War on drugs in Ecuador

The Ecuadorian Drug War (Spanish: Guerra contra el narcotráfico en Ecuador, transl. 'War against drug trafficking in Ecuador') is an internal conflict in Ecuador waged by the Ecuadorian security forces against criminal groups since the beginning of 2018. The conflict is divided into two parts, the first is the Ecuadorian government against satellite groups of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and Sinaloa Cartel, and the second is the confrontation between said satellite groups for dominance and hegemony.

The geographic location of Ecuador as a strategic transit route for drugs from Colombia and Peru into Mexico and later the United States and Europe was always a concern. However, the evolution of the Colombian internal armed conflict and the remainders of the guerrilla forces of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia caused Ecuador to become more involved. The first major incident was an attack against law enforcement in San Lorenzo, which unleashed a wave of violence on the northern coast of the country. The main suspect in the attack was a FARC-EP dissident led by Ecuadorian drug traffickers.

At the end of 2019, the presence of European mafias in Ecuador was first documented, the main one being the Albanian mafia. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the crisis became latent with the entry of illegal weapons from Peru, one of the main sources of arms to armed gangs in Ecuador. Earlier in 2019, a prison crisis broke out in Guayaquil due to the city's prisons becoming important links of communication and confrontations between the armed groups. Later that same year the crisis spread to other prisons nationwide and violence reached the streets again in 2022.

In January 2024 the conflict reached a critical point when armed conflict broke out in Ecuador between the armed forces and several organized crime groups.