War on drugs in Ecuador

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Ecuadorian Drug War
Part of the war on drugs
Ecuadorian military in January 2024
Date 27 January 2018 – present (6 years, 9 months and 2 weeks) Location Ecuador Status Ongoing
Belligerents
Government of Ecuador National Police of Ecuador Armed Forces of Ecuador Ecuadorian Army Ecuadorian Navy Ecuadorian Air Force Armed civilians Counter-terrorist PMCs Supported by:  United States CIA  Canada  Colombia  Mexico (until 2024)  Peru	Organized crime groups Sinaloa Cartel Los Choneros CJNG Los Lobos Chone Killers Los Tiguerones Los Lagartos Latin Kings Albanian mafia NETA Association PCE-SR FARC–EP FARC dissidents ELN La Empresa Other groups
Commanders and leaders
Daniel Noboa Jaime Vela Erazo	José Adolfo Macías Fabricio Colón Pico Jorge Luis Zambrano  Antonio Camacho Terry Israel Camacho
Units involved
159,250 military 46,727 police	Unknown
Casualties and losses
14,218 fatalities

The Ecuadorian Drug War (Spanish: Guerra contra el narcotráfico en Ecuador, transl. 'War against drug trafficking in Ecuador') is an internal conflict in Ecuador waged by the Ecuadorian security forces against criminal groups since the beginning of 2018. The conflict is divided into two parts, the first is the Ecuadorian government against satellite groups of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and Sinaloa Cartel, and the second is the confrontation between said satellite groups for dominance and hegemony.^[1]

The geographic location of the Republic of Ecuador as a strategic transit route for drugs from Colombia and Peru into Mexico and later the United States and Europe was always a concern, but it was with the evolution of the Colombian internal armed conflict and the remainders of the guerrilla forces of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia that Ecuador became more involved. The first major incident was an attack against law enforcement in San Lorenzo, which unleashed a wave of violence on the northern coast of the country. The main suspect in the attack was a FARC-EP dissident led by Ecuadorian drug traffickers.^[1]

At the end of 2019, the presence of European mafias in Ecuador was first documented, the main one being the Albanian mafia. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the crisis became latent with the entry of illegal weapons from Peru, one of the main sources of arms to armed gangs in Ecuador. Earlier in 2019, a prison crisis broke out in Guayaquil [es] due to the city's prisons becoming important links of communication and confrontations between the armed groups. Later that same year the crisis spread to other prisons nationwide and violence reached the streets again in 2022.^[2]

In January 2024, the conflict reached a critical point when armed conflict broke out in Ecuador between the armed forces and several organized crime groups.^[3]