Nearly a week after Donald Trump first announced what he said was the first US ground strike in a four-month-long military pressure campaign against Venezuela, details remain very thin on the ground.
CNN and the New York Times reported late on Monday that they had confirmed the CIA had used a drone to target a “port facility” allegedly used by the Tren de Aragua street gang. No casualties were reported, but the date, time and location of the attack remain unknown. Venezuela’s strongman leader, Nicolás Maduro, and his government have remained silent.
If confirmed, the first strike on land would mark a new phase in a campaign that since August has involved the deployment of a massive US naval fleet, airstrikes that have so far killed 107 people, a “total blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers, the seizure of two vessels and the pursuit of a third.
Independent organisations, activists and analysts in Venezuela have so far been unable to find any details of an attack.
Whether or not the strike even took place, analysts agree that Trump’s announcement itself marks his latest move in a shadow war aimed at removing Maduro from power.
“Obviously, the US doesn’t want to call it a war because that would trigger congressional oversight … but it is a war, as people are dying – and they’re dying in a very explicit and loud way with these airstrikes on boats,” said Alejandro Velasco, a historian of modern Venezuela and a professor at New York University.
He added that Maduro is also waging his own war to stay in power: “That’s the only thing he and the people around him are concerned about. For them, the war is about how to survive one more day.”
Christopher Sabatini, a senior research fellow for Latin America at Chatham House, said the US is already running a psyops campaign against Venezuela: “It’s not a war that involves massive amounts of weapons yet, because I think neither side has the stomach to do that … So it’s more of a war of moving of pieces and hoping one side folds.”
It is that logic, he said, that has driven all of Trump’s moves so far, from the military buildup to the attacks on boats and the seizure of oil tankers.
“Trump’s entire plan hinges on the idea that someone in Maduro’s inner circle will defect and say, ‘Maduro, you’ll leave and we’re forming a new government.’ With every step, the US doubled down on that strategy, even though it didn’t work,” he added.
The alleged first strike on land would be just Trump’s latest attempt in that strategy, said Sabatini.
Andrés Antillano, a criminology professor at the Central University of Venezuela, said it was “unlikely” that the strike, if it occurred at all, destroyed any significant drug infrastructure.
He is among several experts on Venezuelan drug trafficking who noted that, despite initial US claims that the military pressure is part of a so-called “war on drugs”, the country plays a relatively minor role in global cocaine trafficking – and is certainly not responsible for the most significant volumes reaching the US.
“There is an exaggeration of the Tren de Aragua, which is in fact very weakened and fragmented … If the attack really happened, it may have hit a small fishing village from which speedboats carrying cocaine depart,” said Antillano.
Antillano noted that it could have occurred in an “isolated place, which is why nothing is known”, adding that the Maduro regime also may not want to acknowledge the attack. Venezuela took weeks to comment on the deadly airstrikes in the Caribbean, initially claiming the images were fake.
“In any case, even if everything Trump has said is true, it still seems to me an attack with minimal impact, despite its media coverage. That was more or less what happened with the airstrikes on boats: they led to the deaths of fishers, possibly some linked to drug trafficking, but they had no impact on drug trafficking itself nor did they shake the foundations of the Maduro government,” he added.
