Ecuador is at War (With Itself)
President Noboa's "Internal Conflict" aims to eradicate Ecuador's gang problem. Can he succeed without obliterating human rights?
Ecuador’s alarming eruption of gang violence since January has been a staple of Son of a Diplomat’s Running Threads the past couple months. Given that President Daniel Noboa just signed a thirty-day extension of the current state of emergency, I figured it was worth diving into Ecuador’s internal war on the narco-terrorists that have been plaguing the country with violence, assassinations, and chaos for years now.
How did Ecuador find itself embroiled in urban warfare with deadly drug trafficking gangs at the outset of 2024? It’s largely a victim of the larger Central and South American story of drug running and gang violence that has spawned our current continental migrant crisis. The International Crisis Group published a useful breakdown of the situation in January when the internal conflict officially began:
While Ecuador was formerly one of Latin America’s more peaceful nations, the violence is the culmination of a several-year trend. The country’s geography plays a role: sandwiched between Colombia and Peru – Latin America’s top producers of cocaine – Ecuador has emerged as a key transport and logistics link in the global drug supply chain. Hyper-violent gangs have buttressed their ranks by recruiting among communities impoverished by COVID-19. Meanwhile, a shortfall in security investment during the Lenin Moreno administration, in part due to IMF-backed budget cuts, have starved the state’s security forces. During his tenure, from 2017-2021, the government cut prison budgets by 30 per cent, eliminated the Justice Ministry, and froze the security budget. The combination of a weak state and strong criminal forces has led to a near-doubling of homicides each year since 2020. The nation’s murder rate for last year – around 40 murders per 100,000 people – is the highest in its history, and makes the country one of the most violent in Latin America.
Colombian, Mexican, and Albanian criminal enterprises have set up shop in Ecuador’s strategically-located port towns and have been soaking the streets with blood in the process. “The Murder Capital of Latin America” is not a designation President Noboa is keen to retain and he has been aggressively prosecuting his war since declaring it in January:
The 'Phoenix Plan' to beat the gangs in Ecuador has a budget of $800m (US) for law enforcement - $200m of that comes from the government of the United States. The United States has a vested interest in seeing gang activities in Latin America curtailed. First to restrict the flow of illegal drugs into the country and secondly, and arguably even more importantly, to stop the flow of migrants north from South and Central America and illegally into the United States. The huge number of migrants trying to cross the border from Mexico often tell us they are attempting the journey to escape the gangs who make life in a swathe of countries absolutely miserable. For two weeks Sky News joined raid after raid, night and day, on land and sea, against the gangs in Ecuador. We also entered a prison, which was full, and under military guard. So far so good.
Quito’s battle to restore order is going to be a long and difficult endeavor and it may become tempting to begin emulating El Salvadoran strongman Nayib Bukele’s civil-rights free approach to curbing gang dominance. Although as the Washington Office on Latin America notes, a Bukele-style approach may not even be feasible for Ecuador:
Through Bukele-style use of force alone, it will be very difficult to deprive Ecuadorian criminal groups of their wealth. The river of cocaine running through the country cannot be dammed up. Overland drug interdiction is bedevilingly difficult, even for well-resourced U.S. law enforcement at the Mexico border. And Ecuador shares 1,314 miles of border with the world’s two largest cocaine producers.
Should Noboa succumb to the more authoritarian route in his war on gangs, he may be able to secure the broad domestic popularity Bukele enjoys while at the same time risking the material aid the United States is providing if it becomes clear his administration is overseeing widespread human rights abuses. As it currently stands, Noboa is already in the precarious position of triangulating U.S. support without angering their commercial partner Russia—to that end he recently called off a weapons swap that would have seen Ecuadorean arms exchanged for more modern American weapons with the older kit then being sent to Ukraine. Russia quickly announced an embargo of Ecuadorean banana imports in response to the deal which seemingly led Noboa to reverse course.
Aside from eliminating gang violence, Ecuador also has the difficult task ahead of rooting out the corruption that has infiltrated so many of their societal institutions. Just last week Ecuadorean authorities arrested twelve individuals allegedly tied to organized crime including a number of judges and former politicians:
The case is "a demonstration of how corruption is generated from the high spheres of legislative politics, putting the administration of justice in one of the most influential provinces of the country at their disposition and obviously at the disposition of drug traffickers," Attorney General Diana Salazar said in a video.
Ecuador has a difficult path forward to stability. But we should all be rooting for the country’s success in combatting the drug trafficking mafias that have sprung up in recent years while still hoping for the preservation of Ecuadorean civil liberties. Democracy is a precious thing and while El Salvador may be safer today than it was two years ago, there’s no denying it came at the terrible price of a self-acknowledged dictator. I wouldn’t wish that on the citizens of Ecuador.
NATO
After months of infuriatingly being held up by Turkey and Hungary, Sweden is now officially NATO’s thirty-second member. After two centuries of official neutrality, Sweden’s citizens seem thrilled to join the most successful and powerful military alliance in world history:
Almost two years after applying to join Nato, many Swedes say there is palpable relief that the wait to secure membership in the military alliance is finally over. As Stockholm commuters rushed to work in temperatures of -1C, few were in the mood for a detailed post-mortem of the application process. But many said they already felt safer, just a day after Sweden officially joined Nato, following a document handover in Washington.
Sweden’s ascension to NATO creates a huge liability for Russia in the Baltic Sea, which is now completely enveloped by alliance members. It also represents a huge strategic loss for Vladimir Putin’s NATO containment policy:
The addition to the alliance of both Sweden and Finland, whose entry was approved last April, amounts to a symbolic blow to Putin, whose imperialist aims depend on a weakened Europe and who cited NATO expansion and “aggression” as part of his justification for his Ukraine invasion. It also represents a major tactical and logistical boost for the 74-year-old partnership even as it’s simultaneously dealing with thorny questions about American commitment prompted by former President Donald Trump’s recent incendiary comments.
As I said over on Substack Notes last week: welcome to the family Stockholm.
Czechia/Slovakia
Last October Slovakia formed a new government led by explicitly pro-Russian Prime Minster Robert Fico. Since then the European Union has accused Fico of doing “irreparable damage to the rule of law” via a package of reforms allegedly intended to protect Fico’s friends and allies. Fico has also dispatched his Foreign Minister to meet with Russian FM Sergei Lavrov prompting Czechia to suspend joint cabinet meetings with their former fellow countrymen:
Relations between Bratislava and Prague have grown frosty, however, since Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico returned to power in October for a fourth term. While the Czech Republic has steadfastly supported Ukraine since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, and more recently canvassed its partners in the European Union to help buy hundreds of thousands of shells for Kyiv from around the world, Fico pledged during his campaign “not to send another bullet to Ukraine.” He also called on Kyiv to give up territory to Moscow to stop the war.
While Fico’s government refuses to assist Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s horrific invasion, they shamelessly seek to purchase American Patriot air defense systems for their own use. Turkey and Hungary are often cited as the worst/most incompatible members of NATO but Fico’s Slovakia is giving them a run for their money.
North Korea
North Korea continues to be intimately involved in the Russian war effort—a new CSIS report outlines via open source intelligence the extent of DPRK munition transfers to Russia:
CSIS analysis of hundreds of commercially available satellite imagery since August, along with other open-source information, shows the continuing transfer of large quantities of munitions between North Korea and Russia. Notably, dark vessel movement between Najin (Rason/Rajin) in North Korea and Dunai (Dunay) and Vostochny Port in Russia continues to be observed, along with some changes in vessel activity between these locations since late December 2023.
On the home front, Kim Jong Un has ordered heightened war readiness, and personally led artillery drills near the border with South Korea in recent days. The DPRK also unleashed a new salvo of cyber attacks on South Korean semiconductor producers last week. The Great Comrade has certainly had a busy 2024 so far.
Houthis
More bad news out of the Red Sea: the Houthis have murdered a Vietnamese and two Filipino civilians working on the merchant vessel True Confidence which militants struck with missiles last Thursday. This comes right on the heels of a successful (albeit non-fatal) Houthi strike on the Sky II on Monday.
This is insanity. Our response is clearly not working and it’s now costing seafarer’s lives. Just two days ago the Houthis launched double digit drones into Red Sea airspace:
Houthi forces in Yemen claim to have launched one of their largest attacks on US shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, saying they sent 37 drones to hit US navy war ships and a commercial ship. The US Central Command said it had stopped the attack, which it attributed to Iranian-backed Houthi forces. The US spoke of only shooting down 15, not 37, drones.
Playing defense here isn’t going to stop the Iran-backed war on commerce. As I keep saying the Biden administration needs to authorize strikes on the personnel carrying out these terrorist attacks until they can no longer pose a threat to commercial shipping in the region.
Myanmar
Another week, another rapid advance by Myanmar’s alliance of pro-democracy rebels:
A rebel group in Myanmar’s northern state of Kachin said its troops on Thursday attacked more than 10 army outposts along the main road to the state capital of Myitkyina, increasing the pressure on the military government from pro-democracy resistance forces and ethnic minority armed organizations. Fierce fighting has been taking place in the area, residents told a human rights group and local media.
The military junta is in serious danger of collapsing this year ever since the National Unity Government backed rebels launched their incredibly successful offensive last fall. It appears the regime understands just how precarious their position is and has begun conscripting citizens living in military controlled regions in a last ditch effort to stem the tide of rebel advances. This mobilization has predictably sparked a wave of military-aged men fleeing to Thailand.
The junta has also been wantonly executing anti-regime activists and bombing their own civilians incessantly as they slowly lose control of the country they took over three years ago. It’s embarrassing how little the free world has paid attention to Myanmar since the 2021 coup.
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