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Analysts warn US \u2018terrorist\u2019 designation of the EGC could escalate violence and hinder peace negotiations in Colombia.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Bogota, Colombia<\/strong> \u2013 The United States Department of State has designated Colombia\u2019s largest criminal group, the Gaitanist Army of Colombia (EGC), a \u201cterrorist organisation\u201d.<\/p>\n The EGC, also referred to as the Clan del Golfo, has a presence across Colombia and is known for its involvement in drug trafficking, illegal mining, and extortion.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n \u201cToday, the Department of State is designating Clan del Golfo as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT),\u201d read a statement by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio released on Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n \u201cBased in Colombia, Clan del Golfo is a violent and powerful criminal organisation with thousands of members \u2026 responsible for terrorist attacks against public officials, law enforcement and military personnel, and civilians in Colombia,\u201d continued the communique.<\/p>\n Last year, the Biden administration imposed financial sanctions on top members of the EGC but stopped short of classifying it as a terrorist organisation.<\/p>\n Washington previously designated other active Colombian armed groups as FTOs, including the National Liberation Army (ELN) and dissident factions of the defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).<\/p>\n Under the FTO designation, US courts can sanction any individual or organisation considered to be providing assistance to, or linked to, the EGC.<\/p>\n The move will increase opportunities to sever links between the group and private enterprise, according to analysts.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an organisation that has deep tentacles in the business world,\u201d said Elizabeth Dickinson, deputy director for Latin America at International Crisis Group, adding, \u201cit does open some interesting lines of investigation, for example, in money laundering and facilitating and logistics.\u201d<\/p>\n But experts also warn that Washington\u2019s move could undermine ongoing peace negotiations between the EGC and the Colombian state, mediated by the Qatari government. On December 5, Colombia signed a deal in Doha with the EGC to initiate a peace process aimed at the EGC\u2019s disarmament.<\/p>\n \u201cThe designation of the EGC and its command structure as terrorists makes it almost impossible to continue these talks outside the country with security guarantees,\u201d\u00a0 said Gerson Arias, conflict and security investigator at the Ideas for Peace Foundation, a Colombian think tank.<\/p>\n He added that it complicates discussions on extraditions, a key point of contention in ongoing negotiations. According to Arias, the FTO designation effectively eliminates the possibility of the Colombian state providing guarantees that it will not extradite EGC leaders to a US prison.<\/p>\n Last week, the group\u2019s chief negotiator, Alvaro Jimenez, told Reuters that the group\u2019s commanders would likely face jail time in a potential deal, raising the stakes for non-extradition guarantees.<\/p>\n A breakdown in talks could intensify the conflict between the state and the EGC, according to Crisis Group\u2019s Dickinson: \u201cIf peace talks were to end \u2026 I do think that that would lead to an escalation in violence across the north of the country, particularly.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier this year, the EGC killed dozens of state security officials in a targeted campaign.<\/p>\n But Dickinson stressed that the FTO designation does not preclude peace talks, citing the successful 2016 deal with the FARC, which was then a US-designated FTO.<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s not get ahead of ourselves for now \u2026 the important thing is that Colombia will have to take a step back and decide how to proceed with negotiations,\u201d the analyst told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Analysts warn US \u2018terrorist\u2019 designation of the EGC could escalate violence and hinder peace negotiations in Colombia. Bogota, Colombia \u2013 The United States Department of State has designated Colombia\u2019s largest criminal group, the Gaitanist Army of Colombia (EGC), a \u201cterrorist organisation\u201d. The EGC, also referred to as the Clan del Golfo, has a presence across […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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