OVER 150 years of right-wing administrations have left, for the beautiful South American country of Colombia, a frail dependency on the US for 26 per cent of its trade (of which 60 per cent are unrefined fossil fuels), and unacceptable rates of poverty of more than a third of the population, alongside massive resources, largely from the US, to “fight the war on drugs,” which has been a complete failure.

The last far-right administration under inept ex-president Ivan Duque (2018-22) allowed an annual maximum coca area growth rate of 43 per cent a year in 2020, leaving a total of 230,000 hectares by 2022. Duque’s election campaign is also presumed to have received funding from narcotraffic, as investigated by journalist Gonzalo Guillen. And yet, the US never “decertified” — ie disqualified — Duque’s government, nor any of the previous Colombian far-right administrations, despite those irregularities and constant failures in the “war on drugs.”

Things are different now, since the present Colombian left-administration under President Gustavo Petro has been absolutely efficient and successful in steering an ailing economy away from dependency on the export of raw materials and flows of cash from the drug trade. The figures show that the Colombian economy is growing at a steady rate of 2.7 per cent, mainly through expansion of services, tourism, exports and the agricultural sector, while fossil fuel GDP has dropped to 7.6 per cent. Income poverty was decreased from 36.6 per cent to 28.3 per cent and extreme poverty from 13.8 to 11.7 per cent, in the first two years of government 2022-24 [DANE]. Notably, the coca-growing area growth rate has decreased to near 0 per cent annually, down from Duque’s 43 per cent. The total area is now 132,000 Ha compared to Duque’s 250,000. These are excellent trends for the present government.

Petro’s policies for the root-and-branch transformation of the economy, away from coca dependency, are also utterly realistic, humanitarian and enduring. The policies avoid the usual right-wing solutions of forced eradication via bombing, loss of life and poisoning the countryside with glyphosate. The left government understands that it is lack of opportunities in rural areas which has been the main driver for coca-growing by campesinos in Colombia, as in other Latin American countries, which also result in the growth of armed groups of both the left and right of the political spectrum.

The new policies thus include admirable, sustainable, long-term programmes of eradication by voluntary substitution, the enlargement of state coverage via education, resources, training and infrastructure, combined with the support of police, army and governmental agencies, such as in the Southern Cauca Micai region, which has been very successful, and the Northwestern Catatumbo area, a more challenging frontier terrain.

As a result, over the last three years of Petro’s government, 102,000 Ha of coca-growing have been eradicated, either through substitution (22,000 Ha) or abandonment (80,000 Ha).

The present left government has simultaneously carried out the greatest amount of cocaine confiscation in the history of Colombia over the last 25 years.

And yet, in early October 2025, Trump’s government “decertified” Colombia — accusing it of a lack of control of the drug trade, because of a purported “increase of 53 per cent in tonnes produced in 2023 and an increase in cultivated areas… of 10 per cent” quoting figures obtained from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report, UNODC (2025). These figures are now known to be wrong, due to serious errors in the data submitted to the United Nations by Colombian state officials.

Colombia has most definitely not got coca in all geographical areas. Coca-growing areas are confined to thin strips near the frontier corners with Ecuador (south-west Colombia around Tumaco and Putumayo) and Venezuela (north-east Colombia above Cucuta) plus a localised concentration in some of the northern area above Medellin.

In addition, coca-growing areas can be classified with three different levels of decreasing productivity:
1. Permanent (intense productivity)
2. Intermittent / new (low productivity) 
3. Abandoned (zero productivity).

The error in the recent UNODC (2025) report was due to the fact that an average productivity was applied to all areas. Abandoned areas should clearly not have been included because of their 0 per cent productivity.

Overall productivity of coca in Colombia is, therefore, a great deal lower than stated in the original UNODC report for 2023.
The United Nations has now admitted the error and allowed for correction, according to President Petro.

Trump’s “decertification” of Colombia is, therefore, based on flawed evidence and should be reversed.

Will this action be taken? This is still to be seen. At the moment it appears that the far-right US administration is being driven by other agendas, such as a bid to influence the 2026 Colombian elections, where the left has steadily growing support, added to a declared regime change in Venezuela, as shown by the aggressive build-up of naval and army personnel in the Caribbean.

Now let’s counter some of the post-truths fuelling US belligerence:

• Coca production areas in Colombia have not increased under Petro. They have decreased from Duque’s 230,000 (2021) to 132,000 acres (2025). Growth in area is now down to near 0 per cent.
• Cocaine is not exported through Venezuela across the Caribbean to the US, the main drug routes to the US originate in the Pacific coasts of Colombia and Ecuador — mainly the latter.
• There is no evidence the Venezuelan “Cartel of the Suns” exists nor that it is run by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
• Bombing small boats in the Caribbean by the US army will not decrease cocaine transported to the US.
• To date (October 30 2025), the US had not provided any evidence that the 14 boat strikes and 61 people killed by the US army, were drug traffickers. These actions are potential prosecutable extrajudicial executions.
• Bombing a small boat does not get to the root of the problem of drug trafficking, which is driven by a large number of powerful unseen members of an international wealthy mafia, operating the logistics and financial networks. These people include some Latin Americans, but also many Albanians, Italians, Arabs, and Spaniards and others — even US citizens. There is evidence that the dominant international cartel is The Narcotrafficking Junta — based in Dubai and Spain.

Who is the US government taking advice from before implementing its irrational and aggressive build-up of military personnel in the Caribbean? The following facts point to the overarching role of the political far right in all this:

a) Extremist and far-right Colombian opposition politicians have visited the Trump administration over the last few months. All of them support far-right ex-president Alvaro Uribe, who is listed in the US National Security Archives, compiled by the US government itself, in 1991, as presumed “Narco #82”

Uribe, in addition, has a long list of accusations of presumed involvement in many instances of human rights abuses in Colombia. Despite mounting presumed evidence, Uribe denies the accusations. In 2025, he was convicted for witness tampering but has subsequently been temporarily absolved.

b) Many of those Colombian far-right figures, together with Uribe, are known to be lobbying and closely liaising with far-right politicians in the US, particularly in Florida, such as Republican Senators Bernie Moreno and Senator Marco Rubio, who are also close Trump associates. Moreno, in particular, a Colombian-US national, seems to have several axes to grind with President Gustavo Petro, due to previous disclosures by Petro, in which he pointed out presumed questionable activities by members of Moreno’s family in Colombia, concerning banking and land flipping. (See El Caso del Banco del Pacifico (2005) and 2025 speeches by Petro). It is also known that far-right narco-traffickers and their allies use Florida as their base.

c) Also relevant is that, in the 2000s, Gustavo Petro, as senator, excelled in investigating and revealing the major links between the drug economy, the Colombian far-right death squads (paramilitaries) with a myriad of members of the far-right Colombian political establishment.

Petro’s speeches to Congress showed that 35 per cent of those members of Congress at that time were actually the prime movers in narco-trafficking, land theft, corruption and deaths in Colombia. Congress is still plagued by such alliances. Petro and his family have continuous death threats — and have had to live in exile.

d) Petro’s declarations are further substantiated by confessions made at the Jurisdiction for Peace — JEP (the transitional justice body created by the 2016 Peace Process) by scores of paramilitaries and military about their narcotrafficking and crimes against humanity — such as extensive displacement and mass executions — carried out in complicity with members of the Colombian Congress and ruling class.

e) So, it is more than likely that the Colombian far-right-wing lobbyists are not troubled by Colombia’s welfare or increases in the drug trade. What they seem to be concerned about are further discoveries about the presumed real nature of their activities in Colombia, whatever those may be.

What can be concluded from these unsavoury developments is that the above colourful right-wing characters would not seem to be the ones the US government ought to be listening to, with regard to Colombia or neighbouring Venezuela and the drug trade.

As discussed above, it is a complete travesty for Trump to accuse President Petro of being a “narco” when Petro’s life history evidently shows him to be one the most formidable opponents to drug trafficking, corruption and human rights abuses ever in Colombia.

Adding Petro and his family to any financially punitive “Clinton” list is wholly unjustified, and will be proven so in any future legal process.

The Trump administration is also ill-advised in taking impetuous actions in the Caribbean. The present armed build-up is completely irrational in terms of its stated aims. In truth, this new US “war on drugs” has a dreadful resemblance to previous wars on “terrorism.”

Hopefully this concern will be proved wrong. Democratic oversight, via imminent US congressional hearings, regarding Trump’s apparently unaccountable actions is therefore crucial.

The US is the country with the greatest consumption of cocaine in the world. However, it is on the decrease, while fentanyl consumption is on the increase in the US. Illegal fentanyl does not originate in either Colombia or Venezuela. Illegal drug consumption fuels a nasty network of international mafias, also responsible for the destruction of livelihoods in Latin America, through cultivation of a monocrop.

Experts thus emphasise that addiction is a health issue which must have demand-side policies. Military action and bombing will never provide any sustainable solutions to the reality of illegal drug markets. It will actually strengthen the power of illegal mafias.

International co-operation, together with legal regulation of such drugs, are the viable paths forward to end this senseless and deadly spiral.