Colombia's overseas mercenaries are skilled, busy - and controversial
From Darfur to Donbas, growing numbers of Colombian soldiers-for-hire are leaving their South American home to fight and die in foreign wars, placing Colombia’s mercenaries at the centre of intense controversy at home and abroad.
Colombian fighters are a popular choice for foreign armies: they have active combat experience from the country’s long-running internal armed conflict, often train side-by-side with the United States military, and are willing to work for lower wages than many other mercenaries of their calibre.
But as Colombian fighters flow into the ranks of armies around the world, bereaved families, domestic politicians, and foreign governments are calling for greater constraints against the country’s exportation of modern mercenaries.
“They are kids who come from war and want to see war,” said Laz, a sergeant in the International Legion for the Defence of Ukraine (ILDU) who was authorized to speak under the condition of anonymity. “And so, when I ask them why they’re here, they tell me they’re here to fight and earn a living,” he said of the Colombian soldiers.
Today, some 300 Colombians are fighting in the war in Sudan, while up to 2,500 have joined Ukraine’s defence against Russia, according to unofficial estimates from the ILDU.
Colombian fighters are highly sought after because they are “effectively NATO-standard soldiers for a quarter of the price,” Dr. Sean McFate, author of The Modern Mercenary, told the Miami Herald .
Close military and economic ties to the U.S. mean more than 100,000 Colombian soldiers have been trained since 2000, earning them a reputation as robust fighters.
“I have Navy SEALs crying in the trench side-by-side Colombians who continue on,” said Laz.
Over a half-century of internal armed conflict has left the country with a large, well-trained army, which has translated into a booming private security industry.
Originally touted as a mechanism to support state security forces through training, intelligence gathering, and operational support, private security constitutes 1.2 per cent of Colombia’s GDP and employs over 390,000 personnel, according to a 2023 estimate by The Globalist magazine.
These private security firms provide a fertile ground for foreign private military contractors to recruit young Colombian soldiers, luring them with a hefty salary to fight abroad.
McFate told the Guardian that the use of Colombian mercenaries abroad began to take off in the 2010s after the United Arab Emirates paid ex-combatants to guard oil facilities. This phenomenon increased again during the pandemic, when then-president Iván Duque decreased requirements and expectations for licences for private security firms, furthering their expansion.
In Ukraine, an estimated 450 to 550 Colombians have lost their lives on the frontline since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, according to unofficial estimates from the ILDU. Among them: Jhonatan Andrés Martínez Villada, who left home to fight for Ukraine in November 2024 after being recruited via TikTok. He died March 23.
Mérida Villada Ibarra, a 64-year-old mother of six who lives in Santa Marta, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, described Jhonathan as a good son who loved his two dogs dearly. She says Jhonatan’s decision to serve was principally motivated by the prospect of helping the Ukrainian people, but also by financial woes back home and a “love for the military life.”
Since his death, Villada Ibarra has taken over her son’s TikTok account and is calling on Ukrainian officials to help retrieve and repatriate his body and collect payments she says her son was owed.
The Ukrainian government maintains that when a Colombian — or any foreign volunteer fighter — arrives in Ukraine, they join their ranks as a direct extension of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The ILDU says these soldiers are regarded as legal combatants and are entitled to the same pay, protections, and benefits as their Ukrainian counterparts.
But Villada said officials haven’t done “anything for (Jhonatan) or for the families of the fallen,” and wants to shed light on the “ugly things that happened to him out there.”
“International law in Ukraine is a fantasy,” remarked McFate in The Miami Herald, saying that Colombians would be naive to think they’d be safe if captured by the Russians.
On September 6, Sudan filed a formal complaint with the UN Security Council accusing the UAE of directly intervening in the country’s civil war by recruiting, financing, and deploying hundreds of Colombian mercenaries to fight alongside the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary group occupying the western region of Darfur and much of the Kordofan region to the south.
Sudan’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Al Harith Idriss al Harith, labelled the UAE a “direct threat to regional peace and security,” in a scathing, six-page letter.
The UAE has consistently denied allegations of recruiting mercenaries to fight alongside the RSF and characterizes the claims as “PR stunts.”
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a leftist former guerilla, has also become increasingly vocal about ex-Colombian soldiers’ involvement in foreign conflicts.
In August, Petro requested the expedited approval of a bill prohibiting former members of Colombia’s armed forces from enlisting in foreign armies and non-state armed groups after the Sudanese army downed a suspected Emirati plane carrying Colombian fighters. Months earlier, his foreign minister, Luis Gilberto Murillo, said Colombia should sign a UN convention that criminalizes mercenaryism.
More recently, Petro took to X , writing, “Ukrainians treat Colombians as an inferior race” and issued a plea for “Colombian mercenaries, who are being used as cannon fodder, transported by companies guided by Miami, to return to the country immediately.”
Analysts say that to solve its mercenary problem, Colombia must first expand veterans benefits .
Veterans receive a modest monthly pension of US$400 to US$600 and free health care for their families, but they have the opportunity to earn three times that amount fighting abroad.
“These kids do not come in bad faith. They come for a livelihood,” Sergeant Laz said.
For growing numbers of mothers like Villada Ibarra, the livelihood of a foreign volunteer fighter isn’t worth the cost. She is using the loss of her son Jhonathan as a cautionary tale to dissuade other Colombian aspiring soldiers from getting involved in foreign conflicts.
“I was initially afraid to speak, but now I have the courage to talk about it because I can’t bear this anguish anymore.”
Latin America Reports
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