US set to label Maduro-tied Cartel de los Soles as a terror organisation

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion is set to ramp up pres­sure on Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro on Mon­day by des­ig­nat­ing the Car­tel de los Soles as a for­eign ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tion. But the en­ti­ty that the U.S. gov­ern­ment al­leges is led by Maduro is not a car­tel per se.

The des­ig­na­tion is the lat­est mea­sure in the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s es­ca­lat­ing cam­paign to com­bat drug traf­fick­ing in­to the U.S. In pre­view­ing the step about a week ago, U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio ac­cused Car­tel de los Soles, or Car­tel of the Suns, of be­ing “re­spon­si­ble for ter­ror­ist vi­o­lence” in the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

The move planned for Mon­day comes as Trump eval­u­ates whether to take mil­i­tary ac­tion against Venezuela, which Trump has not ruled out de­spite bring­ing up the pos­si­bil­i­ty of talks with Maduro. Land strikes or oth­er ac­tions would be a ma­jor ex­pan­sion of the month­s­long op­er­a­tion that has in­clud­ed a mas­sive mil­i­tary buildup in the Caribbean Sea and strik­ing boats ac­cused of traf­fick­ing drugs, killing more than 80 peo­ple.

Venezue­lans be­gan us­ing the term Car­tel de los Soles in the 1990s to re­fer to high-rank­ing mil­i­tary of­fi­cers who had grown rich from drug-run­ning. As cor­rup­tion lat­er ex­pand­ed na­tion­wide, first un­der the late Pres­i­dent Hugo Chávez and then un­der Maduro, its use loose­ly ex­pand­ed to po­lice and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials as well as ac­tiv­i­ties like il­le­gal min­ing and fu­el traf­fick­ing. The “suns” in the name re­fer to the epaulettes af­fixed to the uni­forms of high-rank­ing mil­i­tary of­fi­cers.

The um­brel­la term was el­e­vat­ed to a Maduro-led drug-traf­fick­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion in 2020, when the U.S. Jus­tice De­part­ment in Trump’s first term an­nounced the in­dict­ment of Venezuela’s leader and his in­ner cir­cle on nar­coter­ror­ism and oth­er charges.

“It is not a group,” said Adam Isaac­son, di­rec­tor for de­fence over­sight at the Wash­ing­ton Of­fice on Latin Amer­i­ca or­gan­i­sa­tion. “It’s not like a group that peo­ple would ever iden­ti­fy them­selves as mem­bers. They don’t have reg­u­lar meet­ings. They don’t have a hi­er­ar­chy.”

Trump’s ex­pan­sion of ter­ror la­bel to car­tels

Up un­til this year, the la­bel of for­eign ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tion had been re­served for groups like the Is­lam­ic State or al-Qai­da that use vi­o­lence for po­lit­i­cal ends. The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion ap­plied it in Feb­ru­ary to eight Latin Amer­i­can crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions in­volved in drug traf­fick­ing, mi­grant smug­gling and oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties.

The ad­min­is­tra­tion blames such des­ig­nat­ed groups for op­er­at­ing the boats it is strik­ing but rarely iden­ti­fies the or­gan­i­sa­tions and has not pro­vid­ed any ev­i­dence. It says the at­tacks, which be­gan off the coast of Venezuela and lat­er ex­pand­ed to the east­ern Pa­cif­ic Ocean, are meant to stop nar­cotics from flow­ing to Amer­i­can cities.

But many — in­clud­ing Maduro him­self — see the mil­i­tary moves as an ef­fort to end the rul­ing par­ty’s 26-year hold on pow­er.

Since the ar­rival of U.S. mil­i­tary ves­sels and troops to the Caribbean months ago, Venezuela’s U.S.-backed po­lit­i­cal op­po­si­tion al­so has reignit­ed its peren­ni­al promise of re­mov­ing Maduro from of­fice, fu­el­ing spec­u­la­tion over the pur­pose of what the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has called a coun­ter­drug op­er­a­tion.

Trump, like his pre­de­ces­sor, does not recog­nise Maduro as Venezuela’s pres­i­dent.

Maduro is on his third term in of­fice af­ter rul­ing-par­ty loy­al­ists de­clared him the win­ner of last year’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion de­spite cred­i­ble ev­i­dence that the op­po­si­tion’s can­di­date de­feat­ed him by a more than 2-to-1 mar­gin. He and se­nior of­fi­cials have been re­peat­ed­ly ac­cused of hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions of re­al and per­ceived gov­ern­ment op­po­nents, in­clud­ing in the af­ter­math of the Ju­ly 2024 elec­tion.

Hegseth says des­ig­na­tion of­fers ‘new op­tions’

U.S. De­fence Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth said last week that the up­com­ing des­ig­na­tion of Car­tel de los Soles will pro­vide a “whole bunch of new op­tions to the Unit­ed States” for deal­ing with Maduro. But Hegseth, speak­ing in an in­ter­view with con­ser­v­a­tive news out­let OAN, did not pro­vide de­tails on what those op­tions are and de­clined to say whether the U.S. mil­i­tary planned to strike land tar­gets in­side Venezuela.

“So noth­ing is off the ta­ble, but noth­ing’s au­to­mat­i­cal­ly on the ta­ble,” he said.

Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials have sig­nalled that they find it dif­fi­cult to see a sit­u­a­tion in which Maduro re­main­ing in pow­er could be an ac­cept­able end-game. But as Trump con­sid­ers an ar­ray of mil­i­tary and non-mil­i­tary op­tions, in­clud­ing covert ac­tion by the CIA, for next steps, there is strong be­lief in­side the ad­min­is­tra­tion that Maduro’s rule “is not sus­tain­able,” ac­cord­ing to a se­nior ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cial who was not au­tho­rised to com­ment pub­licly on the sen­si­tive mat­ter.

The of­fi­cial added that Trump has been keen­ly lis­ten­ing to his in­tel­li­gence team, which has re­port­ed to him that chat­ter picked up in­side Venezuela in­di­cates grow­ing anx­i­ety from Maduro and oth­er high-lev­el Venezue­lan of­fi­cials as the U.S. strikes con­tin­ue. Trump, the of­fi­cial said, is “very con­tent and sat­is­fied” for the mo­ment with the strikes’ im­pact.

All the while, pleas from Maduro and oth­ers close to the Venezue­lan leader to speak di­rect­ly to the ad­min­is­tra­tion, re­layed through var­i­ous in­ter­me­di­aries and chan­nels, seem to be more fran­tic, the of­fi­cial said. But Trump has not sanc­tioned any in­ter­me­di­aries to speak to Maduro on be­half of the U.S. ad­min­is­tra­tion.

In­dict­ment al­leges con­spir­a­cy to ‘flood’ US with drugs

The 2020 in­dict­ment ac­cused Maduro, In­te­ri­or Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo and De­fence Min­is­ter Vladimir Padri­no López, among oth­ers, of con­spir­ing with Colom­bian rebels and mem­bers of the Venezue­lan mil­i­tary for sev­er­al years “to flood the Unit­ed States with co­caine” and use the drug trade as a “weapon against Amer­i­ca.” Colom­bia is the world’s top co­caine pro­duc­er.

Be­fore lay­ing down weapons as part of a 2016 peace deal, mem­bers of the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Armed Forces of Colom­bia, or FARC, reg­u­lar­ly used the porous bor­der re­gion with Venezuela as a safe haven and hub for U.S.-bound co­caine ship­ments — of­ten with the sup­port or at least con­sent of Venezue­lan se­cu­ri­ty forces. Dis­si­dents con­tin­ued the work. Colom­bia’s Na­tion­al Lib­er­a­tion Army guer­ril­la is al­so in­volved in the il­le­gal trade.

Maduro has de­nied the charges. The U.S. Jus­tice De­part­ment this year dou­bled to $50 mil­lion the re­ward for in­for­ma­tion that leads to Maduro’s ar­rest.

Maduro has in­sist­ed that the U.S. is build­ing a false drug-traf­fick­ing nar­ra­tive to try to force him from of­fice. He and oth­er gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials have re­peat­ed­ly cit­ed a Unit­ed Na­tions re­port that they say shows traf­fick­ers at­tempt to move on­ly 5% of the co­caine pro­duced in Colom­bia through Venezuela.

The U.S. Trea­sury De­part­ment im­posed sanc­tions on the Car­tel de los Soles in Ju­ly, say­ing Maduro and his top al­lies had bent the pow­er of the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment, mil­i­tary and in­tel­li­gence ser­vices to as­sist the car­tel in traf­fick­ing nar­cotics to the U.S.

U.S. au­thor­i­ties al­so al­leged Maduro’s car­tel gave ma­te­r­i­al sup­port to the Venezue­lan gang Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa car­tel, both of which were among the or­gan­i­sa­tions that the U.S. des­ig­nat­ed as for­eign ter­ror or­gan­i­sa­tions in Feb­ru­ary.

CARA­CAS, Venezuela (AP) —