Inside Ecuador’s struggle to bring down the cartels

Published

2 months ago

February 29, 2024

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Ecuador is by no means the first Latin American country to try to take on the cartels and gangs that have embedded themselves into the societies of many countries across the region.

But Ecuador, arguably more than others, faces a real challenge because of the involvement on its soil of two of Mexico’s most notorious and powerful drugs cartels – Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation.

The authorities in Ecuador tell us that the Sinaloa cartel has broadly aligned itself with the Los Choneros gang, while Jalisco New Generation has aligned itself with Los Tiguerones.

The 36-year-old president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, ordered a crackdown on these two gangs after Adolfo ‘Fito’ Macias, the leader of Los Choneros, escaped from jail before his planned move to a high security prison.

The crackdown led to a gang fight back, with murders, car bombings and insurrection launched across the country in January.

The fight back was particularly focused on the port cities and towns of the Pacific Coast, like Guayaquil and Esmeraldas, which are major areas of influence for the gangs.

President Noboa recategorised gang crime and membership as terrorism, immediately allowing the security forces to exercise much more rigorous powers to detect, confront, and incarcerate gang members.

The country’s security forces have been conducting raid after raid, rounding up people they believe are linked to the gangs.

Prisons filling up

The country’s prisons have been filling up with new inmates, and some prisons, notorious for their lack of discipline and control have been taken over by the military, completely changing the dynamic inside and the freedom of the gang leaders to continue their business activities while locked up.

The president of El Salvador, another country infested with narco crime gangs, has overseen quite an overwhelming clampdown against criminal activity, and as it stands, roughly two percent of the country’s entire population is behind bars.

The net effect has seen murder rates and general crime rates plummet, according to the government’s latest figures.

‘The world’s coolest dictator’ is how President Nayib Bukele described himself. And his popularity in El Salvador has rocketed.

Ecuador’s president appears to be following a very similar plan but is keen to distance himself from the dictatorship sobriquet.

The Phoenix Plan

The ‘Phoenix Plan’ to beat the gangs in Ecuador has a budget of $800 million (US) for law enforcement -$ 200 million of that comes from the government of the United States.

The United States has a vested interest in seeing gang activities in Latin America curtailed.

First to restrict the flow of illegal drugs into the country and secondly, and arguably even more importantly, to stop the flow of migrants north from South and Central America and illegally into the United States.

The huge number of migrants trying to cross the border from Mexico often tell us they are attempting the journey to escape the gangs who make life in a swathe of countries absolutely miserable.

For two weeks Sky News joined raid after raid, night and day, on land and sea, against the gangs in Ecuador. We also entered a prison, which was full, and under military guard.

So far so good.

Mexican cartels moving in

But, and it is a big but, the Mexican cartels are in town and that is a major problem. I’ve spent a lot of time with gangs and cartels in Mexico and across south and central America, some, like in Brazil, are wealthy, well-organised, ruthless, and crucially, are well-armed.

When Brazil’s police and army go after the gangs, they conduct raids using helicopter gunships and armoured vehicles. And while the authorities have claimed major successes in recent years, my most recent visit showed me that gangs are still acting with impunity – it’s an ongoing thing.

In El Salvador, the gangs were substantial but not well organised, and in neighbouring Honduras it was very much the same picture.

However, in Mexico it’s a whole different ball game. The cartels are fundamentally part of the fabric of society, and the resources are, to all intents and purposes, limitless.

Their brutality is legendary, and their ability to buy off police, judges, whole companies, and even the government, cannot be underestimated.

Successive Mexican governments have long since given up on the police in their efforts to quell cartel activity and depend entirely on the country’s marines to carry out law enforcement.

The point is, Mexico’s government is not winning, and if I’m honest, I don’t think they ever will as things currently stand with drug use across the world.

Now to Ecuador’s problem again. The Sinaloa and New Generation cartels realised that Ecuador – which is not a cocaine producing country – had excellent ports with speedy routes north by sea to Central and North America.

The country has a huge banana production business which exports via sea, and it’s a major oil refining country, which exports by sea. These ships are perfect for hiding and exporting drugs, particularly cocaine, as well.

Neither of the cartels will appreciate President Noboa’s disruption to their business, and my suspicion is that they won’t just walk away.

They’re used to getting their own way, and so used to problems going away – or simply killing an opponent, that they may do the same in Ecuador.

To succeed the president and his government need to keep gang members under control and in prison, they need to stop the cartels sending their operatives into the country to reboot the business, they must ensure that state institutions aren’t corrupt and bought off, and finally, the president needs to stay alive.

World

Bidzina Ivanishvili: Who is the Putin-linked billionaire behind Georgia unrest?

Published

45 mins ago

May 13, 2024

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Bidzina Ivanishvili: Who is the Putin-linked billionaire behind Georgia unrest?

He is the puppet master of Georgian politics – a man of fabulous wealth and extraordinary power.

And Georgian oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili is the focus of intense opposition as unrest sweeping his country reaches boiling point.

From humble origins, he left Georgia to accumulate immense wealth in Russia through close ties with Putin’s chosen few, the kleptocratic elites who have helped themselves to the country’s riches in return for complete loyalty to the Kremlin.

He is said to be worth at least $5bn (£3.98bn), a third of his country’s GDP.

After returning to Georgia, he acquired enormous influence in his homeland.

He says he has withdrawn from frontline politics but, as chairman of the Georgian Dream party, Ivanishvili is the power behind the throne, an eminence grise, say his critics, operating from the shadows as the puppet master of the country’s power struggles.

He chooses the country’s prime ministers. Three of the last four have been former managers of his companies.

Georgia’s interior minister is a former bodyguard of Ivanishvili, its former health minister was his wife’s dentist, an education minister one of his children’s maths tutors. The list goes on.

To many, Ivanishvili’s lifestyle might sound more James Bond villain than tycoon.

In the hills overlooking the capital Tbilisi, he has a futuristic mansion said to have a shark-infested pool.

He collects other exotic animals, including kangaroos and lemurs, and has a penchant for exotic trees – uprooting rare 135-year-old specimens with huge controversy and hauling them off to his tree park.

But it’s his alleged ties with Russia that are the most controversial and murky.

Many Georgians say they are sceptical of his claims to have sold his businesses and ended his investments in Russia years ago.

Ivanishvili and his Georgian Dream party are trying to push through parliament a new law that has caused the biggest unrest in Georgia in years.

The ‘foreign agent’ bill, as it’s known, would give the government more control over the media and human rights organisations. It is modelled on laws Putin has used to tighten his own authoritarian grip on Russia.

Tens of thousands of Georgians have demonstrated against the bill.

With its final reading due this week, the unrest is heading for a crunch point.

Protesters are determined to thwart the man they see as Putin’s puppet. They believe if he prevails he will end their dream of closer ties with Europe and eventual membership of the European Union.

At stake is both Georgia’s national identity and Vladimir Putin’s ability to maintain control and influence in this former Soviet republic.

World

Amsterdam: Police move in after pro-Palestinian protesters occupy university buildings

Published

7 hours ago

May 13, 2024

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Amsterdam: Police move in after pro-Palestinian protesters occupy university buildings

Police in Amsterdam have moved in to end a pro-Palestinian protest after demonstrators occupied university buildings.

Footage from the Dutch capital showed a line of police in riot gear holding back demonstrators, some of whom could be seen making peace signs with their hands while others held signs.

Students could be heard chanting: “We are peaceful, what are you?” and “shame on you” in local media footage.

Earlier, a protest group said it had occupied university buildings in Amsterdam as well as in the cities of Groningen and Eindhoven.

In a post on social media site X, Amsterdam police said the university had filed a report against the protesters for acts of vandalism.

A spokesperson for the University of Amsterdam said protesters had occupied what is known as the ABC building, causing some “destruction”.

It estimated that around a thousand students and employees had taken part in a “national walkout” during which they walked out of a lecture hall at 11 o’clock and gathered on the Roeterseiland campus.

The university said it had advised people not affiliated with the protest to leave the building.

Students in the US and Europe have been holding mostly peaceful demonstrations calling for an immediate permanent ceasefire in Gaza and for schools to cut financial ties with companies they say are profiting from the oppression of Palestinians.

Dutch students have been protesting since last Monday and had previously clashed with police as they used railings and furniture to build barricades in the city.

While in the UK, students at Cambridge and Oxford have set up encampments outside King’s College the Pitt Rivers Museum respectively.

Kendall Gardner, a Jewish student at Oxford University, told Sky News last week that she was “really inspired by the events that have been happening across the world”.

“The US started a global chain of student activism for Palestine,” she said.

“We have six demands for this protest – the top line is to demand closure of all university-wide financial assets that benefit Israel.

World

Georgia: ‘We will not give up’ – protesters and police in tense standoff on streets of Tbilisi

Published

16 hours ago

May 13, 2024

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Georgia: 'We will not give up' - protesters and police in tense standoff on streets of Tbilisi

Tens of thousands of Georgians have taken to the streets in Tbilisi – protesting against a proposed law threatening press and civic freedoms.

The “foreign agents” bill has sparked a political crisis amid concerns it is modelled on laws used by Vladimir Putin to crack down on the media in Russia – and if passed, would make it harder for Georgia to join the EU.

Sky’s international affairs editor Dominic Waghorn is in Tbilisi:

The Georgian security forces moved in shortly after dawn this morning. Phalanxes of masked men sweeping through streets and parks outside parliament.

They kettled protesters with force. We were caught in the crush as they squeezed the crowd.

A woman screamed as she was pinned to a post by the press of people.

Crowds had ringed the parliament building all night – intent on stopping MPs from voting on laws that demonstrators believe put Georgia on the path to dictatorship, and back in the embrace of Moscow.

“They want to drag us back to autocracy, to the country they occupied us for too many years,” one protester told Sky News.

The police succeeded in clearing one entrance to parliament.

Flank after flank of interior ministry security forces backed by helmeted riot police and water cannon trucks are now in a tense standoff with a multi-coloured sea of protesters on the corner of the parliament building.

The blue and green colours of Ukraine and the European Union jostle with the reds and white of Georgia’s national colours.

The protesters have been peaceful, but the police have not. They have unleashed snatch squads barrelling into the crowd.

Sky News witnessed masked security forces seizing one man and raining blows on his unprotected head.

The protesters have failed in their effort to cut off parliament from MPs, but their numbers are swelling.

“We will not give up,” one woman told us.

“We cannot allow them to take our freedom.”

The government was forced to shelve the law last year in the face of bitter opposition but the Georgian Dream ruling party, regarded by many as pro-Russian, is determined to see it passed.