The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, has warned that the armed conflict in Colombia is on the way to becoming a sort of Middle East, with a «more barbaric» and «more complex» scenario that makes it necessary, he stressed, to also address it within his publicized policy of «total peace».
«It is no longer the struggle for power, it is the struggle for the road. This places us in a more barbaric, more difficult, more complex scenario that we also have to solve because otherwise the possibilities of total peace will not exist in our country and may lead to issues such as those occurring in the Middle East,» he said.
Petro’s declarations took place during his visit to the city of Barrancabermeja, in Santander, where he spoke about the recent massacre that took place a few days ago in Putumayo, where 18 people died in clashes between dissidents of the extinct FARC.
«Do you believe that these are the conflicts of a political guerrilla that wants to take national power and make a revolution?», asked Petro, for whom these dissidents are nothing more than mercenaries at the service of violent elites who want to take control of illegal economies.
For Petro that episode of violence «so Dantesque» has only one explanation, «that they are mercenaries» who make the «illegal economy» their real base «to buy weapons and disposable human beings to kill each other».
Earlier this week, Colombian authorities confirmed the deaths of 18 people during clashes in the Putumayo town of Puerto Guzman, in the southwest of the country. These clashes have left not only dozens of victims among dissident fighters and civilians, but also hundreds of displaced people.
