Child deaths in airstrikes highlight Colombia’s political contradictions

The recent airstrike on a FARC dissident camp led by Iván Mordisco, in which seven minors were killed in the Guaviare department of the Amazon, has placed Colombian President Petro at the center of an intense political debate. He has been particularly criticized for his shift from zero tolerance for airstrikes killing minors when he was in the opposition, to justifying them now that he is in office.

However, he is not the only politician in a difficult position over this humanitarian tragedy. On the other side, the opposition and the country’s more conservative sectors — who are now demanding explanations — have little political gain to make from this moment, as many had approved airstrikes involving minors during right-wing governments.

Meanwhile, the left, which has championed human rights and demanded the resignation of officials involved in past strikes, has issued less forceful statements against the military. Once again, children are caught in the middle.

One of the officials closest to the president, who has toned down his criticism of the airstrikes, is Interior Minister Armando Benedetti. He is the same politician who, in 2021, while serving as a senator in opposition to former president Iván Duque, promoted a no-confidence vote against Diego Molano, the minister for defense, for an airstrike that killed 11 minors in the same region, the Guaviare department. “It seems we’re losing the war because we do worse things than the criminals,” he wrote at the time on his X account. Four years later, as interior minister, he has been far less vehement.

“I stand by what the president says,” Molano stated during a Wednesday session of the Human Rights Commission in the House of Representatives. “If they [the dissident guerrillas] knew there would never be a bombing because minors are present, it would be much easier for them to tell military intelligence that minors are present to protect themselves. What I’m saying may sound perverse, but the reality is even more perverse.”

With this muted statement, Molano joined a list of politicians attempting to support the president by justifying the attack. According to Benedetti, Colombia lacks the technology for more precise strikes, he added — two defensive arguments he did not have when confronting Molano from the opposition.

A similar situation involved then-senator Roy Barreras — now a presidential hopeful close to the ruling party — who was also key in the vote of no confidence against Iván Duque’s first defense minister, Guillermo Botero. Barreras was the one who revealed to Congress that six minors died in a 2019 military operation. “Colombia needs a defense minister, not a minister of war, a political agent of the enemy’s ideology, as Botero was,” he said at the time. Barreras claimed, before the government admitted it, that children were among the victims, based on a forensic study.

This time, Barreras again expressed regret over the deaths of minors. But, like other leftist sectors, he has placed more emphasis on the issue of child recruitment by dissidents than the military operation itself. “Criminals must be fought,” he wrote on social media.

Barreras also clarified that six years ago he did not call for the end of airstrikes, but rather that “they must be carried out with surgical precision,” responding to an interview in which Guillermo Botero — who was defense minister in 2019 — questioned why he was not equally critical now. So far, Barreras has not called for the removal of current Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez.

Iván Cepeda, the ruling party’s official candidate for the 2026 elections, was one of the most critical voices regarding the 2021 airstrike in Guaviare, in which several minors were killed during the operation ordered by Molano. From Congress, the senator warned that children recruited by armed groups are victims of the conflict and that the state, by carrying out operations without verifying their presence, re-victimizes them.

“If it is confirmed that boys and girls died … and you had prior knowledge, I will denounce you for serious violations of IHL [International Humanitarian Law],” he said.

Cepeda’s position now is not as firm as it was when he was in opposition. Although he rejected the airstrike under the current government, he did not demand, as he did years ago, the removal of the defense minister in charge.

Katherine Miranda, an opposition congresswoman, is now urging the left, especially Cepeda, to take a tougher stance on these violations. “Dear Iván Cepeda, I invite you to join me in denouncing President Petro and Minister Pedro Sánchez for serious breaches of IHL. Consistency and principles should not depend on the current government,” she said. This is a delicate issue for Cepeda, who has dedicated his entire life to fighting for human rights.

Some on the left have made more drastic shifts. The position of pro-government Senator Wilson Arias, for example, has changed compared to 2021, when he sharply criticized Molano and argued that the state had an obligation to protect children even during military operations. Today, although the senator condemns the death of children in the airstrike ordered by Petro, he nuances his position by retweeting messages that argue that there is a substantial difference between the current operation and the one four years ago. In a post on his X account, he shared a message stating that this time “a group of combatants in active combat was targeted,” whereas in 2021 the operation took place “on a camp where minors were sleeping.” His stance, previously focused solely on state accountability, now draws distinctions.

Political dilemmas also exist on the right, especially among those who defended Duque’s ministers when airstrikes killed minors. While they can point to Petro’s double standards, former ministers like Botero defend the actions of the current defense minister. “The security forces in this case, and in the previous and all other cases, have acted with full force and full caution,” Botero told the TV program Noticias Caracol. This is a notable political shift: a prominent Duque-era figure now supports the actions of Petro’s defense minister.

One politician in this situation is presidential hopeful and Senator Maria Fernanda Cabal, from Centro Democrático (Democratic Center), the party founded by right-wing leader Álvaro Uribe. “What you just did in Guaviare with the airstrike — wasn’t that a war crime? There’s always a tweet about it,” she said, recalling that Patro sent a message describing the Duque-era airstrike that killed minors as a war crime. Beyond that, she has not gone against the current defense minister. At the time of the 2019 strike, she shared messages that seemed to excuse the action.

The Democratic Center announced on Wednesday that it will not support the vote of no confidence against Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez. A representative in the Chamber for the party, José Jaime Uscátegui, said it would be inconsistent that “after three years of total impunity, during which we have urged the Public Force and the Ministry of Defense to act, now that they do, we are going to come down on them as if they were the villains.”

In the current debate, both the left and right find themselves in the uncomfortable position of presenting very similar versions of the same argument: both claim that if airstrikes are halted out of fear that minors may be present, it actually encourages child recruitment. In this context, political extremes end up justifying military actions similar to those they previously condemned, on the premise that any operational restraint could strengthen the dissidents. Meanwhile, humanitarian organizations insist that this logic normalizes the deaths of minors and ignores the state’s obligation to protect children, even in the midst of war.

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