FARC dissident leader, Iván Mordisco, proposes union with ELN after US attack in Venezuela

Bogotá.- Colombia's most wanted criminal, Néstor Gregorio Vera, alias Iván Mordisco, head of the Central General Staff (EMC), the largest dissident group of the FARC, proposed this Thursday the union with the guerrilla group of the National Liberation Army (ELN) after the US attack in Venezuela in which President Nicolás Maduro was captured. "We urgently call for a summit of insurgent commanders from Colombia and all of our America. Enough of military interventions (...) of cultural domination, let all forms of imperialist aggression cease," said Iván Mordisco in a video posted on social media. The EMC leader, for whom the Colombian government is offering a reward of 5 billion pesos (about $1.3 million), invited the commanders of the Segunda Marquetalia and the Coordinadora Nacional Ejército Bolivariano (CNEB), which are two other dissident groups, and the ELN, which operates mainly on the Colombian-Venezuelan border, to the summit.

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«Before you we leave this proposal, we are not scattered forces, we are heirs of the same cause (…) Let us forge the great insurgent bloc that will push back the enemies of the great homeland», said the head of the EMC.

Strong territorial disputes between both sides

In that sense, he highlighted that although "there are differences inherited from the past", today they face "the same enemy, the shadow of the interventionist eagle looms over everyone equally". "We call on you to put aside these differences, there will be time to sit down in camaraderie to discuss these disagreements," he stated and added: "Fate is shouting at us that it is time to come together (...) in the common trench." FARC dissidents and the ELN have violent disputes over territorial control and the cocaine business in several parts of Colombia, especially in the Catatumbo region and the department of Arauca, both in border areas with Venezuela.

The Capture of Maduro in Venezuela

After Maduro's capture last Saturday, the ELN welcomed the call from Venezuelan authorities, such as the Minister of Defense, Vladimir Padrino, to resist after the United States attack. "We salute the calls of the Venezuelan authorities to resist this brutal military intervention and to continue defending the legacy of (former president) Hugo Chávez," said the Central Command, the highest command authority of the guerrilla, in a statement published on Sunday. Colombia and Venezuela share a land border of 2,219 kilometers that stretches from the Caribbean to the Amazon and which, for the most part, would be sparsely populated territories.

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The ELN, included by the United States on its list of foreign terrorist organizations and which the Colombian president himself, Gustavo Petro, accuses of having become a drug trafficking gang, is the armed group with the most power on the border and therefore has a strong presence in Venezuela.