A Colombian warlord became the Amazon rainforest’s most unlikely protector. Now he is cutting it down

Deforestation fell by a third when the guerrilla leader Ivan Mordisco violently enforced a logging ban, but now he has changed tack and is threatening Cop16 biodiversity talks

In the Amazon states of southern Colombia, uniform patches of cattle pasture suddenly give way to trees so numerous and densely packed that the blots of emerald, lime green and white overlap as vines, leaves and tree trunks merge into one.

According to official figures, this place is an international success story: the frontline of the country’s fight against deforestation, which it slashed last year by 36%.

But for those who live here, the future of the forest hangs in the balance. Many believe it will be decided on the whim of a violent militia leader, who last year became one of the world’s most unlikely forest protectors.

“Only one man controls these regions: Ivan Mordisco,” says Miguel Tabares, who was displaced from Guaviare state when rebels threatened his life and murdered a colleague running an ecotourism project. “He is the one who is really in charge. And he does whatever the hell he wants.”

Néstor Gregorio Vera Fernández – better known by the nom de guerre Ivan Mordisco – is leader of the Central General Staff (EMC), one of the largest armed groups in Colombia.

A list of alleged crimes, including drug trafficking, the mass killing of civilians, and the forced recruitment of children, have earned him a place on the US terrorist list and made him one of Colombia’s top military targets.

He also became one of the Amazon’s most unexpected protectors after implementing a total ban on deforestation, and policing it with deadly force.

Now, Mordisco looks poised to derail the country’s progress. As hundreds of environmental negotiators and political leaders flood the city of Cali, Colombia, for the Cop16 biodiversity summit, his militia has threatened to disrupt the proceedings, and there has been a series of violent attacks outside the city, prompting a substantial police and military presence on the streets.

Speaking on the eve of the summit, President Gustavo Petro said: “We are all nervous that nothing bad happens. There are those who would like [Cop16] to be a showcase of death and there are those who want it to be a showcase of the beauty that exists in Colombia.”

After years of runaway deforestation, Colombia had achieved a remarkable turnaround under its first ever leftist government, bringing forest loss to its lowest level in two decades. Colombia’s environment minister, Susana Muhamad, hailed it as “a truly iconic year in this fight against deforestation”.

In the Amazon, however, residents, peacekeepers and environmental experts – who remain anonymous for fear of violent reprisal – told the Guardian that Mordisco and the EMC could rapidly reverse the country’s gains.

“The EMC is in control in some of the most critical states with respect to protecting the Amazon from deforestation and they are currently expanding even deeper into the rainforest,” says Francisco Daza, a researcher at the Bogotá-based peacebuilding thinktank Pares. “They are a huge obstacle to the government’s environmental plans.”

A slight, bespectacled figure, Mordisco has more the appearance of an office worker than a jungle combatant, but his ruthlessness has helped the group of guerrillas, who are former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) fighters, tighten its control of vast swathes of southern Colombia.

Mordisco joined the Farc as a teenager and rose quickly through the ranks. Founded in 1964, the group conducted the longest insurgency in the western hemisphere until its more than 7,000 Marxist combatants disarmed in 2016 in a landmark peace deal with the government. Until that peace deal few had heard of Mordisco.

The rebel commander caused a stir when he became the first to abandon the peace process, forming a breakaway army. By 2022, Mordisco had amassed a force of more than 3,000, according to the Colombian military.

“He is a very competent leader who knows how to employ violence tactically for his own gain,” says Gerson Arias, a researcher at the Bogotá-based thinktank Ideas for Peace Foundation, who has studied Mordisco’s rapid rise.

In July 2022, the Colombian government announced it had killed Mordisco in a bombing raid on a camp deep in the jungle. “The last great leader of the Farc has fallen,” said then-defence minister, Diego Molano.

But in October 2022, Mordisco re-emerged, seemingly from the dead. He claimed he was a changed man, telling local media “we can begin to build the roadmap that will help Colombia to eradicate the causes that gave rise to the armed conflict.”

Mordisco’s resurrection coincided with the election of Colombia’s first leftist president, and Petro’s ambitious plan to negotiate peace with armed political groups.

To secure a seat at the negotiating table, Mordisco set strict annual deforestation limits of a few hectares per person in deforestation hotspots along Colombia’s agricultural frontier where the plains meet the Amazon rainforest. Those who cleared more faced fines, forced labour or death.

The bans worked. “Their orders restricting slash and burn were the biggest influences in the reduction in deforestation,” says Pedro Arenas, from the environmental organisation Viso Mutop.

When the government cut off negotiations with the EMC earlier this year, however, after its combatants bombed a police station and murdered an Indigenous leader, Mordisco revoked the ban. In the first three months of this year, deforestation was 40% higher than in 2023.

“The EMC have not only allowed deforestation, they have pressured farmers to make new roads and clear the forest for agriculture,” says Angelica Rojas, a liaison officer for Guaviare state at the Foundation for Conservation and Sustainable Development, a Colombian environmental thinktank.

A report by the International Crisis Group adds that the EMC is preventing rangers from entering national parks and tightening its grip on the areas under its control.

Civilians are trapped in the middle of the conflict – and resolving it has been further complicated by fractures within the EMC, with another dissident front splintering off in April.

A source inside a rival Farc dissident faction says Mordisco had “started behaving more and more like a cartel than a guerrilla group [leader]”.

“It’s one thing growing some coca for farmers to live off but it’s another thing filling entire mountains with it,” the source says. “They are a paramilitary group, but a lot of people have been tricked into thinking they are something else.”

Petro has since admitted the talks with the EMC were premature. As Cop16 approached, Mordisco again made international headlines for threatening to sabotage the meeting, where presidents and ministers from across the world are discussing how to save the world’s biodiversity.

“[Cop16] will fail even if they militarise the city with gringos,” Mordisco said in a press release. An EMC spokesperson subsequently said there was no plan to directly attack the summit, but recent weeks have been marked by a series of violent clashes , including bombing a police station just 12 miles (20km) from Cali.

So far, the EMC has used the negotiations with the government to strengthen itself and extend its illicit business tentacles into the Amazon, a member of a team supporting the peace process in Guaviare has told the Guardian.

The Colombian government now has two options, the source says: offer Mordisco something in exchange for protecting the rainforest, or declare all-out war and attempt to cut off the armed group’s revenue streams.

“The EMC do not care about deforestation,” he says, “but they sure do care about money.”

Cover photo: Ivan Mordisco is leader of the Central General Staff (EMC), one of the largest armed groups in Colombia. Photograph: Long Visual Press/Universal Images Group/Getty Images