US President Donald Trump says efforts to halt alleged Venezuelan drug trafficking “by land” would start “very soon”, amid increasing tensions with the South American country.
Trump has sent a large deployment of US military to the region, including an aircraft carrier group, with a stated mission of tackling transnational crime and drug trafficking.
But Venezuela claims it is really a ploy to overthrow leftist President Nicolas Maduro, whom the United States considers an illegitimate leader and a drug lord — a charge he denies.
“We’ve almost stopped — it’s about 85 per cent stopped by sea,” Trump said in a Thanksgiving video call with US troops from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
In a recent statement, an official hinted at a forthcoming strategy to intercept illicit activities on land, suggesting this approach is more straightforward compared to maritime efforts. “And we’ll be starting to stop them by land also. The land is easier, but that’s going to start very soon,” the official noted, indicating a shift in tactics that could soon be underway.
Several of the US military groups that Trump addressed were actively participating in his anti-drug operation, dubbed “Southern Spear”.
As part of the operation, the US military has so far only announced the targeting of alleged drug traffickers in international waters, killing at least 83 people, according to an Agence France-Presse tally of publicly released figures.
The United States has released no details to back up its claims that the people targeted in both the Caribbean and eastern Pacific in the more than 20 strikes were actually traffickers.
The strikes have raised legal concerns over the lack of judicial review.
Maduro and his government have always denied any involvement in crime and have accused the US of seeking regime change out of a desire to control Venezuela’s natural resources, especially its vast oil reserves.
