U.S. Designates Colombia as Failing to Cooperate in Drug War, Says It Will Waive Sanctions

The United States on Monday designated Colombia as a country that has failed to meet its international counternarcotics obligations for the first time in nearly 30 years, even as the administration issued a waiver to spare the nation from immediate sanctions.

The designation, announced in a presidential memo to Congress, cited a sharp rise in cocaine production and shortcomings in Colombia’s eradication and law enforcement efforts. The White House said it will consider reversing the decision if Colombia’s government takes more aggressive steps to eradicate coca, reduce cocaine production and trafficking, and improve cooperation with U.S. efforts to hold criminal leaders accountable.

The move is a sharp diplomatic rebuke to a longtime U.S. partner in Latin America and follows data showing a near-tripling of land dedicated to coca cultivation over the past decade. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime reported that Colombia had a record 253,000 hectares under coca cultivation in 2023. Colombian authorities have seized hundreds of tons of cocaine in recent years — recording 884 metric tons last year and 654 metric tons so far this year — but U.S. officials said those figures do not outweigh rising production and persistent trafficking.

The White House decision places Colombia alongside Afghanistan, Bolivia, Burma and Venezuela as countries listed as failing to meet international counternarcotics obligations. Officials said, however, that with the exception of Afghanistan, U.S. assistance to those countries was deemed vital to U.S. national interests, prompting a waiving of sanctions that otherwise could have followed the designation.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro criticized the U.S. determination during a televised cabinet meeting, saying it penalized a country that has sacrificed the lives of “dozens of policemen, soldiers and regular citizens, trying to stop cocaine” from reaching the United States. Petro, a former rebel, has repeatedly questioned the emphasis on punitive drug policies and has said, on multiple occasions, that whisky kills more people than cocaine.

U.S. officials cited several developments in explaining the designation, including a sharp slowdown in manual eradication of coca since Petro took office. This year Colombia reportedly uprooted just 5,048 hectares manually, compared with about 68,000 hectares removed in the final year of the previous conservative administration, and far short of the government’s own 30,000-hectare target. The Trump administration also pointed to Colombia’s refusal to extradite some suspects and to presidential criticism of U.S. policies, including U.S. actions against drug shipments allegedly operating from Venezuela.

The designation revives a process last used in 1997, when Colombia was similarly decertified amid scandals involving cartel influence over politics and law enforcement. At the time, then-President Ernesto Samper faced allegations of receiving illicit campaign contributions from the Cali cartel, and a plane intended for a U.N. trip was seized carrying heroin. The post-1997 era saw deep U.S.-Colombian cooperation: Washington provided billions of dollars in assistance aimed at eradicating coca, strengthening Colombia’s security forces, and supporting rural development and alternatives for poor farmers.

Those cooperative efforts began to change after Colombia’s Constitutional Court effectively suspended a decade-old aerial fumigation program using glyphosate because of environmental and health concerns. A 2016 peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) shifted official policy further away from punitive eradication toward rural development, state-building and voluntary crop substitution, measures that analysts say have not kept pace with the recent expansion of coca cultivation.

“Decertification is a blunt tool and a huge irritant in bilateral relations that goes well beyond drug issues and makes cooperation far harder in any number of areas,” said Adam Isacson, a security researcher at the Washington Office on Latin America. “That’s why it’s so rarely used.”

In his memo, the U.S. president said, “The failure of Colombia to meet its drug control obligations over the past year rests solely with its political leadership,” and added that the designation could be changed if Colombia adopts more aggressive measures to curb production and trafficking and enhances cooperation with the United States to bring criminal leaders to justice.

Colombia’s leadership has defended its overall approach to public security and counternarcotics, arguing that the country has made progress on seizures and arrests and that addressing the root causes of coca cultivation requires more than eradication. The Petro administration has emphasized alternative development in rural areas and criticized what it describes as heavy-handed U.S. tactics.

The decertification comes amid heightened U.S. activity in the Caribbean and tensions with Venezuela. The Trump administration has pointed to Venezuela’s alleged role in trafficking and has carried out strikes on small Venezuelan vessels the U.S. said were transporting cocaine bound for American markets. The U.S. designation statement said that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government leads one of the largest cocaine trafficking networks in the world and signaled continued efforts to pursue Maduro and others for drug-related crimes.

Under U.S. law, the president must annually identify countries that have not met their counternarcotics obligations in the previous 12 months. The designation can trigger financial and aid penalties, though the president may waive those measures on national interest grounds, as was done in this instance.

Analysts warned that formal U.S. rebuke, even without immediate sanctions, risks complicating broader cooperation on security, migration and economic ties at a time when Colombia faces escalating rural violence and the challenge of reintegrating former combatants under the 2016 peace accord. The designation could also have economic implications if future administrations choose not to renew waivers or to tie aid and trade benefits to specific counternarcotics benchmarks.

Colombia’s government will now face pressure from the United States and from domestic constituencies to show measurable changes in its counternarcotics strategy. The U.S. statement left open the possibility of reversing the designation if Colombia intensifies eradication, improves trafficking investigations and strengthens judicial cooperation to bring criminal leaders to justice.

Reporting for this account included material from the Associated Press.