Colombia-Venezuela cooperation on border security is necessary for investment, but unlikely in the short-term

✓ ACLED is the world’s most trusted source of conflict information >

Executive summary

The United States-led removal of Nicolás Maduro has attracted renewed interest by companies in the oil, gas, and mining sectors in Venezuela. Much of Venezuela’s resources are located along the 2,219-kilometer porous border with Colombia, which has traditionally been important for the economic development of both countries. However, the border has also attracted the interest of armed groups, which in recent years have exploited fraught relations between Bogotá and Caracas to compete for the control of cross-border criminal economies such as drug trafficking, extortion, and illegal mining. 

On 24 April, Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez met in Caracas and signed a series of agreements, including on the reactivation of joint energy projects and efforts to address armed groups’ activities along the border. Until the agreements are operationalized, however, the infrastructure and workers for extractive projects will remain vulnerable to armed group attacks — particularly from the dominant force along the border, the National Liberation Army (ELN). 

Should Bogotá and Caracas finally step up security cooperation efforts, they will likely be most effective in the central and northern parts of the border. In this area, the presence of other armed groups contesting the ELN's dominance; the existence of relatively developed road, airport, railway, and port infrastructure; and the convergence of US, Colombian, and Venezuelan interests make cooperation more likely to yield results in denting armed groups' operations. Therefore, security cooperation there may pave the way for a safer reactivation of oil and gas projects on both sides of the border. 

By contrast, it is far less likely to make a difference along the southern part of the border in the remote Amazon regions. In these areas, the virtually absent road infrastructure, limited security forces’ capabilities, widespread corruption, and unchallenged armed group dominance in the mining sector hinder the chances of success of any form of cooperation. Regardless of the extent to which Bogotá and Caracas cooperate on security matters, it will not be convenient nor advisable for mining companies and traders to extract or distribute minerals from southern Venezuela. That is, unless they are ready to assume high security costs, extortion fees for their operations, and compliance failures from the systematic violation of human rights and environmental protection standards taking place there.

In any case, renewed cooperation is far from assured. Right-wing candidate Abelardo de la Espriella, who won the 21 June runoff vote in Colombia by a razor-thin margin according to preliminary results, has rejected any relationship with Venezuela’s Rodríguez administration, but the evolution of relations between the two governments will also depend on political developments in Venezuela and Washington’s ability to sway both countries. 

The central and northern parts of the border are a hotspot of violence but offer an opportunity for more effective cooperation

Stability assessment

The border area that spans from coastal La Guajira to the Arauca department in Colombia, and from Zulia to Apure in Venezuela, is rich in oil, coal, and gas; has suitable soil for agriculture and cattle ranching; and hosts important infrastructure such as highways, ports, airports, and railways. It ties both countries’ economic development and security, as illustrated by the Antonio Ricaurte gas pipeline, which runs from Colombia’s La Guajira department to Maracaibo in Venezuela. The pipeline was abandoned a decade ago over armed groups’ attacks and a deterioration in bilateral relations, and only recently have the two governments started talks to reactivate it.

However, it is also the epicenter of conflict between an array of armed groups. In Colombia, the Catatumbo region is the main enclave for coca crops and cocaine production and the point of origin for key routes for international drug trafficking through the Caribbean. Armed groups also impose extortion fees on coal miners and transporters in Boyacá, Cesar, La Guajira, and Norte de Santander in Colombia and, in Venezuela, in Táchira and Zulia states. Another major hotspot of conflict is the area between the Arauca department and Apure state, which is also important for drug trafficking, but particularly vulnerable to extortion of cattle and oil sectors (see map below).

Emboldened by a boom in illegal mining and drug trafficking activities, as well as political protection in Venezuela, the ELN became the dominant armed group on both sides of the border after waging wars against the Popular Liberation Army (EPL), Los Rastrojos gang, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) dissidents from the General Central Staff (EMC), and the Estado Mayor de Bloques y Frente (EMBF). Since 2018, ACLED records the group’s presence in 84 of the 216 municipalities in the Colombian border departments and almost half of the 75 municipalities in Venezuela’s border states. 

Other armed groups are contesting the ELN's control in the northern and central parts of the border, despite the group's strong foothold. Although weakened on the Venezuelan side of the border, FARC dissidents are still operating in Norte de Santander and Arauca. In addition, the Gulf Clan’s expansion along the Caribbean coast has triggered a confrontation with the Autodefensas Conquistadoras de la Sierra Nevada (ACSN), affecting particularly the Cesar and La Guajira departments, but this has been gradually moving toward Norte de Santander, where it risks opening another front in the conflict between the ELN and the EMBF for the control of the Catatumbo region (see map below). 

On the Venezuelan side of the border, particularly in Zulia and Táchira, local gangs are involved in criminal activities such as extortion, kidnapping, drug trafficking, and contraband and migrant smuggling. According to ACLED data, their number and activity have decreased over the past few years. A Venezuelan security expert who spoke to ACLED in March 2024 said this is due to a combination of Maduro’s government’s crackdown on local gangs who lost Chavista political backing and the overall economic collapse and subsequent exodus of millions of people. Yet, since 2025, ACLED records over a dozen active criminal actors in Zulia alone; this includes colectivos and the ELN, who sometimes are indistinguishable from each other, according to a human rights defender ACLED interviewed in May 2026.

Conflict trajectory

An ELN offensive against the EMBF in Catatumbo last year prompted a 73% increase in violent armed group activity in Norte de Santander, as recorded by ACLED, and the displacement of over 73,000 people, according to the Colombian Ombudsman's Office. Similarly, Cesar and La Guajira departments experienced an uptick in violence levels (see map below), driven by the worsening conflict between the ACSN and the Gulf Clan, as well as the ELN’s attempts to maintain control in parts of those departments and extort the coal railway. These conflicts have shown no signs of subsiding in 2026.

For its part, Petro’s government resumed military pressure against the ELN and FARC’s EMC after peace talks with these groups collapsed in 2024, and has stepped up military operations in Norte de Santander, Arauca, and Cesar departments, including aerial bombings, since US President Donald Trump’s return to office. 

In Venezuela’s northern states, gang violence has been decreasing since 2019 (see graph below). However, gangs appear to have exploited the political change in Venezuela to step up extortion-related attacks and kidnappings in Zulia since January 2026, and are likely to exploit any economic reactivation in the country to further revive these activities. When it comes to Colombian armed groups in Venezuela, their violence against civilians has subsided since 2023, but security forces’ operations intensified in the northern states of Apure, Táchira, and Zulia in 2025. This shift likely stemmed from Maduro’s attempt to show results in the fight against drug trafficking in order to regain international legitimacy after his contested re-election in the 28 July 2024 elections. 

Risks and implications

Any joint offensive against Colombian armed groups operating on both sides of the border carries significant risks:

1. Even though it is not in the ELN’s interest to open yet another war front, it would not stand still in the face of any increased military pressure from Caracas. The group would not only respond to the security forces’ fire, but also retaliate against local civilians if it perceived they withdrew their support and provided information that informs security operations. A military offensive against the ELN would therefore effectively turn the currently pro-government paramilitary into a binational guerrilla, with a network of social, political, and economic actors it could count on — making it hard to eradicate with military action alone.
2. Even if the ELN avoided confrontation and redeployed its manpower away from Catatumbo, it would likely consolidate its presence in other disputed areas, fueling conflict with the Gulf Clan and ACSN in La Guajira, and with the EMC in Arauca and Apure. 
3. Should a joint offensive succeed in weakening the ELN’s presence in Catatumbo, it would leave Norte de Santander more vulnerable to other armed groups’ attempts to overtake the ELN’s territories and trafficking routes, exposing civilians to their violent incursion.

Security cooperation is in the interests of both governments and the private sector. The presence of relatively developed infrastructure and the ELN’s contested authority make a shared security strategy on both sides of the border more feasible and more likely to weaken the ELN’s operations in Norte de Santander, Táchira, and Zulia, thereby providing the security guarantees needed to reactivate binational energy projects. By contrast, a continuation of disjointed actions between Bogotá and Caracas would not only allow the ELN to continue its offensive in Catatumbo but would also expose the Antonio Ricaurte gas pipeline to the same kind of extortion armed groups apply to the oil and coal sectors in Arauca and La Guajira, and subsequently dissuade foreign investment. 

The southern part of the border is a hub of illegal mining

Stability assessment

The southern Amazon border regions offer remote areas that are ideal for fluvial drug trafficking routes and illegal mining — namely of gold and, increasingly, minerals crucial for the green energy transition, such as tin, tungsten, tantalum, and rare earth elements. In 2016, the Maduro government created the so-called Orinoco Mining Arc, a megaproject covering 12% of the country's territory to overcome declining oil revenues by attracting fresh foreign investment into the mining sector. It then sought the ELN’s help to impose order and subdue criminal gangs operating in that area, which led to the ELN’s expansion in southern Venezuela, according to Cristina Burelli, founder of SOSOrinoco, an advocacy and research group that documents the environmental and humanitarian crisis in southern Venezuela. Ten years later, Venezuela finds itself in a similar conundrum. But this time, the ELN — which the US considers a foreign terrorist organization — has turned into the main obstacle to attracting foreign investment. 

The ELN and FARC dissidents have long operated along the border between Colombia’s Guainía and Vichada departments and Venezuela’s Amazonas and Bolívar states (see map below). Around 10 years ago, however, they made incursions deep into Amazonas and Bolívar, sparking clashes with local gangs and systematic acts of violence against local Indigenous communities. Some — like the Pemon people — have formed self-defense militias to prevent armed group incursions into their territories to exact money from boats transporting minerals. Today, the ELN’s presence is less visible but stretches from the border with Colombia to as far east as San Martín de Turumbán, bordering Guyana, according to Burelli, where other powerful Venezuelan gangs, known as sindicatos, as well as Tren de Aragua, also continue to operate.

For years, the ELN held an alliance with FARC dissident Second Marquetalia’s Acacio Medina front, which essentially resulted in sharing drug trafficking routes and divvying up mining sites. However, the ELN broke it in 2025, sparking a turf war in different parts of the Amazonas state.

Conflict trajectory

Since 2020, violence in Bolívar and Amazonas has substantially decreased. But this reflects the ELN’s successful supremacy in most of the western parts of these states, while acceding to a sort of balanced division of territory with other criminal groups and a working relationship with Venezuelan authorities in the east. ACLED records only a handful of violent events in the southern part of the border in 2025 and 2026. Violence did not escalate significantly even after the ELN and Second Marquetalia clashed a few times in 2025, increasing pressure on Venezuelan authorities to intervene. This resulted in the first operation by security forces against Colombian armed groups’ drug labs and camps since 2022. More recently, authorities have also intensified actions against illegal mining activities, launching a military operation with the US in Las Claritas mining area and, a few days later, apparently allowed the US to carry out an airstrike that killed the Tren de Aragua gang leader, known as “Niño Guerrero.”

Risks and implications

Tackling organized crime, drug trafficking, and illegal mining activities in the southern part of the border represents an insurmountable challenge for both countries in the short-term, particularly for Venezuela. The key challenges are:

1. With bribes and direct revenues from gold mining likely exceeding those from drug trafficking, Venezuelan security forces — which face widespread corruption among their ranks — have little incentive to step up military pressure against armed groups, according to Bram Ebus, founder and director of Amazon Underworld, an investigative journalism project that explores criminal economies in the Amazon rainforest. 
2. The remoteness of the Amazon regions and the lack of ground infrastructure require more sophisticated military aircraft and fluvial equipment than that available to Venezuelan and Colombian troops.
3. The ELN’s dominance over large swaths of the border, coupled with local communities’ distrust of state institutions, makes it more difficult for local actors to cooperate with authorities and makes reprisal by the group all the more likely. 
4. Information on armed group presence and activities is limited and has further diminished over the past two years, as many media outlets and conflict monitoring organizations had to shut down due to censorship and foreign funding cuts, making it more difficult to assess exact risks for both security forces and mining companies interested in stepping in.

Despite reforms to Venezuela’s mining law that introduced a specialized National Guard unit to police mining areas, the appointment of a new defense minister and regional generals, and the military operations in mining areas, the picture in this part of the border is unlikely to change in the span of a few months. Any foreign company interested in expanding operations or distributing minerals mined in this southern part of the border will face high costs due to the lack of infrastructure, as much of the rare-earth minerals and gold extracted from this area are flown out by helicopters or planes. It will also almost certainly have to deal with the presence of armed groups, falling prey to their extortion and exposing local workers to their abuses, and overarching corruption networks within government institutions, according to Nathan Jaccard, senior editor at investigative journalism organization OCCRP, who spoke to ACLED in April 2026. In some areas, local experts such as Omar Vázquez Heredia, professor at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, have told ACLED that mining companies are likely to also face resistance from organized communities rejecting large-scale mining operations.

Scenarios: Political developments in Colombia, Venezuela, and the US will define prospects for border security cooperation 

The improvement in bilateral relations between Colombia and Venezuela comes amid growing US pressure on both governments to step up military confrontation against armed groups, which seems to be creating a window of opportunity for increasing security cooperation. But the ELN’s deep political and military connections, as well as years of distrust and disjointed policies, make the agreements reached by Petro and Rodríguez hard to operationalize and to outlive the end of Petro’s term on 7 August, when De la Espriella’s presidency is due to start, provided that the preliminary results that have him as winner — currently considered as not yet official or binding by left-wing candidate Iván Cepeda — are confirmed.

Three factors will define whether or not the window of opportunity closes: the willingness of Colombia's incoming president to deepen collaboration with Venezuela, the evolution of Venezuela's political transition, and Washington's ability to keep swaying events in both countries. 

We propose two alternative scenarios for the handling of security along the Colombian-Venezuelan border:

1. Relations between right-wing De la Espriella and the Rodríguez administration will likely be strained, as the former has rejected the possibility of strengthening ties with the government in Caracas. At the same time, he proposes doubling down on militarization as a method to solve Colombia’s armed conflict. This approach risks recreating the conditions that allowed Colombian armed groups’ expansion in Venezuela during the Iván Duque presidency (2018-2022). Then, broken diplomatic relations and pressure from Colombian security forces led guerrillas to seek refuge and strengthen their presence in Venezuela under Maduro’s protection. This time, however, the Rodríguez administration is not willing to see the ELN’s foothold expand further in Venezuela. In the absence of a democratic transition in Venezuela, therefore, military pressure on armed groups is likely to rise on both sides of the border, but remaining largely disjointed, thus allowing armed groups to adapt to varying and uncoordinated levels of military pressure on either side.  In fact, prospects for cooperation between Caracas and Bogotá are slim and will largely depend on Washington’s strategy. In fact, De la Espriella’s government will be much more aligned with the economic, political, and security agenda brought forward by Trump, who has openly endorsed him during the campaign. Trump is, in theory, well positioned to use his sway to prompt greater cooperation between the two countries on security to pave the way for safer investments. However, his administration has so far preferred dealing with each country separately, and is unlikely to make an exception. 
2. By contrast, if Washington pushes for a political transition leading to the rise of a conservative government in Venezuela, a joint military offensive against armed groups would be highly likely, as both governments would be ideologically aligned, fully cooperative with Washington, and supportive of a military confrontation against armed groups. It would likely prompt an escalation of armed groups’ violence on both sides of the border, but it also offers a chance to weaken their operations in the medium term, opening opportunities for subsequent investment. This scenario is unlikely in the remainder of 2026, as Trump is prioritizing stabilization and economic deals over democratic transition.

Greater cooperation between Bogotá and Caracas has a strong chance of weakening the ELN, contributing to longer-term improvements in the development of energy-related projects, particularly in the central and northern parts of the border. However, the likely renewed deterioration of diplomatic relations between the governments of De la Espriella and Rodríguez will make it harder for Bogotá to make a dent in the ELN’s operations along the border, as it will maintain a rear guard in Venezuela and make it more dangerous for foreign companies to invest in binational energy projects. 

However, neither scenario will solve the challenges facing the mining sector in southern Venezuela, where businesses will have to assume high security costs, extortion fees for their operations, and the violation of human rights and environmental protection standards that extracting or distributing minerals from Venezuela will entail. Even in the unlikely case that the Chavista regime is replaced altogether in Venezuela, it would take years to build a political and security apparatus that is reliable and can effectively dismantle the organized crime groups that run the mining sector in Venezuela.

Visuals produced by Christian Jaffe and Ciro Murillo.