BOGOTÁ, Colombia – Colombia’s defense minister said on Wednesday that several youths were in a rebel camp recently attacked by the military, but did not confirm reports that children were among the dead, an allegation that fueled great indignation in a staggering nation. after decades of war.
In an interview with Rádio W, Minister Diego Molano said that “young combatants”, who had been recruited and turned into “war machines” by criminals, were present in a military operation aimed at a violent armed group.
But he has repeatedly refused to reveal the age of the dead, amid reports by local authorities and media outlets that one or more of the dead were minors, including a 9-year-old girl. In the interview, Mr. Molano called this information “illegitimate” and part of a “political war to provide information that sought to delegitimize our military”. In the program, the presenter read the names of the dead reported on local news.
The accusations resonated instantly in a nation marked by decades of brutal internal war involving the US-backed government, leftist rebels, right-wing paramilitaries and powerful drug cartels – combats that often included child combatants and caused many civilian casualties. Today, the country is divided by a 2016 peace agreement that sought to end that era, but has had only limited success.
On Wednesday morning, the Colombian military announced that they had killed 12 people in a military operation that targeted the “criminal structure” of an armed group led by Miguel Botache, known by the pseudonym of Gentil Duarte, a former member of the largest group Colombian rebel, Colombia’s left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces, or FARC.
The FARC signed a peace agreement with the government in 2016, officially ending the war between the two sides. But some rebels, including Duarte, abandoned the peace agreement and returned to arms.
As the FARC withdrew from vast swaths of territory, other violent groups moved, turning many communities into battlegrounds between military, former and new rebel and paramilitary groups. For many in Colombia, the war is not over.
President Iván Duque has been the target of growing criticism for not doing enough to contain the violence.
In late 2019, his former defense minister, Guillermo Botero, stepped down after failing to disclose that several children died during a military operation against a criminal group.
In a radio interview, Molano said that the most recent operation, which took place on March 2 in the department of Guaviare, is within the limits of international law. He blamed the leaders of the armed groups for the deaths.
“We are not talking about young people who did not know what they were doing,” he said of those who join these groups.
“Who is responsible for recruiting, for converting them into war machines?” he added. “It is these organizations, not the national army.”
These comments prompted immediate criticism from various sectors of Colombian society, who said that young people recruited by armed groups should be treated as victims, not as criminals.
The country has been consumed for decades in a conversation about how to deal with recruiting children.
“They are not combatants, but victims of war,” wrote Diego Cancino, councilor in Bogotá, the capital, on Twitter. “Minister Diego Molano, you cannot justify the unjustifiable.”
Sofía Villamil contributed reporting.