Trump’s War on Drug Cartels Could Hurt Colombia’s Own Efforts Against Them

As the U.S. ramps up its attacks on drug cartels out of Venezuela, it’s done serious harm to its relationship with Colombia, once considered its strongest and most reliable narcotics-fighting partner in Latin America.

Diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Colombia have taken a nosedive this year, starting with a spat over more aggressive U.S. deportations of Colombians and deteriorating further over the Trump administration’s continued killing of Latin American sailors in the Caribbean and Pacific who it says were trafficking drugs, without publicly producing evidence.

This international spat is now threatening to weaken Drug Enforcement Administration operations to destroy cocaine-producing coca crops and combat paramilitary cartels.

Last week, Colombian President Gustavo Petro said he would cut off all intelligence-sharing with the United States until President Donald Trump halts the boat bombing campaign, which has already claimed at least 80 lives — following a similar move by the United Kingdom. Although Petro later backed off from the threat, the strained relations run the risk of interrupting what’s perhaps the DEA’s greatest asset there: spywork on the highly guarded armed groups that operate in the jungle mountains of Colombia.

Harry Lidsky, a former CIA officer who also spent years as a DEA agent, said losing Colombia as a close partner will “certainly complicate things.”“If we wanted to do something like Operation Snowcap again, we’re not going to be allowed to,” he said, referring to a years-long DEA anti-narcotics effort that by 1990 had led the Colombian National Police to capture 53 tons of cocaine and arrest roughly 7,000 suspected traffickers.

Lidsky and several other former agents who spoke to NOTUS stressed the importance of spy work at the DEA, which prides itself on developing informants deep inside criminal networks and militarized drug cartels. The information the DEA obtains eventually gets shared with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.

The DEA has “sources everywhere,” even when local governments aren’t cooperative, Lidsky said. So the Colombian president’s announcement “doesn’t mean we’re cut off,” but it could still be highly damaging and dangerous for agents, he said. Lidsky invoked the name of Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, the DEA agent who was kidnapped, tortured, and killed in Mexico in 1985.

“It makes for a potentially dangerous situation for DEA agents operating in Colombia,” he said. “If the government there is not sharing or potentially looking the other way in terms of safety, that could be problematic. They know who we are. Every DEA agent is declared in the embassy in Bogotá, Cartagena, Medellín. There’s a risk they could be sold out.”

The DEA did not respond for comment.

Asked about disintegrating diplomatic relations with Colombia, a Trump White House official called U.S. funding so far “nothing more than a long term rip off of America” and said “cartels are thriving under Petro’s failed policies.”

The current diplomatic breakdown with Colombia ties back to Venezuela. The two countries share a 1,378-mile border that has become a safety corridor for the ELN, an anti-government Colombian paramilitary group that has allegedly received shelter from the Maduro regime to the east.

That border will take on renewed importance if the United States attacks Venezuela, which looks increasingly likely. The U.S. Navy on Tuesday announced that the U.S.S. Gerald Ford, the largest aircraft carrier in the world, had entered South American waters, prompting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to immediately sign orders mobilizing a defense force of public officials, citizens and military personnel. The next day, top military officials presented Trump with options for attacking Venezuela, CBS reported.

Such an armed conflict could only exacerbate the need for a close relationship with Colombia, which has been on a steady decline since the start of the second Trump administration.

It started during Trump’s first week in office, when Petro said that “a migrant is not a criminal and should be treated with the dignity that a human being deserves” and turned away two U.S. military flights loaded with deportees. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, citing an “America First agenda,” immediately suspended visas for the Colombian family members of government officials “who were responsible for the interference of U.S. repatriation flight operations.”

It got worse in June, when the Spanish newspaper El País reported that a former Colombian foreign minister was seeking to topple Petro’s democratically elected presidency with the help of two Republican congressmen in Florida — Mario Díaz-Balart and Carlos Giménez — an episode that led Rubio to recall the top U.S. diplomat in Colombia back home for “urgent consultations.”

Then came the definitive slap in the face, when the Trump administration “delisted” Colombia from its directory of drug war partners in September — a symbolic blow that was softened with a “national interest waiver” that would allow Colombia to still receive much needed weapons and matériel. In response, Colombia froze purchases of U.S. arms.

Seven former DEA agents, including several who oversaw operations in Colombia, told NOTUS that this diplomatic disintegration could roll back the clock decades — to a time when the South American nation was the world’s leading producer of cocaine. Several stressed the importance of U.S. personnel maintaining Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters owned by the Colombians that are needed to reach deep into mountainous terrain. Others pointed to the advice and training delivered by DEA agents to Colombian police.

“You’ll see the FARC or ELN will start getting stronger again, because they’re getting the drug proceeds,” said Stacy Zinn, a former DEA agent who trained security forces in neighboring Peru on intercepting communications, referring to the guerilla groups Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and National Liberation Army.

Zinn said Trump’s hardline approach to Colombia could have a blowback effect that eventually brings more cocaine into the United States, undermining the renewed drug war he’s now embarked on. But she and several other former DEA agents who spoke to NOTUS mostly lay the blame on what they perceive to be Petro’s soft approach on narco groups.

“The lack of operational activity [in Colombia] was very apparent to me. There was a significant decrease in actionable intelligence, a lack of will to go after cartel leaders” said Derek S. Maltz, who served as this Trump administration’s first acting DEA administrator earlier this year, blaming what he called Petro’s “left-leaning, soft on crime politics.”

Petro and past Colombian leaders have scaled back the nation’s hardline approach to the drug war and opted for more progressive anti-addiction programs, but they continue to face off with guerilla groups — particularly, the ELN, which has reportedly partnered up with Venezuelan government forces. But conservative criticisms that they’ve stopped herbicide eradication of coca crops tend to miss the point that they only did so in 2015 when the International Agency for Research on Cancer declared that the chemical was “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Former DEA investigators who spoke to NOTUS all agreed that the cessation was justified.

“They were arguing about the chemicals when I got there in 1994. That has always been an issue, and it’s certainly a legitimate concern,” said Chris Feistl, a former DEI agent who tracked down leaders of the Cali Cartel.

The complicated internal politics of combating drugs within Colombia have been overshadowed by what’s become a personal showdown between Petro and Trump.

When a conservative Colombian politician was assassinated with a gunshot to the back of his head, the State Department blamed “the violent leftist rhetoric coming from the highest levels of the Colombian government.” When Petro visited New York in the midst of Trump’s domestic military deployment and grabbed a bullhorn to ask “all soldiers of the United States not to point your rifles at humanity,” the State Department revoked his visa for having “urged U.S. soldiers to disobey orders.”

Michael Vigil, a retired agent who oversaw international operations at DEA, is dismayed by what he sees as Trump’s “huge error” in managing to lose a close ally. He pointed to Colombia’s heavy reliance on U.S.-made and maintained helicopters as just one example.

“What Donald Trump is in effect doing by withdrawing aid and applying sanctions is allowing these armed groups to expand into other territories. They’re going to become more powerful,” Vigil said. “The ones really paying the price are American citizens, because we’re going to start seeing more cocaine going this way.”