Duterte’s drug war deaths were far from 'coincidence,' study shows
MANILA, Philippines (Updated 2:58 p.m.) — Former President Rodrigo Duterte wasted no time in unleashing his bloody nationwide drug war upon taking office in 2016. In its first six months, civilian killings linked to the campaign surged but dropped during brief suspensions of police operations.
A study suggests this was far from coincidental.
The 2025 policy brief of the University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies (UP CIDS) found that weekly fatalities spiked during the first six months of each project like “Tokhang” under Duterte’s so-called “war on drugs.”
Sol Iglesias, a UP political science assistant professor, analyzed patterns of violence throughout the campaign, highlighting the effects of policies that are "not just rhetoric."
Her study's findings indicate that the likelihood of these civilian killings occurring purely by chance — rather than as a result of deliberate action — is very low, estimated at less than 5%.
"It’s common sense that if the policy is to start killing, it will start, and if the policy is to stop violence, it will stop. This shows central control by someone at the top, and control means that they are responsible for systematic, wide-spread violence. This is what systematic violence looks like," she told Philstar.com in a message.
This analysis was based on a model she developed to predict the “escalation and de-escalation” of killings by estimating the probability of weekly fatalities from anti-drug operations between July 1, 2016, and June 30, 2021.
Her estimates were also based on data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) project, which tracked weekly civilian deaths linked to the drug war.
Escalation refers to the rising trend in drug-related killings, while de-escalation marks periods when the violence subsided. The model particularly examined how law enforcement policies, government decisions and official pronouncements influenced these shifts.
This allowed her to identify trends in how killings surged or declined, particularly in relation to the implementation of Philippine National Police (PNP) anti-drug policies.
Duterte’s drug war set off a bloodbath
One of these policies was Operation Double Barrel, also known as Project Tokhang, led by then-police chief Sen. Bato dela Rosa. It was the Duterte administration’s flagship campaign, aiming to eradicate illegal drugs within three to six months, as Duterte had promised during his election bid.
The “double barrel” approach had two prongs: one targeting “high-value individuals” and the other focusing on “street-level personalities.”
Supposedly, police conducted house visits to persuade drug suspects to surrender — but these operations ultimately led to thousands of deaths.
According to the policy brief, Oplan Tokhang was later extended beyond homes, reaching schools, businesses and other areas linked to drug suspects.
“If you resist, show violent resistance, my order to the police (will be) to shoot to kill,” Duterte said on May 15, 2016. “It’s true. If you fight, I will have a sniper shoot you.”
This was before he was sworn into office in June 2016 — a statement that would later become one of his most infamous lines.
“Duterte directed the violence as the Philippines’ chief executive, vowing to rid the country of crime and corruption by killing millions of criminals without regard to human rights, similar to what he did as mayor of Davao City,” the policy brief said.
In the years that followed, more than 6,000 extrajudicial killings acknowledged by the government had occurred in his police’s anti-drug operations. Rights groups, however, have projected that the killings could reach as much as 30,000.
One case was Kian delos Santos', a 17-year-old Grade 11 student shot dead during an anti-drug operation in Caloocan in August 2017. Police claimed he resisted arrest, leading to his death.
However, witnesses and a forensics report showed that he did not fight back. CCTV footage also revealed officers dragging him away as he begged for his life on his knees before being killed.
RELATED: On Kian's slay, court tells cops: Murder 'never... a function of law enforcement'
Before Kian's death, Duterte had ordered a suspension of the police-led anti-drug operations in January 2017, a pause that saw a sharp decline in civilian fatalities.
The Tokhang project was briefly stopped after a kidnap-murder corruption scandal involving South Korean businessman Jee Ick Joo, whose body was discovered in Camp Crame.
When police stepped back, killings dropped
After ordering a suspension, Duterte temporarily shifted control of the drug war from the PNP to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).
According to the study, the likelihood of this being purely coincidental was just 1 in 1,000 — a pattern that strongly suggests control.
“As we have seen in other violence studies, the ability to turn violence on or off like a faucet is an indication of the former President’s control over the violence,” the policy brief read.
The suspension was short-lived. By March 2017, when drug war operations resumed, the PNP launched large-scale, simultaneous raids under a campaign dubbed “one-time, big-time.” It was during this phase that Kian was killed and deaths increased.
"But people were outraged and major anti-drug war protests started for the first time. The violence fell and even if there were still many killed, the rate of killing slowed down a lot," Iglesias said.
Another suspension of the PNP’s drug war operations came in October 2017, once again shifting responsibility to the PDEA. However, by December 2017, the PNP regained control of the campaign.
While the overall death toll declined, data shows that killings continued, with weekly civilian fatalities remaining below 50.
“The pattern of violence and the statistical evidence of central control reinforces the common-sense notion that if the policy is to start violence, it will start, and if the policy is to stop violence, it will stop,” the study said.
It stressed that establishing responsibility for the drug war “partly relies on evidence of centralized control over the violence.”
The study also pointed out that the patterns of killings from 2016 to 2021 could inform a stronger line of questioning in efforts to determine culpability — especially with the International Criminal Court (ICC) leading the investigation and prosecution.
The ICC charged Duterte with the murder of at least 43 individuals, a sample of the thousands of extrajudicial killings the prosecution recognized as part of his drug war.
For Iglesias, these cases "will show that the violence was ordered from the top, that it was widespread throughout the country, and the violence bears similar features that show they were systematic."
Philippine authorities arrested Duterte on March 11 following an Interpol notification of an ICC-issued warrant for crimes against humanity.
The former president initially appeared at the ICC in The Hague, Netherlands, on March 14. The confirmation of charges is set for September 23.
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