In recent weeks, the United States has conducted several deadly airstrikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea, which the Trump administration has claimed, without providing evidence, were being used to traffic drugs. A group of United Nations experts said U.S. strikes targeting boats in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela amount to “extrajudicial executions.”

“There seems to be a much bigger political context behind this than really going after drug traffickers, which seems to be … not at all the main goal of the U.S. administration,” says Guillaume Long, senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and former foreign minister of Ecuador. Long says “regime change in Venezuela” and anger over Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s pro-Palestinian politics are also motivating factors in the U.S. campaign. Meanwhile, Manuel Rozental, a Colombian physician and activist, says the drug war is about economic control.