Back to Manta: Ecuador’s Descent into Narco-Violence and the Return of US Forces

The US military was kicked out of Ecuador in 2009. Now, we're going back.

Ecuadorian police watch traffic in Ecuador’s capital, Quito.

Ecuador wasn’t always like this.

Back in 2006, I deployed to Manta, Ecuador, as part of Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATF-S). We flew E-3 Sentry AWACS missions off the Pacific coast, hunting drug runners before they reached open water.

Manta was sleepy, quiet—a port city best known for tuna, Panama hats, and the best Pina Colada I’ve ever had. We shared the airbase with the Ecuadorian Air Force, did counterdrug work with US Coast Guard detachments, and ran air surveillance over one of the busiest narcotics corridors in the Western Hemisphere.

For me, it was the dream deployment. In my off-duty time, I swam with sharks in the Pacific Ocean, hiked through the rainforest, studied Russian literature for my degree program, and socialized with the locals.

The Air Force OSI, Office of Special Investigations, often paid off Ecuadorian taxi drivers in greenbacks for intel on drug movements – one such informant told me as much as we were driving home from a bar one night.

We were pulled over often by the local police force. Americans were frequent targets. A crisp US ten dollar bill paid to the police during a handshake usually got us back on the road.

We were unwelcome but tolerated.

Then, under political pressure from the new Ecuadorian president, Rafael Correa, the US was asked to leave. My rotation was the last rotation – after me, there would be no more US forces in Ecuador.

Now, in 2025, the quiet is gone. Manta’s piers are expanding again. The barracks are going back up. And US troops may soon be back—not for surveillance this time, but to help Ecuador battle gangs who’ve taken the country hostage.

My AWACS in Ecuador - 2007-8

The New Frontline: Gangs, Cartels, and a State on the Brink

President Daniel Noboa isn’t mincing words. He’s declared open war on what he calls “international narco-terrorists”—a Frankenstein’s monster of domestic gangs tied to Mexican and Colombian cartels.

Once called the “island of peace” in a volatile region, Ecuador now has the highest homicide rate in Latin America, with some provinces resembling failed states more than functioning republics.

What’s different from 2006? Everything.

Back then, cocaine flowed through Ecuador like water, but it was relatively bloodless.