A truce with Colombia’s largest drug trafficking organization was broken off on Sunday after President Gustavo Petro accused it of attacking civilians.
“I ordered the security forces to resume all military operations against the Gulf Clan,” he said on Twitter.
“I will not allow them to keep sowing distress and terror in the communities,” Petro added.
The clan, according to the government, is responsible for recent assaults and harassment of residents in northwest Colombia.
Just before the new year, Petro’s administration announced a bilateral ceasefire with a number of armed groups, including the Gulf Clan, National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels, and ex-FARC guerrillas.
In contrast to his conservative predecessor Ivan Duque’s hardline strategy, leftist Petro’s “total peace” plan called for negotiations with criminal organizations to put an end to decades of violent conflict.
However, issues with the policy surfaced almost instantly.
The Marxist ELN denied having signed the deal, while the government claims there have been numerous violations of the pact by FARC dissidents.
The government says the Gulf Clan has been supporting attacks by illegal gold miners since March 2 in the Bajo Cauca area of Antioquia department.
Workers in illegal mines have been protesting the government’s destruction of the heavy machinery they use to dredge up soil to find gold.
Miners have shut down roads, attacked a town hall and a bank in the Caucasia district.
According to officials, illegal mining generates almost as much revenue for criminal organizations in Colombia as cocaine trafficking does.
The Gulf Clan is made up of former right-wing paramilitaries that were disbanded in 2006 as part of a peace agreement that Petro believes to have been a failure and was negotiated by the then-president Alvaro Uribe.
Official estimates place the responsibility for between 30 and 60 percent of the drugs exported from Colombia, the biggest producer of cocaine in the world, on the Clan.
Opposition parties and some experts say the security forces were at a disadvantage in the ceasefire with the Gulf Clan and the rebels, arguing that only the government side observed the truce.
“There was never a bilateral ceasefire with the Gulf Clan,” said right-wing former presidential candidate Federico Gutierrez.
He said it was “grossly irresponsible to leave the civilian population defenseless for so long.”
