Is an undeclared war between the state and drug cartels taking place in Ecuador?

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Even though Guayaquil is part of a security plan, the wave of violence that manifests itself in contract killings continues to grow. Security experts believe that in addition to turf wars between local gangs linked to Mexican drug cartels, the relentless crime and increased drug trafficking are also a sign of strength for the state.

Are there signs of undeclared war? Colonel Mario Pazmiño, former head of Army Intelligence and an expert on security and defense issues, thinks so. But it is drug trafficking that threatens the state, and not the other way around, as it should be, or at least it is not perceived that way.

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“This problem has a name and a surname: it’s drug trafficking,” police commander Tannya Varela said of the cause of most security problems, which have also led to collateral casualties in shootings, such as that of Rosa Antonia Vélez, 75, who was shot this weekend in her home in the La Ladrillera sector of northern Guayaquil when criminals shot her grandson (who was wounded) and two of his friends (one of whom died).

The grandmother is part of a list of eight murders in one weekend. In Police District 8, which includes Guayaquil, Durán and Samborondón, there have been more than 450 victims of contract killings so far this year.

But more than the signs, there are facts that prove the “cold war” that has been created by the state’s actions – even if there is still much to be done – to fight the mafias and their reactions.

July 22, 2021. In the midst of the prison crisis that had led to the deaths of 22 inmates in the Guayas and Cotopaxi prisons the previous day, President Guillermo Lasso issued a warning: “To the mafias that are trying to intimidate this country: You are mistaken. You are mistaken if you believe that this government will act with the same lukewarmness as previous governments. You are mistaken if you believe that our hand is shaking. You will be defeated. We will use the full force of the law to enforce the rule of law and guarantee peace and human rights.”

September 13, 2021. The Guayas Regional Prison, where the leaders of the “mafia” attacked by the President are being held, is attacked by three drones. There were no fatalities, but there was damage to the roofs.

In the midst of this data, police in Guayaquil managed the largest seizure of drugs in a single location, and the armed forces began installing two radars in Manabí, a province where there are at least 40 areas whose characteristics suggest they have been used to land and dispatch drug planes.

CLANDESTINE LANDING STRIPS FOR DRUG PLANES

According to Pazmiño, police deprived drug traffickers of nearly half a million dollars with the August 13 seizure of nine tons of cocaine at a water bottling plant in Los Vergeles, north of Guayaquil. Weapons “with the power to destroy an armored truck” were found at the same site, according to Government Minister Alexandra Vela.

“This was a warning to the state, from an international drug cartel, telling him (the President) that we are not asking for permission, like it or not, we are here, and we are not going to leave. This will not continue, a reaction from drug traffickers is foreseeable,” said the expert. He does not believe in the hypothesis of the police that the drone attack was a gang trying to eliminate the leaders of another criminal organization.

According to Lasso, the prison riots were a reaction to the installation of radar installations in Manabí by criminal organizations “that believed Ecuador was a free zone for transnational crimes such as drug and human trafficking.”

THE WARNING

But Pazmiño sees something more dangerous than the unrest; the drone attack has symbolic significance, he says. “Transnational organized crime organizations are saying to the state, ‘Gentlemen, we have the technological and operational capacity, the economic resources and the personnel to attack not only the roof of a prison, but also any strategic national structure: refineries, oil pipelines, hydroelectric plants, dams, ports.'”

The state is currently incapable of countering this type of threat; it has neither knowledge of nor the power to destroy drones. Fausto Cobo, director of the National Service for the Comprehensive Care of Adults in Custody and Juvenile Offenders (SNAI), acknowledged after the August 13 attacks, “The only option is to use anti-drone technology, which is very expensive and, moreover, cannot be procured and installed overnight.”

Therefore, the government should set up an intelligence system to detect and anticipate threats and also establish a joint task force to deal with them, Pazmiño suggests. “Organized crime, drug trafficking and general crime have put the state and its people in a process of total defenselessness,” he said.

Renato Rivera, research associate at the Latin American Network for the Analysis of Security and Organized Crime, points out the difference between general crime, “which is related to socioeconomic factors such as lack of employment and social inequality,” and organized crime, such as drug trafficking, “which has intensified and expanded over the years in the absence of a strong security policy in the area.”

The clashes between rival gangs and between the gangs and the state “are the result of the increasing transit of Colombian drugs through Ecuador, the involvement of Mexican organizations that hire Ecuadorian organizations to guard the shipments and, above all, the payment of drug money to these organizations, which forces them to sell the drugs on the local market,” the researcher explains.

Combating drug trafficking would curb related crimes such as contract killings and money laundering. But how can that be accomplished? Police have proposed “identifying the heads and the entire structure of the organizations with the help of the various special units,” according to an official who declined to give his name for security reasons.

The move is intended to clarify a question that Ricardo Camacho, a security analyst who knows the prison system’s problems intimately, has been asking for several years: Who is the biggest drug boss in Ecuador? How can you put a stop to the biggest traffickers of drugs in the country if you don’t recognize them?

Among the measures the state still needs to take, Pazmiño said, is creating laws to complement the radars installed to track drug trafficking. “It is good that the state is putting up radars where there were none before, but what is still missing, at the level of the President or the assembly itself, is the creation of an interdiction law that would allow the Air Force to shoot down vessels that enter illegally.

That and anti-drone technology would convince criminals and prevent what is happening in Mexico and Colombia, Pazmiño says, where drug traffickers carry out terrorist attacks on strategic state infrastructure.