On May 16, the United States found and killed Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, a top Islamic State commander, in Nigeria. The precision operation in the northeast of Africa’s most populous country came about a week after President Donald Trump’s administration released its new counterterrorism strategy.
As one might expect, combating the Islamic State and al-Qaida, the usual suspects for Washington’s vast counterterrorism apparatus, is treated as a top priority in the 16-page document. What’s more notable is the strategy’s focus on the drug cartels and smaller criminal groups that have proliferated in the Western Hemisphere. In both words and deeds, Washington is elevating Mexico’s drug trafficking organizations and Ecuador’s gangs to the same plane as the Islamic State gunmen who roam the Syrian desert. In doing so, Trump has expanded the war on terrorism to encompass the war on drugs.
“We will not let cartels, Jihadists, or the governments who support them plot against our citizens with impunity,” Trump wrote in the report’s introduction. “Terrorists of any kind will not be allowed to find safe harbor here at home or attack us from abroad.”
The Trump administration has made good on this threat by increasing the U.S. military’s role in the counter-drug fight. In September, the Pentagon announced Operation Southern Spear, a series of U.S. strikes against boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific that allegedly were carrying drugs to the United States. According to the latest tally by The New York Times, the U.S. has conducted a total of 57 strikes, killing approximately 200 people in the process. Trump alleges, falsely, that the strikes have reduced seabound drug trafficking into the U.S. by an astounding 97%.
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