War / Americas
Colombia Insurgency
Colombia's new government scraps all peace talks, launches its deadliest offensive since 2018, and locks into Washington's hemispheric security architecture.
Ecuador
Ecuador is at war with its own cartels.
In January 2024, President Daniel Noboa declared an "internal armed conflict" and designated more than 20 gangs as terrorist organizations, deploying the military nationwide after gunmen seized a live television broadcast in Guayaquil. The fight traces to 2021, when prison massacres killed over 300 inmates and exposed how thoroughly groups like Los Choneros, Lobos, and Los Tiguerones had captured the state's institutions. No foreign government backs either side. The gangs are sustained by Colombian and Mexican cartel supply chains, FARC-EMC dissidents to the north and Sinaloa and CJNG networks moving cocaine through Pacific ports.
A country once considered Latin America's safe corner has become one of its deadliest.
Peru's September accession to Shield of the Americas closed the trilateral loop Rubio's Andean tour was designed to seal, giving Washington consent-based coercive access across all three states anchoring Pacific cocaine export routes.
It matters because the war continues to tie down the main belligerents, pull in outside backers, and shape the security balance across Americas.
Weekly net escalation pressure, last 90 days
Two parallel U.S. strike programs now operate in the eastern Pacific with meaningfully different accountability structures: JTFWH is publicly acknowledged and lethal, having killed more than 220 people.
Colombia's entry into the coalition and authorization of joint operations on its soil is the most consequential external development of the conflict's third year.
GANGS
Colombian cartel supply chains (FARC-EMC, Gulf Clan), Mexican cartel connections (CJNG, Sinaloa).
US
counter-narcotics cooperation. No direct state sponsor.
War / Americas
Colombia's new government scraps all peace talks, launches its deadliest offensive since 2018, and locks into Washington's hemispheric security architecture.
War / Americas
U.S. military infrastructure hardens across Latin America as cartel fragmentation deepens and Mexico yields political ground.
Colombian FARC-EMC supply channels sustain cross-border trafficking and provide weapons and logistics to Ecuadorian armed groups along the northern border.
Gulf Clan (Clan del Golfo) cross-border logistics support gang financing and supply chains in Ecuador's northern border zones.
Sinaloa Cartel networks coordinate Ecuadorian gang access to Pacific cocaine export flows and embed in port transit infrastructure as a durable upstream node.
CJNG franchise nodes operate within Ecuadorian port and overland transit networks to manage northbound drug shipments toward U.S. and European markets.
Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere functions as a publicly acknowledged U.S. coercive auxiliary conducting lethal maritime strikes under consent agreements.