Drug Trafficking and Cartels

Ecuador has launched a two‑week security operation against drug‑trafficking gangs with support from the United States, the first major deployment under a new 17‑country cartel‑fighting alliance announced by President Donald Trump at a summit earlier this month. Interior Minister John Reimberg said 'we're at war' as the government imposed nighttime curfews in the coastal provinces of Guayas, Los Rios, Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas and El Oro and began deploying about 35,000 soldiers with armored vehicles and helicopters to areas hardest hit by cocaine-fueled violence. The article notes that President Daniel Noboa, a close Trump ally, has spent two years targeting traffickers, but murders, disappearances and extortion have not declined, underscoring how Ecuador’s role as a corridor for an estimated 70% of Colombian and Peruvian cocaine keeps driving bloodshed. It also reports that U.S. and Ecuadorian forces recently conducted joint strikes inside Ecuador and that the FBI will open an office in the country to work with local police on organized crime, money laundering and corruption cases, signaling a deeper U.S. law‑enforcement and security footprint on the Andean corridor that feeds the U.S. cocaine market. The lack of clarity over whether U.S. troops will again operate on Ecuadorian soil highlights both the scale of Washington’s involvement and the political sensitivities around direct U.S. military roles in Latin America.