Last week, thanks to U.S. drug policy, Colombiareports.com reported that Colombia's Urabeños drug cartel effectively seized and held hostage most of northern Colombia, a massive area. It forced the entire population to abandon all economic activity at the demands of the gang's armed enforcers, who threatened death to any resident who did not comply with their shut-down orders. Transport between cities and towns was halted, millions of Colombians hid behind shuttered windows and barricaded doors in their homes. Inside virtual ghost towns, the lucrative tourist industries of Colombia's Pacific coast and Caribbean were paralyzed. (see colombiareports for map of area affected.)
The Urabeños paramilitary gang and drug cartel shut down the country in retaliation for the killing of their leader, Juan de Dios Usuga, alias "Giovanni" by the Colombian government the previous week. The massive operation to capture the head of the Urabeños gang was a part of its local "War on Drugs", funded, guided and armed by the U.S. government.
U.S. drug policy not only determines and funds massive anti-drug campaigns in developing countries, such as Colombia. It forces compliance with U.S. policies not only to obtain funding, but in order to stay off U.S. blacklists of countries which are not considered sufficiently cooperative with U.S. State Department's objectives. Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador are now on this list, having thrown the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency operatives out of its country for spying and surveillance. Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador are on their list of supposed "non-cooperators".
Venezuela threw the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency officials out of their country when they were found to be involved in spying, drug running and corruption. Thereafter, Venezuela's successful attacks on the organized drug cartels who use their country to transport drugs to the U.S. increased markedly. In June of 2011, the UN officially acknowledged that Venezuela is free from drug cultivation, nor is it considered a drug consuming nation. Venezuela is not considered even a drug transiting nation. It is rated fifth in the world for its levels of illegal drug seizure.
Colombia, however, is a key drug producer. It is the locus for the drug-smuggling routes north to the U.S., the main consuming nation. It has also been a U.S. cooperator par excellance.
Colombia's reward for cooperating was billions in armaments to fight the U.S.'s drug war and hundreds of thousands of bloody skirmishes within its own borders, much like the "War on Drugs" affects upon Mexico.