The 2016 peace accord with the FARC contained, among its hundreds of provisions, a clear sequencing rule: farmers in designated areas would voluntarily register, destroy their coca, and receive government support for transitioning to legal crops. Forced eradication in those areas was explicitly prohibited until the voluntary process had run its course. That rule is now being broken at scale.

Colombia's National Police anti-narcotics directorate has conducted forced eradication operations in Putumayo, Caquetá, and Norte de Santander at roughly three times the 2024 pace. The surge is driven by US pressure — Washington ties military equipment and training support to counter-narcotics certification requirements, and the Colombian security apparatus has responded accordingly. The peace accord's commitments sit in a different ministry and a different political logic. The collision was predictable. It has arrived.

The damage is documented. Community monitors in Putumayo recorded 23 instances in 2025 where forced eradication operations destroyed crops belonging to farmers with active voluntary substitution registrations — farmers who were, by the accord's own terms, doing exactly what the government asked. In most cases they received no compensation. Their PNIS agreements were administratively cancelled on the grounds that they were no longer growing coca. The logic is circular and the effect is devastating.

Minister for Peace Otty Patiño sent a formal protest letter to the Defence Ministry and the National Police in February. It was leaked — by whom remains disputed — and published by El Espectador. What had been managed through quiet internal negotiation became a public split inside the Petro government between the peace track and the security track.

Former FARC commanders participating in political reintegration have warned that communities losing PNIS support are being approached by dissident factions — those that rejected the 2016 accord — with offers of renewed protection arrangements. In at least two municipalities in Caquetá, community leaders report that dissident recruitment has increased measurably since the eradication operations began. The accord is haemorrhaging trust in precisely the areas it was designed to hold.

"You cannot eradicate your way to peace," said Patiño at a press conference following the letter's publication. "Every hectare we destroy by force in a PNIS community is a hectare we hand to the dissidents. We made commitments. If we break them for Washington, we lose everything we built."