Recently, however, the FARC has delivered brutal reminders that they have not been vanquished yet. On September 1st, a police convoy in the province of Caquetá was destroyed by a mine laid by the guerrillas, who later burned the bodies of the 14 victims. Nine days later, the group fired homemade mortars made from cooking-gas cylinders on a police station in the town of San Miguel, on the Ecuadorean border, claiming eight lives. All told, the FARC has killed 40 police and soldiers over the last month.

Such a show of force was to be expected following a presidential handover. However, its magnitude lends support to recent studies of the FARC’s activity. These suggest they may have adapted to the army’s punishing campaign against them by reverting to more traditional guerrilla tactics, such as using land mines and snipers and breaking up into smaller groups.

Mr Santos promptly vowed to “intensify the offensive” against the FARC. But such plans may require diverting resources from other security priorities, such as soaring urban crime. That is attributed primarily to fighting for control of retail drug sales and extortion rings among gangs, many of which are led by former right-wing paramilitary fighters demobilised under Mr Uribe. In Medellín, a city of 2.2m, 1,250 murders were reported between January and July, and 2,266 people have fled their homes because of the violence. By attacking the government, the FARC may inadvertently be strengthening the heirs of the fighters that battled them in the 1990s.