InSight Crime’s Managing Editor Deborah Bonello and Co-Director Jeremy McDermott dig into the latest war of words between President Donald Trump and his Colombian counterpart Gustavo Petro, discussing why US anti-drug assistance to Colombia is so fundamental, whether it really might disappear, and why it will benefit no one to cut resources used to fight the cocaine trade.
Transcript
Deborah: [00:00:04] Hey there, I’m Deborah Bonello, Managing Editor of InSight Crime. I’m joined by our Co-director, Jeremy McDermott. Jerry, what a weekend we had in the region with US President Donald Trump turning on Colombia again, vowing to withdraw more US aid to the country and accusing President Gustavo Petro of being a “drug leader.” This comes, of course, weeks after Colombia was decertified, which means it was removed from the list of allies in the region that the US counts on for anti-narcotics cooperation. And it also comes after we’ve seen the US repeatedly bomb what it says are drug trafficking boats off the coast of Venezuela, in the Caribbean, since the beginning of September. So before we look at the implications of these threats, if they come to pass, what evidence, Jerry, does President Trump have for accusing President Petro of being a drug leader.
Jeremy: [00:01:03] Zero evidence of him being a drug leader. I think what the US position, and this, you mentioned the decertification, this was one of the reasons for the decertification of Colombia. Worth saying with a national security waiver, which means that while Colombia was decertified, the US continued to provide aid. Although that might change. One of the reasons that Colombia was decertified was that Washington believed that Gustavo Petro was not doing enough in the fight against drugs in Colombia. What’s the justification for that? Cocaine production has increased in Colombia to record levels and President Petro decided to take a new approach to drug policy. And this he campaigned on, Deb, so he was elected off the back of this. It wasn’t just, you know, he decided to change everything when he arrived. His thinking was, look, you can’t criminalize the coca growers. They cannot bear the brunt of the counter-narcotics fight in Colombia. What we need to do is we need to target the upper links in the drug chain, which are, you know, let’s do more interdiction, which is achieved, and let’s go after the drug kingpins who direct the business, as opposed to the worker bees at the bottom of the chain.
Jeremy: [00:02:52] He wanted to combine this with his very ambitious total peace policy to negotiate with all the different illegal actors, many of whom are deeply involved in the drug trade. It was a lovely idea. Three years in, unfortunately, it’s been an unmitigated failure. Now, to be fair to President Petro, he was passed a poisoned chalice by the previous president, Iván Duque, who was a blind ally of Washington and who put drug eradication at the center of his security policy. But in his last year, drug crops grew by a record amount as well. So this has not just happened under President Petro’s watch. He inherited a booming drug market and his drug policy, innovative, unusual, some might say a tad unrealistic, has failed to stem the flow of drugs leaving the country. Does that make him a drug leader? I don’t think by any stretch of the term does that make him a drug leader.
Deborah: [00:04:05] Right. And let’s remind our audience how Colombia is the biggest cocaine producer in the region and how cocaine production has sort of gradually gone up and is at record levels right now. So he is facing a formidable problem. Have we seen this kind of flare up before between Trump and Colombia?
Jeremy: [00:04:32] I’m going to say something that’s not going to please either President Trump or President Petro, but they are remarkably similar in the fact that they seem to govern principally via social media. Just after President Trump had taken office, it was at the end of January, there was the first spat where President Petro turned around and said these forced migration flights were being carried out in inhuman conditions, and that he was going to refuse to receive these flights from the United States of deported Colombians because due process and their rights were not being respected. President Trump then responded with, well, stand by, you’re going to face new tariffs. They will start at 50% and they could go up to 100%. After this, we know there was a flurry of diplomatic activity behind the scenes, and a compromise was reached whereby Colombian Air Force planes went to the United States, collected the Colombians and flew them back. So both of them addressed their issues. This is probably a tad bigger than the migration spat. And the threat is more immediate, which I think we probably need to delve into, but I throw it back at you.
Deborah: [00:06:09] I mean, we have seen a lot of saber rattling, obviously, between the Trump administration and governments in Latin America, not just Colombia, obviously, with neighboring Venezuela too. But we’ve also seen that the Trump administration does follow through on some of that, as we’re seeing with these missile strikes, which is a huge leap from what we’ve seen in terms of anti-narcotics ops in Latin America as long as I can remember on the regular. So we’ve also seen the dismantling of USAID in the region since Trump took power, which did have a severe impact on Colombia, and I believe, amounted to at least a three-quarters reduction in assistance compared to years prior. So we’re seeing now that in 2023, the US spent around $740 million in Colombia and just under $30 million of that was on anti-narcotics. Last year, the total amount of aid that the US spent in Colombia dropped, even though the amount it spent on anti-narcotics was about $32 million. Now, it’s not clear whether all of that is going to go or some of it is going to go, but let’s say that this does happen and there is a severe pullback in terms of the amount of money the US is giving to Colombia on anti-narcotics ops. What does that mean on the ground in Colombia? Because this is paying for everything from boots on the ground, police, to helicopter fuel, right.
Jeremy: [00:07:49] Let’s deal with the cut in USAID. That was a body blow. And not all of it is human rights or diversity programs. A lot of this was the notion of a whole of state approach to transnational organized crime. Not just the narcotics trade, but also gold and other transnational economies. So Colombia has already taken a hit of hundreds of millions of dollars in the loss of USAID, which has weakened its fight against the illegal armed actors and the transnational criminal economies. If the remaining aid is taken, which is, you would call more hard end, it is what little drug eradication programs that are going on at the moment. There are some, but not as many as there were under the previous administration, certainly. They are operational budgets for the military, almost all of the helicopter fleet. And it’s a huge helicopter fleet, one of the biggest in Latin America. These are US choppers. They’re the old Hueys. They’re the Blackhawks. The US is maintaining these. And this is what underpins all of the struggle against illegal armed groups and the drug trade, because this is an Andean nation, a huge Andean nation. If you want to travel by road, it’s going to take you days to get anywhere. The helicopter can be there in minutes. So if this affects the helicopter support for the armed forces and the anti-narcotics police and the counter-narcotics operations, then they’re going to grind to a halt. And this is going to cripple Colombia’s counter-narcotics efforts and play into the hands of the drug trafficking organizations.
Deborah: [00:10:02] We’ve seen also the ELN was mentioned by Trump in some of the war of words that we’ve heard over the weekend. Is the ELN the main group that’s sort of shepherding cocaine from Colombia and sending it north towards the United States.
Jeremy: [00:10:21] The ELN is involved in the drug trade, but is certainly not the biggest drug trafficking organization. Let’s give the readers a wee bit of context on the ELN, the National Liberation Army. They’ve been around for more than six decades. They are Cuban inspired. They are a traditional Marxist-Leninist group. They’re about 6,000 strong, perhaps a wee bit more if you include some of their civilian networks. They are based not just in Colombia, but also in Venezuela, where they are tolerated if not supported by the Maduro regime. So bringing the ELN to the mix, I think Deb is a two for one from the US perspective. This is a guerrilla group, a left wing group, and it’s also active in Venezuela helping prop up the Maduro regime, which is currently public enemy number one. The other reason that mentioning the ELN is a bit of a blow is because President Gustavo Petro is a former guerrilla. He’s a former left wing guerrilla. He wasn’t an ELN. He was with M-19. But part of his signature program, total peace, has been with the ELN. He said, look, if anyone can make peace with the ELN, it’s going to be me, a former guerrilla. That’s not gone terribly well. Dialogs are currently frozen. So this is a way for the US to kill many birds with one stone. But let’s drill down on what is the ELN’s role in the drug trade? One, they do sit in certain drug producing regions and they tax the production of drugs.
Jeremy: [00:12:14] It’s a system they call the gramaje, which is a system of established taxes on the coca growers and then those that buy the coca base. Then there’s a tax on the laboratories in their area of control, and then there’s a tax on the airstrips, if their drugs are flown out, or there’s a tax on the border, if they wish to move their drugs out of the country. So it’s quite a sophisticated system of taxing the drug trade. Also some ELN units go further than that. And they are drug trafficking units in the sense that they buy and sell drugs and move it across borders, which by definition makes them drug traffickers. The ELN has a love hate relationship with the drug trade. It loves the cash, but it hates the ideological implications of being involved in this business. And this is a love hate relationship they have still not been able to resolve. Because they have quite a lot of autonomy, the units on the ground, some of the units have gone full in with drug trafficking. Others are trying to keep it at arm’s length. But like so many things President Trump says, there is a an element of truth to it. But this is nowhere near the biggest drug trafficking outfit in Colombia, and most of the drug traffic, the biggest drug trafficking outlets, are operating on the Pacific coast, not on the Caribbean side.
Deborah: [00:13:41] So what are the other organizations that have major roles in the cocaine getting moved to the states right now?
Jeremy: [00:13:48] The biggest, as far as the states is concerned, by far is the Gaitanistas. They’re also known as the Gulf clan. Their presence, Deb, they’re on both coastlines. So if you look at the Panamanian border, we’ve got the Caribbean on one side, we’ve got the Pacific on the other. The Gaitanistas dominate that area along the Panamanian border and on both sides. They are pushing hard down the Pacific, and they have an enormous amount of influence along the Caribbean, actually, all the way to the Venezuela border, almost. These guys are far and away the biggest drug traffickers in Colombia, particularly with respect to the US market. They feed the Mexican cartels. And Colombia, just to give you an idea, is probably responsible for anything up to 80% of the cocaine going into the US. And I would say the Gaitanistas are responsible for, if it’s 80%, I would say probably at least 60 comes from the Gaitanistas. I would be surprised if 5% is linked to the ELN.
Deborah: [00:15:01] Right? I mean, that’s a pretty daunting difference, isn’t it? And I think one of the things that is going to face Petro is exiting the presidency in a way that he can claim some triumphs, right? Because we are seeing Colombia going to the polls next year for a new president.
Jeremy: [00:15:21] Yes. Analysts here in Colombia see the decertification by the US as a political move more than a counternarcotics move. The idea is that this may embolden and strengthen Colombia’s right wing, which is much more aligned with President Trump’s policies, and ensure that for Washington, Colombia gets back on track as far as following the US dictated line on counter-narcotics policy.
Deborah: [00:15:54] Right. And at the end of the day, I think Colombia’s kind of being made an example of by the Trump administration, right, and the way that we’re seeing it going for Venezuela too. But it’s really not in the US’ interests to stop Colombia, or stop helping Colombia, from cracking down on the cocaine business. Ultimately that probably means more of a disruption of governance and increasing corruption and more cocaine getting to the United States.
Jeremy: [00:16:27] There is a danger that many military and police offensive operations are going to grind to a halt without US money. And let me explain the reason for this. Colombia’s broke. There’s a huge fiscal hole. They’ve just been voting on next year’s annual government budget and there is a huge hole. Colombia’s going to have to borrow. It just had much of its social spending, which was cut by USAID, disappeared. It now could have the final bit of, it’s still more than $100 million, of US support mainly focused now at the hard end, cut. Colombia’s defense budget, and it’s perhaps worth saying that Colombia’s in a peculiar position where the police and the army are both under the Ministry of Defense, which is not common in many nations. But in Colombia, it’s all in one house. And Colombia’s defense budget is mostly eaten up by the wage packet and the pensions. So the percentage left for operations is really very small. And the US, since Plan Colombia started in 2000, has often really helped that part. They’ve provided the anti-narcotics police, the helicopters, the fuel for the helicopters, training for the elite troops, etc.
Jeremy: [00:18:05] All that is going to go. This means that they’re going to stay in barracks. They won’t have the money to engage in large scale assaults at the exact moment when we see the illegal armed groups have increased over the last four years by maybe 40%. They’ve grown in numbers. They have expanded their territory in tandem with the growth in coca crops, but also gold, which, as you know, has just broken $4,000 an ounce, is a major earner for these guys. And everything else in their criminal portfolios like kidnapping, extortion, etc. so we are seeing organized crime rampantly expanding, taking advantage of President Petro’s goodwill and the total peace process and the bilateral ceasefires he gave them to grow. And the risk is now, the last year in Petro’s administration, which is always a tough lay because you tend to be a lame duck and everyone’s looking at the next president, suddenly he’s had the security rug pulled out from under him, and the illegal actors who are very agile, very able to read the political panorama, and now very well financed, are going to go wild. And of course, this is going to mean more drugs, more instability, and maybe, guess what, more migrants leaving this country looking for a place to settle.
Deborah: [00:19:45] Well, it’s definitely one to watch, right. Let’s see if Petro and Trump find some way to smoke the peace pipe, make it up, and find a way to make it work because in the long run, it’s in no one’s interest for this kind of deadlock to carry on and for things to grind to a halt at all.
Jeremy: [00:20:04] I think when the world’s biggest consumer of cocaine and the world’s biggest producer of cocaine stop working together, there is no way this is going to have a happy ending.
Deborah: [00:20:19] Yeah, well, let’s keep watching Jerry, I’m sure it won’t be the last time that we talk about it. Thanks everyone for listening. You can dig deep on all of the criminal groups, all of the countries, and all of the criminal economies that we’ve mentioned in this conversation at insightcrime.org. Until next time, thanks very much. Thanks, Jerry.
