Colombia Targets Criminal Corridors Along Its Caribbean Coast

Recent Colombian Army operations in northern Colombia underscore the Caribbean’s strategic importance to the criminal organizations operating in the country. Controlling coastal corridors, transportation routes, and maritime departure points remains one of these groups’ primary objectives, while the Colombian government combines intelligence, sustained territorial presence, and international cooperation to restrict their freedom of movement.

On June 15, the Colombian Army launched an operation against the Autodefensas Conquistadoras de la Sierra Nevada (ACSN) in rural areas of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. In response, members of the group blocked several sections of the Troncal del Caribe highway, disrupting traffic between the departments of Magdalena and La Guajira. Hours later, security forces regained control of the corridor through a coordinated effort involving national and local authorities, humanitarian organizations, and community leaders.

Beyond the immediate confrontation, the operation highlighted the strategic value of this corridor for criminal organizations. According to the Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation (FIP), the ACSN’s primary sources of revenue are drug trafficking and extortion. The organization controls corridors linking inland routes to Caribbean departure points, operates storage sites, and charges other criminal networks for access to coastal areas used to export cocaine.

The group, which consolidated under its current name in 2020 following the reorganization of armed structures operating in the region, maintains a presence primarily in the departments of Magdalena, César, and La Guajira, with signs of expansion into Santander and Norte de Santander.

Yadira Gálvez, a security expert and professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), told Diálogo that these organizations extend far beyond drug trafficking and extortion. In addition to controlling illicit economies, they establish systems of criminal governance that allow them to impose rules of behavior, exert direct control over communities, and secure the corridors that sustain their operations.

Geography as a strategic asset

Colombia’s Caribbean region includes major port facilities in Santa Marta, Barranquilla, and Cartagena, as well as an extensive network of highways, coastal areas, and mountainous terrain that facilitate movement between the country’s interior and international maritime routes.

According to Gálvez, controlling these corridors provides criminal organizations with far more than a means to move illicit cargo. It also enables them to protect storage sites, secure embarkation points, sustain logistics networks, and generate revenue by extorting legitimate economic activities, including tourism.

The Colombian Ministry of Justice’s report, Organized Crime in Colombia, states that the country’s geography and the limited state presence in some regions have facilitated the expansion of multiple illicit economies and the criminal organizations that manage them. The study identified the sustained presence of 98 criminal groups in 618 municipalities between 2018 and June 2024. It also found that these organizations have diversified their revenue streams through illegal mining, extortion, and other criminal activities while strengthening export corridors to Central America, Europe, and Africa.

Colombia remains the world’s leading producer of cocaine, a reality that, according to Gálvez, continues to place constant pressure on the corridors used to transport the drug to international markets. Between 2016 and 2024, the departments of La Guajira, Magdalena, and Bolívar accounted for nearly 20 percent of the country’s cocaine seizures, according to the Ministry of Justice, underscoring the Caribbean’s importance both as an export corridor and as a priority area for interdiction operations.

An increasingly flexible criminal model

Criminal organizations have also changed the way they control these corridors. Rather than maintaining a direct presence in every area of interest, larger organizations increasingly rely on alliances and arrangements with local criminal groups to secure routes, storage sites, and embarkation points.

This model allows them to expand their influence while reducing operational costs and taking advantage of the local knowledge of established actors. At the same time, it creates new sources of conflict, as local groups can grow stronger, become more autonomous, and eventually compete for control of the same illicit economies.

Gálvez said this adaptability reflects a constant search for new ways to operate. Criminal organizations incorporate new technologies, modify their transportation methods, and shift operations toward areas with less government pressure. This phenomenon, known as the “balloon effect,” occurs when increased enforcement in one area pushes criminal activity into less-monitored corridors.

A sustained response

According to the Ministry of Justice, Colombia has progressively strengthened its institutional and legal framework to combat organized crime, complementing military operations with measures aimed at disrupting the financial and logistical structures that sustain these organizations.

According to InSight Crime, recent efforts have also focused on the most specialized components of transnational organized crime, particularly networks involved in money laundering and the logistical coordination of drug trafficking supply chains.

Gálvez said recent operations demonstrate the importance of integrating intelligence, planning, and interoperability among the Colombian Army, National Police, and Office of the Attorney General to disrupt the logistical capabilities and mobility of these organizations. She added that the operational challenge is to maintain pressure on strategic corridors while protecting civilian populations, particularly in areas inhabited by Indigenous communities, while also strengthening financial investigations and targeting the networks that connect licit and illicit economies.

International cooperation complements these efforts through information sharing, capacity building, and bilateral mechanisms designed to combat transnational organized crime and other shared threats.

The operation against the ACSN demonstrates that protecting a strategic corridor requires far more than reopening a highway or dismantling a camp. It demands a sustained effort that combines intelligence, territorial control, interagency coordination, and cooperation with international partners to prevent criminal organizations from rebuilding the logistical networks that sustain drug trafficking and other illicit economies along one of Colombia’s most important Caribbean corridors.