Arrest of "Otoniel", Colombian drug lord: "This strategy does not solve anything"

President Ivan Duque welcomed the arrest of one of Colombia's biggest drug traffickers.

via REUTERS - COLOMBIAN PRESIDENCY

Text by: RFI Follow

2 min

Antonio Usuga, alias “Otoniel”, Colombia's most wanted drug trafficker was arrested on Saturday 23 October.

But despite President Ivan Duque's satisfaction, that shouldn't stop the country from remaining the world's largest cocaine exporter.

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President Ivan Duque hailed the

arrest of "Otoniel"

as "

 the hardest blow to drug trafficking in this century in our country (...), only comparable to the fall of Pablo. Escobar 

”

,

the famous leader of the Medellin cartel who has controlled up to 80% of the global cocaine trade.

Dairo Antonio Usuga, 50 and leader of Clan del Golfo, Colombia's most powerful drug trafficker gang, was arrested during a military and police operation in northwestern Colombia.

Indicted by the American justice in 2009, he is in particular the subject of an extradition procedure before a court in New York.

"The elimination of these leaders only starts wars within these networks 

"

But for Jacobo Grajeles, professor at the University of Lille and specialist in Latin America as for the other specialists, the strategy in place is not the best and should not change much to the situation on the ground.

" 

It is the same strategy applied by other countries in the region such as Mexico. It is the strategy to go and find the heads of these organizations and try to eliminate them or stop them. We can nevertheless see in a fairly general way that this strategy does not solve the problem since the criminal organizations remain there, the market for the illegal export of cocaine will last as long as the cocaine is quite simply illegal. And so, the elimination of these leaders only starts wars inside these networks, these organizations armed for the control of the networks of traffickers. There are two scenarios: either there is someone who takes the head of this organization fairly quickly and therefore, that will not change much; either there is indeed internal competition there,this will result in violence that will have humanitarian consequences in the areas in which this organization operates.

"

After five decades of the war on drugs, with thousands of deaths among police, civilians and drug traffickers, Colombia continues to be the largest exporter of cocaine and the United States the main consumer.

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  • Colombia

  • Drug

  • Criminality

  • Ivan Duque