As Abelardo de la Espriella takes office as president vowing a new military offensive, the country’s last leftwing rebels are getting ready to fight back As the boat approached the…

As Abelardo de la Espriella takes office as president vowing a new military offensive, the country’s last leftwing rebels are getting ready to fight back As the boat approached the riverbank, camouflaged figures watched from the tree line. Behind them, in the dim understory of the jungle, a commander of the National Liberation Army (ELN) sat with his rifle on his lap, amid the buzz and whine of insects and the thwacks of machetes on bamboo as his troops set up camp, hidden from enemy drones. Colombia’s 62-year old armed conflict is on the brink of a new chapter, with the country’s new president, Abelardo de la Espriella, who takes office on Friday, vowing an end to peace talks and launch a new military offensive. Colombia’s last guerrilla group says it is ready for whatever might come. “Where we can go on the offensive, we will,” said the commander of the group’s Western War Front, who goes by the moniker Yerson. “And if the ELN leadership says we have to carry out a military offensive at the national level, we will. Attacks in cities, in the countryside, wherever.” Yerson and his troops were deep in the Pacific department of Chocó, in an ELN stronghold accessible only after hours of river travel, where humid heat soaks through the cloud cover. Occasional communities, each a line of wooden shacks on stilts, broke the dense forest on the banks. Giant mining barges were moored on the river, with diggers clawing up the riverbed to extract the particles of gold it contains. The ELN and rival armed groups fight to control the San Juan River, its resources and its population. At one point in the journey, armed men from the Gulf Clan, a violent paramilitary group, stopped the Guardian’s boat to question the passengers, before promising to liberate the area from the ELN.