US Teams Join Colombia and Venezuela in Surging Hunt for ELN After Drone Assault on Army Base
The scent of cordite had barely lifted from the palm-lined parade grounds before the first surveillance aircraft took to the sky. Over the weekend, in an escalation that rattled Bogotá’s security establishment, the National Liberation Army—better known as the ELN—launched a drone attack against a Colombian military base, according to officials familiar with the incident. The assault was not just a tactical flashpoint; it arrived at a moment of quiet, consequential realignment in the Andes. American military forces are now actively helping Colombia and Venezuela hunt the ELN, sharing intelligence and operational support in a cross-border push that would have been almost unthinkable just a few years ago. The weekend drone strike, described by officers as a brazen test of new insurgent capability, has underscored exactly why that cooperation has become urgent. As the region’s oldest active guerrilla insurgency adapts to the age of unmanned aerial warfare, the response is no longer a matter for any single nation. It is a coordinated campaign, with American boots and sensors quietly embedded in a mission that spans jungles, rivers, and hostile political landscapes.
A Coordinated Hunt Across Borders
For years, the ELN operated in the gray zones between state authority and armed rebellion, slipping through the porous borderlands where Colombia ends and Venezuela begins. That sanctuary is now being squeezed. American forces, working alongside Colombian military units and Venezuelan security agencies, have intensified their hunt for the group’s top commanders and mid-level operatives, according to multiple officials briefed on the operation. The partnership is built on a mix of cutting-edge intelligence gathering, satellite surveillance, and ground reconnaissance, with US personnel providing technical expertise and, in some cases, tactical advisory support. While Washington has long maintained a robust counter-narcotics and counterinsurgency presence in Colombia, the inclusion of Venezuela marks a striking shift. Caracas, once a geopolitical adversary of the United States, has found common cause with Washington when it comes to the ELN, a group that has extended its influence deep into Venezuelan territory and threatens to destabilize the very government that once tolerated its presence.
The collaboration, though largely unannounced, has been visible in the movement of military assets across the region. Colombian defense officials have confirmed joint patrols with US Special Operations forces along the Catatumbo region, a rugged corridor of coca fields and smuggling routes that serves as the ELN’s traditional heartland. Meanwhile, Venezuelan authorities have reportedly granted limited access to US liaison officers as part of a quiet understanding aimed at dismantling ELN logistics networks operating out of the border state of Apure. The arrangement is delicate, to say the least. Publicly, neither side is eager to advertise the depth of their cooperation; politically, the optics are complicated. But behind closed doors, security analysts say, the hunt has become a test case for a new kind of regional counterinsurgency—one that prioritizes operational necessity over traditional ideological divides.
The ELN’s Deadly New Tactics
The drone attack over the weekend marks a turning point in the ELN’s tactical evolution. For decades, the group relied on ambushes, bombings, and extortion campaigns waged with rifles and homemade explosives. Now, it is experimenting with weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles, a development that signals both desperation and sophistication. According to officials, the assault targeted a Colombian army installation in the Norte de Santander department, where the ELN had apparently launched a small swarm of drones during the night. The explosive payloads were crude, but the psychological impact was anything but. Though the attack did not result in the kind of catastrophic damage seen in other conflict zones, it shattered the perception that Colombia’s military bases were beyond the reach of guerrilla aviation.
Security analysts view the drone strike as a direct response to the intensifying manhunt. “The ELN is trying to show that it can still strike hard, even as it is being cornered,” said a former military intelligence officer with decades of experience in the region. “Drones give them a way to project power without exposing their fighters to direct combat.” The group has been under immense pressure since the Colombian government suspended cease-fire talks and resumed offensive operations, and the drone attack is widely interpreted as a signal to Bogotá, Washington, and Caracas that the insurgency retains both the will and the means to fight back. It is also a warning to the local population. By targeting a military base in a region where the ELN competes for control with other armed groups, the group is reminding everyone—rivals, civilians, and state forces alike—that it remains a dangerous, unpredictable actor.
The use of drones also reflects a broader trend in irregular warfare across Latin America. Cartels, paramilitary groups, and insurgent organizations have all begun to adopt commercially available unmanned aircraft, modifying them to carry small bombs or drop supplies to remote units. The ELN’s foray into this domain is part of a worrying pattern: the barriers to entry for drone-based terror are rapidly falling, and security forces across the region are struggling to keep pace. Significantly, the weekend attack demonstrated that the ELN is not merely a rural insurgency struggling to survive; it is an adaptive organization capable of learning from conflicts far beyond its borders.
A Complicated Peace Process
The ELN is no ordinary guerrilla group. Founded in 1964 by revolutionary intellectuals inspired by the Cuban Revolution and liberation theology, it has outlasted its larger rival, the FARC, which demobilized under a landmark 2016 peace deal. The ELN rejected that agreement and has continued fighting, but its history is marked by periodic peace talks, false starts, and endless cycles of negotiation followed by renewed violence. Under President Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftist leader, the government made a bold attempt to reopen negotiations with the ELN, offering ceasefires and humanitarian concessions. Yet the talks have repeatedly stalled, undermined by mutual suspicion, territorial disputes, and the group’s refusal to halt kidnapping, drug trafficking, and attacks on infrastructure.
The weekend drone strike has further poisoned the atmosphere. Petro’s administration condemned the attack, calling it a violation of international humanitarian law and a deliberate provocation. But some analysts argue that the operation should also be read as an internal power play within the ELN’s fractured command structure. The group has long struggled to maintain unity between its more moderate political wing, which favors negotiation, and its hardline military factions, which view dialogue as a weapon of war. The drone assault may be the work of a regional commander asserting his autonomy, or a calculated effort to strengthen the insurgents’ bargaining position by demonstrating their ability to escalate. Either way, it complicates the government’s dual-track strategy of negotiating while fighting—and it gives the military and its US partners a powerful rationale for continuing the hunt.
That hunt is not without controversy. Human rights organizations have repeatedly warned that intensifying military operations, especially those involving foreign forces, could lead to civilian casualties and displacement. The ELN, for its part, thrives in the chaos, using the cover of humanitarian crises to hide among displaced communities and rural peasants. The challenge for Colombian and Venezuelan forces, with US assistance, is to dismantle the insurgency without creating exactly the kind of resentment that feeds it. The drone attack, however, has pushed the security-first argument to the front of the agenda. In the aftermath of the assault, political resistance to the US-backed campaign has significantly diminished, even among leaders who had previously called for a purely political solution.
Regional Security at a Crossroads
The US decision to assist Venezuela in particular has injected a new, unpredictable element into regional security dynamics. For years, Washington treated Nicolás Maduro’s government as a pariah, imposing sanctions and backing opposition efforts to remove him. Yet the ELN’s expansion into Venezuelan territory—and the group’s deep involvement in illegal gold mining, extortion, and smuggling—has created a strange and uncomfortable convergence of interests. The ELN is not simply a Colombian problem anymore; it has become a destabilizing presence in the Orinoco region and the border states, challenging state authority and clashing with rival groups linked to both the government and the opposition. For Caracas, tolerating the ELN no longer serves a strategic purpose, if it ever did. The group has become a liability, and US intelligence assets are now being used to help Venezuelan forces target ELN logistics hubs and command-and-control nodes.
This cooperation is pragmatic but fragile. Venezuela’s military and security institutions are deeply politicized, and any success against the ELN is likely to be measured in different ways by different observers in Caracas and Washington. For the United States, the operation offers a way to undercut a longstanding threat to its closest ally in South America while testing new channels of communication with a government it still does not formally recognize as legitimate. For Venezuela, US assistance is an opportunity to neutralize a threat that could spiral into a full-blown insurgency along its own territory—without having to make broad public concessions on its geopolitical posture. The unspoken bargain appears to be that the hunt for the ELN takes precedence over older grievances, at least for now.
What Comes Next
The drone attack on the Colombian military base is a reminder that no success in this campaign will come easily. The ELN has repeatedly demonstrated an extraordinary capacity for adaptation, and its leadership has survived decades of pursuit. Even with US forces helping to coordinate air, land, and intelligence assets across Colombia and Venezuela, the group is likely to continue launching asymmetrical attacks, exploiting the region’s difficult terrain and the limits of state control. The insurgents have networks that extend into urban centers, support structures in neighboring countries, and a financial base built on drug trafficking and illicit mining. None of those will be dismantled overnight.
Still, the new level of cooperation among Washington, Bogotá, and Caracas has shifted the strategic balance in ways the ELN cannot ignore. The drone strike, for all its shock value, may prove to be a last hurrah rather than a turning point. Security forces in the region are now developing counter-drone tactics, including electronic jamming and kinetic interception, and the intelligence sharing that has brought US, Colombian, and Venezuelan personnel to the same table is certain to yield results over time. The goal, officials say, is not just to capture individual commanders but to dismantle the ELN’s operational capacity so thoroughly that it is left with no choice but to return to meaningful negotiations—or face extinction.
For the people living in the conflict zones, the path ahead is grimly familiar. More operations mean more displacement, more casualties, and more suffering, even if the long-term aim is peace. The ELN, like many insurgent groups, has survived by embedding itself in civilian life, and untangling that connection is the most delicate task of all. In the coming weeks and months, the region will be watching to see whether the coordinated hunt produces the decisive breakthrough that Bogotá and Washington have long sought. The weekend drone attack has set the tone: the ELN is still dangerous, still capable, and still willing to fight. But for the first time in years, it is facing a unified push across borders, with American assets and regional forces operating in a synchronization that was once impossible. Whether that will be enough is the open question. What is clear is that the hunt has entered a new, more urgent phase—and the old rules of engagement no longer apply.
