seemed long over.

They wear green uniforms, do push-ups and stand up in military formations. On the arms they wear bandages in the national colors of Colombia, yellow, blue and red. Some hold machine guns in their hands.

The fighters are members of the Revolutionary Force of Colombia (Farc), the guerrilla group that engulfed the country in a decade-long civil war. The commander of the small unit in Putomayo, a jungle region in the south, is called Danilo Alvizú. He says, "The media said that the Farc no longer exists, that the government won the war." The military exercises are proof that this is not true. The rebels are back.

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Alvizú has given a team of SPIEGEL exclusive access to his Farc fighters. He wants the political elite in Colombia's capital Bogotá to know that the rebels are ready to fight. And he announces a new tactic from his jungle camp: the attack on cities.

For over half a century, the rebels had fought the Colombian state in a bloody guerrilla war - financed by blackmail, kidnapping and cocaine trafficking. The conflict cost over 220,000 lives, most of them civilians. The EU led the rebels as a terrorist group. Then, in 2016, leaders of Farc agreed with then-Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on a peace plan that included turning the Farc from an armed militia of thousands into a political party. Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the notorious guerrilla was at the end - for the time being.

Danilo Alvizú: "The world should understand that we are back"

"Some of the FARC gave up their weapons at the time, another one, this one, did not do that, our fight continues," says Alivizú. He commanded around 500 men in the Putumayo region, 2000 were ready throughout Colombia. When the time comes, it can be the beginning of a new wave of violence.

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Almost every day new recruits arrived, says Alvizú. "Nothing has changed: we are revolutionaries, guerrillas who have taken up arms, and we want the social revolution, the world should understand that we are back."

The images of fighting Farc guerrillas are likely to shock many Colombians. Until the very end there was the hope that the peace process could prevent exactly that. However, over the past three years, the government has failed to comply with much of the agreement's agreement, including land reform for the farmers who traditionally supported the Farc.

One reason for this was that, with the lawyer Iván Duque, a politician from the right-wing conservative Centro Democrático was elected president last year. Duque is not a friend of the peace agreement with the Farc. Above all, he bumps into the negotiated amnesty arrangements for former fighters and spends a lot of time with the introduction of the promised reforms. Even against the terror wave right killers against former guerrilla eros, activists and peasant representatives, he undertook little so far. More than 100 ex-Farc fighters and more than 500 leaders from various left-wing interests have been murdered in Colombia over the past three years.

The rebels are to bring the fight from the jungle to the big cities

"We will not accept this anymore," says Danilo Alvizú. About 40 percent of the rebels are no longer fighting in remote jungle regions against the Colombian armed forces. "We have to go to the urban centers, to Bogotá, Medellín and Cali, where we have to build cells that operate independently." So you can massively increase the clout and the relevance of the Farc. He does not use the word, but it is clear what he means: a new form of terrorism.

The fact that Alviúz is not fighting alone has been clear for over a week. Former number two Farc, Iván Márquez, announced that he would resume the armed struggle. "It's starting a new stage," said Marquez in a video that circulated on the Internet and hit Colombia like a bomb.

The military took the threat of Iván Márquez very seriously. A bomb attack on guerrilla positions killed 14 guerrillas last week, according to the Colombian Ministry of Defense. Commander Alvizú in Putumayo is therefore right in his assessment: "The peace treaty is dead, Colombia is back at war."