Marco Rubio calls drug-trafficking militia, present in at least 20 of Colombia’s departments, ‘violent and powerful’
The US has designated the Gulf Clan, Colombia’s largest and most powerful illegal armed criminal group, as a foreign terrorist organisation.
The notorious drug-trafficking militia with its roots in far-right paramilitary forces, is present in at least 20 of Colombia’s departments, and dominates people- and drug-smuggling routes through the Darién Gap. It has also battled unsuccessfully against leftwing rebels for control of criminal networks along the Venezuelan border.
In recent years, the group has attempted to present itself as a political movement similar to Colombian insurgent factions groups, which would grant it different conditions at peace talks, but it is not widely considered to have concrete political aims.
In a statement on Tuesday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, described the Gulf Clan – which calls itself the Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC) – as a “violent and powerful criminal organisation with thousands of members” whose “primary source of income is cocaine trafficking, which it uses to fund its violent activities”.
