Donald Trump and Gustavo Petro have launched a joint US-Colombia manhunt for three Colombian drug kingpins. Photo / Getty Images
Colombia’s most powerful cartel walked away from months-long peace talks today, after presidents Gustavo Petro and Donald Trump vowed a new offensive targeting three key cocaine trafficking bosses.
At the White House, the two presidents agreed to joint United States and Colombian military and intelligence actions against the criminal capos who together produce and supply much of the world’s cocaine.
Colombian Defence Minister Pedro Sanchez said the two countries would target Ivan Mordisco, Colombia’s most wanted rebel; Chiquito Malo, commander of the Clan del Golfo cartel; and Pablito, an ELN guerrilla leader operating on the Venezuelan border.
The Petro-Trump pact upends years of spluttering Colombian efforts to negotiate peace accords with big criminal groups.
After months of trading insults from their very active social media accounts, it’s a surprising outcome from the presidents at the summit, although drug trafficking was always going to be the main topic.
Colombia produces about 70% of the world’s cocaine, and the US is by far the world’s largest consumer.
Trump and Petro have sparred over everything from Israeli operations in Gaza to jailed migrants, to Venezuela.
A January 7 phone call appears to have been a turning point between the two leaders.
“These are not new Colombian targets, but they are new targets for a joint US–Colombia operation,” Sanchez told Colombia’s Caracol radio.
Sanchez said Venezuela would also be asked to join the campaign. Many cartel and guerrilla fighters have traditionally found safety crossing the Colombia-Venezuela border.
Colombian governments have long accused Caracas of funding and offering a safe haven to leftist guerrilla and cocaine trafficking groups.
After the ouster of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, there are hopes that security cooperation can improve.
Talks with the Gulf Clan had been ongoing for about five months in Qatar.
“This would be an attack on the good faith and commitments of Doha,” the Gulf Clan said in a statement on social media announcing it would “temporarily” leave the negotiating table and hold internal consultations.
Government officials confirmed to AFP that the account posting the message belongs to the paramilitary‑origin organisation.
Jobanis de Jesus Avila, alias “Chiquito Malo” – which translates to “Little Bad Boy” – took command of the Gulf Clan, Colombia’s largest criminal group, in October 2021.
That month, his predecessor Dairo Antonio Usuga, alias “Otoniel,” was captured in a mega-operation considered one of the biggest blows to Colombian organised crime since Pablo Escobar was killed in 1993.
After Otoniel was extradited to the US and sentenced to 45 years in prison, Chiquito Malo emerged victorious from an internal leadership struggle and set about transforming the Gulf Clan.
The cartel had grown out of the paramilitary movement that emerged in the 1990s to fight Marxist guerrilla groups that had taken up arms against the state two decades earlier in rural areas.
It is engaged in the cocaine trade, illegal gold mining and people smuggling.
As a younger man, Chiquito Malo had belonged to a paramilitary group from which he defected after it agreed to lay down arms in an agreement with the Government in 2004.
He is a “technocrat,” according to analyst Elizabeth Dickinson of the International Crisis Group think-tank.
“He thinks like a businessman and his leadership ... succeeded in consolidating and expanding the business,” she told AFP.
Two supposed rivals have since died: a man known as “Siopas” was found shot dead on a highway in 2023, and “Gonzalito” drowned recently in a boat accident.
One known photo of Chiquito Malo shows him sporting a shaved head and an elegant suit.
When the Marxist-inspired Farc guerrilla army signed a peace agreement in 2016, Nestor Gregorio Vera, alias “Ivan Mordisco”, was a mid-level commander in the Amazon jungle.
He was legendary for his weapons skills, a former comrade once told AFP but had little power.
After opting out of the peace pact, he became one of Colombia’s biggest criminals, leading a band of so-called dissidents engaged in cocaine trafficking and illicit destruction of the jungle for cattle ranching.
He is now the leader of the Central General Staff (EMC) dissident group, and Colombia’s most wanted man.
Bogota has issued a reward for about US$1 million ($1.67m) for his capture.
In April 2023, Mordisco made his only known public appearance: arriving in a luxury bulletproof SUV at a secluded jungle area to announce the start of peace talks that subsequently failed.
At the event, he wore dark glasses and camouflage fatigues, brandished an Israeli-made rifle and shouted revolutionary slogans.
Gustavo Anibal Giraldo, who goes by “Pablito” – which translates to “Little Pablo” – is considered a hardliner in the so-called National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group.
He commanded its Domingo Lain front, one of the most brutal and wealthiest factions operating along Colombia’s border with Venezuela.
Now third in the ELN’s chain of seniority, he is “one of the foremost commanders of the ELN with broad authority over ELN troops in Colombia and Venezuela”, the Insight Crime think-tank says in an article with a photo of Giraldo sporting a thick moustache and military beret.
He was opposed to peace talks but nonetheless travelled to Havana in 2018 to meet government negotiators.
The talks collapsed a year later after a car bomb was detonated at a military school in Bogota, killing 23.
Pablito was accused of ordering the attack.
-Agence France-Presse