CARACAS: Wash­in­gton accused Ven­ezuelan President Nicolas Maduro of a role in the “Cartel de los Soles” as it dispatched five warships and thousands of Marines toward the Caribbean country for an anti-drug deployment.

While some of President Donald Trump’s right-wing led allies in South America — Argentina, Ecuador and Par­aguay — have echoed his designation of “Soles” as a terrorist organisation, many have doubts such a group even exists.

Venezuela itself, and neighbor Colombia, insist there is no such thing as Cartel de los Soles. Some experts agree, saying there is no evidence of the existence of an organised group with a defined hierarchy that goes by that name.

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Last month, the Trump administration described the Cartel de los Soles as a “Venezuela-based criminal group hea­d­­ed by Nicolas Maduro and other high-ranking Venezuelan individuals”.

It said the cartel “provides material support to foreign terrorist organisations threatening the peace and security of the United States, namely Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel” — two major drug trafficking groups.

Washington upped a bounty to $50 mil­­­lion for the capture of Maduro on drug charges. Yet in March, the latest US State Department report on global anti-drug operations made no ment­ion of the Cartel de los Sol­es or any connection betw­een Maduro and narco trafficking. The Uni­­­ted States did not recognize Maduro’s 2024 re-election, rejected by the Venez­u­elan opposition and much of the world as a stolen vote.

“There is no such thing, so Maduro can hardly be its boss,” Phil Gunson, an analyst at the Inter­n­ational Crisis Group think tank, said.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2025