US vows to back Ecuador in war with drug gangs
South American country’s millennial leader calls on foreign diplomats for help against armed cartels
ECUADOR’S millennial president is desperately drumming up international support against the powerful drug gangs that this week unleashed a wave of bloodshed in the tiny South American nation.
Yesterday, Daniel Noboa urgently summoned foreign ambassadors, including from the United States, United Kingdom and European Union, to Carondelet, the presidential residence in Quito, to brief them on the unfolding security crisis.
The meeting came after a wave of apparently co-ordinated attacks across the country that has claimed at least 10 lives, including armed gunman storming a TV station live on air in the port city of Guayaquil, a major cocaine hub, and the prison escape of two of Ecuador’s most notorious drug kingpins.
Mr Noboa’s appeal was swiftly met with strong backing from Washington. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan called on Twitter, for the perpetrators to be brought to justice, adding: “We strongly condemn the recent criminal attacks by armed groups in Ecuador against private, public & government institutions.”
Explosions were reported across the country while seven police officers were taken hostage. A video subsequently posted on social media showed three of the officers reading at gunpoint a statement addressed to Mr Noboa.
“You declared war, you will get war,” a visibly terrified officer said. “You declared a state of emergency. We declare police, civilians and soldiers to be the spoils of war.” The statement added that anyone found on the street after 11pm “will be executed.”
Separately, police eventually arrested several of the heavily armed gang members who had assaulted the TV station, TC Televisión in Guayaquil, which had continued to broadcast for half an hour as startled journalists were ordered to lie down on the floor.
The mayhem came after Mr Noboa, 36, a centrist political novice and son of banana tycoon Alvaro Noboa, Ecuador’s richest man, had ordered a clampdown on the gangs that have in recent years turned parts of the country, once one of the safest in South America, into bloodsoaked war zones between rival cartels.
It prompted Mr Noboa to declare a 60-day national state of emergency, with a 11pm-5am curfew, military patrols on the streets and the suspension of basic constitutional rights, including freedom of assembly. Schools were suspended until tomorrow.
The president said he had ordered security forces to “neutralise” the gangs, who he called “terrorists.”
Ecuador produces minimal quantities of coca, the key ingredient in cocaine, but is sandwiched between the two principal producers, Colombia and Peru. It has become a key transit hub for the illegal produce, particularly Guayaquil, a major Pacific port.
The gangs appear to have been particularly angered by the president’s recent decision to buy two high-security prison ships to house gang leaders. Currently, thanks to endemic corruption, many effectively run their own prisons, and have access to drugs, alcohol and prostitutes.
The first drug boss, José Macias, known as “Fito”, escaped from prison on Sunday, just as he was to be transferred to a harsher jail. He is the leader of the Choneros gang, reported to be allied to Mexico’s brutal Sinaloa cartel.
Fernando Villavicencio, the presidential candidate assassinated last August following his outspoken criticism of the alliance between the narcotraffickers and corrupt officials, had publicly accused Fito of threatening his life in the days before his death. The second, Los Lobos gang leader Fabricio Colón Pico, allegedly behind a plot to assassinate Ecuador’s attorney general, vanished on Tuesday.
Kevin Palacios, who heads Ecuador Security consultants, said that the violence was the inevitable reaction to Mr Noboa’s “rupture with the agreement of complicity” between the narcos and corrupt politicians, police officers and other officials.
“We gave them [the criminals] this space and now we are taking it back from them,” he added. “They were always going to react violently.”
‘You declared a state of emergency. We declare police, civilians and soldiers to be the spoils of war’