Inside the operation to destroy drug labs in the Colombian jungle (BBC)
BBC Senior international correspondent Orla Guerin joins specialist police on a mission over Colombia’s cocaine heartland, tasked with destroying crude cocaine labs hidden deep in the jungle.
The Jungle Commandos, a police unit armed by the United States and originally trained by Britain’s SAS, have been looking for the labs which are little more than shacks with drums of chemicals and fresh coca leaves, ready to be turned into a paste.
Major Cristhian Cedano Díaz, a 16-year veteran of the war on drugs, told the BBC a cocaine lab can be rebuild quickly, «in just one day».
Colombia has been criticised by US President Trump for not doing enough to combat the drugs trade, though Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro claims that his government has seized the largest amount of drugs in history.
Correspondent: Orla Guerin, Camera: Goktay Koraltan Producer: Wietske Burema Edited by: Marina Costa
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Inside the hopeless effort to quash cocaine by force (The Economist)
Commando raids in the Colombian jungle are little better than whack-a-mole
|Villagarzón, Putumayo
One helicopter buzzes around, acting as a decoy, while the other touches down, buffeting surrounding coca bushes. A dozen Comandos Jungla (Jungle Commandos), an elite unit of Colombia’s anti-narcotics police, leap out. Clutching assault rifles, they stalk towards their target: a wooden shack, concealed by banana trees. They are destroying gang-run laboratories in the border regions, where almost 70% of the world’s cocaine is made. Gangsters coerce some farmers into making coca paste, threatening them with murder and recruiting their children as fighters. Other cocaleros simply work the crop because it is profitable.