The US State Department on Monday formally designated the Cartel de los Soles, or Cartel of the Suns, a group that doesn’t actually exist, as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” providing a pretext for a potential attack on Venezuela.
The term “Cartel of the Suns” was first used in the 1990s to describe two Venezuelan military generals with sun insignias on their uniforms who were involved in cocaine trafficking. According to a 60 Minutes report that aired in 1993, one of the generals was working with the CIA at the time.
Today, the term is used to describe a loose network of Venezuelan military and government officials allegedly involved in drug trafficking, but the Cartel of the Suns doesn’t actually exist as a structured organization.
According to InSight Crime, a think tank that receives grants from the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, recent US sanctions mischaracterized the Cartel of the Suns, which InSight described as “a system of corruption wherein military and political officials profit by working with drug traffickers.”
Despite the reality, the US is now calling the Cartel of the Suns a terrorist organization and claims that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is its leader, a push being led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has long sought regime change in Caracas.
President Trump has claimed that the terror designation would allow him to target Maduro or his assets, but any US attack on Venezuela would be illegal without congressional authorization. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in an interview last week that the designation gives the Pentagon “new options” to go after the “cartel,” meaning the Venezuelan government.
The real allegation against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, according to InSight Crime, is that he allows lower-level officials to profit from the drug trade to keep them content. InSight said that the Venezuelan officials aren’t necessarily directing drug shipments but rather use their “positions to protect traffickers from arrest and ensure that shipments pass through a territory.”
For his part, Maduro and his government strongly deny the allegations, pointing to their recent operations targeting cocaine shipments. The Venezuelan government on Monday rejected the US designation and said that it was meant to justify a regime change war.
“Venezuela categorically, firmly and absolutely rejects the new and ridiculous fabrication of the secretary of the US Department of State Marco Rubio, who designates the non-existent Cartel of the Suns as a terrorist organization, thus reviving an infamous and vile lie to justify an illegitimate and illegal intervention against Venezuela under the classic US regime-change formula,” said a statement from Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil.
Gil urged the US “to correct this erratic policy of aggressions and threats, forcefully rejected by the American people themselves, which harms the development of Caribbean nations and does nothing to contribute to a true and genuine fight against illicit drug trafficking.”
While Venezuela neighbors Colombia, where most of the world’s cocaine is produced, very little of the cocaine that arrives in the US transits through the country. Venezuela is also not a producer or a transit point for fentanyl, which has caused the most overdose deaths in the US in recent years.
