Ecuador Declares War on “Cartel Terrorism” — But Is War The Right Response?

-Analysis-

QUITO — Ecuador, the South American country facing down a massive crime surge, is in unknown territory. People used to consider it a pleasant place, an island of peace, though that ended even before a declaration of war on crime by the conservative government of President Gustavo Noboa. His decree 111 of January 9, 2024, declared a state of “internal conflict” and named 22 armed gangs as terrorists, though unfortunately, this will merely tackle the symptoms of our problem.

The presidential measures follow an intimidatory wave that included murders, jail flights and most recently the assault on a television studio, which ended in the terrorists’ capture without any deaths. On the back of this incident, reported worldwide, the government declared a state of civil war though the surge in crime follows years of permissive attitudes that allowed the drug business to settle in Ecuador.

Ecuador does not produce drugs, but it has more ports, which the drug cartels need to send out their illegal products.

Mexican and Colombian influence

There were also three milestones in recent years that helped create the present state of affairs: the 1999 dollarization of the economy, which favors money laundering, the termination of U.S. presence in the port of Manta in keeping with a constitutional mandate (2008), and the recognition of universal citizenship (favoring migrants, in 2010), which allowed big criminal groups to settle here without a visa.

Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel came to control the country, especially thanks to its closeness to the (now disbanded) Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which ran drug production in Colombia.

The Colombian peace process and FARC’s inclusion in mainstream political life dispersed the drug business, bringing in dissident guerrilla factions, another Mexican cartel, Jalisco New Generation, and an Albanian gang active here since 2010. That fueled the proliferation of Ecuadorian gangs, which were initially loyal to the Sinaloa cartel and after 2017, to New Generation and the Albanians.

22 groups

The 22 groups the government has declared to be terrorists are fighting, with guns and machetes, to control Ecuador’s jails. They are bearing down on the population with kidnappings, extortions and murders to the tune of 7,592 homicides in 2023, compared to a little over 4,400 in 2022. That has pushed Ecuador above Colombia and Mexico in the table of violent and criminal killings.

The mobilization of the army aims to disband these terror gangs though the presidential order must be approved by the Constitutional Court. Its opinion will prove decisive, for better or worse, as the population is exposed and the country’s entire production chain is now in danger.

International criminal gangs run themselves at three levels. There is firstly a base of foot soldiers consisting of criminals using violence, then a mid-level web of political corruption involving crooked officials and judges, and above them, the big cartel bosses.

The internal conflict in Ecuador is a fight with the foot soldiers, without any public policies for now to tackle the two levels above them. Could Ecuador adopt a more comprehensive vision of the criminal phenomenon, beyond firepower, shootouts and soldiers?

*Imbaquingo is a journalist in Ecuador and political editor of Quito’s El Comercio newspaper.