SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
war on drugs
As Trump Resumes Boat Strikes, Amnesty Says 'Congress Must Stop Murderous Yearlong Campaign'
"We look forward to the day when the architects and perpetrators of this campaign of extrajudicial killings are investigated and face justice, including the people who ordered these operations."
Aug 31, 2026
In anticipation of Wednesday, which will mark one year since the Trump administration launched its recently revived bombing campaign against boats allegedly trafficking drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, Amnesty International USA on Monday renewed its call for congressional action.
"For one year, the US military has carried out a campaign of extrajudicial killings at sea that has left more than 225 people dead, with the most recent four deaths just six days ago," said Amanda Klasing, Amnesty International USA's national director for government relations, in a statement. "For just as long, we have called on Congress to take meaningful action to stop these killings, which are illegal under both international and US law."
Both chambers of Congress are narrowly controlled by Republicans, who have refused to advance war powers resolutions intended to stop the strikes. The US military has confirmed 68 bombings, with at least 227 deaths and 3 survivors, including two attacks last week—though there have been at least three other suspicious attacks on Ecuadorian fishing boats.
All of the attacks have been denounced by legal experts worldwide as "war crimes, murder, or both." While the Trump administration has tried to justify the deadly campaign by claiming that the United States is in an armed conflict with drug-smuggling cartels, many experts and members of Congress disagree.
"War crimes are violations of the law of armed conflict that take place in armed conflict," Sarah Elaine Harrison, nonresident fellow in the Stimson Center's Conventional Defense Program, wrote for Lawfare last week. "By contrast, all of these boat strikes conducted by the US military... are extrajudicial killings. That is, they are deliberate killings that are outside the law: That means murder under domestic criminal statutes, and now likely crimes against humanity under international law."
Amnesty's Klasing similarly noted Monday that "US authorities have yet to offer a shred of evidence to support their claims against the people they have killed. They have not even named the dead. But even if the victims were transiting narcotics as the administration alleges, international law absolutely prohibits summary killings of criminal suspects."
"Unfortunately, with a few notable exceptions, lawmakers have done little to try to halt this horrific campaign of murder at sea," she continued. "And let us be clear: Extrajudicial killings are a form of murder. How many more people will die at sea from this administration’s illegal actions before Congress does its job?"
Klasing said that "we look forward to the day when the architects and perpetrators of this campaign of extrajudicial killings are investigated and face justice, including the people who ordered these operations: President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth."
"Until then, we will continue pushing Congress to do its job to stop this ongoing policy of murder, and we urge people to call their representatives and do the same," she stressed. "But the blame does not solely rest on US authorities."
Amid the boat bombings overseen by US Southern Command, Trump in March sent American troops to Ecuador for a joint effort to combat "narco-terrorists" in the South American nation. Earlier this month, SOUTHCOM announced an expanded operation dubbed Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, with an aim to "defeat all threats" across Latin America.
Klasing declared Monday that "any authorities in Latin America who have aided these killings with equipment or intelligence must stop collaborating in this illegal airstrike campaign and likewise face justice."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Lawless Killing Spree at Sea Resumes' as US Announces Fresh Boat Bombings
With the latest two casualties, the Trump administration's boat bombing spree has now claimed the lives of at least 223 people.
Aug 24, 2026
The US military has resumed its campaign of bombing alleged drug-trafficking vessels after a two-month pause in a campaign that many legal experts and human rights groups believe constitutes a murder spree.
In a Monday social media post, US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said it carried out a "lethal kinetic strike on a low-profile vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes" in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday. Two people were killed as a result of the attack, SOUTHCOM claimed.
In announcing the strike, SOUTHCOM Commander Gen. Francis Donovan said the attack was part of a campaign of "imposing total systemic friction on narco-terrorists—disrupting their operations, dismantling their leadership, and eliminating cartel terror across the region."
Donovan's boasts about the effectiveness of the boat strikes in combating the drug trade come less than a month after a leaked a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) analysis revealed that the boat-bombing campaign has not "reduced the amount of cocaine entering” the country, as drug cartels have found alternate methods for shipping their product into the US.
With the latest two casualties, the boat bombing campaign launched nearly a year ago by President Donald Trump's administration has now claimed the lives of at least 223 people.
Adam Isaacson, director of the Defense Oversight program at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), criticized the administration for resuming its boat bombings despite "overwhelming evidence that they are murder; that many, likely most, of the dead are either super-low-level or uninvolved with drugs; and that cocaine supply is unaffected."
Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, delivered a similarly scathing assessment, commenting that "the Trump administration's lawless killing spree at sea resumes."
Nicholas Grossman, professor of international relations at the University of Illinois, described the boat strike campaign as "murderous" and "illegal," adding that its victims are "not terrorists" and "may not even be drug traffickers."
Investigative journalist Camila Lourdes Galarza observed that "there’s still no proof any of the victims" of the boat strikes were involved in the drug trade.
Lourdes Galarza sarcastically added that if the victims had been drug traffickers, "the US would probably give them a deal" like the one given to Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras who was pardoned by Trump last year despite being previously convicted on narcotics trafficking charges.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Mysterious Attacks on Ecuadorian Fishers Raise Fears of Expanded US Boat Bombings
“It would be one thing if the US didn’t have an overt maritime strike campaign, but they do, and they’re posting snuff films of boats going up in flames regularly,” said one expert.
Aug 12, 2026
An investigation published Wednesday by The New York Times has raised fresh questions about who attacked three Ecuadorian fishing vessels in the Pacific Ocean earlier this year—but for fishers and their families in the South American nation, the mystery is hardly new.
According to the Times, Ecuadorian fishers aboard the Fiorella, Negra Francisca Duarte II, and Don Maca were separately attacked by what witnesses called unidentified "gringos" using drones. Survivors said they "came under attack by English-speaking assailants wearing matching uniforms with American flag patches, but without any clear insignia to link them to an official government force."
International rights groups have called for an investigation after the Fiorella and its crew of eight disappeared in January amid Operation Southern Spear, President Donald Trump's largely ineffective campaign of extrajudicial strikes on boats that the US administration claims, without evidence, were smuggling drugs.
By the Pentagon's own admission, more than 220 people have been killed in at least 66 such strikes since last September. The US military says no civilians were killed in the strikes, a claim that anonymous government officials called "a fucking joke" and "a total whitewash."
This is a very worrying story. Ecuadorian fishermen are being attacked and killed, and the perpetrators seem to be either the U.S. military engaged in clandestine operations or an American mercenary company working for Bukele or another Central American country.
[image or embed]
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) August 12, 2026 at 7:12 AM
Government officials in countries including Colombia and Venezuela, as well as victims' relatives, have contradicted the US claim. The families of two Trinidadian men killed in one strike earlier this year filed wrongful death lawsuits against the United States. Relatives of a Colombian slain in another US strike also filed a complaint at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Some of the Ecuadorian fishers featured in the new Times piece say they were seized and interrogated by the attackers before being handed over to the Salvadoran navy, which conducts long-range maritime patrols and counternarcotics operations in the Eastern Pacific and occasionally intercepts vessels.
The new Times report says that a maritime patrol aircraft based at a military facility in El Salvador repeatedly flew toward and tracked the Ecuadorian fishing boats in the days before they were attacked or disappeared. An analysis of flight data found that the aircraft's course appeared to follow the vessels over several days.
Yet the aircraft was not listed among Pentagon operational aircraft. According to the Times, it was registered to a private company whose address was a UPS store mailbox in Virginia, deepening the mystery over who was operating it—and for whom.
“It would be one thing if the US didn’t have an overt maritime strike campaign, but they do, and they’re posting snuff films of boats going up in flames regularly," Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who specializes in the laws of war, told the Times.
"And that’s what makes this even more squirrelly," added Finucane, now a senior adviser in the US Program at the International Crisis Group. “Who are these people that are operating, and under what authority? And they are using a UPS store as their company address? Come on.”
The Pentagon has denied involvement, claiming that US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) did not know about the attacks or have a role in them. But the new findings raise the possibility that the attacks could have involved a private military contractor or another force operating in coordination with Washington's expanding anti-drug campaign.
“Who are these people that are operating, and under what authority? And they are using a UPS store as their company address?"
In addition to the boat bombing campaign—which the Pentagon has replaced with the newly created Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere—SOUTHCOM has launched Operation Total Extermination, a joint counternarcotics operation with Ecuadorian forces involving the deployment of US ground troops into the Andean nation.
In one operation in the campaign, Ecuadorian soldiers raided and destroyed a dairy farm in San Martín, Sucumbíos, on March 3. Ecuador claimed the site was a traffickers’ camp, but investigations by The New York Times and, later, Human Rights Watch found substantial evidence that it was a working cattle and dairy farm with no credible evidence of a criminal connection. HRW said four workers at the farm were detained and tortured by Ecuadorian forces, and that the broader operation was carried out with US assistance.
The Times investigation published Wednesday followed months of reporting by Ecuadorian and international media and human rights groups, including HRW, on the three fishing vessels and their crews.
In April, Primicias reported growing fear among fishermen in Manabí, Ecuador's major fishing province, where crews said they had been intercepted and attacked at sea. Fishers from the Don Maca and Negra Francisca Duarte II separately described being surrounded by drones and subsequently detained by what they believed were US personnel.
Don Maca's crew told El Universo that drones bombed their boat without warning on March 26. Fishers aboard said they escaped in small boats, approached a foreign vessel for help, and were instead handcuffed and hooded before eventually being transferred to Salvadoran authorities.
El Universo also separately reported a strikingly similar account from the crew of the Negra Francisca Duarte II. Captain Hernán Flores said a drone struck the boat on March 17, setting it ablaze and forcing all 16 fishermen into the water. When they approached a nearby blue vessel seeking assistance, Flores said, armed foreign personnel pointed weapons at them, bound them, and covered their heads.
In the case of the Fiorella, Primicias and El Universo reported that two fishers who had separated from the boat in a smaller vessel saw a drone circling above shortly before they spotted smoke on the horizon. Fiorella and those aboard it have never been found.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump and Hegseth's Boat Strike Murder Spree Hasn't Slowed Cocaine Trafficking: DEA Analysis
"'Bombing boats' to stop drugs isn't just cruel and illegal—it's futile," said one expert.
Jul 27, 2026
An internal government analysis has revealed that President Donald Trump's campaign of strikes against alleged drug boats off the coasts of Latin America hasn't achieved its purported goal of diminishing the amount of cocaine being trafficked into the US.
The Washington Post reported on Monday that a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) analysis has concluded that the boat-bombing campaign, which many legal experts and human rights groups consider acts of murder, has not "reduced the amount of cocaine entering" the country.
"DEA analysts found the strikes had failed to affect the supply or price of cocaine in the United States," reported the Post, "and had led traffickers to diversify beyond go-fast boats and to avoid international waters, opting instead for larger boats and hemming close to coastlines, where US forces are less likely to open fire."
The Post added that US Department of Defense (DOD) officials last month gave a closed-door briefing toe members of Congress where they acknowledged the strikes had not reduced the purity of cocaine entering the US from Latin America.
In an interview with the Post, a DEA official said that drug cartels had several options in addition to smuggling contraband by boats and simply switched tactics to avoid being hit by US strikes, which so far have killed at least 221 people.
"When you squeeze the balloon on one side, it always expands on the other side," the official said. "They always find the weak spots and exploit them."
Journalist Alex Horton, one of the authors of the Post report, described the boat-bombing campaign as what happens "when you merge the failures of the war on terror and the failures of the war on drugs."
The Post's report on the effectiveness of boat strikes came days after the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) released a lengthy report that similarly found that the boat strikes' "impact on the trafficking of cocaine, the main drug flowing from South America, has been slight to non-existent."
Adam Isaacson, director of the Defense Oversight program at WOLA, explained the pointlessness of the boat-bombing spree in a Saturday social media post.
"All cocaine produced in a year could fit on just over 1% of a single container ship," Isaacson wrote. "Imagine that scattered worldwide across innumerable boats, planes, vehicles, and people. 'Bombing boats' to stop drugs isn't just cruel and illegal—it's futile."
Georgetown University Law School professor Marty Lederman noted in a Monday social media post that the boat-bombing spree would be unjustified even if it were successful at reducing the flow of cocaine into the US.
"Another reminder, since no one in Congress appears to care," wrote Lederman. "These strikes are a campaign of unlawful murders, and the administration hasn't offered any plausible argument to the contrary."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Calls for Independent Probe Into Reported US Bombing of Ecuadorian Boats Grow After Murder of Investigator
"How far does the 'war on drugs' go?" said a former Ecuadorian official. "Who is held accountable for the lives of Ecuadorian fishermen?"
Jul 24, 2026
The recently reported killing of the Ecuadorian prosecutor who had been investigating allegations that three boats from the country had been struck by the US and that dozens of survivors had been abducted and tortured by American forces, was "not a coincidence," said one congressman Friday as he called for a probe into the bombings.
"For almost a year, the US government has been illegally bombing fishing boats and killing people without evidence of wrongdoing," said Rep. Jesús "Chuy" García (D-Ill.). "And last month, Alexandra Bravo, the Ecuadorian prosecutor investigating boats that were attacked or disappeared, was murdered... There must be an independent investigation."
García's demand came a day after Drop Site News reported on Bravo's killing in the city of Manta on June 14.
Police say a hitman on a black motorcycle opened fire on Bravo and her sister at 11:00 am as they were leaving a cafe. Both women were killed and the prosecutor's driver was injured. There was "no sign of the police detail that had been assigned" to protect Bravo, leading the Police Directorate, which operates under the executive branch of President Daniel Noboa, a close ally of President Donald Trump, to investigate whether there had been an "internal security breach."
Bravo had been investigating the cases of three fishing boats—the Fiorella, the Negra Francisca, and the Don Maca—which were reportedly struck by drones in January and March.
The 36 surviving crew members of the latter two vessels reported that they were captured by US forces and subjected to torture before eventually being returned to Ecuador.
Eight fishermen went missing from the Fiorella, and their family members have reported that Ecuadorian authorities have provided little help to them as they look for answers, with the daughter of one missing fisherman saying an official had suggested the crew was involved in drug trafficking.
The three boats were hit with explosives as the Trump administration carried out "Operation Southern Spear," its campaign of boat bombings in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific. The White House has insisted that the at least 66 strikes that have been carried out by US forces since last September were on boats that were carrying drugs, and the 221 people on board were involved in drug trafficking. Trump has claimed the US is in an armed conflict with Latin American drug cartels, but Congress has not authorized military force in the region.
Legal experts have said that even if the bombed vessels were ferrying illicit substances to the US, military attacks against civilians for their alleged involvement in drug trafficking is against international law.
According to Amnesty International, the Ecuadorian public prosecutor’s office has not submitted a formal request to the US for help with investigating the disappearance of the Fiorella and its crew.
Sources at the police department in Manta and at Human Rights Watch told Drop Site that Bravo had reported facing pressure from the attorney general's office regarding her investigation, with her superiors telling her to treat the alleged attacks on the boats only as "cases of disappearance" and to "close all lines of inquiry" after the 36 survivors of the Negra Francisca and the Don Maca returned, even though they showed signs of torture.
Meanwhile, as the US maintains it had nothing to do with bombing the three vessels, Drop Site reported that a US Coast Guard boat was detected near the Negra Francisca around the time of the bombing before the Coast Guard boat turned off its signal.
Two survivors of the Fiorella bombing, Christian Flores and Dimas Ignacio Álvarez, "corroborated seeing the Fiorella engulfed in smoke and surrounded by American assets."
"In their police statements, Flores and Álvarez described two US aircraft flying over the Fiorella on January 18; multiple grey American drones and a US-flagged patrol ship circling the vessel on January 19; and, on January 20—the day their crewmates disappeared—the large US-flagged patrol ship near the smoke," wrote Camila Lourdes Galarza at Drop Site.
Former Ecuadorian Minister of Foreign Affairs Guillaume Long said Thursday that US military presence in Ecuador as the two countries deepen their military partnership is "a clear violation of our people's sovereignty and popular will."
"Meanwhile, the families of Manta and Jaramijó wait for answers," said Long. "Eight families deserve truth and justice. How far does the 'war on drugs' go? Who is held accountable for the lives of Ecuadorian fishermen?"
Keep ReadingShow Less
Rights Group Demands US Investigation Into Reported Bombing of Ecuadorian Fishing Boat
“The families of the eight individuals whose whereabouts are unknown fear that this is a case of enforced disappearance at the hands of the United States," said an advocate at Amnesty International.
Jul 21, 2026
Amnesty International is calling for a full investigation by the US government into the alleged bombing of an Ecuadorian fishing boat, the Fiorella, last January, as the family members of eight disappeared fishermen have spent months demanding answers about what happened to their loved ones in the midst of the Trump administration's boat bombing campaign in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.
In "Operation Southern Spear," which the Trump administration has said is aimed at stopping drug trafficking from Latin America and in which at least 221 people have been killed in more than 60 bombings, US Southern Command has frequently announced strikes in the region since they began in September.
In the case of the Fiorella, the US military did not issue an announcement of a bombing after the boat "went up in smoke" on January 20, after which eight fishermen who were on board went missing in the midst of Operation Southern Spear.
Amnesty noted on Monday that in the case of two other Ecuadorian fishing vessels, Negra Francisca Duarte II and Don Maca, which were reportedly struck by drones in March and whose surviving crew members said they were captured and tortured by US forces, US Southern Command also did not publicly acknowledge the strikes, "despite reports from survivors stating that both vessels were allegedly sunk by unmanned aerial vehicles bearing markings attributed to the United States."
"If it were confirmed that the United States was responsible for the strike on the Fiorella, as well as for the strikes against the Negra Francisca Duarte II and the Don Maca, the total number of extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances and other serious human rights violations associated with these operations could be much higher than previously estimated," said Amnesty.
The group's Evidence Lab used a vessel monitoring system to reconstruct the route covered by the Fiorella, finding the boat set sail from Jaramijó with 10 crew members on January 15.
The boat lost its internet connection shortly after setting out and went in and out of international waters, also sailing in the Galapagos Exclusive Economic Zone, between January 15-19.
"During the first days of the trip, no major incidents were reported," said Amnesty. "However, from the fourth day onwards, the Fiorella was allegedly subjected to sustained monitoring by aircraft, patrol boats and drones bearing United States markings. Juan Carlos Valencia, the fishing boat’s captain, sent daily satellite messages to his family expressing his growing concern about the surveillance."
On the morning of January 20, the boat sent two skiffs out with baited hooks, and at around 1:00 pm the two crew members on one of the boats saw "a large column of smoke in the distance in the direction of the Fiorella." The two crew members on the skiff were rescued by another fishing boat two days later, but "nothing more has been heard of the Fiorella or the second skiff since," said Amnesty.
Three months after the Fiorella disappeared following the apparent attack, the local organization Standing Committee for the Defense of Human Rights reported that the 36 crew members who had been aboard the Negra Francisca Duarte II and the Don Maca had been detained by US personnel after their boats were struck by drones, before being eventually returned to Ecuador.
Amnesty International, which met with the families of the disappeared crew members from the Fiorella, said the relatives suspect their loved ones may also have been captured and transferred to another country by the US.
“The families of the eight individuals whose whereabouts are unknown fear that this is a case of enforced disappearance at the hands of the United States," said Ana Piquer, Americas director at Amnesty International. "The US and Ecuadorian authorities must confirm or deny whether state agents from either country were involved, take all necessary steps to ascertain the fate and whereabouts of the victims, and provide reliable evidence showing what happened to them."
Family members reported that Ecuadorian officials have alluded to allegations that their loved ones were involved in drug trafficking and were therefore attacked by the US as part of Operation Southern Spear.
“The commander said to us: ‘You know what they went to do, so why are you looking for them?’" the daughter of one missing fisherman told Amnesty. "This made me really angry, and I said to him: ‘I’m here to look for my dad, all they did was go fishing. You should show some compassion and tell us the truth.’ The next day we went again [to the port authority] and they simply closed the door on us.”
The Ecuadorian Public Prosecutor's office has not submitted a formal request to the US for information to complete an investigation into the Fiorella's disappearance, said Amnesty.
“It’s as if the ship simply vanished and no one cares how it happened or what became of the people on board. Perhaps it just flew away? More than six months on from the disappearance, the Ecuadorian authorities must provide a clear account of what actions they have taken to establish the facts, what they know, what they do not know, and how they intend to address the legitimate demands of the families of those disappeared. The criminal investigation into these events must continue until those potentially responsible are identified and brought to justice,” said Piquer.
She added that "the Department of Justice and the investigative authorities of the US armed forces must investigate and establish possible criminal responsibility not only in relation to the Fiorella, but also for all other strikes on vessels on the high seas."
"Similarly, the US Congress must drive a parliamentary inquiry into this serious incident, with hearings and reports designed to establish the facts and determine the possible involvement of public agencies or private entities under its authority," she said. "In addition, all states must suspend international cooperation on intelligence and military equipment that could be used in such illegal operations."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'There Will Come a Day When He Faces Prosecution': Trump Condemned After US Murders Two More at Sea
"The summary execution of two more in an alleged drug boat brings the number of murders ordered by Trump to more than 210," noted one human rights defender.
Jun 22, 2026
Two people were killed, and six others survived, a strike on Sunday that the US military claimed—without providing evidence—targeted a boat full of "narco-terrorists," but that human rights defenders called another summary execution worthy of prosecution.
"On June 21, at the direction of the commander of US Southern Command, Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations," USSOUTHCOM said in a statement. "Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations."
"Two male narco-terrorists were killed during this action, and there were six male survivors," the statement added. "Following the engagement, USSOUTHCOM immediately notified US Coast Guard to activate the Search and Rescue system for the survivors."
More lawless killing in the Trump administration’s boat bombing campaign.Real killing in a phony armed conflict with “narco-terrorists.”This strike reportedly left 6 survivors.US record for rescuing survivors alive is…not great.
[image or embed]
— Brian Finucane (@bcfinucane.bsky.social) June 21, 2026 at 11:28 PM
According to The Intercept's Nick Turse, who has tracked all of the reported US boat bombings in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, there have now been 66 such strikes, which have killed 215 people and left 12 survivors, based on USSOUTHCOM data.
The fate of previous boat strike survivors is not completely clear. After one April bombing, the US Coast Guard told UPI that search-and-rescue operations were called off after no signs of survivors were found. Last October, President Donald Trump said two strike survivors were repatriated to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia, where they faced prosecution.
Survivors of some of the strikes have accused US forces of torturing them.
Relatives of people killed in previous US boat bombings, as well as officials in Venezuela and Colombia, have said that numerous victims were fishers who were not involved in the illicit drug trade.
In January, relatives of two Trinidadian fishers killed in the strikes filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit in Massachusetts.
"The summary execution of two more in an alleged drug boat brings the number of murders ordered by Trump to more than 210," former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said on social media. "There will come a day when he faces prosecution for these crimes."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Murdering People in Boats Is Not Stopping the Flow of Drugs Into US
Aside from proving woefully ineffective at reducing drug production and trafficking, Washington’s militarized campaign, carried out in conjunction with regional governments, also risks increasing extrajudicial killings of unarmed civilians.
Jun 19, 2026
For the past year, the Trump administration has undertaken a lethal campaign of strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, killing at least 200 people. It could soon gain a major new ally in this fight in Colombia, where the leading candidate in Sunday's presidential elections has promised to break with his dovish predecessor and wage an all-out war on drug trafficking.
As a regional war on drugs takes shape, there is no better time to ask the question: is a military campaign really the most effective way to stop the flow of narcotics from Latin America?
My new Quincy Institute brief addresses this question head-on, finding that the White House’s militarized “war on narco-terror” across the hemisphere is unlikely to produce durable results. In its place, I recommend a concrete road map for sustainably reducing Colombian coca production and cocaine trafficking to the US.
An analysis of 25 years of evidence since the the passage of the multi-billion dollar Plan Colombia aid package reveals that a winning strategy for fighting drug trafficking must bolster state presence, rural development, and the rule of law in drug-producing areas; sequence manual eradication campaigns alongside legally enforceable negotiations with some armed groups; and tackle more profitable nodes of drug supply chains while countering illicit financial flows.
Colombia—where over two-thirds of the world’s cocaine, and 90% of cocaine that enters the US, is produced—forms the nucleus of the Andean drug trade and is by far Washington’s’ most important counternarcotics partner in the Western Hemisphere. Yet nearly $15 billion in US security, counternarcotics and development assistance over the past quarter century has largely failed to curtail Colombia’s cocaine economy, which is now witnessing all-time highs in hectares under cultivation and potential production.
Past strategies, such as aerial fumigation with glyphosate, which was banned in Colombia in 2015, significantly reduced coca crop coverage in the early 2000s but failed to halt production. As farmers became more productive and adaptive, cultivation shifted to Peru, and the chemicals sprayed left indelible harm on the environment and public health.
Surges in US military aid, particularly under the aegis of Plan Patriota, led to the professionalization of Colombian security forces, improved their aerial and intelligence capabilities, and brought the FARC guerillas to the negotiating table. But this approach also fueled instability near military bases — as extrajudicial killings by security forces and paramilitary violence rose to unprecedented levels — and failed to meet its counternarcotics objectives.
The “kingpin strategy,” meanwhile, focused on extraditions of drug bosses. This tactic, which soared under President Alvaro Uribe as he sought to demobilize Colombia’s largest paramilitary organization and has continued to this day, has produced the fragmentation, expansion and specialization of newer criminal outfits, contributing to increased cocaine production as groups devised new trafficking routes and illicit rents to exploit, from gold mining to extortion, kidnapping, wildlife trafficking, and human smuggling.
Other approaches, however, have proved more successful and are correlated with modest declines in coca cultivation, potential cocaine production, and trafficking to the US, particularly in the late 2000s and following the signing of the 2016 peace accords between the government and the FARC.
The strongest recipe for slowing the drug trade has focused on incentivizing viable economic alternatives to coca and reducing the power and influence of illicit armed actors. Under initiatives like the Plan de Consolidación Integral de la Macarena, Familias Guardabosques, and Colombia Transforma, Colombian authorities have boosted state presence, invested in rural development, and bolstered rule of law in drug-producing areas, all while maintaining a credible security posture focused on improving public safety.
A complementary approach involves manual coca eradication campaigns. While time consuming and sometimes risky for communities and security forces alike, these efforts have proven effective when sequenced by first establishing police presence and investing in productive infrastructure and services before forcibly — or, ideally, voluntarily — uprooting coca plants. When combined with strategically designed and legally binding, enforceable negotiations with some armed actors in localized settings — as the administration of President Gustavo Petro has pursued more recently as its Total Peace plan flounders — this approach can incentivize armed groups to pursue industrial-scale eradication themselves. They do this by tying non-compliance to credible threats of targeted offensives.
Lastly, later-stage drug interdictions, increased inspections of larger vessels, and enhanced regulatory integration and coordination against money laundering and other illicit financial flows are essential for stemming cocaine trafficking to the US and disrupting the global networks underpinning it. Fortunately, this approach continues to occur alongside the expensive, legally questionable, and likely ineffective boat strike campaign, which could explain why even top administration officials admit it’s “not the answer … [or] the most effective tool."
These lessons have clear implications for Colombia’s next president and US drug policy moving forward. A balanced strategy is bound to yield more favorable outcomes for both left-wing candidate Iván Cepeda, who seeks to follow Petro’s negotiations with armed actors and voluntary illicit crop substitution programs, and right-wing candidate Abelardo de la Espriella, who seeks to accelerate low-level arrests and increase the military’s role in targeting drug production and trafficking.
To date, neither the left’s hesitation to implement a credible supply-side counternarcotics agenda nor the right’s militarized approach to curbing coca cultivation has led to durable results. In fact, the lack of a viable, well-articulated strategy strengthens the hand of irregular armed actors, exacerbates a deteriorating security landscape across the country, and gives the Trump administration greater leverage to dictate its preferred approaches, regardless of their empirically poor outcomes.
Despite the US administration’s insistence on applying “systemic friction” to designated foreign terrorist organizations across the hemisphere, this overly militarized strategy is already leading groups to adapt to new illicit industries, divert trafficking routes, diversify economic portfolios, and expand operations to new subregions, resorting to more covert and asymmetrical forms of violence against states and competitors, as a recent surge in drone activity in Colombia has shown.
Aside from proving woefully ineffective at reducing drug production and trafficking, Washington’s militarized campaign, carried out in conjunction with regional governments, also risks increasing extrajudicial killings of unarmed civilians, fueling insurrectionary and anti-US sentiment, undermining the rule of law across the hemisphere, and reversing years of progress in Latin America’s fraught civil-military relations.
Ultimately, without credible government presence, viable economic opportunities, and even rudimentary judicial institutions in drug-producing subregions throughout Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America, illicit economies and the irregular armed actors feeding off them will persist, regardless of military pressure.
Raiding artisanal drug labs, fumigating small-scale farmers or extraditing kingpins have not proved particularly significant in advancing durable policy outcomes. And there’s little evidence to show that bombing alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean or Eastern Pacific will work either, despite some Trump administration officials’ claims.
Assisting our Colombian partners in formulating a credible security posture against armed non-state actors is crucial to US counternarcotics goals. But in tandem with this approach, we must seek to safeguard development assistance for coca-growing communities; sequence manual eradication campaigns with prior investment in infrastructure; boost interdictions of more valuable drug supply; and counter impunity and corruption by political and business elites.
Colombia’s high-stakes presidential elections could well accelerate a remilitarization of the regional drug war. It is therefore urgent that analysts and officials evaluate the effectiveness of diverse counternarcotics strategies in Colombia over the past quarter century. If reducing the flow of drugs to the US is truly the Trump administration’s objective, then US officials must learn from decades of failure and chart a new course.
Keep ReadingShow Less
UN Experts Demands Nations ‘Break Their Silence’ as Trump, Hegseth Murder 3 More People at Sea
The Trump administration has killed at least 211 people by bombing boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since last September.
Jun 19, 2026
As US senators pushed the Department of Defense to release unedited footage of the boat bombings the Trump administration has carried out in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since last September, US Southern Command on Thursday announced that it had killed three more people in the operation that some international law experts have said amounts to mass murder and an extrajudicial killing spree.
As with the other announcements of boat bombings, at least 65 of which the US has now carried out, Southern Command released no evidence Thursday night of its claim that the vessel it bombed was “operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations,” “engaged in narco-trafficking operations," or that the three people killed were “narco-terrorists.”
Victims of the previous boat bombings have included fishermen and other people who had no involvement with drug trafficking, according to legal complaints filed by families.
Ben Saul, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, called on international governments to "break their silence and jointly condemn these murders," noting that the death toll of the administration's operation is now at least 211 people.
Some international officials, including French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot and Colombian President Gustavo Petro, have strongly denounced the boat bombings and accused Trump of breaking international law. Some countries have ended or dialed back intelligence sharing with the US. But human rights groups have called on the international community to take a unified stance against the boat strikes.
"Sick of hearing, 'I didn't know those boat strikes are still happening. Silence leaves the impression that this is somehow OK," said Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America on Thursday, adding that the US Coast Guard had called off its search for two survivors of an earlier boat bombing this week, potentially bringing the total death toll to 213.
President Donald Trump has claimed the US is engaged in an "armed conflict" with cartels in Latin America and has said the boat bombing campaign is aimed at stopping illegal drugs like fentanyl from flowing into the US. According to the US State Department's 2025 report on international narcotics control, Mexico is the "only significant source of illicit fentanyl and fentanyl analogues significantly affecting the United States," with the drug mainly entering the US via the southern border.
In an analysis of Customs and Border Protection data in April, Isacson emphasized that the lethal boat strikes have not stopped drugs from entering the US.
Even if the administration were targeting drug traffickers as it claims, bombing vessels involved in the drug trade is a violation of international laws protecting civilians from military force. Since the US is not officially engaged in an armed conflict with drug cartels, the accused "narco-terrorists" the Trump administration has killed have all been civilians.
Legal experts also say that US Southern Command's killing of survivors of initial strikes by bombing them again, would also be war crimes in an armed conflict.
Earlier this week, after another boat bombing that killed at least one person, Saul called for "those who ordered and carried out these crimes to be investigated, prosecuted, and punished, in line with international law."
On June 24, the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights are set to argue before the US District Court for the Southern District of New York for the immediate release of a secret legal memo authored by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which the Trump administration has repeatedly claimed gives the president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth the authority to kill people at sea.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Why the People of Bolivia Are Revolting
To understand why Bolivia is on the brink, we must understand a fundamental betrayal of the people by their political representatives.
Jun 18, 2026
For over six weeks now, Bolivia has been engulfed in a national revolt. What started as sectoral demands over public employee salaries, fuel subsidies, and land rights has metastasized into a full-throated cry for the resignation of Trump-aligned President Rodrigo Paz. The country is paralyzed by more than 100 road blockades that have severed the capital, La Paz, from the rest of the nation, cutting off food, fuel, and medicine. Ten people are dead, dozens more injured, and over 300 have been arrested. Journalists and activists have also been caught in the violence.
The government’s response has been a schizophrenic mix of hollow calls for peaceful dialogue and negotiation, and brutal repression. Paz has signed deals with some social sectors, and organized a Social Economic Council, while jailing the leaders of the groups he’s “negotiating” with.
Thousands of militarized police have been deployed, using tear gas, rubber bullets, and, according to persistent rumors the government denies, live ammunition. Leaders of various protest groups, including the Bolivian Workers’ Central (COB), the largest trade union in the country, and radical Aymara defense force Ponchos Rojos, have been jailed. The Wiphala, the sacred flag of Bolivia’s Indigenous majority, has been burned in public squares by counterprotesters while the state itself no longer displays it publicly.
As Argentinian President Javier Milei’s expatriated adviser Fernando Cerimedo put it, this government is fighting against “dirty leftists.” Cerimedo was reportedly crucial in deporting a human rights mission from Argentina this week. Protest leaders and politicians have been kidnapped in broad daylight, including one senator with the Movement Toward Socialism, taken by police in plain clothes.
When a government disregards the voting blocs that got it into office, blocks every avenue for democratic change, criminalizes dissent, and rules on behalf of a foreign-aligned racist elite, it leaves the people few political options for engagement and representation.
Far-right groups and “The Resistance” have re-popularized the slogan, “Make the homeland, kill an indian,” which had become a popular rallying cry in the 2019 coup. Those same far-right groups were also seen in San Julian, near Santa Cruz, using illegal weapons and explosives against protesters, alongside state security forces. The Paz government has not rebuked any of these figures, statements, or actions, and instead cracked down further on the left.
Internationally, the reaction maps perfectly onto the new ideological conflict dividing Latin America. The right-wing autocrats, from Argentina’s Milei and Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado to the Trump administration, have been unequivocal. They have labeled the protesters “narco-terrorists” threatening democracy itself, with the government applauding their solidarity.
US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declared that the US “will reject all attempts to overthrow the legitimate government.” President Donald Trump himself expressed solidarity for Paz at the Shield of the Americas, held at his very own Trump Resort in Miami. This support has emboldened the Bolivian far-right, which is openly pushing for a full “state of exception,” a euphemism for martial law that has been developed by various autocrats including Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, to crush democracy and opposition in the name of a “war on drugs.”
That scenario is likely for Bolivia, too, where protesters labeled “narco-terrorists” would be the subject of that war on drugs. Paz and the government coalition in the Plurinational Assembly have already passed and signed a law modifying the state of exception law. The old law was passed in 2020, after the pro-US unelected government of Jeanine Anez committed multiple massacres against opposition in that state of exception, to try to tamper state abuses.
Now, many safeguards have been removed, with the law giving carte blanche to state agents to kill, seize property, shut down telecommunications, and suspend political rights. The president has also declared a 90-day humanitarian emergency, which allowed for the deployment of militarized forces in El Alto, leading to the death of one protester and multiple injuries.
To understand why Bolivia is on the brink, we must understand a fundamental betrayal of the people by their political representatives. Rodrigo Paz ran under the banner of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), a big-tent coalition with Indigenous currents previously aligned with the left, populist anti-corruption crusaders, and hard-right figures from the Santa Cruz elite. Voters, exhausted by the chronic crises of the Luis Arce administration and facing a nightmare choice against the far-right former president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga (who was vice president to former pro-US dictator, Hugo Banzer), held their noses and voted for what they believed was the least destructive option.
They were promised “Capitalism for Everyone,” a softer, more competent alternative that would see public programs and social rights protected while opening up the country further.
Instead, Paz’s first months have been a masterclass in neoliberal shock therapy, looking to privatize energy, cutting public services and subsidies, restructuring debt with American financial institutions, and proposing to reform Indigenous land tenure, which communities correctly interpreted as a prelude to opening communal lands to private extraction. Key subsidies ensuring many citizens’ very survival, including fuel and food subsidies, have also been cut, jump kicking the cost of living for the most vulnerable.
The result is the political destitution of the Bolivian left, which represents the vast majority of the country. The old vehicle, Evo Morales’ MAS, is decapitated and adrift. Evo himself is practically in exile with an arrest warrant hanging over his head. His protege, Andronico Rodriguez, has been a ghost in public life, and his Alianza Popular has not been able to build much momentum.
Former President Luis Arce, Evo’s former minister and now sworn enemy, is in prison, in preventive detention. Other socialist leaders, politicians, and activists have been jailed, while the cabinet has ironically vowed to continue crackdowns “against lawfare.”
The Paz government has been jailing the key leaders of the socialist era while releasing convicted terrorists and far-right racists linked to the 2019 coup government and its subsequent massacres, like Jeanine Áñez, Luis Fernando Camacho, and leaders of far-right youth groups deemed the equivalent of the Proud Boys. It has also brought back the Drug Enforcement Administration, which had been kicked out by the Morales government over alleged election interference.
Despite running as the left’s only option, and as the counter to the right, since taking office, Paz’s policy proposals, rhetoric, and platform have mostly been directed at the white, Christian, conservative elite in the tropics, rather than to the Indigenous majority in the Altiplano.
This betrayal is creating a crisis of representation in a country where trust in institutions and democracy is already very low—and in the poorest country in South America. Most of the activists in the streets voted for Paz, while many unions endorsed the PDC, but are now expressing their discontent at their interests being disregarded. One protester in La Paz told me, “We have to remind these oligarchs who the Casa Grande del Pueblo is for, and reclaim it.”
The government and its allies have worked overtime to criminalize the rage that has come from this betrayal. In the face of this repression, some groups have decided to fight fire with fire, arguing Paz’s repression has made negotiation unviable. The COB itself said it would be willing to do anything, “as in a war,” and has vowed to “increase radical pressure measures.”
As Quya Reyna, a writer, activist, and social leader argued in a manifesto for the protest movements, repression will only bring further suffering, and, if the government refuses to negotiate, this is the social cost it will bring. Another manifesto signed by some indigeneist protest groups now explicitly endorses armed resistance.
When a government disregards the voting blocs that got it into office, blocks every avenue for democratic change, criminalizes dissent, and rules on behalf of a foreign-aligned racist elite, it leaves the people few political options for engagement and representation.
The state is using its monopoly on force not to protect its citizens, but to protect the privileges of the few against the many. It cannot, then, be surprised at the rage it engenders by doing so. As Reyna added, “if you want peace, listen to the people and negotiate, don’t repress.”
Faced with this brick wall, the social movements are left with little choice but to play outside the system. In the long term, this is a terrible development for peaceful, stable, social democracy, as it may create a vicious cycle between faith in political institutions, and political violence. As one piece of graffiti scrawled in La Paz by protesters declares, “Let there be no peace for the oligarchies if there is no bread for the majority.”
Vice President Edmand Lara, a populist former police officer who was crucial to Paz’s election, has broken dramatically with the president, condemning the repression and inviting the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to monitor the country.
The vice president has also denounced the cabinet’s own links to drug trafficking, though he has called for further crackdowns on crime, and Evo Morales. On the right, former president Tuto Quiroga, billionaire Marcelo Claure, Áñez allies, and others have pushed for Paz to step aside and allow security forces to rule, through a state of exception (essentially, martial law), while continuing economic “liberalization.”
Some reports have also indicated the military is interested in pushing Paz out, while embracing further right-wing figures. To satisfy them, Paz has given even more power to the hardliners like Ernesto Justiniano, the anti-drug czar, now minister of defense, while further alienating social sectors and moderate progressives within his cabinet, like José Luis Lupo, Lara, and billionaire Samuel Doria Medina, all of whom have urged for dialogue over repression.
This government is eating itself, while Bolivian democracy has perhaps never looked weaker.
The hard-fought promise of the Plurinational State, a multiracial social democracy with strong rights and constitutional protections, has been hollowed out by a new form of external rule for the elites, far-right racists, foreign states, and the security state. The majorities, meanwhile, have felt betrayed, and are using every means at their disposal to regain representation.
That popular movement now believes the only way forward is a fresh start—calling for Paz to resign, and for fresh elections. Until then, they will continue blocking the country, and forcing the government’s hands, to remind them of their power. Though, the right will continue blaming “dirty leftists” and “indians” for “destroying the country” and “stopping progress,” instead of blaming themselves.
To move forward, the country's leaders will have to realize that, whether in a democracy or dictatorship, they will have to govern with, and for, the Indigenous majorities, not without and against them.
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy