Rarely do the horrors of narco-terrorism play out so publicly as they did on 9 January in Ecuador. In response to a state of emergency declared by President Daniel Noboa a day earlier, criminal gangs seized a public television station, detonated bombs in major cities, kidnapped police officers and invaded a university. It was, in their words, a declaration of war against the government.
In the aftermath of the narco-terrorists’ frightening display of force, Noboa promised to ramp up his war on domestic crime – imposing a curfew, naming 22 gangs in Ecuador as terrorist organizations, and calling on the military to oversee national security and the prison system.
But as the country struggles to regain control and provide security for its citizens, the world needs to realize that Ecuador’s neighbours and Western countries bear some of the blame for Ecuador’s tragedy – and must now support its democracy.
An explosion of crime
This explosion of violence has been brewing for a long time. In recent years, international narcotics groups infiltrated the country, linking up with local criminal organizations in the export of cocaine and other illicit goods.
Until recently the expansion of criminal networks, and their pernicious infiltration of Ecuadoran security forces and state institutions, had occurred quietly. But in the past five years that began to change, with murders increasing fivefold between 2016 and 2022.
The rot of criminality extended to and expanded in the prison system, erupting in dramatic view last year when inmates took control of several prisons. Rather than remove them from society, the penal system allowed gangs to conduct their business with impunity from within prison walls, interspersed by internecine gang warfare. Since February 2021, more than 420 prisoners have been killed in such fighting, and in efforts by government forces to regain control of jails.
A gruesome reminder of the power of criminal gangs was brought home in August 2023, when presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, a respected anti-corruption activist who had called out gangs leaders by name, was assassinated. Six suspects were later arrested, all from neighbouring Colombia. All were killed in prison.
For now, things appear calm. Within 24 hours of the uprising on the 9 January Ecuadoran security forces were regaining control of prisons, and the state television station was back in government hands.
But the tasks of rooting out the 22 terrorist groups, cleaning up government corruption linked to organized crime, and reasserting state control remain long-term and uncertain, requiring patience and international support.
The causes of the crisis
There are many domestic reasons for the state of terror that Ecuador now faces. The country had historically been distant from the guerrilla wars and criminal violence that plagued neighbours Colombia and Peru from the 1970s until recently.
As a result, the Ecuadoran state never developed the infrastructure or material capacity to address existential security threats stemming from revolutionaries or illicit gangs.
Former President Rafael Correa’s decision to close a US air base in the city of Manta in 2008, though it may have been seen at the time as striking a blow against Yanqui imperialism, now seems particularly misguided. The base was used to track and interrupt narcotics trafficking in that region of South America, and its closure removed a key capability to counteract transnational crime (which already begun to take root in Ecuador).
But the country’s geography, and its neighbours’ struggles with narco-terrorism, are also crucial to understanding the crisis.
Ecuador’s porous borders with its coca-growing and cocaine-producing neighbours meant the country became a logical transhipment point for narcotic traffickers, as governments in Colombia and Peru fought back against criminal networks and guerrilla groups in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Colombia’s $1 trillion US-supported ‘Plan Colombia’, which cracked down and disarticulated illicit groups, saw many paramilitaries and guerrillas move their operations across the border into Ecuador.
Similarly, in Peru, the government’s temporary victory over Shining Path guerrillas in the 1990s and reassertion of state authority over cocaine-producing areas saw criminal organizations shift to using Ecuador’s ports to export their products to the largest cocaine-consuming markets, the US and Europe – in some cases hiding them in legal shipments of goods like fruit and manufactured products (though in the case of the US, smugglers are turning to submarines to run drugs up the Pacific coast).
Demand in Western countries
And here comes the international responsibility: The majority of profits that support the 22 narco-terrorist groups identified by President Noboa flow from cocaine sold to consumers in the West.
As with many criminal syndicates in Latin America, the cocaine trade is only one of their illicit enterprises alongside human trafficking, extortion, and smuggling – but cocaine is their most important source of revenue. And it is the demand for cocaine in North America and Europe that attracted Mexican cartels and Albanian criminal networks to link up with local Ecuadorian groups.
According to the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, of the 110 tons of cocaine seized in Antwerp in 2020, 60 per cent came from Ecuador.
As President Noboa seeks now to tackle the metastasizing criminal elements within Ecuador’s society, economy and state, the international community need to step up. Already, neighbouring Peru, Argentina and Bolivia, plus the US, have pledged their support to help the embattled Ecuadoran government.
This should include more than just expressions of sympathy and solidarity. For bordering countries such as Peru and Colombia it should require mobilizing better border controls, via troops and air surveillance.
Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro will also need to coordinate with Ecuador on his ambitious but flailing efforts to negotiate with the dozen or so criminal gangs in Colombia – what he calls ‘Total Peace’. After the peace deal negotiated by Petro’s predecessor President Juan Santos, some former members of guerrilla group FARC (as well as some paramilitary groups who participated in a peace plan under his predecessor) took up their former criminal practices across the border.
The US, EU and UK also need to shoulder their responsibility. Part of this will mean reinforcing and stepping up interdiction and demand-side policies to reduce the flow of drugs north. It will also require financial, material and technical assistance to the Ecuadoran government and security forces.
Should Ecuador’s democratically elected government lose this gang-declared war, there is a risk that South America’s once-peaceful country could disintegrate into a narco-state.
Such an outcome would not just be a domestic nightmare for Ecuador’s frightened and besieged citizens. It would have international implications, for its neighbours and its enablers to the north.
Just as the reasons for the current troubles are domestic and international, so are the responsibilities and solutions.
Dr Christopher Sabatini, Senior Research Fellow for Latin America, US and the Americas Programme.