The Brazilian and Colombian armed forces have jointly stepped up the fight against transnational crime in the Amazon. In late April, military authorities from both countries signed an agreement to close in on criminal organizations in the region.
“In Brasilia, we signed the Cooperation Plan between the Colombian Military Forces and the Brazilian Armed Forces, where we ratified the fight against common threats in the Amazon, such as narcotrafficking and illegal mining over the next two years,” Army General Helder Fernán Giraldo Bonilla, commander of the Colombian Military Forces said via X.
“In addition to the exchange of experience, training, and doctrine, interoperability operations will also be carried out to combat the criminal alliance between FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] dissidents and organized crime groups,” Colombian magazine Semana reported.
Among these are Brazilian criminal organizations Red Command and First Command of the Capital, known for their narcotrafficking, illegal mining, and arms trafficking activities, Argentine news site Infobae reported.
Greater military presence
Cooperation with the Colombian military is part of a growing effort by the Brazilian Armed Forces to protect and defend the Amazon region. “Since the 1980s, the Brazilian Army has been increasing its presence in the Brazilian Amazon,” the Verde-Oliva Agency of the Brazilian Army’s (EB) Social Communication Center told Diálogo.
This increased presence guarantees the operational and logistical readiness needed for operations in the jungle. “The Brazilian Army, represented by the Amazon Military Command, the Northern Military Command, and the Western Military Command, has detailed the main actions for these commands: contributing to guaranteeing national sovereignty and cooperating with national development,” the EB said.
Drop in deforestation
The growing presence of Brazilian and Colombian military personnel in the Amazon contributed to a drop in deforestation in 2023. In Brazil, deforestation fell by 62 percent in the January to November 2023 period, compared to 2022. The deforested area went from 10,286 square kilometers in 2022 to 3,922 km² in 2023, according to the Institute of Man and the Environment of the Amazon, a Brazilian scientific institution that supports climate justice.
In Colombia, the reduction was even greater. Between January and September 2023, deforestation alerts fell by 70 percent compared to the same period in 2022, according to data released by Colombia’s Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology, and Environmental Studies.
According to the EB, interagency cooperation has been the “critical factor” for the success of missions in the Amazon. “In the last five years, we can highlight EB’s participation through joint operations — under the coordination of the Ministry of Defense — or singular operations, in direct or indirect actions that contribute to reducing deforestation,” the EB said. An example of this was the mega-operation the Brazilian military and security forces carried out in April to destroy the criminal infrastructure in the Yanomami Indigenous Land (TIY).
“With 312 intelligence, inspection, and repression actions to demobilize the logistics supporting the crime, the government seized a large list of equipment, now unusable: 38,000 liters of diesel, 200 engines, 114 kilograms of mercury, among others,” the Brazilian government said in an April 12 statement. According to the Brazilian government, the mega-operation at TIY involved 343 people, most of them military personnel.