Colombia Kills Two ELN Commanders as Peace Gives Way to Bombs
Colombia’s new government has delivered its clearest answer yet to the country’s last major guerrilla army: not another negotiating table, but an airstrike.
President Abelardo de la Espriella said Sunday that Operation Ónix killed 10 members of the National Liberation Army, or ELN, in rural El Tambo, Cauca. The dead included two senior commanders known as “Marcos Pacífico” and “Ochenta,” also called “Murillo.” The confirmed toll increased from the nine deaths initially reported after Thursday’s strike.
The president called the operation “the hardest blow” against the ELN in eight years. His statement, reported independently by the Associated Press and EFE, said the two commanders belonged to the José María Becerra bloc of the ELN’s southwestern war front.
That makes Ónix more than a battlefield tally. The strike hit an organization that projects power across Cauca, Valle del Cauca and Nariño—departments where armed groups fight over territory, illicit revenue and routes to Colombia’s Pacific coast. By removing two regional commanders at once, the government aims to fracture the chain of command that connects rural units to money, recruits and urban networks.
De la Espriella claimed Marcos Pacífico spent 24 years in the guerrilla organization and blamed him for 62 killings, the recruitment of minors and the displacement of roughly 500 people. Those are government allegations, not findings independently established in Sunday’s reports. But they show how the administration intends to frame its war: decapitation strikes against men it presents as both military commanders and organizers of coercion far beyond the jungle.
The president also conceded the limit of the attack. One operation, he said, “does not end the threat.” That sentence matters more than the triumphalist language around it. The ELN has survived six decades, repeated military campaigns and failed peace processes. Its decentralized structure can absorb losses that would cripple a more hierarchical force.
Only four months ago, an ELN commander told Reuters that the organization could withstand a new offensive. The guerrilla said it remained open to talks with whoever won the presidency, but warned it would continue fighting if the government chose confrontation. De la Espriella has now made his choice unmistakable.
Since taking office on August 7, the conservative president has ended the peace negotiations inherited from Gustavo Petro and promised a harder military line. Operation Ónix was the fifth bombing mission his government has ordered against armed groups. The pace signals a strategic break: Bogotá is betting that sustained force can reverse years of territorial expansion and compel the ELN from a position of weakness—or make negotiations irrelevant.
That bet carries a grave civilian risk. EFE noted that Colombia’s renewed bombing campaign has revived controversy over children recruited into armed groups who may be present in targeted camps. Every government has a duty to protect civilians and distinguish lawful targets. A state does not escape that obligation because an armed group commits the crime of recruiting minors.
Nor can the government bomb its way around the conditions that keep the conflict alive. Rural communities in Cauca face weak public institutions, scarce legal employment and the pressure of multiple armed actors. Removing commanders can disrupt an organization; it cannot by itself replace the local economies and authority those organizations exploit.
Still, Sunday’s confirmation marks a real military and political turning point. The new president promised to abandon Petro’s bargaining strategy. In El Tambo, he translated that promise into explosives, bodies and a new calculation for the ELN.
Colombia is no longer asking whether the peace process can be revived. It is testing whether war can produce what negotiations did not—and whether civilians in the southwest will again pay the price.
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