While the War Department says it is currently focused on partner-led deterrence operations, it does not not rule out unilateral US strikes across Latin America.
Given the scale of the carnage and economic fallout from the US-Israeli war on Iran, it’s easy to forget all the other military misadventures Washington is currently engaged in. The Pentagon is still knee deep in the Ukraine conflict, even as the Trump administration talks of diverting military aid from Kiev to West Asia. It is also increasingly involved in military operations in its own “back yard”, as it likes to call Latin America — not just at sea but on land.
On March 6, we relayed that the US military was opening up a new front against so-called “narco terrorists” in Ecuador. The Pentagon had just announced the launch of joint US-Ecuadorian operations against “designated terrorist organizations” in the Andean country. The statement was accompanied by footage of figures boarding military helicopters, the helicopters then taking off and an explosion.
The video was intended to show that the Pentagon, which for months had been directing the bombing of boats it claimed was carrying drugs from South America, is “now bombing Narco Terrorists on land,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on social media.” In reality, as an exposé by the New York Times reveals, the actual target of the attack appears to have been a dairy farm in the small village of San Martín, on Ecuador’s northern border with Colombia:
Workers on the farm told The Times that Ecuadorean soldiers arrived by helicopter on March 3, doused several shelters and sheds with gasoline and ignited them after interrogating workers and beating four of them with the butts of their guns. Three of the workers, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation by the government, said the soldiers later choked and subjected them to electrical shocks before letting them go.
Village residents said Ecuadorean helicopters returned to the farm three days later, on March 6, and appeared to drop explosives on the farm’s smoldering remains. It was at that point, they said, that Ecuadorean soldiers recorded the footage that U.S. and Ecuadorean officials said captured the bombing of a traffickers’ compound…
The Ecuadorean government said in the news release that it had relied on U.S. “intelligence and support” to target the farm, which it said was a camp used to train “about 50 drug traffickers.”
Ecuadorean officials also said it was a “resting place” used by the leader of Comandos de la Frontera, a Colombian armed group that moves cocaine along the Ecuador-Colombia border, according to the authorities.
The Ecuadorean military referred questions to President Daniel Noboa, who did not respond to a detailed list of questions…
The dairy farm’s owner, Miguel, said he bought the 350-acre farm about six years ago for $9,000, growing it to more than 50 cows used for milk and meat.
Miguel, a 32-year-old carpenter and father of two, asked to be identified by only his first name for fear of retaliation by the government. He showed The Times the land’s property title that listed him as its owner, as well as photos of the farm before it was demolished.
As Miguel stood in the rubble, he denied that his farm was used as a training camp, and said he was baffled by the military’s decision to bomb the property.
CEPR’s Jake Jonson adds more detail (for some reason twitter won’t let me embed the tweet):
More on that joint US-Ecuador military bombing, from @USATODAY
There is video of the Ecuadorian military taking away villagers, heads covered with black bags, days ahead of the bombing . The troops fire apparent warning shots at others watching.
Days later, after being tortured, they were dropped on the side of the road hours away from their homes and told they’d be killed if they said anything. US response: our operations are meticulously planned and “any insinuation otherwise is false.” This is going to get worse and worse…
This was all too predictable. We ourselves flagged the risks of the US’ militarisation of Ecuador back in May 2024, six months before Trump re-entered the White House, when the then-commander of US Southern Command, General Laura Richardson, was describing the disastrous “Plan Colombia” as a model for the entire region:
All of Ecuador is now one giant US military base. And its president is arguably more American than Ecuadorian. At least three years of careful planning and deliberation has finally borne fruit: the US has a new ops centre in Latin America — and what’s more, in one of the few countries on the planet to have the temerity to vote in a referendum to close down all US military bases on its territory and force all US soldiers to withdraw. That was in 2009. Now, US soldiers and military bases are back with a vengeance.
To give a little flavour of the new situation in Ecuador, here are a few excerpts of the “Statute for the Permanence of US Troops in Ecuador” signed by the Noboa government in January (machine translated):
Article 2
United States personnel will be granted privileges, exemptions and immunity equivalent to those granted to the administrative and technical personnel of diplomatic missions under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of April 18, 1961. United States personnel will be able to enter and leave the territory of the Republic of Ecuador with US identification and with orders for collective movement or individual travel… United States personnel will be authorised to wear a uniform while fulfilling official duties and to carry weapons while on duty, if authorised by their orders…
Article 4
Personnel of the United States Department of Defense such as those of the United States will not be responsible for paying any tax or similar charge imposed within the territory of Ecuador, and such personnel may import into Ecuador, export from it and use in its territory any personal property, equipment, supplies, equipment, technology, training or services in connection with activities under this Agreement. Said import, export and use will be exempt from any inspection, license, other restrictions, customs fees, taxes or any other charge applied within the territory of Ecuador.
Given the long, storied history of involvement of US troops and CIA agents in drug trafficking operations…, one can’t help but wonder whether Ecuador is about to see a sharp increase in cocaine exports to Europe and other parts of the world, just as happened with heroin in Afghanistan after the US-NATO invasion and occupation of that country. Ecuador is already believed to be the largest departure point for cocaine to Western and Central Europe.
Now, just under two years later, Ecuador is the largest departure point for cocaine to the entire world. As Infobae reported in December, Ecuador has become the global “superhighway” for cocaine, with 70% of global traffic passing through its territory.
Most of that traffic passes through the country’s coastal ports, where President Noboa’s family’s businesses, Noboa Trading Co., has a particularly large presence. The company has been accused of participating in a massive conspiracy with the Albanian mafia to transport drugs to Europe in banana crates.
Meanwhile, Noboa’s US-assisted security crackdown is intensifying. Washington recently established its first permanent FBI branch in Ecuador, where it joins agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.
As the US presence in the country has grown, so too has the Noboa government’s political repression. Earlier this month, Ecuador’s largest political movement, the left-leaning Citizen Revolution party, was banned, to a chorus of almost total silence from the Western media.
These developments bear disturbing echoes of the US’ dirty wars in Latin America during the Cold War as well as the human rights abuses committed under Plan Colombia (2000-15), including more than 3,000 extrajudicial executions by the US-funded security forces.
Plan Colombia itself had little to no impact on cocaine trafficking. In fact, global cocaine production reached the highest level ever reported in 2016, with most of the production coming from Colombia, according to the United Nations’ World Drugs Report 2018 (quelle coincidence!).
In 2020, the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee admitted that Plan Colombia had been a resounding failure from a counter-narcotics perspective. It did, however, provide short-term benefits from a counter-insurgency perspective, which was almost certainly one of the initiative’s main goals.
“Operation Total Extermination”
Teaming up with narco-controlled governments is a common feature of US counter-narcotics policy. Throughout the post WW2 period, Washington has partnered with governments in the region that were either directly engaged in trafficking or closely allied with traffickers, from Cuba’s Fulgencio Batista to Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, to Panama’s Manuel Noriega, to Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe and Honduras’ Juan Orlando Hernandez, whom Trump just pardoned.
As reader Tom Dority put it a few weeks back, “this is not a ‘fight against’ (narco-terrorists) but is a fight for control of the ownership of the drug trades” — a fight that US government agencies, particularly the CIA, have been waging for decades. It is also a pretext for reimposing US dominion over Latin America and its vast deposits of strategic minerals, at a time when the US is trying to ween itself off Chinese-controlled supply chains.
The recent military attacks in Ecuador are a foretaste of what could be in store for the broader region as the US expands its so-called “war” on the drug cartels. In an excellent piece for The Intercept, Nick Turse notes that the US’ intensifying military efforts in the Western hemisphere has a new name, and it’s not exactly subtle: “Operation Total Extermination”:
Attacks on Latin American drug cartels are “just the beginning”, Joseph Humire, the acting assistant secretary of war for homeland defense and Americas security affairs, told members of the House Armed Services Committee last week.
Humire indicated that many more strikes in Latin America are on the horizon. The comments came a day after President Donald Trump again teased American annexation of Cuba. “I do believe I’ll be the honor of — having the honor of taking Cuba,” Trump said last week. “Whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it.”
Humire announced that the Department of War supported “bilateral kinetic actions against cartel targets along the Colombia-Ecuador border” — Pentagon-speak for March 3 strikes on unnamed “Designated Terrorist Organizations” previously reported by The Intercept. “The joint effort, named ‘Operation Total Extermination,’ is the start of a military offensive by Ecuador against transnational criminal organizations with the support of the U.S.,” he said.
The U.S.–Ecuadorian campaign has already strayed into Colombia after a farm was bombed or hit by “ricochet effect” on March 3, leaving an unexploded 500-pound bomb lying in Colombia’s border region. In response to a request for comment, U.S. Southern Command referred The Intercept to a statement on X by the Ecuadorian Ministry of Defense confirming the bomb landed in Colombia.
On May 17, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro said that Ecuador’s bombings on the Ecuador-Colombian border had left “27 charred bodies” in Colombia. The alleged cause of death was a bomb recovered near homes that had been “dropped from a plane,” and did not match weapons used by armed groups or Colombia’s military, which he said did not authorize any strike.
Petro apparently asked President Trump to speak to Noboa “because we don’t want to go to war.” Daniel Noboa rejected the accusation, claiming military operations — supported by “international cooperation” — are being carried out within Ecuador’s territory against organized crime and illegal mining groups, some of them linked to Colombia.
As Drop Site News notes, citing separate reporting by Revista RAYA, there have been similar unexplained bombings in Nariño in recent weeks, leaving dozens dead with no group claiming responsibility. The dispute take place amid a deepening trade war that began in late January 2026, when Ecuador imposed tariffs of up to 50% on Colombian goods. Colombia responded soon after with 30% tariffs and halted electricity exports.
New Regime Change Target
Noboa is clearly happy for the US to use Ecuador as a lancehead against Colombia’s left-wing government and other thorns in the US’ side. Washington is also resorting to lawfare campaigns against Colombian President Gustavo Petro. Just a few days ago, the US Justice Department leaked to the Times that Petro is under criminal investigation for allegedly receiving electoral financing from drug traffickers for his triumphant run in the 2022 presidential election.
The timing is certainly curious — just two months before Colombians head to the polls to vote in new presidential elections…
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Nick Corbishley 