The US takes its anti-narcotics war onto Venezuelan soil with a drone strike against the ELN

Last Friday, an operation was carried out against alleged members of the Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla organization in the Venezuelan state of Apure, near the border with Colombia. In the absence of official confirmation, human rights organizations working in the area, such as Fundaredes, reported at least 20 deaths. On Tuesday, The New York Times revealed that the United States participated in the strike, carried out with drones, in a direct offensive against the irregular Colombian groups that for years have established operations in Venezuela amid inaction by the authorities.According to four U.S. officials quoted by the newspaper, the operation took place last Friday with U.S. intelligence and drone support. A senior Venezuelan military officer also confirmed the attack. Residents in Puerto Páez, an area controlled by the ELN, described a bombing, and photographs of some of the dead circulated in WhatsApp groups. Local reporters from Alianza Rebelde Investiga were able to identify eight of the dead, including two Colombians and four Mexicans, using information gathered from the morgue, the hospital, and San Fernando de Apure cemetery, around 250 miles from Caracas. Fundaredes, the first organization to raise the alarm, counted 23 dead and an undetermined number of wounded in attacks on an ELN base used as a cocaine distribution center, according to testimony the Times collected from survivors and local residents.If confirmed, it would mark the second operation of this type, after an airstrike in June that killed the leader of the Tren de Aragua criminal organization, Héctor Guerrero Flores, aka “Niño Guerrero,” in the gold mines of Bolívar state, as Donald Trump claimed on his social media the day after local residents reported security operations in the area. The joint operation highlights how since last year the Trump administration has deployed a militarized strategy against drug trafficking in Latin America. Attacks on vessels off the coasts of Venezuela and Colombia have escalated to ground operations. The New York Times also revealed that Washington and Caracas were evaluating the possibility of deploying U.S. troops in Venezuela, as part of the tutelage the United States has exercised since January 3, when it captured former president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.Venezuelan authorities have not reported on the incident. The interior and justice minister, Diosdado Cabello, merely said he had deployed the scientific police to the area to investigate some “strange deaths.” He also announced the dispatch of troops to the border with Colombia, in response to the militarization of the Norte de Santander department ordered by Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella. “We do not want internal conflicts in Venezuela, especially those that are not ours,” Cabello said.In recent years the ELN has been withdrawing into Venezuela. According to investigative reporting, it has between 900 and 2,000 fighters in at least 38 border municipalities in the states of Apure, Amazonas, Táchira, and Zulia, where it controls clandestine airstrips for drug trafficking and is also involved in fuel and mineral smuggling and extortion. For years the chavista regime was accused of sheltering ELN guerrillas and dissidents who broke away from the 2016 peace agreement with the FARC on its territory, although the government has always denied it.FARC dissident groups have also penetrated some territories, and in 2021 Maduro’s government launched an operation against the guerrillas that displaced more than 5,000 people to Arauca, Colombia. Venezuelan authorities then fought groups from the defunct FARC who were contesting territory with the ELN, against whom they had so far avoided taking action. During that incident, one of the most serious in recent years, activist Javier Tarazona of Fundaredes was detained over his complaints about the presence of irregulars; he was released this year amid the political opening forced by the United States.In the criminal indictment Maduro now faces in a New York court he is accused of being an ELN ally in the smuggling of cocaine to the United States. The ELN has also been accused of controlling mines in Venezuela’s south and of operating as an armed group allied with the Armed Forces to confront other criminal organizations, according to reports by the International Crisis Group.Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition