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Colombia’s president has ordered the suspension of intelligence sharing with the US in protest against Washington’s campaign of strikes against alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.
“All levels of the intelligence services of the public force are ordered to suspend the sending of communications and other dealings with US security agencies,” President Gustavo Petro wrote on X on Tuesday evening.
Petro, a leftist former guerrilla, added that the measure would remain in place until the US ceased attacks on boats in the Caribbean.
The US has deployed forces, including eight warships and 10,000 troops, to the region since late August as part of an operation that has killed at least 76 alleged drug traffickers in at least 19 strikes throughout the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.
It recently dispatched four more warships, including the USS Gerald R Ford, the country’s newest and most advanced aircraft carrier. Its strike group entered waters near Latin America on Tuesday, according to the US Navy.
Venezuela’s authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro has claimed that the US deployment is a pretext for his ousting. On Tuesday his defence minister Vladimir Padrino López announced on state television that “almost 200,000 troops have been deployed throughout the country” for military exercises amid “threats” from the US.
Petro, who has previously described US strikes as “murder”, on Tuesday said: “The fight against drugs must be subordinate to the human rights of the Caribbean people.” He also shared a report by CNN that the UK had suspended sharing some intelligence with the US about suspected drug-trafficking vessels because of the strikes.
Petro has been at loggerheads with President Donald Trump over US actions in the region, upsetting decades of warm relations between two nations that have traditionally been security partners.
Washington has provided Bogotá with about $14bn in funding since 2000, including its Plan Colombia military aid package, which bolstered the country’s armed forces in the fight against leftist guerrillas and drug traffickers.
Elizabeth Dickinson, senior Colombia analyst at the International Crisis Group, said Colombia provided about 80 per cent of the actionable intelligence used by the US to seize drugs in the Caribbean.
“If intelligence sharing does truly pause, the US will lose significant visibility on security threats . . . That would be a major strategic loss for Washington,” Dickinson said.
She added that the US had “invested heavily in building and professionalising intelligence collection to combat shared threats from organised crime”.
Trump and Petro have also clashed publicly over migration, illegal drugs policy and Israel’s war in Gaza since Trump returned to the White House in January.
The US last month imposed sanctions on the Colombian president and members of his family, claiming that “Petro has allowed drug cartels to flourish”.
In September, Washington decertified Bogotá as an ally in combating drug trafficking, blaming Petro for a surge in the production of cocaine, of which Colombia is the world’s largest producer.
Despite suggesting that cocaine be legalised and that it is no worse “than whisky”, Petro has said that his government has taken a tough line on drug traffickers. He claims his administration is seizing more cocaine at sea than previous conservative governments that focused on eradicating crops of coca, the main ingredient in the narcotic.
Petro also had his US visa revoked in September after he called on American troops to “disobey Trump’s orders” during a pro-Palestine rally in New York.
The White House and Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Additional reporting by Steff Chávez in Mexico City and Amy Mackinnon in Washington
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