The US military campaign against vessels manned by civilians allegedly involved in drug trafficking continued this Tuesday with two new extrajudicial attacks, bringing to nine the number of operations known since September. The novelty this time is that both occurred in the waters of the Pacific Ocean, at least one off the Colombian coast. The attacks, in which five people died, occurred in the middle of the confrontation between the president of the United States, Donald Trump, and the Colombian, Gustavo Petro, over the military campaign against drug trafficking launched by Washington.
“These attacks will continue, day after day. They are not simple drug traffickers, but narcoterrorists who wreak death and destruction in our cities. These drug traffickers are the Al Qaeda of our hemisphere and they will not escape justice. We will find them and eliminate them until the threat to the American people is extinguished,” wrote Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in a message accompanying the second announcement, already at night. The attack occurred in the “Eastern Pacific” on “a known drug trafficking route.”
At noon (East Coast time) CBS announced the first operation, citing two anonymous official sources. Confirmation came shortly from Hegseth himself. The casualty count from the nine extrajudicial operations is at least 37 civilians.
In X’s publications, the Secretary of Defense also released a video of the moment in which the boats jumped into the air. “These cartels are waging war against our border and our people. There will be no refuge or forgiveness, only justice,” he added in the first, without offering more details about the identity of those who were traveling aboard the vessel or evidence about the cargo they were carrying. He also said that the order had been given by President Donald Trump.
The attack known at noon also marked a before and after. It was also the first time that US authorities acknowledged that the attack took place “off the Colombian coast.” On previous occasions, Hegseth or Trump highlighted the proximity to the Venezuelan Caribbean coast. According to official figures, only 10% of the drugs that reach US shores do so through the Caribbean. The most common route is the Pacific, with three fundamental origins: Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador.
The Secretary of Defense’s words must be placed in the context of the conflict between Trump and the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, whom he has accused of being “a drug trafficking leader” who encourages massive drug production, after Petro said that Washington has violated the sovereignty of his country in two of the nine attacks on vessels that could be Colombian. The White House assured that it was going to cut off any type of aid to the country and threatens punitive tariffs on Bogotá, which have not yet been materialized.
This Wednesday the clash between both leaders increased: Trump called Petro a “thug” and “a bad guy” in a meeting with the press in Washington. “He produces a lot of drugs. Today we suspended all payments to Colombia. Be careful or we will take very severe measures against him and his country.”
The announcement comes two days after Hegseth himself – and not, as has also become customary, Trump – broke the news of the seventh attack on Sunday. So the target was a boat that U.S. authorities link to the National Liberation Army, a Colombian guerrilla group that the United States has considered a terrorist organization since the 1990s. In a post on They killed three people.
The Secretary of Defense also stated that the operation, whose objective was Colombian, and not, as until then, Venezuelan, took place in international waters and within the area of responsibility of the United States Southern Command, which includes the Caribbean Sea. In that area, a deployment with few precedents has been developed in recent weeks, which includes a dozen ships of
“Armed attacks”
The Trump Administration considers that the United States is in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels. Arguing that the narcotics these criminal gangs traffic kill tens of thousands of Americans every year, they understand that these alleged drug movements are “armed attacks.”
Senators from both parties oppose the fact that Trump has declared war against these organizations, and not against a country, and that he has invoked a law from the 1970s that gives him the power for 60 days to maintain these operations without the approval of Congress, which end at the beginning of November and can be extended for 30 more days.
Over the weekend, the president of the United States also confirmed the sixth extrajudicial operation of a campaign that began in early September. On that occasion the target was a shallow submersible boat. The army killed two civilians and two others, a Colombian and an Ecuadorian, survived.
Both were repatriated to their countries, and the Prosecutor’s Office of that country did not find evidence to accuse him of any crime.
The US authorities have not yet provided evidence about the crew of these vessels or the cargo they were carrying. The death penalty is legal in much of the United States, although it is never applied to drug trafficking, and there always has to be a prior trial.
