What are and how much power have the two groups of the FARC dissidents indicated as responsible for the attacks that left 19 dead in Colombia

From the demolition of the helicopter with police on board in Amalfi, Antioquia, was responsible to the front 36, which is part of the General Staff of Blocks and Fronts (EMBF), another dissident group, commanded by alias Calarcá.

No armed group has claimed the authorship of the attacks.

In the past, the EMC and the EMBF formed the same structure, but in April 2024 they were divided.

Since then, the Government has faced EMC frontally, while with the EMBF it maintained a ceasefire until April of this year and is sitting at a negotiating table as part of its “total peace” policy.

After knowing the attacks, Petro requested that the dissidents of Iván bite – that is the EMC – to be considered terrorists “and persecuted anywhere on the planet.”

He did not do the same with the dissidents of Calarcá (EMBF), with which the National Government also met this Friday in the municipality of San Vicente del Caguán, in Caquetá.

The EMC and the EMBF are the most evolved facet of the FARC dissidents that were born in 2016 during the negotiations that led to the historic peace agreements and in the disarmament of the guerrillas.

More than perfectly cohesive groups, they are networks composed of several local structures that operate with relative autonomy and claim to be “the true FARC”, in opposition to the majority of the members of that guerrillas that demobilized.

According to military intelligence estimates prior to splitting in 2024, the dissidents led by bite and Calarcá added about 3,500 members, something that was far from the dimension that the extinct Farc had.

“In 2002, which was when the FARC reached their best military moment, they had more than 20,000 men and women in arms, more than 100 structures and activity in more than half of the country's municipalities. What we see today is something of a much lower level,” says Juanita Vélez, an expert researcher in dissidents.

Months before the agreement between the guerrillas and the government in 2016 was signed, the FARC first front, composed of some 400 members and commanded by aka Iván Bite, announced that it would not demobilize. That was the seed of dissidents.

At that time, the FARC leadership sent Alias ​​Gentil Duarte, who had been in the guerrillas for almost 40 years and was participating in the negotiations, to reestablish the discipline in that front; that is, to align it with the rest of the FARC in the decision to leave the weapons.

But Duarte also abandoned the peace process, joining bite and taking his people to the project to put together a dissent.

Since then, the dissidents began to expand and consolidate, nourished by both ex -combatants of the FARC and by former members of other armed groups and new recruits.

Bitis and Duarte managed almost total autonomy at regional level and local ”, according to an investigation by the Ideas Paz Foundation.

According to the same research, “the growth and strengthening of EMC is closely related to the financial resources of economies such as drug trafficking, extortion and illegal mining.”

In 2022, Gentil Duarte died in Venezuela and Iván Bordisc replaced him as Maximum EMC commander.

It was in that same year that Gustavo Petro came to the presidency with the proposal to seek total peace.

That proposal, which is still part of its agenda but has received fierce criticism for its lack of results, consists in advancing peace negotiations with all armed groups in the country, from old guerrillas such as Eln to urban criminal gangs.

The Havana Peace Agreement contemplated that the FARC fighters who abandon the process and continue to commit crimes would fall on them all the weight of the law.

In the words of former president Santos, who did not accept the process would be fought with forcefulness and “would end up in a jail or in a grave.”

But that was left behind when in October 2023, the Petro government announced that it would sit at a negotiating table with the EMC, the dissent commanded by bite.

However, the hope that the government had to negotiate peace with the EMC as a whole lasted little.

In March 2024, a front of that dissent broke the cessation to the fire that had been agreed with the government.

In response, President Gustavo Petro suspended the bilateral cessation of fire in the departments of Cauca, Nariño and Valle del Cauca and accused Iván Bite of being a “tracheto (drug trafficker) dress of revolutionary”.

The outcome of that was that Iván Bite stood from the table taking more than half of the EMC structure.

In the negotiating table, another part of the dissent remained, which was renamed as the General Staff of blocks and fronts and is today represented by Alias ​​Calarcá.

In the words of Juanita Vélez, “the State opted to unite them to be able to negotiate easier, but what has ended up with the peace process is that they have fragmented more.”

The attack attributed to EMC against a military base in Cali this Thursday is not exceptional.

It is a sample of the war that since then sustains the faction that rose from the table and the state.

The EMC has carried out actions like that – you at the stations of police or military positions – at other times and other terries of the country, says Vélez.

And the government, on the other hand, has intensified its operations against the dissent of Iván Bite, for whom it also offers a reward greater than US $ 1 million.

President Petro said that this Thursday's attack was a terrorist response to the blows that the State has given to that structure in the department of Cauca.

“His reaction is not strength, it is weak,” he said in his X account.

There have been versions found on which EMC subgroup could perpetrate the attack.

The president and the Minister of Defense pointed out to the Carlos Patiño column, while the prosecution and the mayor of Cali mentioned the Jaime Martínez column. Both, however, are under the coordination of Iván Bite.

The EMBF is a relatively unknown dissent for public opinion, although it is negotiating peace with the government and, as its authorship was demonstrated on Thursday, it would have the ability to tear down a police helicopter with drones.

It is lower in military size and capacity than the EMC, but operates in eight departments (32), and controls and governs in some territories.

The Government maintained a ceasefire with that structure from its EMC split to April 2025.

A few days after the ceasefire was over, EMBF members attacked a patrol and killed 7 soldiers in the department of Guaviare, which questioned the continuity of the negotiations.

Since then, the process has advanced little.

For this Friday, August 22 and Saturday, August 23, a new meeting between the National Government and the EMBF had been scheduled in the municipality of San Vicente del Caguán.

Just one day before that meeting, the helicopter attack was recorded in Amalfi.

For researcher Juanita Vélez, that betrays at least a cohesion problem in the EMBF.

The president has not spoken with respect to the future of the conversations table, but published a video in his X account in which he saw members of the Army to shoot a long distance weapon.

“Since yesterday the group that was able to tear down the police helicopter is under artillery fire,” he wrote.

In any case, the local press confirmed that the meeting between the delegations was held.

The governor of Antioquia, the department where the attack occurred, criticized the response of the Petro government and said that Alias ​​Calarcá, leader of the EMBF, is “a criminal who Petro gives angel treatment.”

The governor of the Valley, where the attack against the military base occurred, said for her part: “The peace tables, the facts demonstrate it, are not giving results. No more dialogues with terror!”

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