Colombia has spent more than half a century contending with one of the longest-running internal armed conflicts in the Western Hemisphere. Beginning in the 1960s, leftist guerrilla movements, most notably the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), took up arms against the state, drawing the government, the military, and eventually right-wing paramilitary groups into a cycle of violence that has touched nearly every region of the country.
The conflict has always been closely tied to the drug trade. Colombia became the world’s leading producer of cocaine, and revenue from narcotics, along with kidnapping and extortion, financed armed groups on all sides for decades. The human cost has been severe: millions of Colombians have been internally displaced, and rural communities in particular have borne the brunt of massacres, land seizures, and forced recruitment.
A major turning point came in 2016, when the government signed a landmark peace agreement with the FARC, leading to the group’s formal demobilization and transition into a political party. The accord was widely seen as a historic achievement, but implementation has been uneven. Former combatants have faced ongoing security threats, land reform provisions have moved slowly, and dissident factions who rejected the deal have regrouped in parts of the countryside.
Meanwhile, the ELN never reached a comparable settlement, and talks with the government have repeatedly stalled. Newer criminal and paramilitary successor groups have also expanded into territory once held by the FARC, competing over trafficking routes and illegal mining, keeping violence high in several departments even as the wider conflict has faded from national headlines.
Today, Colombia is still navigating the work of consolidating peace: rebuilding trust in conflict-affected regions, addressing rural inequality, and finding a sustainable path away from a drug economy that has shaped its politics and security for generations.