International
Analyst León Valencia: The ELN subordinated peace to its plan to seize the border
Analyst León Valencia, director of the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation (Pares), states in an interview with EFE that the guerrilla of the National Liberation Army (ELN) “subordinated” the peace negotiations with the Government to a plan to seize the Colombian-Venezuelan border.
“They subordinated peace to their strategy of seizing the border. Really what they have shown at this time is that their main objective is to have control of that border, grow on that border and be the master of the border between Colombia and Venezuela,” says Valencia, who in his youth was a member of the ELN.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced on January 17 the suspension of peace talks with the ELN, which he accused of committing “war crimes” in the Catatumbo region, where a confrontation between that guerrilla and the Front 33 of the FARC dissidents has left at least 56 dead and more than 54,000 displaced since January 16.
In that sense, the director of Pares, who analyzes everything that happens with the ELN in the book ‘Is lead what’s coming?’ (Penguin Randon House), considers that the fact that the guerrillas are facing another “armed left” group and not the Military Forces claims that “their main idea is to seize that border, fighting against the other illegals”.
The analyst, one of the greatest experts on the Colombian armed conflict, believes that the guerrilla has offered itself as “a support force” to the Chavista leader Nicolás Maduro “in the event of a foreign aggression” on Venezuela.
Valencia says that the guerrillas allied with the Venezuelan Government in 2019 to “sweep the paramilitaries” that were at the border, a successful operation because at that time, according to Pares figures, there were 27 armed groups there and only a few remain.
However, something that the ELN did not count on, in Valencia’s opinion, is that Petro did not cut off relations with Maduro after his questioned possession on January 10, which has led both countries to work together to face guerrilla violence on the common border of 2,219 kilometers.
“That is a little out of place for them, (they thought that Petro) was going to break relations with Venezuela and that Maduro was going to face (the President of the United States, Donald) Trump very hard and that Trump was also going to act immediately against Venezuela. Now the thing is temporarily very strange,” he says.
The main bet of the Petro Government was the policy of ‘Total Peace’, with which it sought to negotiate an agreement with the ELN and FARC dissidents, as well as the submission to justice of the main criminal gangs in the country.
However, with 18 months to go until the end of his mandate, the most advanced negotiation was that of the ELN and the president’s proposal seems to be shipwrecked.
In Valencia’s opinion, it is difficult to understand why the guerrillas are not signing peace with the first left-wing government in Colombia, although he believes that Petro was wrong to think that “ideology” and having “a similar speech” was going to be enough to disarm the ELN.
“The conflict changed radically, which is what we say in our book ‘Is lead what’s coming?’. We make an X-ray of the change in the conflict of some guerrillas who threatened the State and wanted to take central power and who are no longer in that now,” he explains.
Neither the ELN nor the FARC dissidents seek, as they intended before, to take power, but now “they are on the borders, in the regions, occupying territories, controlling the population, attacking the population, they are in something else”.
“There is a turn of the conflict and the ELN is in it. He gave up the seizure of power and is more in a task that they call resistance, they declare it publicly (…) It is a resistance of the ‘global south’, which is a series of groups and countries that have ideas of revolution, that have autocratic governments and are in something else,” says Valencia.
In this context, the director of Pares warns that the Military Forces and the Police must make a “very big operational change.”
“The intelligence that was made to look for where the ELN comes from, where the FARC come from to attack the State is no longer useful. Where do these groups go to seize a border, a region, how do they attack the population? It is another type of intelligence and it is what the State is not doing,” Valencia concludes.
International
Europol warns of the increase in groups on the Internet to radicalize minors
Europol issued an alert on Thursday about the growth of groups on the Internet dedicated to “extremely violent child abuse” and warned that these communities seek to “normalize violence and corrupt minors,” by spreading ideologies that inspire “mass shootings, bomb attacks and other crimes.”
The European police coordination agency issued what is known as an “Intelligence Notification” to draw attention to the increase of these communities that “recruit both aggressors and victims” globally and function as “sects led by charismatic figures who manipulate and deceive” their followers to “control” them.
These groups, the agency explains, seek to “normalize violence and corrupt minors, promoting the collapse of modern society through terror, chaos and violence, and spreading ideologies that inspire mass shootings, bomb attacks and other crimes.”
The hierarchy within these groups is based on “the amount of shared content, where the most active members get higher ranks” and participants exchange “extremely violent material, including bloody images, animal cruelty, child sexual exploitation and depictions of murders,” said the Hague-based agency.
The aggressors use “video game platforms, live streaming services and social networks” to identify and attract their victims, and focus especially on vulnerable young people, in particular children between the ages of 8 and 17, including those who belong to the LGBTQ+ community, racial minorities or young people with mental health problems.
“In some cases, the perpetrators infiltrate online self-help or support communities, where victims seek help for their emotional problems,” he says.
The leaders of these communities use “various manipulation tactics” to attract their victims and “force them to generate explicit sexual content, self-harm, harm others or even commit murder.”
Among the methods identified by Europol is what is known as “love bombing”, which is explained as “extreme expressions of affection, understanding and kindness to gain the trust” of the minor.
As the relationship progresses, they collect sensitive personal data of the victim, before moving to “the phase of exploitation”, in which they force the minor to produce sexual content or commit acts of violence.
If the victim does not want to obey, the aggressors “threaten” to share the explicit images or videos with family, friends or on social networks.
“Once trapped in this network, minors become even more vulnerable. Detecting these criminal activities in time is crucial,” Europol warns, sharing a list of “warning signs” in children.
The agency asks to pay attention to, among others, its activities on the Internet (interaction with unknown contacts, use of encrypted communications or exposure to worrying content), social isolation, emotional distress, interest in violent or harmful content, change in language, use of unknown symbols and concealment of physical signs of damage.
“The perpetrators spread harmful ideologies, often addressing our young people. These networks radicalize in the shadows, inciting them to bring violence to the real world. Awareness is our first line of defense. Families, educators and communities must be attentive and provide young people with critical thinking skills to resist online manipulation,” added Europol Director Catherine De Bolle.
De Bolle considered international cooperation “key” and urged to continue sharing information and holding perpetrators accountable, in order to “fight these dangerous communities and protect future generations from extremism and crime.”
International
Guantánamo expresses criticize its use to detain migrants: “It’s a black hole”
The Yemeni Mansoor Adayfi spent 14 years in Guantánamo and ended up released without charges. Along with him, 15 other former inmates criticize that the Donald Trump Administration has expanded the use of the naval base to detain undocumented migrants: “No one deserves to be thrown into a system created to erase them,” they say in an open letter.
“Guantánamo is not just a prison: it is a place where the law is deformed, dignity is stripped of and suffering is hidden behind barbed wires. We live it. We know the metallic noise of the doors, the weight of the shackles and the silence of a world that looked away,” says that letter to which EFE had exclusive access.
The letter is promoted by Adayfi, coordinator of the Guantánamo Project within CAGE International.
Guantánamo, as he adds in an interview with EFE, “is a black hole. It can’t be called a prison or detention center because that means there are certain rights.”
Therefore, in his opinion, we should not focus on the treatment that newcomers may have, but on why they send them there in the first place and stop it: “Guantánamo is one of the greatest human rights violations of the 21st century,” he emphasizes from Serbia.
Its London-based organization says it challenges the “state oppression” inspired by the “War on Terrorism” launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. (11S), where about 3,000 people died.
CAGE International defends the right to due process and in the past has criticized attempts to tarnish its reputation for the cases it leads.
Trump made the decision to expand the use of Guantánamo on January 29 with an executive order to enable 30,000 beds at that naval base in Cuba for undocumented migrants.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) has been operating there for years a detention center managed independently of the prison for suspected jihadism, but until now it had only received a limited number of people intercepted at sea, mostly from Haiti and Cuba.
“This order not only allows injustice, it guarantees it. Detaining migrants in Guantánamo denies them constitutional protections, trapping them in the same legal limbo that we endure. This deliberate ambiguity allows abuse, just as it happened with us. We know firsthand what happens with a system designed to break people,” say the former hostages.
Among them are the Moroccan Ahmed Errachidi, the Algerians Lakhdar Boumediene and Sufyian Barhoumi, the Tunisian Hisham Sliti or the British Tarek Dergoul, Moazzam Begg, all repatriated without charges.
For the signatory group, sending migrants to Guantánamo is not a matter of security.
“It’s about power and control and using the darkness of Guantánamo to hide another injustice,” they add.
Earlier this month, a group of 15 human rights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), actually asked the Government for access to migrants sent there, denouncing a lack of transparency about their legal situation.
The first prisoners arrived in Guantánamo in 2002, as part of that ‘War on Terrorism’ launched by former Republican President George W. Bush (2001 – 2009) after 11S. Of the nearly 780 that there were, there are 15, of which only two are convicted.
For the ex-prisoners who support the letter, not closing that prison or taking into account its legacy has allowed both injustices to continue and “its expansion.”
Trump promised to send there “the worst illegal criminal immigrants who are a threat to the American people.”
“We refuse to allow others to be swallowed by the same nightmare that we endure. No one deserves to be thrown into a system created to erase them. We will not stop talking or fighting. We will not allow the horrors of Guantánamo to be repeated,” say the former inmates.
His message is clear. Not only do they want the prison to be closed and the executive order revoked, they also warn the Trump Administration that justice will be done. “Someday he will be accountable.”
International
Even in the Nido de las Águilas, a section without a wall, border crossings in the United States go down
The crossing of asylum-seeking migrants has been reduced in recent weeks on the border of California (USA) with Mexico, even by the popular Nido de las Águilas, a stretch of about 500 meters without a wall and one of the favorites of coyotes or human traffickers in decades.
The Border Patrol recognizes that the area, just 5 kilometers east of the urbanized area of San Diego, where the Otay mountains begin to be steep, is still one of the resources of migrants to enter the country. “There are migrants who still continue to cross in that area, as in others of the San Diego Sector of the Border Patrol,” said officer Gerardo Gutiérrez.
However, the Patrol says it does not know how many people have crossed there since President Donald Trump took office on January 20. Throughout San Diego County, civilian groups and the Coast Guard have reported a total of 77 detainees, but now most, 63, have arrived by sea, and there are no reports of arrests in the area without walls.
Residents of the place told EFE that although they still hear nocturnal noises of people passing by, now it is minimal. “I would tell you that at the end of 2023 large groups of people passed by, from about 30 to 40 people every now and then. One group was on right now and in minutes the other. Now I only have to see a small group of four people and stop counting, that was all, about two weeks ago,” Ventura, a resident of the area in Tijuana (Mexico) told EFE.
“I see that they continue to arrive, but it can no longer be compared,” said another resident of the Nido de las Águilas neighborhood, a highly populated neighborhood in Tijuana where the border wall about 9 meters high is interrupted.
The resident whose window has a direct view of the border said that now “very few people are seen crossing. Nothing as it was until a few months ago.”
Without wanting to say his name or accepting that photos be taken “for safety”, he said that “before they were groups every now and then: last year still sometimes in an hour I could see groups one after another.”
‘El Nido’ became one of the most frequented corridors since the 1990s, when the construction of the wall with Mexico began for the first time on the San Diego border and the Border Patrol deployed for the first time a larger operation, Operation Guardian.
The wall was then a closed metal obstacle ten feet (about 3 meters) high with a sharp finish that often cut fingers or caused injuries to migrants.
But unlike San Diego, with the largest and most populated urban area on the US border, ‘El nido’ has constantly had less surveillance and still has no wall, on top of a hill.
From the homes of the people who live in Mexico you can see the two interrupted parallel walls, and also if there is surveillance of the Border Patrol. For those ‘adventages’, it became known as a neighborhood of coyotes.
However, the mountain and open field area on the side of the United States, represents much less obstacle than, for example, San Ysidro, about 10 kilometers to the west, where there is not only a double wall and greater surveillance of patrol boats, but also teams of military engineers reinforced with barbed wire.
Another of the sections where migrants still arrive is to an area between parallel border walls to the west of the San Ysidro checkpoint, where in previous years thousands of people came to camp in search of asylum.
The director of the American Friends Committee, Pedro Ríos, who has headed a permanent post of assistance to migrants who arrive at that point reports only two groups so far this month: eight people from the Middle East and Africa, and a family of six people from Uzbekistan.
The other resource, more frequented since last January 20, is the sea, which has led the Coast Guard to take charge for the first time of intercepting boats with migrants, a task that CBP previously carried out in the Pacific with the support of the Border Patrol.
The Office of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported on Tuesday an 85% reduction in crossings along the southern border with Mexico during the first eleven days of the Trump administration, compared to the same period in 2024.
Since former President Joe Biden (2021-2025) decreed greater restrictions on asylum in June 2024, border crossings have been decreasing.
Europol warns of the increase in groups on the Internet to radicalize minors
Guantánamo expresses criticize its use to detain migrants: “It’s a black hole”
Even in the Nido de las Águilas, a section without a wall, border crossings in the United States go down
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