The recent escalation of tensions between Washington and Caracas has led to the US deploying at least seven warships in the Southern Caribbean, which can be traced back to certain dates.
On August 7, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced a $50 million reward for information that led to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who has been facing formal drug trafficking charges from the Department of Justice since 2020.
Bondi declared that Maduro was “one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world and a threat to the national security of the United States.”
Caracas has always denied these accusations, but within hours more than 4,000 US servicemen had been deployed in the Caribbean. A few days later, more ships, submarines and air intelligence units were added.
A few days after the Maduro and Trump administrations celebrated the prisoner exchange and the reopening of Venezuela’s oil exports, the rapid escalation of the crisis surprised many surprises and opened a rift in the White House itself.
“Donald Trump has come to the White House as president of peace. Drumbeats from several divisions of Venezuela’s opposition and lawmakers in South Florida do not fit the president’s message,” a Venezuelan-knowledged US government official told CNN, demanding anonymity.
But beyond rhetoric, it is impressive that the White House faces Maduro on its relationship with drug trafficking rather than demanding that Venezuela restore democracy.
Allegations involving the Miraflor Presidential Palace in cocaine trafficking have been around for at least 10 years. So why is this new initiative in recent weeks?
Bondi does not present conclusive evidence of the alleged role Venezuelan leaders have in international drug trafficking. At the same time, Caracas refused the claim altogether.
“Because there are drug cartels, how can a cartel not last long if there are no cultivation, production or drug trafficking in Venezuela to deal with, or exchange them?” The Trump administration declared a terrorist organization a few weeks ago.
According to the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Venezuela is not a cocaine producer.
Almost all coca crops, the main ingredient in cocaine, are concentrated in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Colombia in particular has seen a dramatic increase in cocaine production in recent years, due to an increase in cultivation areas (almost 100,000 hectares since 2020), and more importantly, according to UN researchers.
In other words, more coca leaves are grown, and at the same time, each leaves produce more cocaine. Of the 3,700 tonnes of coca produced worldwide, more than 2,500 tonnes are on sale from Colombia, but according to the latest UNODC report published in June, Venezuela will not appear on the production map.
Investigators from the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) have come to similar conclusions, writing in an annual report published in March that 84% of cocaine seized in the US comes from Colombia. In the four pages dedicated to cocaine trafficking, Venezuela is not mentioned. Colombia and Peru are mostly mentioned among producers, while Ecuador, Central America and Mexico are mentioned among transport countries.
“Most of Colombian cocaine is trafficked north along the Pacific coast,” UNODC says.
The United Nations says that transits through Venezuela are not ruled out, but other countries have been identified as new trends in international drug markets such as Ecuador.
This is an analysis that the State Department has not challenged – at least behind closed doors, suggesting that resources deployed in the Caribbean could be more effective elsewhere. “It’s strange that we don’t see any criminalization of boats heading into the Pacific, or (more Colombian groups),” a US diplomat told CNN.
Former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr appears to suggest the same when he revealed his first drug trafficking accusations against Maduro in 2020, pointing out the Venezuelan government as a facilitator as a transport of “up to 250 tons of cocaine per year.”
The Pacific route also controls UNODC drug attack statistics as countries with Colombia (37%), Ecuador (8.8%) and Panama (4.2%) with regional cocaine hydrochloride cocaine. Venezuela ranks sixth among Latin American countries in terms of seizures, with less than 2%.
Although UN data appears to contradict the White House narrative, reality is more complicated.
The 250 tonnes of cocaine movement that Barr accused of being promoted by the Venezuelan government is minor compared to global human trafficking (3,700 tonnes, according to UNODC). However, being said to generate millions of dollars in profits for Maduro remains a considerable illegal transaction. At the time, Barr also failed to provide evidence of illegal human trafficking that he allegedly claimed.
The Venezuelan government coalition recognizes drug trafficking exists in the country, but that doesn’t encourage it. Eekhout, for example, told CNN that Maduro security forces seized 490 aircraft and 94 vessels used to transport cocaine, seizing CNN, which cannot be verified independently.
And while Caracas claims he is at a war on drugs, there is also evidence of direct involvement in drug trafficking from the highest levels of the government.
In November 2016, a federal court in New York found that two members of the presidential family (Venezuelan First Lady Cilia Flores) were found guilty of conspiring to transport cocaine to the United States after being arrested by the DEA in Haiti. Both were returned to Venezuela in prison exchanges.
What’s even more prominent is the role of Hugo “El Polo” Carvalal, a former high-class Venezuelan employee who imported cocaine into the United States on June 25th and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to narcoterism. This comes after a lengthy trial in which US prosecutors accused Colombian opposition of swapping firearms with current Fark guerrillas, which control some of the key areas of drug production.
The contract reached a few days before his trial began in New York after a lengthy extradition process from Spain.
At the time, the Miami Herald reported that Karvajal, who was accused of being part of Cartal de los Sales, was working with US prosecutors and providing evidence against Maduro in exchange for a sentence that CNN could not independently support.
Just a month later, the Treasury was able to designate Cartel de los Salles as a foreign terrorist organization, enforcing greater freedom of action against suspicious members of the organization.
Other South American countries such as Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay announced similar designations the next day.
“In itself, there is no Cartel de los Salles. It’s a journalistic expression created to refer to the involvement of Venezuelan authorities in drug trafficking,” Phil Gunson, a researcher with the International Crisis Group, which has been based in Caracas for more than a decade, told CNN.
This does not mean there are no military personnel or government officials involved in drug trafficking. “The cartel is here, and Colombians and Mexicans are here too. There’s air through the Orinoco River and the secret runway, flights from Apre to Central America, and all of this is impossible without direct involvement from above,” the expert said.
For Gunson, Maduro’s role is reminiscent of the role of former Panama President Manuel Noriega, who was sentenced to decades in prison in various jurisdictions in 1992 for his relationship with the Medellin Cartel.
Other independent analysts on the Intelligence website Insightcrime share the same analytics. “Cartel de los Salles is a term used to describe a shadowy group within the Venezuelan military that is involved in a wide range of criminal activities. It is not a hierarchical group, but rather a loose network of cells acting as drug lords,” the site says.
The very name of the organization nods to the army, and the “sole” (Sands) is a reference to the insignia worn by a Venezuelan general on the straps of his shoulders.
Since hiding, opposition leader Maria Korina Machado praised her recent statement to the cartel. Other opposition divisions were more skeptical. Former opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles told CNN that the Trump administration “must present” evidence of the existence of Cartel de los Saul, who previously accused Maduro of being involved in drug trafficking.
The Venezuelan president has always denied personal involvement in drug trafficking, at least until US prosecutors presented uncontroversial evidence of similar significance to what led to his wife’s nephew conviction nine years ago.
In this, the role of Karbajar is once again important, and so is another date: October 29th.
