A Self-Proclaimed Dictator's War on Gangs
El Salvador's President is wildly popular. But is he killing Salvadoran democracy?
42 year-old El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele first came across my radar in 2021 when he successfully urged the Salvadoran legislature to pass a bill adopting Bitcoin as legal tender. The state purchased millions of dollars worth of the volatile cryptocurrency which proceeded to lose sixty percent of its value over the course of the next year. Comically stupid economic gambit aside, what I didn’t realize at the time was that Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party-appointed Supreme Court judges had just ruled he could run for a second consecutive term in contradiction to El Salvador’s constitution.
That election happened last week with Bukele securing his constitutionally dubious second five year term with an overwhelming majority of the vote. The President has embraced a youthful public persona, frequently posting on the platform formerly known as Twitter (where he once updated his profile bio to read “the coolest dictator in the world”). But Bukele’s popularity is largely credited to the sweeping crackdown he initiated on El Salvador’s notoriously murderous gangs:
Under a “state of emergency” approved in March 2022, the government has arrested more than 76,000 people — more than 1% of the Central American nation’s population. The asault [sic] on the gangs has spurred accusations of widespread human rights abuses and a lack of due process, but violence has plummeted in a country known just a few years ago as one of the most dangerous in the world.
Gang violence has undoubtedly made El Salvador a difficult place to live in the twenty-first century. Before Bukele took office in 2019, gangs controlled large swaths of the nation’s capital. But while the young President’s iron-fisted campaign has seen murder rates fall allegedly seventy percent, human rights watchdog organizations like Amnesty International have issued alarming reports of state forces torturing detainees among other abuses:
Amnesty International has confirmed that, under the application of an extraordinary temporary measure, Salvadoran authorities have restricted and violated fundamental rights, including the right to life and prohibition against torture, over the course of 21 consecutive months. The state of emergency measures have given rise to recurring patterns of violations during the cycles of detention, processing, and imprisonment, including massive arbitrary detentions; forced disappearances; commitment of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment against individuals held in detention centers; and the deaths of individuals while in state custody – some as a result of torture or other ill-treatment.
Last week, amid a sensational Harvey Dent-esque mass trial of suspected Mara Salvatrucha gang members, a former national security advisor who “had accused a congressman from the ruling New Ideas party of corruption and drug trafficking, died in state custody in unclear circumstances” according to a Reuters report. This seems to be emblematic of Bukele’s war: headline grabbing mass arrests and prosecutions generate popular support while the state quietly strips away civil liberties and rights under the guise of stabilizing the country.
El Salvador is no stranger to repressive regimes. The nation’s twentieth century history is a story largely of military juntas and a devastating civil war that played out amid the backdrop of the larger Cold War. The military ruled El Salvador in a series of governments for forty-eight years before a thirteen year civil war broke out in 1979 between the communist backed Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front and what would eventually become the democratically elected government in San Salvador.
A 1981 New York Times feature captures the brutal and violent nature of life in the early days of the civil war:
But tiny El Salvador has suddenly burst upon the world stage. In the fall of 1979, a coup by moderate army officers led to the establishment of a junta with both civilian and military representatives. Economic reforms, including a major redistribution of land, were undertaken, but they were accompanied by repression. According to El Salvador's Human Rights Commission, a private organization, 13,194 people have been killed in political violence in the last year, most of them by Government security forces and rightist paramilitary groups…The Marxist-led guerrillas, growing ever stronger and bolder, have kidnapped businessmen and bombed banks. Thousands of Salvadoran families have been forced by the escalating warfare to flee from their villages, settling in makeshift refugee centers in the cities and in camps across the border in Honduras.
While there aren’t currently roving government death squads like the height of the civil war, if you squint and replace the pinks with criminal gangs you can see eerie similarities to the government repression of years past with the bizarre modern twist of a tech-bro actively attempting to undermine democratic institutions.
It’s yet to be seen if Bukele will consolidate his power and set the stage for ruling El Salvador past 2029. But one thing is for certain—being able to publicly claim victory in a war on Salvadoran gangs would go along way in convincing the legislature, judiciary, and population at large to abandon democracy in favor of security as the tide of authoritarianism rises this decade.
Sudan
The civil war in Sudan is continuing to spiral completely out of control as the world collectively buries its head in the sand. Last week the country plunged into an internet blackout that will increase the risk of civilian death and make monitoring the war even more difficult:
Internet monitoring firm, Netblocks confirmed the outage Friday, saying that “a near-total telecoms blackout” has limited communication in the country and prevented the Sudanese people from seeking safe zones and accessing healthcare and banking services.
This type of chaos will accelerate the refugee crisis that has already internally displaced roughly 6.5 million and externally displaced 1.5 million people:
Half of Sudan's population - around 25 million people - need humanitarian assistance and protection, while more than 1.5 million people have fled to the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia and South Sudan, according to the U.N.
Sudan’s tragic and needless civil war is part of the interweaving story of contemporary global conflict. The Rapid Support Forces have been seen using Iranian kit. Ukraine has deployed special forces to assist the Sudanese military in combatting the remnants of Russia’s Wagner PMC. Some number of refugees from this war will likely make their way to the United States’ southern border that has become a focal point of our all-consuming domestic political battle.
The Biden administration has named Tom Periello as Special Envoy to Sudan but as I’ve written before I’m highly skeptical about the efficacy of these types of moves but hopefully I’m wrong and Periello is able to make an effective contribution to bringing this conflict to a close.
South Sudan
The instability in Sudan is also spilling over to the border region with South Sudan where 40 people were killed last week including two Doctors Without Borders workers:
Abyei is an oil-rich area that is jointly administered by South Sudan and Sudan, which have both staked claims to it. The region's information minister, Bulis Koch, said: "In the attacks that took place on Feb. 2 and 3, several markets were set on fire, property looted and altogether 19 civilians got killed and 18 others were wounded." A further 18 people were killed in separate attacks on Sunday, he said, adding that three children were among the dead.
I wrote last week about the violence plaguing Nigeria and sadly South Sudan is currently suffering a similar fate. James Barnett, a foreign policy research fellow at Hudson Institute whose work on the ground in Africa is absolutely indispensable, recently wrote about the despair and chaos in the world’s newest sovereign nation:
Rivalries between South Sudan’s political-military elites and an incomplete peace process have pitted communities across the country against each other even as the government boasts of reconciliation efforts. This violence is compounded by the inability of the country’s once warring factions to form a unified army, which has deprived the state of its monopoly on the use of force, a shortcoming manifested most strikingly in places like Kajo Keji that are suffering from both violent land-grabbing and farmer-herder conflict.
The whole feature is very much worth reading for an understanding of how South Sudan is effectively a paper state. Fair warning—it’s almost eight thousand words but it’s the kind of compelling first hand journalism that’s increasingly rare in the dying industry.
Somalia
Somalia has signed a counter-terrorism and defense agreement with Turkey as Ethiopia’s pursuit of sea access continues to generate ripple effects:
Turkey and Somalia on Thursday signed a cooperation deal on defense amid lingering tensions in the Horn of Africa over a controversial agreement between Ethiopia and the breakaway region of Somaliland.
As Somalia protests the Ethiopia-Somaliland port leasing and military base deal, al-Shabaab is continuing to ravage the country. Last week insurgents murdered six Ethiopians in a terror attack in the southeast:
The district commissioner of the town, Abdirashid Abdi Arog, told VOA Somali that gunmen attacked a compound, killing five women and two men.
“Last night at around 3:24 am local time we heard heavy gunfire, it happened at a time when security patrols change shifts, and the murderers took advantage of that,” Arog said. “Troops responded and when they reached the site they saw civilians – men, women and children who some of them were killed and some injured.”
The following day, explosions in Mogadishu killed at least ten and injured twenty shoppers at a large outdoor market. Somalia does genuinely need additional counter-terrorism resources but I’m not sure bringing the Turks into the picture is going to solve their problems.
Ecuador
Narco-terrorists in Ecuador continue to fight back in President Noboa’s war on criminal gangs despite six thousand recent arrests. The violent drug traffickers have engaged in a campaign of broad-daylight assassinations, recently targeting a 29 year-old city councilor:
An Ecuadorian councilwoman was executed in broad daylight in front of a crowd of people after wrapping up a meeting. Diana Carnero, 29, had just finished a council meeting in the town of Naranjal in Guayas on Wednesday afternoon and was recording a video about the poor road conditions when she was attacked. Two male suspects approached her on a motorcycle and shot her in the head before fleeing, police said.
The White House announced last Thursday the United States will be providing a second tranche of support for Noboa’s efforts to stabilize the South American country:
The Department of Homeland Security is actively providing digital forensics support to identify, map, and target criminal networks; has sent a team to train 175 Ecuador migration officers on the use of biometrics collection; and trained 35 members from the Ecuadorian Presidential and Vice-Presidential protective details. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) increased its personnel in-country following the recent rise in violence…The Department of Defense has also committed to delivering a C-130H military plane to the Ecuadorians by the end of March 2024. This support builds on the facilitated delivery of more than 20,000 bullet proof vests and more than $1 million worth of critical security and emergency response equipment, announced in January.
Ecuador may also procure additional modern U.S. weapons in a deal that would see them transfer older Russian arms to Ukraine. Interestingly, this move has driven India and Moscow closer with Russia halting Ecuadorian banana imports and turning to New Delhi for their tropical fruit imports instead.
Senegal
Disturbing news for democracy in west Africa as Senegal’s parliament has delayed the country’s scheduled February presidential election until December sparking fears Dakar could become the next African capital led by an un-elected leader. The reaction to the delay has already prompted an autocratic response:
As the lawmakers debated the bill, security forces fired tear gas at protesters gathered outside the legislative building. Many of the protesters were arrested as they poured into the streets of the capital, Dakar, burning tires and criticizing the country’s leader.
Another country on the precipice of chaos in an insurgency and coup-plagued region is just what we need these days. The world really is on fire.
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