The current escalation of tensions between Washington and Caracas, which has led to the United States deploying at the least seven warships to the southern Caribbean, will be traced back to a explicit day.
On August 7, US Attorney General Pam Bondi introduced a $50 million reward for info main to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has been going through formal drug trafficking prices from the Justice Department since 2020.
Bondi declared that Maduro “is one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world and a threat to the national security” of the United States.
Caracas has at all times denied these accusations, however inside hours, greater than 4,000 US army personnel had been deployed to Caribbean waters. Days later, extra ships, submarines and aerial intelligence models joined them.
The speedy escalation of the disaster – simply days after the Maduro authorities and the Trump administration celebrated a prisoner alternate and the resumption of Venezuelan oil exports by means of Chevron – has shocked many and opened rifts inside the White House itself, the place a faction opposed to Chavismo for ideological causes is balanced by those that would like to keep away from harmful confrontations.
“Donald Trump came to the White House as a president of peace, and the drumbeat from some sectors of the Venezuelan opposition and congressmen from South Florida doesn’t fit with the president’s message,” a US authorities official with data of Venezuela informed NCS, requesting anonymity as a result of he was not approved to communicate on the matter.
But past the rhetoric, it is placing that the White House is confronting Maduro over alleged ties to drug trafficking, and never by demanding he restore democracy in Venezuela.
Allegations involving the Miraflores presidential palace in cocaine trafficking have existed for at the least a decade. So why this new initiative in current weeks?
Bondi has not offered conclusive proof of the Venezuelan chief’s alleged function in worldwide drug trafficking. At the identical time, Caracas has flatly rejected the claims.
“For there to be a drug cartel, either you produce (the drugs), you process it or you traffic it. And if there is no cultivation, production, or drug trafficking in Venezuela, how can there be a cartel? It’s unsustainable,” Venezuelan congresswoman Blanca Eekhout informed NCS, referring to Cartel de los Soles, an alleged drug trafficking group that the United States claims is led by Maduro and that the Trump administration declared a terrorist group a few weeks in the past.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Venezuela is not a cocaine-producing nation.
Almost all coca crops – the foremost ingredient of cocaine – are concentrated in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Colombia particularly – has seen its cocaine manufacturing develop dramatically in recent times, due each to a rise in cultivation space (nearly 100,000 hectares extra since 2020) and, extra considerably, due to increased yields in refining the product, in accordance to UN researchers.
In different phrases, extra coca leaves are being grown, and at the identical time, every leaf produces extra cocaine. Of the 3,700 tons of coca produced worldwide, greater than 2,500 tons come from Colombia, whereas Venezuela doesn’t seem on manufacturing maps, in accordance to the newest UNODC report revealed in June.
Investigators from the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) reached related conclusions, writing of their annual report revealed in March that 84% of the cocaine seized in the US comes from Colombia. In the 4 pages devoted to cocaine trafficking, Venezuela is not talked about. Colombia and Peru are primarily talked about amongst producers, whereas Ecuador, Central America and Mexico are talked about amongst transit international locations.
“The majority of Colombian cocaine is being trafficked north along the Pacific coast,” says UNODC.
Although transit by means of Venezuela is not dominated out, different international locations are recognized as rising tendencies in worldwide drug markets, reminiscent of Ecuador, the place the sharp improve in homicides is linked to the rise in drug trafficking, in accordance to the UN.
This is an evaluation that the State Department doesn’t dispute both – at the least behind closed doorways, suggesting that the sources deployed in the Caribbean could possibly be simpler elsewhere. “It’s strange that we don’t see more boats heading to the Pacific, or the criminalization of (more Colombian groups),” a US diplomat informed NCS, who additionally requested not to be recognized as a result of he was not approved to focus on these points.
Former US Attorney General Bill Barr appeared to recommend the identical factor when he revealed the first drug trafficking accusations towards Maduro in 2020, pointing to the Venezuelan authorities as a facilitator in the transportation of “up to 250 tons of cocaine annually,” which represents a tiny quantity in international drug volumes and fewer than 10% of manufacturing.
The Pacific route additionally dominates UNODC drug seizure statistics, with Colombia (37%), Ecuador (8.8%) and Panama (4.2%) as the international locations in the area with the largest portions of cocaine hydrochloride. Venezuela ranks sixth amongst Latin American international locations by way of seizures, with lower than 2%.
Although United Nations data seems to contradict the White House narrative, the actuality is extra advanced.
The motion of 250 tons of cocaine yearly, which Barr accused the Venezuelan authorities of facilitating, is minor in contrast to international trafficking (3,700 tons, in accordance to the UNODC). But it is nonetheless a important quantity of illicit commerce that allegedly generates multimillion-dollar earnings for Maduro. At the time, Barr additionally failed to present proof of the unlawful trafficking he was alleging.
The Venezuelan authorities coalition admits that drug trafficking exists in the nation, however not that it promotes it. Eekhout, for instance, informed NCS that in the previous yr, Maduro’s safety forces have seized 490 plane and 94 vessels used to transport cocaine, data that NCS can’t independently confirm.
And whereas Caracas claims to be waging struggle on medication, there is additionally proof of direct involvement in drug trafficking from the highest ranges of presidency.
In November 2016, a federal courtroom in New York discovered two members of the presidential household – nephews of Venezuelan First Lady Cilia Flores – responsible of conspiring to visitors cocaine to the United States after they had been arrested by the DEA in Haiti. Both had been later returned to Venezuela in a prisoner alternate.
But much more placing is the function of Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal, a former high-ranking Venezuelan official who, on June 25, pleaded responsible to conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and to narco-terrorism prices. This got here after a prolonged trial through which US prosecutors accused him of exchanging firearms for cocaine shipments with the now-defunct FARC guerrillas, whose dissidents in Colombia management a few of the key areas for narcotics manufacturing.
The deal was reached after a prolonged extradition course of from Spain and simply days earlier than his trial was to start in New York.
At the time, the Miami Herald reported that Carvajal, who was additionally accused of being a part of Cartel de los Soles, was cooperating with US prosecutors, offering proof towards Maduro in alternate for a decreased sentence, one thing NCS has not been ready to independently corroborate.
Exactly one month later, the Treasury Department designated Cartel de los Soles as a international terrorist group, permitting US forces better freedom of motion towards suspected members of the group.
Other South American international locations reminiscent of Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay issued related designations in the following days.
“Cartel de los Soles, per se, doesn’t exist. It’s a journalistic expression created to refer to the involvement of Venezuelan authorities in drug trafficking,” Phil Gunson, a researcher with the International Crisis Group based mostly in Caracas for greater than a decade, informed NCS.
This doesn’t imply that there aren’t army personnel or authorities officers concerned in drug trafficking. “The cartels are here, the Colombians and the Mexicans, too. There are drug shipments via the Orinoco River and by air through clandestine airstrips, flights from Apure to Central America, and so on. All of this wouldn’t be possible without direct involvement from above,” the skilled mentioned.
For Gunson, Maduro’s function is harking back to that of former Panamanian President Manuel Noriega, who was sentenced to many years in jail in numerous jurisdictions for his affiliation with the Medellín cartel in 1992: an exterior companion who, whereas in a roundabout way a part of a cartel, nonetheless benefited from drug trafficking routes underneath his safety.
Other impartial analysts from the intelligence web site InsightCrime share the identical evaluation. “Cartel de los Soles is the term used to describe the shadowy groups within the Venezuelan Army involved in a wide range of criminal activities … It is not a hierarchical group, but rather a loose network of cells … that operate as drug trafficking organizations,” a report from the website states.
The group’s very title is a nod to the army, with the “Soles” (Suns) being a reference to the insignia worn by Venezuelan generals on their shoulder straps.
From hiding, opposition chief María Corina Machado applauded the current statements towards the cartel. Other sectors of the opposition had been extra skeptical. Former opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles informed NCS that the Trump administration should “present the evidence” of the existence of Cartel de los Soles, having beforehand accused Maduro of involvement in drug trafficking.
For his half, the Venezuelan president has at all times denied any private involvement in drug trafficking and can proceed to achieve this, at the least till US prosecutors current indeniable proof of comparable significance to that which led to the conviction of his spouse’s nephews 9 years in the past – a conviction that Maduro, conspicuously, has mentioned little about.
In this, Carvajal’s function is as soon as once more key, and so is one other date: October 29. That day, the retired Venezuelan normal and former intelligence chief will probably be sentenced on drug trafficking and terrorism prices, and it’ll probably be simpler to make clear whether or not he collaborated with the White House in formulating the prices towards his former commander-in-chief.