Ecuadorian President to Involve Blackwater in Fight Against Gangs
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa (R). X/ @El_Cooperante
March 12, 2025 Hour: 1:50 pm
Faced with the failure of his security policy, Daniel Noboa promotes an alliance with a mercenary company.
On Tuesday, President Daniel Noboa announced a “strategic alliance” with U.S. mercenary Erik Prince, the founder of the private security company Blackwater, to combat organized crime in Ecuador.
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“Organized crime has spread fear and believed it can operate with impunity. Their time is up. International assistance in Ecuador is beginning,” Noboa said on his social media account X, where he posted a photograph of himself speaking with the former U.S. military officer.
“In a meeting with Erik Prince, we established a strategic alliance to strengthen our capabilities in the fight against ‘narco-terrorism’ and the protection of our waters from illegal fishing. There is no truce. No retreat. We move forward,” he added.
The right-wing president, however, did not specify how Prince will assist Ecuador in tackling the criminal gangs involved in drug trafficking, illegal mining, and other illicit activities.
Declared enemies in an “internal armed conflict,” Ecuadorian criminal gangs have ties to the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
Erik Prince is a former Navy SEAL and the founder of Blackwater, a private military company that gained international notoriety for human rights violations committed during the Iraq War.
He also became widely known due to Blackwater’s involvement in controversial incidents, including the 2007 Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad, where Blackwater contractors killed 17 Iraqi civilians. This led to legal battles and increased scrutiny of private military contractors.
Prince has been involved in various mercenary activities, covert operations, and intelligence work with governments and private clients in Africa and the Middle East. He has close ties to far-right political figures and was an informal advisor to the Trump administration.
The U.S. mercenary recently returned to the spotlight following the 2024 Venezuelan presidential elections when he was one of the main backers of the ‘Ya Casi Venezuela’ platform, which sought to raise $10 million to promote destabilization efforts against President Nicolas Maduro’s government.
In August 2024, Prince also met with the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, and visited the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (Cecot), the country’s infamous maximum-security prison where gang members are incarcerated.
The alliance with Prince comes at a time when Ecuador remains the Latin American country with the highest homicide rate. This has highlighted the failure of the “Internal Armed Conflict” strategy declared by Noboa against drug trafficking.
Currently, he hopes to get reelected in a second-round vote scheduled for April 13. On that date, Noboa will face the Citizen Revolution candidate Luisa Gonzalez, who remains the frontrunner to assume the presidency for the 2025–2029 term.
teleSUR/ JF
Source: EFE
