In January 2024, following a series of dramatic public security incidents, including the escape from prison of Adolfo Macias (“Fito”), the leader of the violent Ecuadoran gang Los Choneros, and the takeover of an Ecuadoran Television station during a live broadcast, the newly elected government of Daniel Noboa declared a “state of internal warfare” in the country. Through Presidential Decree 111, he designated 22 violent criminal entities operating in the country as “terrorist organizations” and authorized the employment of the Armed Forces in a broad range of security operations from supporting the control of the nation’s interior and borders, to deployment in prisons, to operations against illegal mining.
Ecuador’s escalating security challenge has been years in the making. Contributing factors include the takeoff of cocaine production and the fragmentation and empowerment of criminal groups in neighboring Colombia since its flawed 2016 Peace Accords there, the geographic position of Ecuador as an outlet and logistics hub for cocaine produced in both of its neighbors Peru and Colombia, the development of ties between Ecuadoran criminal gangs and outside criminal actors including the Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generacion cartels of Mexico, the National Liberation Army (ELN) and dissidents elements of the FARC in Colombia, the Albanian mafia, and Ndrangheta and Camorra mafias of Italy, among others.
The Noboa government and its security forces have taken important steps to address the nation’s security crisis, yet face multiple significant reinforcing challenges that raise significant doubt about its ability to make headway, including the massive scale of the illicit drug and mining flows through the country, both the power and fragmentation of the criminal groups operating in the country, the depth of corruption of Ecuadoran institutions combatting the threat, and grave concerns regarding the inadequacy of resources, coordination, and concepts of employment.
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