Category World News

United States President Donald Trump has invited Colombian leader Gustavo Petro to the White House, days after accusing him of trafficking cocaine and threatening military action against his government.

The sudden detente on Wednesday followed an hour-long phone call between Trump and Petro, in which the two leaders discussed “the situation of drugs” and “other disagreements”, according to the US president.

It was their first call since Trump’s threat of a military operation in Colombia following the US’s abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a brazen attack on Caracas on Saturday. The warnings prompted Petro to issue a call for Colombians to take to the streets to defend their sovereignty.

“It was a Great Honour to speak with the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, who called to explain the situation of drugs and other disagreements that we have had,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

“I appreciated his call and tone and look forward to meeting him in the near future.”

Trump added “arrangements are being made” for a meeting in Washington between himself and Petro, but gave no specific date for a meeting.

Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president, addressed demonstrators who had heeded his call for protests at Bogota’s Plaza Bolivar following the call with Trump. He said a detente was under way and that he had to change his speech at the last minute.

“If we don’t speak, there is war. Colombia’s history has taught us that,” the former rebel fighter said.

“And what happened is that we talked and re-established communication for the first time. I talked about two things: Venezuela and the issue of drug trafficking,” he said. “I gave him our numbers of what we are doing to fight drugs.”

Petro also accused Colombian politicians of misleading Trump. “Those [people] are responsible for this crisis – let’s call it diplomatic for now, verbal for now – that has erupted between the US and Colombia,” he said.

Relations between Trump and Petro have been frosty since the Republican returned to the White House in January 2025.

Trump has repeatedly accused Petro’s administration, without evidence, of enabling a steady flow of ‌cocaine into the US, imposing sanctions on the Colombian leader in October.

Earlier this week, Trump described Petro as “a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States” and that he should “watch his a**” following the US attack on Venezuela.

“He’s not going to be doing it very long, let me tell you,” Trump told reporters on Sunday, and said a military operation there “sounds good.”

For his part, Petro had condemned the US attack on Venezuela as “abhorrent”, convened emergency meetings before the United Nations and the Organization of American States and even threatened to take up arms again to defend Colombia.

Petro and Trump also sparred last year when Colombia initially banned deportation flights from the US.  Washington in September also ⁠revoked Petro’s visa after he joined a pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York following a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly and called on American soldiers to “disobey the orders of Trump”.

Petro, who has been a vocal opponent of Israel’s war in Gaza, had accused ‌Trump of being “complicit in genocide” in Gaza and called for “criminal proceedings” over US missile attacks on suspected drug-running boats in Caribbean waters.

Despite the tensions, for Colombia, the US remains critical to the military’s fight against left-wing rebels and drug traffickers. Washington has provided Bogota with roughly $14bn in the last two decades.

For the US, Colombia remains the main source of intelligence used to interdict drugs in the Caribbean, and the cornerstone of its counternarcotics strategy abroad.

Colombia is also a “Major non-NATO ally” of the US – a designation that only belongs to a handful of countries like Australia, Japan and Qatar.

“The relationship between presidents Trump and Petro is volatile and unpredictable,” said Anthea McCarthy-Jones, an expert in Latin America affairs at the University of New South Wales.

“It seems to oscillate from exchanges involving threats and inflammatory language to more reasoned attempts to use diplomacy as a way forward,” she told Al Jazeera.

Colombia’s government, meanwhile, said cooperation between the two countries on intelligence, defence and law enforcement was continuing.

Colombia’s defence minister Pedro Sanchez told The New York Times this week that the “Navy, Coast Guard, Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives” have been uninterrupted.

Landing at Aden International Airport on a trip in late 2017, the plane had two flags visible as it moved along the tarmac. One was the flag of the former South Yemen, resurrected as a symbol of Yemen’s secessionist southern movement. The other was of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the movement’s primary backer.

Passing one checkpoint after another on the road out of Aden, the flag of the actual Republic of Yemen wasn’t visible, and only made an appearance towards the city of Taiz, to the north.

The UAE-backed secessionist Southern Transitional Council (STC) had been formed a few months earlier, in May 2017. Headed by Aidarous al-Zubaidi, it made clear that its ultimate goal was separation from the rest of Yemen, even if it found itself on the same side as the Yemeni government in the fight against the Houthi rebels occupying the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

By 2019, the STC and the Yemeni government fought in Aden and other areas of the south. The STC emerged on top, forcing the government out of Aden – the former capital of South Yemen and the city the government had designated as a temporary capital during the conflict against the Houthis.

Momentum continued to be on the STC’s side for the next few years, as it seized more territory. Even after al-Zubaidi joined the Saudi-backed Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) as a vice-president, officially making him a member of the Yemeni government, it was clear that on the ground, the STC had de facto control over much of the former South Yemen.

Al-Zubaidi must have felt close to achieving his goals when he found himself at the United Nations General Assembly in September. Speaking to the international media, he said that the “best solution for Yemen” was a “two-state solution”.

But then he went too far. His move last month to push STC forces into the eastern governorates of Hadhramout and al-Mahra, effectively securing control over all of the former South Yemen, was a red line for Saudi Arabia.

The STC leader is on the run, forces now loyal to the Yemeni government are in control of the majority of southern Yemen, and many of his allies have changed sides.

The UAE, meanwhile, appears to have accepted that Saudi Arabia is the primary foreign actor in Yemen, and has taken a step back – for now.

What now for South Yemen?

In a matter of weeks, secession has gone from a de facto reality to seemingly further away than it has been since the early days of Yemen’s war in the mid-2010s.

It was only last Friday that al-Zubaidi announced a two-year transitional period before a referendum on the independence of southern Yemen and the declaration of the state of “South Arabia”.

A week later, the STC looked divided – with Abdul Rahman al-Mahrami, a PLC member also known as Abu Zaraa, now in Riyadh, appearing to position himself in the Saudi camp.

The Yemeni government, with Saudi support, is attempting to reorganise the anti-Houthi military forces, with the aim of moving them away from being a divided band of groups under different commands to a force unified under the umbrella of the government.

Nods to the “southern issue” – the disenfranchisement of southern Yemen since the country’s brief 1994 north-south civil war – continues, with plans for a conference on the issue in Riyadh.

But the ultimate goal of hardline southerners – secession – is off the table under current circumstances, with consensus instead forming around the idea of a federal republic allowing for strong regional representation.

The Yemeni government also sees an opportunity to now use the momentum gained in the recent successes against the STC to advance against the Houthis, who control Yemen’s populous northwest – even if that remains an ambitious goal.

Of course, this is Yemen, and the winds can always change once again.

Support for the secession of southern Yemen remains strong in governorates like Al-Dhale, where al-Zubaidi is from. Hardcore STC supporters, those who have not been coopted, will be unlikely to simply give up, sowing the seeds for a potential insurgency.

And President Rashad al-Alimi will have to show that his power does not simply rest on Saudi Arabia’s military strength. One of the major tests of his legitimacy is whether he will be able to return with his government to Aden, and finally be based in Yemen for the first time in years.