Colombia Army’s Renewed Lethal Targets Rattle Ranks and Revive Old Fears
A new set of battlefield incentives is reshaping Colombia’s war on armed groups, pushing commanders to “double results” and strike with partial certainty. The New York Times and reporter Nicholas Casey describe an army under pressure—where old traumas resurface and civilians may pay the price.
A Quota Mentality Returns to the Barracks
Inside the Colombian Army, frustration has been turned into arithmetic. Written orders and senior-officer interviews reported by The New York Times’ Nicholas Casey describe a command climate in which brigades are judged by a blunt sum: the “arithmetic” of kills, captures, and surrenders. At the start of the year, generals and colonels were gathered, handed pledge forms titled “Goal Setting 2019,” and told to sign for a surge. Daily internal briefings began tracking “Days Without Combat,” and commanders were berated if their units went too long without assaults. The message, as officers interpreted it, was not simply to be effective—it was to be visibly lethal, frequently, and measurably.
The architect of the directive, Major Gen. Nicacio Martínez Espinel, acknowledged issuing orders to “double the operational results,” arguing that the “criminal threat rose” and that maintaining the previous pace would fail national objectives. Yet in a country still scarred by the mid-2000s “false positives” scandal—when civilians were killed and falsely presented as guerrillas to satisfy quotas—any return to results-based pressure lands like a tremor beneath already cracked institutions. Officers told Casey that the chill is not abstract: they fear the logic of numbers is once again eroding the discipline of restraint.
Sixty Percent Certainty and the Human Cost of Error
The most unsettling shift described to The New York Times is not merely an uptick in operations; it is the lowering of the threshold for deadly action. One order instructed soldiers not to “demand perfection,” even if serious questions remain about targets. Another stated that operations should be launched with “60 to 70 percent credibility or exactitude.” Officers said the change effectively reduced the safeguards that were tightened after earlier abuses, replacing deliberation with momentum. General Martínez disputed how the instruction was being interpreted, insisting “respect for human rights is the most important thing” and that actions remained “within the letter of the law.” He argued the guidance concerned planning rather than execution. But officers told Casey the practical effect is the same: uncertainty is no longer a red light; it is treated as an acceptable margin.
In Colombia, that margin has a history of swallowing peasants, commuters, and anyone unlucky enough to be misread by a nervous squad. Research in The Journal of Conflict Resolution and Latin American Research Review has long linked body-count incentives to civilian vulnerability in counterinsurgency settings, especially where accountability is weak and intelligence is murky. The officers’ fear, as relayed by Casey, is that institutional memory is being overwritten by a renewed hunger for proof—proof that can be photographed, logged, and reported upward.
They described incentives like extra vacation for increased combat kills, a perk that may sound small until it becomes a currency that measures loyalty. In one meeting recounted by an officer, a general urged commanders to “do anything” to boost results, even suggesting “allying ourselves” with armed criminal groups for targeting information. In a conflict where paramilitaries and criminal networks have often thrived in the shadow of state weakness, the idea of tactical collaboration—even as a suggestion—signals how quickly lines blur when the state becomes desperate to show success.
Peace Frays, Politics Tighten, and Old Ghosts Reappear
These orders, The New York Times reported, landed just two years after Colombia signed a landmark peace deal with its largest rebel force, the FARC. Yet peace has proved elusive: dissident fighters returned to arms, and other criminal and paramilitary groups expanded into contested regions. One guerrilla group that never signed an accord carried out a deadly car bombing in Bogotá in January, a reminder that violence can outlive treaties when territorial economies—cocaine routes, illegal mining, extortion markets—remain intact.
Political pressure tightened, too. Colombia faced demands from the Trump administration to show progress against drug trafficking despite roughly $10 billion in U.S. aid over the years, and President Iván Duque—a conservative who campaigned against the peace deal as too lenient—replaced top commanders in December. Documents published by Human Rights Watch, cited in Casey’s reporting, said nine officers linked to earlier abuses were appointed to senior roles, including figures now directing nationwide offensives. General Martínez said he did not participate in unlawful killings and is not under investigation by the attorney general’s office. Still, the symbolism matters in a country where command continuity is not just administrative—it is moral.
The record remains staggering. From 2002 to 2008, as many as 5,000 civilians or guerrillas were killed outside combat, according to the United Nations, and at least 1,176 members of the security forces were convicted of crimes tied to those deaths. For many Colombians, those numbers are not history; they are a warning label.
A January meeting crystallized the shift. Fifty generals and colonels gathered in a hangar in the mountains outside Bogotá and returned from a break to find pledge forms waiting. The document asked each commander to list last year’s totals—surrenders, captures, deaths—and then to set a new target. Officers said the instruction was blunt: double it. Within days, the directive arrived in writing, signed by General Martínez. Soon after, intelligence officers and regional commanders convened in Cúcuta, on the border with Venezuela, where they were told results mattered now, even if that meant drawing information from illegal armed groups to defeat rivals.
The consequences began to surface. Officers told The New York Times they identified suspicious killings and arrests. One cited a February 23 report describing a clash in which three lightly armed members of the Clan del Golfo supposedly fought a 41-soldier platoon—an account the officer found implausible. More visible was the killing of Dimar Torres, a former guerrilla who had disarmed under the peace deal. His body, found around April 22 near the Venezuelan border, showed a gunshot wound to the head. Villagers’ cellphone video captured soldiers near a half-dug grave; witnesses said troops tried to make him disappear. The defense minister, Guillermo Botero, initially defended the shooting as a struggle over a weapon, then a regional commander apologized publicly. Officers told Casey that many other cases would never see the light of day.
The institutional signals reinforced the fear. A slide titled “Days Without Combat” circulated internally, ranking brigades by how long they had gone without fighting. In counterinsurgency literature—from Security Studies to World Development—such dashboards are known to skew behavior, privileging action over accuracy. In Colombia, where rural intelligence is often fragmentary, and civilians move along the same paths as fighters, the risk of misidentification is structural, not incidental.
The political context makes restraint harder. President Iván Duque governs amid demands to demonstrate toughness and amid skepticism toward the FARC accord he opposed. At the same time, drug economies persist, and armed groups splinter and recombine faster than institutions can adapt. The temptation to revert to metrics that “work” on paper is powerful. Yet Colombia’s own reckoning showed the cost of such shortcuts: legitimacy collapses when the state measures success by bodies.
Officers who spoke to The New York Times said they feel trapped between orders and memory. They served through reforms meant to prevent a repeat of the false positives, only to watch standards loosen again. General Martínez insists the army is being misread, that commanders choose their own increases, and that legality governs operations. But the order’s text—accepting 60 to 70 percent certainty—casts a long shadow, especially when paired with incentives and public pressure to produce.
The question now is not whether Colombia faces real threats; it does. It is whether the country believes peace can be secured by compressing doubt, or whether it has learned that certainty—earned slowly, verified rigorously—is the only currency that spares civilians and strengthens the state. As Nicholas Casey reported, the army is counting again. Colombians remember where that arithmetic once led.
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