US will label supposed Venezuelan drug cartel ‘headed by Maduro’ as terrorist organization

The US has said it will designate a putative Venezuelan drug cartel allegedly led by Nicolás Maduro as a foreign terrorist organization, as the Trump administration sent more mixed messages over its crusade against Venezuela’s authoritarian leader.

The move to target the already proscribed group, the Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns), was announced by Marco Rubio on Sunday. “Headed by the illegitimate Nicolás Maduro, the group has corrupted the institutions of government in Venezuela and is responsible for terrorist violence conducted by and with other designated FTOs as well as for trafficking drugs into the United States and Europe,” the US secretary of state tweeted, generating excitement among hardline adversaries of Maduro who interpreted the announcement as proof Washington was preparing to intensify its push to force the South American dictator from power.

But shortly after Rubio’s pronouncement, those hopes were undermined when Trump hinted he might be prepared to negotiate with Maduro representatives. “We may be having some conversations with Maduro, and we’ll see how that turns out. They would like to talk,” Trump told reporters.

After returning to the White House in January, Trump – who tried, but failed to overthrow Maduro during his first term – took a different approach to relations with Caracas. The US president ordered his special envoy, Ric Grenell, to visit Maduro and some of his top officials as part of negotiations involving deportation flights, US prisoners in Venezuela and natural resources.

In recent months, however, those talks appear to have been put on the back burner, as Venezuela hawks such as Rubio and Stephen Miller reportedly took control of policy on the South American country, although observers believe some channels were kept open.

Since August, Trump’s administration has turned up the heat on Maduro’s regime with a series of deadly strikes targeting alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean and the largest naval deployment in the region since the 1989 US invasion of Panama.

A $50m reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest was announced by the state department – twice the value once offered for the capture of the al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. On Sunday, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, arrived in the Caribbean bringing the total number of US service people in the region to about 15,000.

“Neither Maduro nor his cronies represent Venezuela’s legitimate government,” Rubio said as he announced the cartel would be designated a foreign terrorist organization as of 24 November.

Experts believe the campaign – while officially about halting drug trafficking and attacking groups such as the Cartel of the Suns – is fundamentally designed to pressure Maduro into stepping down with the threat of military force.

Many Venezuela specialists are skeptical that the Cartel of the Suns even exists in the same way that Mexican cartels such as Sinaloa or Jalisco New Generation do. Rather, the name is seen as a dramatized description of the way in which Maduro has allowed criminal groups, including senior military figures, to exploit illegal industries including cocaine smuggling.

“They know it doesn’t exist,” said Phil Gunson, a Caracas-based analyst for Crisis Group, who called the “fictitious” cartel “convenient shorthand” for Maduro’s power over the world of crime.

“Of course there are people in the military doing drug trafficking. Of course the government allows them to do it and grants them impunity in order to keep them onside. But there isn’t a cartel as such. There’s no organization. It’s not like Maduro is sitting at the top of this organizational pyramid directing the traffic and saying: ‘Send five tonnes of cocaine to US this month, that’ll help bring down the Trump government.’”

Gunson saw threatening to designate such a fantasy group within the week as the latest incremental step in pressuring Maduro to resign, or the military to topple him, or face possible airstrikes.

But that campaign had so far failed. “It’s three months since the start of this and they are still escalating … but of course the more you escalate the fewer options you have for escalating and the more it becomes apparent that you are bluffing,” Gunson said.

“It becomes less and less likely that Maduro is going to take them seriously which means that they might have to sail away, with nothing to show for it.”