“The lessons of the long war on terrorism” appear to have been forgotten, wrote the NYT. Until now, the rule was that you first had to understand a network in order to be able to break it up. In this case, the military is killing lower-ranking people whose role is, at best, to move cocaine from one place to another. “In the worst case scenario, some of those killed could have been fishermen, migrants or other people who had nothing to do with the drug trade.”
“Traditionally, our counternarcotics efforts have always been directed at the head of the snake,” said Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “Now we’re going after the tail of the snake. We’re hunting down some poor former fishermen who took $300 to transport a load of cocaine to Trinidad.”
Information destroyed
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Blowing up the boats would also destroy any information and evidence. “If you wanted to stop the drug trade, of course you wouldn’t do it,” said Annie Pforzheimer, a former senior U.S. diplomat who specialized in counternarcotics during her career. “Because you would capture the people in the boats, get them to betray the next level of the organization, take those people to the next level and get to the top.”
Proponents of the attacks argue that aerial surveillance using drones and satellites has improved in recent years and that the risk of collateral damage from attacks on boats at sea is lower compared to targets on land. Representatives of the Trump administration also point out that their Democratic predecessors also approved anti-terror attacks without knowing exactly who could be killed.
Memories of “Signature Strikes”
The CIA also carried out “signature strikes” under President Barack Obama: The term stands for drone attacks in which the identities of the target persons are not known, but whose behavior and lifestyle indicate that they could be involved in terrorist activities.
The “Signature Strikes” were controversial from the start. The criticism was that they would do little to prevent terrorist attacks, but would pose the risk of errors that could lead to the deaths of civilians and turn the local population against the USA.
The US military rejects parallels between the current boat attacks and the “signature strikes,” wrote the NYT. In briefings with members of Congress, military officials said they were certain there were drugs on the boats – and that they were the actual target of the attacks. The death of the people on the boats would be collateral damage, so to speak.
UN sees “extrajudicial killings”
The approach has met with international criticism, also because the legal basis for the attacks is unclear and the USA has provided no evidence. UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk recently said there were “strong indications” that the attacks were “extrajudicial killings”.
The USA accuses Venezuela of actively promoting drug smuggling into the United States and thereby endangering the safety of its citizens. “We warn you: Stop sending poison to our country,” Trump told Venezuela’s left-wing nationalist President Nicolas Maduro.
According to experts, Venezuela is not considered a drug production country, but rather a transit country, especially for the European market. The drugs usually reach the USA via other routes: The synthetic opioid fentanyl, which has led to serious problems, is manufactured primarily in Mexico using raw materials from China and smuggled from there into the United States.
Maduro: USA wants to force regime change
At the beginning of his second term, Trump declared Latin American drug cartels to be “foreign terrorist organizations.” The US government therefore classifies the drug cartels and suspected smugglers associated with them as “unlawful combatants”. Since then, the military’s involvement has steadily deepened, and the line between fighting organized crime and waging war has become increasingly blurred.
Venezuela and other countries see the strong military presence of the USA, which is expressed not least through the dispatch of the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the “USS Gerald R. Ford”, to the Caribbean, as a threatening gesture. Maduro accuses Washington of wanting to force regime change in the oil-rich country. Trump recently denied planning military attacks on Venezuela. At the same time, he said Maduro’s days are numbered.