Hackers took over the PA system at Harrisburg International Airport in Pennsylvania, broadcasting a pro-Palestine message and insults against the leaders of the US and Israel. Similar incidents were reported at three Canadian airports on the same day.
The European Commission is in discussions to adopt a new counter-drone initiative to protect European Union airspace from Russian violations, as it seeks to strengthen border security with its own advanced drone technology after a string of drone incursions were reported in a host of EU and NATO member countries over the past month.
The proposal, which was included in a defence policy “roadmap” presented on Thursday, will aim for the new anti-drone capabilities to reach initial capacity by the end of next year and become fully operational by the end of 2027, according to a draft of the document.
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It will then be presented to EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas, European Commission Executive Vice President for Security Henna Virkkunen, and European Commissioner for Defence Andrius Kubilius.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said last month that it was time for Europe to build a “drone wall” to protect its eastern flank, hours after some 20 Russian drones reportedly entered the airspace of EU and NATO member Poland.
The concept has since morphed into a broader “European Drone Defence Initiative” including a continent-wide web of anti-drone systems in an effort to win support from EU capitals.
The drone initiative is one of several flagship EU projects aiming to prepare the bloc for a potential attack from Russia as its more than three-year-long war in Ukraine grinds on.
In the meantime, as a counterpoint, Russia’s federal security chief said on Thursday that Moscow has no doubt about NATO’s security services’ involvement in incidents with alleged Russian drones over EU territory, Russian news agency RIA Novosti cited him as saying.
Following the drone incursion into Poland, other incidents were reported at airports and military installations in several other countries further west, including Denmark, Estonia and Germany, although there has not been confirmation that the drones were sent by the Kremlin.
For its part, NATO has launched a new mission and beefed up forces on its eastern border, but it is playing catch-up as it tries to tap Ukraine’s experience and get to grips with the drone threat from Moscow.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said on Wednesday that NATO was now “testing integrated systems that will help us detect, track and neutralise aerial threats” for use on the bloc’s eastern flank.
Ukrainian officials say Russia’s incursions into other countries’ airspace are deliberate.
“Putin just keeps escalating, expanding his war, and testing the West,” Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said last month after the drones were spotted in Poland.
Other NATO allies have also claimed the incursions were deliberate.
However, experts in drone warfare say it is still possible that the incursions were not deliberate.
Russia has denied deliberately attacking any of the European countries, instead accusing them of making false allegations to cause tensions.
While Brussels wants to have the drone project fully up and running by the end of 2027, there is scepticism from some EU countries and fears that the bloc is treading on NATO’s toes.
At least four people have been killed and nine injured following an explosion targeting a government-owned bus in eastern Syria, according to the state news agency SANA.
The explosive device detonated while the bus, belonging to the Syrian Ministry of Energy, was travelling on a highway connecting Deir Az Zor and al-Mayadin, SANA reported in a post on X on Thursday.
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All four deaths were security personnel at an oil facility in Deir Az Zor, the country’s oil heartland and seventh largest city, which was the site of fierce battles against ISIL (ISIS) during the country’s ruinous civil war.
Oil facility workers as well as civilians were among those who were injured in the attack, SANA added, without providing further details.
A video verified by Al Jazeera from the site of the explosion showed several security personnel inspecting a bomb-damaged bus on the side of a road.
According to the Reuters news agency, the security personnel were part of an army contingent securing the Teim oilfield. They were reportedly returning home after their shift at the oil facility when the explosion took place.
The incident is said to be the deadliest explosion in the eastern province, which also produces most of Syria’s wheat, since the fall of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad last December.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
In May, a blast killed at least three people targeting a police station in al-Mayadin, a day after Syrian authorities said security forces killed three ISIL fighters and arrested four others in Aleppo.
In June, authorities had also accused ISIL of being behind a deadly suicide attack in a Damascus church that killed 25 people, though the group never claimed responsibility.
During Syria’s civil war, which erupted in 2011, ISIL carried out similar attacks on buses targeting the forces of al-Assad.
However, since the interim government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa took power after a lightning rebel offensive, attacks on government-controlled areas have been rare.
The site of the latest deadly attack also lies near an area controlled by the Kurdish US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) east of the Euphrates, where skirmishes and tensions between government forces and the SDF have risen in recent weeks.
The region lies along the border with Iraq and is divided by the Euphrates River between areas controlled by the state and the US-backed and Kurdish-led SDF, which controls Syria’s oilfields east of the river.
In August, Syria’s Ministry of Defence had accused the SDF of carrying out a rocket attack on a military position in northern Syria, injuring four army personnel and three civilians.
The Syrian leader has been on a painstaking mission to try and unify the war-ravaged nation, making major inroads in ending Syria’s international isolation, crowned with a visit to the United Nations General Assembly last month, the first by a Syrian in six decades, where he called for an end to all sanctions on his nation.
Damascus has also been attracting substantial economic investment from Gulf Arab nations, a critical economic lifeline.
Deadly sectarian fighting in the southern province of Suwayda in July rocked the fledgling government, prompting it to deploy forces there to quell unrest between Bedouin tribes and Druze militias.
There are also external interventionist security issues to contend with, as Israel attacked Syrian positions during that fighting under the pretext of protecting the Druze. But Israel has carried out multiple bombings and incursions into Syria both before and after that, despite ongoing security talks between the two nations.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vision of a “Greater Israel”, condemned by Arab and Muslima countries, involves hegemonic designs on Syrian territory, among others.
On Friday, SANA reported Israeli forces conducted incursions and raids in Eastern al-Samadaniyah and Ofaniya, in the Quneitra countryside.
According to SANA, the Israeli operation consisted of eight military vehicles, a heavy bulldozer, and two tanks advancing from near Tal Krum Jaba towards Eastern al-Samadaniyah, before withdrawing hours later towards the destroyed city of Quneitra in southwestern Syria, in the occupied Golan Heights.
Central bankers and financial delegates have gathered in Washington, DC this week for the annual International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank meetings, which conclude on Saturday.
Discussions this week have focused on global economic headwinds, as the IMF warns of signs of distress following US trade tariffs and protectionism.
The IMF is widely seen as a “lender of last resort”, only stepping in when countries face severe financial crises and cannot access usual borrowing channels. Its loans, however, often come with strict conditions which can result in austerity measures and deepen social and economic hardships, making the loans a double-edged sword.
Founded in 1944 during World War II at the Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire, US, the IMF was established to help stabilise the post-war global economy. Now based in Washington, DC, it has since grown from 44 founding members to 191 today and works closely with the United Nations and other international organisations to support global financial stability.
It does this by providing policy advice, short-term financial assistance and capacity development to countries and institutions.
Any country can join the IMF if approved by existing members and by paying a quota based on the size of its economy, with wealthier countries contributing more. This quota is used to set how much the country contributes, how much it can borrow and how much voting power it has.
Overall, the IMF has a total lending capacity of about $1 trillion.
When the IMF lends money, it draws on the pooled resources of its member countries. Wealthier and more stable economies often act as creditors, supplying the funds the IMF uses to provide loans. In return, these creditor countries earn interest on their contributions.
In 2024, about 50 creditor nations received approximately $5bn collectively in interest.
The amount of money owed to the IMF is typically expressed as Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), the IMF’s own unit of account based on a basket of five currencies – the US dollar, euro, pound sterling, the Chinese renminbi and the Japanese yen.
While SDRs are not a currency, countries can exchange them for the currencies mentioned above. As of October 15, one SDR was equivalent to $1.36.
The IMF currently has the highest-ever total credit outstanding. The chart below shows how much money has been owed to the IMF over the past 40 years.
In total, 86 countries owe the IMF SDR 118.9 billion, roughly equivalent to $162bn.
The three countries that owe the most make up almost half of the total, while the top 10 countries owe 73 percent.
The chart below shows the 86 countries which owe money to the IMF, broken down by region.
Argentina owes the most to the IMF, with SDR 41.8 billion (about $57bn) in outstanding credit, followed by Ukraine with SDR 10.4 billion ($14bn) and Egypt with SDR 6.9 billion ($9bn).
Argentina is the IMF’s largest borrower, with its debt exceeding the combined total of the following seven countries – Ukraine, Egypt, Pakistan, Ecuador, Ivory Coast, Kenya and Bangladesh.
In April, the IMF approved its 23rd programme to Argentina with a $20bn bailout programme to help prop up the economy.
Argentina’s history with the IMF is marked by repeated borrowing – it is the recipient of the most bailouts in the history of the IMF. In 2018, the country secured a $57bn loan – the largest in IMF history – to address fiscal imbalances after facing a currency crisis and double-digit inflation.
In October 2025, the Trump administration announced a $20bn financial support package for Argentina, aimed at stabilising the country’s economy before its October 26 midterm elections. The package includes a $20bn currency swap with Argentina’s central bank, providing US dollars in exchange for pesos to bolster the nation’s foreign currency reserves.
Ukraine’s economy tanked after Russia’s invasion in February 2022 and its external debt is now more than double what it was before the war began. The country’s total government-guaranteed debt reached $152bn by the end of April, according to the Reuters news agency, with more than 70 percent ($108.4bn) constituting external obligations.
In March 2023, the IMF approved a four-year Extended Fund Facility (EFF) worth $15.5bn, which was part of a broader international support package to help stabilise Ukraine’s economy and support civilian spending and debt servicing due to the country’s high expenditure on weapons.
As of October, Ukraine has received $10.6bn out of the planned $15.5bn for 2023-2027 under the EFF arrangement.
Egypt has had to borrow from the IMF on numerous occasions to stabilise its economy as a result of high debt and fiscal deficits. It has also faced shortages of foreign currency reserves and is tackling high inflation.
In 2016, the IMF approved programmes under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) for Egypt worth $11.9bn following longstanding economic issues in the shadow of the 2011 uprising, including an overvalued currency, slow growth and high unemployment. The aim of the IMF’s programme was to fix these issues via a flexible exchange rate and inflation control, raising taxes and cutting subsidies and wages.
In March, the IMF approved the disbursement of $1.2bn to Egypt after completing a fourth review of the country’s $8bn economic reform programme. Egypt reported that inflation had almost halved in February, helped by financial reforms taken as part of the IMF financial support agreement.
While IMF loans run into the billions of dollars, they usually make up only a small part of a country’s total debt and gross domestic product (GDP).
As a share of GDP, the countries with the most debt to the IMF are: Suriname (13 percent), Central African Republic (9.4 percent), Argentina (8.3 percent), Barbados (7.4 percent) and The Gambia (6.95 percent).
Although the White House immediately put the Nobel Committee on notice for putting “politics over peace” when it failed to deliver the peace prize to United States President Donald Trump, the administration had to be pleased that the award went to Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado. Trump and Machado are cut from the same right-wing authoritarian cloth, which in part explains why the president quickly congratulated her, and why Machado, in turn, dedicated her award to him.
As a leader of Venezuela’s hardline right-wing opposition, Machado has been committed to a brand of peace that has sought to undermine Venezuelan democracy and sovereignty for more than a quarter of a century. In 2002, she helped orchestrate a coup against Hugo Chavez, the democratically elected president at the time. Undeterred by failure, Machado subsequently worked to build an opposition whose primary goal has been to create enough political and economic chaos to undermine the Venezuelan government and return the country to oligarchic rule. This has included mobilising violent mobs to block streets, targeting opponents, wreaking havoc on the country’s economy, and terrorising large segments of the population. More recently, Machado’s tireless pursuit of “peace” led her to ask none other than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose genocide in Gaza Machado vocally supports, to bomb Venezuela in an effort to “liberate” the country.
Machado’s rise to international prominence has long been aided by Western media and political elites who frame her as a freedom fighter rather than a destabilising force. Her image has been carefully curated to appeal to the US and Europe, where right-wing populists increasingly claim the mantle of democratic renewal. By awarding her the Nobel Peace Prize, the committee has helped launder that image and reinforced the narrative that the West alone defines what counts as legitimate democracy.
What is troubling about Machado being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is not so much that the committee “got it wrong”, something it has done often enough, or even that mainstream coverage of her award has been largely uncritical. It is that, in awarding the prize to Machado, the Nobel Committee has provided an open invitation for Trump to continue, and even escalate, military intervention and gunboat diplomacy in Latin America. For Venezuela, this means violent regime change is firmly on the table.
In fact, Machado herself has suggested that the attention brought by the Nobel Peace Prize might lead to increased international intervention in Venezuela, a sabre-rattling sentiment echoed by Bret Stephens in The New York Times. This should come as no surprise, given that Machado has encouraged Trump’s ongoing illegal efforts to “combat narcotrafficking”, cheered his periodic threats of invasion, and even pushed for international sanctions that have strangled the Venezuelan economy and killed hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans.
That warning already appears prescient. Just this Wednesday, The New York Times revealed that the Trump administration has authorised covert CIA operations aimed at destabilising Venezuela’s government. The disclosure confirms exactly what many feared: that rewarding Machado under the banner of “peace” would embolden Washington to pursue regime change by other means. In effect, the Nobel Committee has provided moral cover for the very interventions its prize was meant to condemn.
Put another way, the problem with Machado receiving the Nobel Peace Prize is not just that it makes a mockery of any meaningful understanding of peace. In the process, it embraces and validates the Trumpian sleight of hand by which violence not only becomes peace but, in so doing, becomes an effective tool for advancing an authoritarianism that is repackaged as democracy. Opponents are then cast as enemies of freedom who must be eliminated, the destruction of whom allows for a broader project that benefits the very rich while leaving working people in misery.
In this sense, Venezuelan sovereignty and democracy mean as little to Machado as they do to Trump. The goal and practice of right-wing authoritarianism look much the same across the Americas. It is to ensure that political power is controlled by a wealthy elite who are free to implement long-discredited economic policies designed to facilitate the upward distribution of wealth while reducing government regulation of the natural resources and public goods that support working people. Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Machado, someone who puts a democratic face on violent foreign intervention and an economic war on the poor, is not just bad for Venezuela. It is deeply disturbing for the rest of the hemisphere and the world.
United States President Donald Trump confirmed on Wednesday that he has authorised the CIA to carry out secret operations in Venezuela.
The New York Times first disclosed the directive, quoting US officials who privately said the administration’s strategy is focused on removing President Nicolas Maduro from power.
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Trump also said his administration was mulling a land attack on Venezuela, amid sharply escalating tensions after multiple US strikes on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean Sea in recent weeks and a troop build-up in those waters ordered by the US president.
Maduro appeared on national television Wednesday night, urging restraint and caution against any further escalation.
“No to regime change that reminds us of the failed wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya … No to coups d’état carried out by the CIA … Latin America does not want them, does not need them, and rejects them,” said the Venezuelan president in response to Trump’s announcement.
So what might Trump be planning? Are his moves legal? How has Venezuela responded, and what does history tell us about what covert CIA operations in Latin America might look like?
“Why did you authorise the CIA to go into Venezuela?” a journalist asked the US president at a White House news conference.
“I authorised for two reasons, really,” Trump said.
“Number one, they [Venezuela] have emptied their prisons into the United States of America.
“And the other thing are drugs. We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela, and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea, so you get to see that, but we’re going to stop them by land also,” he added.
When asked if the CIA “had the authority to take out Maduro”, Trump demurred – refusing to rule out regime change, though not committing to it, either.
“Oh, I don’t want to answer a question like that … That’s a ridiculous question for me to be given … not really a ridiculous question, but it would be a ridiculous question for me to answer. But I think Venezuela is feeling heat,” Trump added.
The US has carried out at least five strikes on boats in Venezuelan waters, alleging that the boats were carrying drugs, and killing a total of 27 people.
The latest attack took place on Tuesday, Trump said.
“Under my standing authorities as commander-in-chief, this morning, the Secretary of War, ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO) conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility – just off the Coast of Venezuela,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. He added that six “male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel” were killed.
The first US strike on a Venezuelan boat was on September 2, killing 11 people. Two more attacks were carried out on September 15 and 19, each killing three people. A fourth strike occurred on October 3, with US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reporting four people killed.
Trump and his administration have so far not provided any evidence that these bombed boats were carrying narcotics headed for the US.
Experts have previously told Al Jazeera that US strikes on Venezuelan boats possibly broke international law and went against the US Constitution.
Declared operations on Venezuelan land, whether by the CIA or the US military, would go even beyond maritime strikes in testing the legal authority of the president.
Salvador Santino Regilme, an associate professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands, explained to Al Jazeera last month that the use of deadly force during maritime operations must respect the right to life and adhere to the principles of law enforcement necessity and proportionality.
“UNCLOS [United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea] and the 1988 UN Drug Trafficking Convention emphasise cooperation, boarding and consent mechanisms at sea, not summary destruction. Any strike that kills suspected traffickers should trigger a prompt, independent, and transparent investigation,” Regilme said.
Constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein was even more definitive in his criticism of the US maritime operations.
“Any use of the military [except] in self-defence to an actual attack requires express congressional statutory authorisation. The military attack on the alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers was unconstitutional,” Fein told Al Jazeera last month.
The War Powers Resolution of 1973 is a federal law that requires the US president to obtain Congressional approval before committing to war. It also mandates that the president notify Congress within 48 hours of initiating any military action.
Fein told Al Jazeera that there would need to be a public vote in Congress for the approval of such a strike, and such a vote has not taken place.
At the beginning of his term, Trump designated Venezuelan drug cartels as foreign terrorist organisations. In a statement to Al Jazeera in August, Fein said this designation is “illegal because [it is] contrary to the statutory standards to qualify as a Foreign Terrorist Organization “.
The standards, according to the US Constitution, are that a group must be based outside the US, involved in terrorist acts or activities, and its terrorism must pose a threat to the safety of US citizens or to US national security.
Trump has also repeatedly alleged that Maduro’s administration is behind the Venezuelan drug cartels that the US administration has branded “terrorist” organisations, even though US intelligence agencies have themselves said there is no evidence to back this assertion.
Venezuela accused the US of violating international law and the United Nations charter.
“The purpose of US actions is to create legitimacy for an operation to change the regime in Venezuela, with the ultimate goal of taking control of all the country’s resources,” the government said in a statement.
Maduro also rebuked the CIA’s involvement in different parts of the world, without explicitly referencing Trump’s authorisation of the CIA to carry out operations in Venezuela.
Carlos Pina, a Venezuelan political scientist, said Trump’s announcement could unify Maduro’s political base domestically.
“Today, the Venezuelan president once again denounced US interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs and, in particular, reinforced the anti-colonialist discourse that a large number of leftist governments and parties in the region have used in the past to oppose Washington’s influence in their own countries,” Pina said.
“That said, in practical, real-world terms, Trump’s announcement will likely lead the Venezuelan government to increase its mechanisms of internal surveillance and repression – which, if left unchecked, could result in possible human rights violations.”
It is dirty, and while, at the moment, it is unclear what the US’s external espionage organisation plans for Venezuela, history offers clues to the nature of its operations in Central and South America and the Caribbean.
From the late 1800s through the early decades of the 20th century, the US carried out a series of military interventions in Central America — the so-called Banana Wars — to protect the interests of US corporates with interests in the region.
In 1934, under President Franklin D Roosevelt, the US adopted what was known as the “Good Neighbor Policy”, which in effect meant a commitment to not invade or occupy Latin American nations and to not interfere in their domestic affairs.
But the US did not remain a “good neighbour” for long.
Through the Cold War, in particular, the US funded several operations to unseat elected left-wing leaders in Latin American countries.
Here are some instances:
In 1954, elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz was toppled by local fighter groups backed by the CIA under the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower.
Arbenz had sought to nationalise a company, stoking fears within the US of more socialist policies in the country.
Under the CIA’s Operation PBSuccess, the agency trained fighters led by military officer Carlos Castillo Armas, who took power after the coup. A civil war raged in Guatemala from 1960 to 1996 between the Guatemalan government and military on the one hand, and leftist rebel groups on the other.
In 1959, Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro came to power after overthrowing dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Under Eisenhower, the CIA devised a plan to train Cuban exiles to invade the country and overthrow Castro. Democratic President John F Kennedy, who won the 1960 election, was briefed about the plan during his inauguration.
Castro found out about the training camps through Cuban intelligence. In 1961, Kennedy signed off on the Bay of Pigs Invasion, a plan for the Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro. However, the invasion failed when the Cuban military overwhelmed them.
In 1961, Joao Goulart came into office as president, with a mandate to pursue social and economic reforms. He maintained good relations with socialist countries such as Cuba and nationalised a subsidiary of the US-owned International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT).
In response, the CIA funded pro-US politicians and supported anti-communist groups. This undermined Goulart’s leadership, culminating in a military coup in 1964, which established a US-friendly dictatorship.
Ecuador had long been a basket case of political instability, with 27 presidents between 1925 and 1947. That, however, changed in the 1950s when the country witnessed a rare period of stability.
It was not to last. By the early 1960s, the US was worried about the pro-Cuba policies of President Jose Velasco Ibarra and his Vice President Carlos Julio Arosemena, who in fact advocated even closer relations with Soviet bloc nations.
The CIA, using US labour organisations as its conduits, financed the spread of anti-communist sentiment in the country.
“In the end, they [the CIA] owned almost everybody who was anybody [in Ecuador],” a CIA agent told analyst Roger Morris later, in a 2004 CIA-approved appraisal of the agency’s activities in Latin America.
Arosemena first staged a coup against Ibarra, and initially turned further to the left, before trying to moderate his positions. Then, in 1963, the military staged a coup against him, banning the communist party and severing ties with Cuba, aligning with US interests.
Between 1963 and 1964, the US used covert funding, largely through the CIA, to influence Bolivia’s politics.
The funding backed leaders that were friendly to the US, and supported a military coup in November 1964 led by General Rene Barrientos Ortuno against elected President Victor Paz Estenssoro. The coup was successful and forced Paz Estenssoro into exile.
But the US was not done with interfering in Bolivia.
By the early 1970s, Washington had eyes set on another regime change. This time, the target was President Juan Jose Torres, who had come to power in 1970 and had nationalised multiple US companies in the country.
According to the US State Department’s official history, the US ambassador in La Paz, in June 1971, told Washington that it needed to support Torres’s opponents. The White House secretly sought, and received $410,000 in what critics within the administration described as “coup money” to finance military leaders and political leaders opposed to Torres.
Two months later, senior military officer Hugo Banzer led a successful coup against Torres. The US continued to fund Banzer’s government, which ruled until 1978. Nearly two decades later, Banzer would return to power once again, after actually winning an election in 1997.
The CIA provided funding to help end the presidency of Salvador Allende, an elected leftist leader. Allende had planned to nationalise Chilean copper companies, many of which were owned by US interests.
The CIA funding was used to back Allende’s opponent and spread anti-communist sentiment. This spiralled into the 1973 military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. Allende shot himself dead using an AK-47 rifle before he was captured: Doubts about the cause of his death lingered for decades before it was confirmed by an independent autopsy years later.
The brutal US-backed dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet lasted 17 years.
In 1975, the CIA supported right-wing military dictatorships in six Latin American countries in setting up a transnational network of terror called Operation Condor. This began during the presidency of Gerald Ford.
These countries included Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay. The operation was aimed at crushing political dissidents, leftists and communist sympathisers. The dictatorships used a shared database to monitor dissidents and their families across state borders.
They used tactics such as exchanging intelligence, information, prisoners and torture techniques. Under the operation, at least 97 people were assassinated, according to Plan Condor, a joint initiative by Latin American organisations and the University of Oxford.
In December 1981, the Salvadoran military’s elite Atlacatl Battalion conducted a deadly massacre in the village of El Mozote, killing about 1,000 civilians, including women and children. This was during El Salvador’s civil war of 1980-92.
The battalion was trained and equipped by the US under its larger Cold War policy of suppressing leftist rebellions in Latin America. The US government greatly increased military aid to El Salvador between 1980 and 1982.
It was a familiar story by now. Maurice Bishop, the prime minister of the tiny Caribbean island, had adopted Marxist-Leninist policies after seizing power himself in 1979 when the previous premier, Eric Gairy, was out of the country.
By the early 1980s, the US was worried about Cuban influence in the country. As bloody infighting broke out within Bishop’s party over a leadership struggle in October 1983, the US swooped in, invading the country, capturing Cubans in Grenada and ensuring that the country’s future was aligned with US priorities.
The US invaded Panama in 1989 during the presidency of Republican George HW Bush. The invasion was called Operation Just Cause.
The US underplayed the death toll and justified the invasion, saying it was carried out to remove President Manuel Noriega for alleged drug trafficking.
Pina, the Venezuelan analyst, told Al Jazeera that most other Latin American countries have so far been cautious in their response to Trump’s order and threat.
Pina said there are a few exceptions to this, such as Gustavo Petro’s Colombia, and those in the regional ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America) bloc: Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Honduras and some Caribbean islands.
He said that while an escalation like this would normally cause serious friction between Latin American governments and the US, many Latin American countries have erred on the side of caution after Maduro returned to power through a controversial presidential election in July 2024.
“The current situation is due to the fact that Maduro ‘burned’ many diplomatic bridges after the presidential elections of July 28, 2024.”
The election in Venezuela resulted in widespread allegations of fraud from within and outside the country. The US, which has not had a diplomatic relationship with Venezuela since 2019, and its allies did not accept the election result. In July 2024, the Carter Center and a UN panel said they could not confirm the credibility of Venezuela’s election results, stating the vote lacked international standards for fairness and democracy. Nine Latin American countries also called for the results to be reviewed by independent observers.
Pina said that for the region, the most likely response is that some countries might try to act as mediators and encourage talks between Venezuela and the US to find a peaceful solution. However, at the moment, that seems unlikely, with both sides seeming “far” from reaching an agreement.
He added that, for now, he expects the US to continue to put pressure on Maduro to step down peacefully, while increasing its military and naval presence – but that Maduro is likely to resist these demands.
A full-fledged war will also have consequences for all of Latin America. Already, because of US sanctions on Venezuela and the economic crisis that has gripped the oil-rich nation for years, more than 8 million people have migrated from the country since 2014, mostly to other nations in the region.