Hi NDD--
I am somewhat confused by your last post. Can you elaborate?
My own sense is that we tend to agree on parts of the picture and disagree over nuances.
Cheers
John
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Hi NDD--
I am somewhat confused by your last post. Can you elaborate?
My own sense is that we tend to agree on parts of the picture and disagree over nuances.
Cheers
John
Death Squad Scandal Circles Closer to Uribe - NYTIMES.
Quote:
President Álvaro Uribe, the Bush administration’s closest ally in Latin America, faces an intensifying scandal after a jailed former commander of paramilitary death squads testified Tuesday that Mr. Uribe’s defense minister had tried to plot with the outlawed private militias to upset the rule of a former president.
Speaking at a closed court hearing in Medellín, Salvatore Mancuso, the former paramilitary warlord, said Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos had met with paramilitary leaders in the mid-1990s to discuss efforts to destabilize the president at the time, Ernesto Samper, according to judicial officials.
Mr. Mancuso also said that Vice President Francisco Santos had met with paramilitary leaders in 1997 to discuss taking their operations to the capital, Bogotá.
...
These revelations followed the disclosure this week of an illegal domestic spying program by the national police force and additional arrests of high-ranking political allies of Mr. Uribe on charges of ties to the paramilitaries.
...
Mr. Uribe tried to contain the newest scandal by forcing 12 generals in the national police to resign Monday over illegal wiretaps of political opponents, government officials and journalists.
Among those whose phones were tapped was Carlos Gaviria, an opposition leader who ran for president against Mr. Uribe last year. “This cannot happen under a democratic government,” Mr. Gaviria said.
The purge of the generals came after the newsmagazine Semana published transcripts of cellphone calls from imprisoned paramilitary leaders in which they orchestrated murders and cocaine deals. It was not clear whether these intercepted phone calls were part of the police surveillance program.
Mr. Santos, the defense minister, said neither he nor Mr. Uribe knew of the police wiretapping operation. Still, the report has hurt the credibility of Mr. Uribe’s government, already suffering from a perception of being soft on the paramilitaries ...
Just a couple:
Not a "domestic spying program" - there was no program. Some people wandered off the reservation - and they will go to jail for it.
He didn't fire them to "contain the scandal" - a couple of them weren't even fired, they didn't have to be. He asked for two resignations. When he named Naranjo Chief - the rest of them had to go by custom. It looks like the thing was done by a Sergeant with the knowledge of a Major and a Colonel.
The implication that Gaviria's phone was tapped because he was a political opponent of Uribe's is incorrect in my view - they are implying that Uribe ordered the tap, as he would be the one to benefit. They neglect to mention the other recent event that could have been the motive for the tap (among others).
The whole thing was apparently done to prove that the paras were still running their illegal operations from inside jails. If Uribe is tied to the paras, why would he do such a thing?
Mancuso has yet to prove any of his accusations regarding Santos.
5 June LA Times - Colombia Begins Freeing Rebels by Chris Kraul.
Quote:
President Alvaro Uribe on Monday began releasing 193 jailed rebels, including a leader who was kidnapped in Venezuela in 2004 and turned over to Colombian authorities.
For nearly five years, Uribe had refused to swap any of the hundreds of guerrillas in Colombian prisons for the estimated 3,000 hostages held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and other groups.
But Uribe has launched a bold — some say desperate — gambit to appease national and international critics who say he isn't doing enough to ease the hostages' plight. During this country's four-decade-long civil war, previous Colombian presidents exchanged prisoners for hostages...
And then this happens:wry:
Colombia rebels kidnap local police commander
Quote:
BOGOTA, June 5 (Reuters) - Colombian guerrillas kidnapped a local police commander even as President Alvaro Uribe announced he had freed a jailed rebel leader to try to broker the release of rebel-held hostages, authorities said
Quote:
The kidnapping took place as Uribe was announcing the release of Rodrigo Granda, a top guerrilla commander who the government freed to act as a negotiator to try to broker an agreement between the government and the FARC.
8 July Washington Post - Calderón's Offensive Against Drug Cartels by Manuel Roig-Franzia.
Quote:
... Calderón is betting his presidency on a surge of Mexican troops -- one of the country's largest deployments of the military in a crime-fighting role -- to wage street-by-street battles with drug cartels that are blamed for more than 3,000 execution-style killings in the past year and a half. Sending more than 20,000 federal troops and police officers to nine Mexican states has made Calderón extremely popular; his latest approval ratings hit 65 percent.
But as the campaign drags into its eighth month and the death toll mounts, Calderón is facing a growing cadre of critics, including the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights representative in Mexico, who opposes the use of the military in policing. Calderón is also contending with foes in Mexico's Congress who want to strip him of the authority to dispatch troops without congressional approval. The Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights organization, has faulted him as quick to use the military but slow to reform Mexico's corrupt police...
26 July Washington Post - Report Cites Rebels' Wide Use of Mines In Colombia by Juan Forero.
Quote:
Colombia's largest rebel group, already accused of executing 11 civilian hostages last month, faced a new allegation Wednesday: A report by Human Rights Watch said the group has dramatically escalated its use of land mines, to the point that more people are killed or maimed by the devices here than in any other country in world.
The report, nearly a year in the making, said the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which has been fighting the state since 1964, has sown antipersonnel mines throughout the country to slow an increasingly offensive-minded army. The impact of FARC mines, as well as those laid by a smaller rebel group, the National Liberation Army, or ELN, has been devastating: The devices killed or hurt 1,113 people last year, nearly a third of them civilians, according to government tallies based on reported incidents...
ISN Security Watch, 3 Sep 07: Colombia, Israel and Rogue Mercenaries
Quote:
Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos has acknowledged that Bogota had quietly hired a group of former Israeli military officers to advise local defense officials on their counter-insurgency tactics against leftist Fuerza Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) guerrillas...
....Israeli advisors - reportedly consisting of three senior generals, a lower ranking officer, an unnamed Argentinean officer and three translators - were hired under a reported US$10 million contract by the Colombian Defense Ministry to advise on how to improve the army's intelligence gathering capabilities. Santos reportedly approached former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami last year about the deal.
The Israeli group operates from Tolemaida in Cundinamarca Department, 240 kilometers from the capital Bogota, where the Colombian army runs its "Lancero" counterinsurgency training course, with Colombian army instructors being assisted by US military personnel.....
I was wondering this morning if you were going to post that JB. :D
Diary secrets of Dutch woman fighting for FARC
http://news.scotsman.com/internation...?id=1460942007Quote:
COLOMBIAN forces have captured the intimate diary of a Dutch woman who joined the country's Marxist rebels, in which she gives a rare view of life with the guerrillas deep in the jungle.
In July, elite troops swept into the camp of a commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), known by the alias of Carlos Antonio Lozada.
He was wounded in the firefight and carried off by bodyguards, while women in the unit, who were bathing at the time, had to flee into the jungle in their underwear.
As the troops sifted through the camp, they came across two surprises. The first was Lozada's laptop computer, which held a treasure trove of intelligence, including confidential army plans of counter-guerrilla operations, revealing the extent of FARC infiltration into the military.
The second surprise was two battered notebooks, the journals of a guerrilla, written in Dutch.
...
IHT, 17 Sep 07: Mexican Drug Gang Attacks Government Intelligence Network
It appears their police anti-corruption drive isn't being too sucessful.....Quote:
....Natividad Gonzalez, governor of the northern state of Nuevo Leon, said federal intelligence officers were tipped off that alleged members of Mexico's Gulf drug cartel "wanted to kidnap two or three agents" prior to the attack last Tuesday in the state capital of Monterrey. Two officers were killed and two more wounded in the ensuing shootout.
Federal police rounded up about a dozen members of a family believed to work for the cartel in connection with the shootout. The clan, dubbed "The Pedraza Dynasty" by Mexican newspapers, may have learned of the agents' identities from local policemen, Gonzalez said.
Intelligence agents have been targeted for assassination before, but the attack showed that traffickers not only knew who the agents were but also wanted to take the heavily armed officers alive, Gonzalez said....
Quote:
“You can change the people and not change the institution,” said Ernesto López Portillo Vargas, executive director of the Institute for Security and Democracy, an independent group that studies police corruption issues. “This is the big risk.”
USIP, 25 Sep 07: New Hopes for Negotiated Solutions in Colombia
Complete 42 page paper at the link.Quote:
This working paper analyzes recent peacemaking efforts between the Colombian government and two of the remaining armed guerrilla groups—the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces-Popular Army (FARC-EP) and the National Liberation Army (ELN). It evaluates the demobilization process with the paramilitary umbrella organization known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), and current efforts to implement the Justice and Peace law that regulates the paramilitary process. The paper analyzes the roles of third-party actors—primarily the church, civil society more broadly, and the international community—in peace initiatives. In Colombia, these roles include pressuring for peace, setting the stage for peace accords, establishing spaces for dialogue and democratic discussion, creating the mechanisms for conflict resolution necessary for a sustainable peace, facilitating or mediating peace processes themselves, and implementing and monitoring peace agreements.
While in Colombia and elsewhere peace is usually negotiated between the government and one armed group at a time, this paper underscores that where there are multiple armed actors involved, it makes sense to approach peacemaking in a more comprehensive way. The paper underscores the need to be attentive to the ways that the dynamics within and between each set of armed actors impact the prospects for peace with other armed groups. The USIP conferences on which this paper is based for the first time brought together in Washington, D.C. participants in and analysts of current peace efforts with the AUC, FARC-EP, and ELN. This paper underscores the need to continue to put the experiences of each armed group into dialogue with each other and the need to anticipate the impact (and potential impact) that negotiations and agreements with one sector will have on the other groups and on the prospects for a sustainable and comprehensive peace....
ICG, 11 Oct 07: Columbia: Moving Forward with the ELN?
Quote:
....Due to its reduced military capability, many in Colombia believe the ELN is no longer a threat, will eventually disappear on its own, and hence the government is under no pressure to conclude the negotiations. This reasoning is flawed. While the ELN is more a “party in arms” than an insurgent army, it is not defeated. Insurgent groups rarely just go away. The ELN has shown a capacity to survive and revive after coming close to demise. In addition, a peace agreement would be highly beneficial, not only politically for Uribe but also for the ELN, which, however, must find answers to a number of serious questions.
Some of its fronts are in a more favourable situation than others. Some interact with other illegal armed groups, in particular the FARC, while others are at loggerheads with them; their financial solidity and grip on local communities differ a great deal. The movement risks implosion or fragmentation as well as the possibility that it could not fully implement a ceasefire, since its internal cohesion is weak. Since the death in 1998 of its leader, Spanish priest Manuel Pérez, Nicolas Rodríguez, alias “Gabino”, is responsible for political and military unity, but there are rifts within the COCE itself. Antonio Garcia is allegedly more hardline than Pablo Beltrán and Ramiro Vargas. The interests of Francisco Galán, who is not a COCE member and has spent a decade in prison, from where he has been working for a peace agreement, are not the same as those of the still active commanders.....
Man, I love the ICG. And how appropriate that I'm sitting here at my desk reading this report while sipping on some fine imported Colombian café. Many thanks, sir. I'm finding it hard to stay abreast of what's happening in Colombia while also devoting most of my attention to OIF (and my job, and LSAT studying, and exercise, and the opposite sex...)
CSIS, 12 Nov 07: Back From the Brink: Evaluating Progress in Columbia, 1999-2007
Quote:
....It is no secret that Colombia is beset by difficult problems. Illegal armed groups and powerful drug gangs, often working together, continue to challenge the rule of law in parts of the country. The presence of these violent elements fuels other problems: crime, human rights abuses, poverty, and a weakening of governance. Taken out of the context of Colombia’s history, these challenges might be seen as nearly insurmountable.
In fact, however, Colombia’s current situation represents a major improvement over what it had been only eight years ago. During the 1990s, a confluence of highly negative factors threatened to drag the country down. By 1999, Colombia’s stability was at stake, with guerrillas and paramilitaries threatening to overwhelm the weakened capabilities of the state, violence spiraling out of control, and the economy in free fall.
Colombia’s emergence from this grave crisis constitutes a success story. It is, however, a story that is not well known, despite the fact that billions of dollars in military and economic assistance from the United States helped bring Colombia “back from the brink.” Successful foreign policy initiatives normally have no shortage of executive branch or congressional leaders claiming authorship but, curiously, not in the case of Colombia. Despite strong bipartisan support for an emergency supplemental package for “Plan Colombia” approved during the Clinton administration in 2000 and vigorously continued during the Bush administration, assistance to Colombia, as well as approval of a trade promotion agreement with Colombia signed late last year, is now a topic of considerable debate.
This report by the CSIS Americas Program provides a timely and useful point of reference in understanding the difficult issues at stake in Colombia and the U.S.-Colombia relationship. It analyzes the factors that took Colombia to the verge of unraveling in the late 1990s and how the country began to make its way back from instability. Then the report evaluates the impressive progress made between 1999 and 2007 across a broad spectrum of difficult issues, as well as the thorny problems that persist.....
. . .I'm writing a research paper right now (or, perhaps, I should be writing) for my agricultural development class on counter-narcotics and development strategies in Colombia.
Most of the stuff I've seen from development groups is that they consider Plan Colombia a pretty big failure. The combined approach of alternative development and forcible eradication has alienated a lot of small farmers (whose marginalization over the last sixty years is the cause of the Colombian insurgency) and seriously undermined development. The guerillas are on the run, but coca production is not down, and the development people are even more wary than ever of working with the Colombians, and charge the US with putting too much pressure on Colombia to attain coca crop reduction targets, and too little emphasis on sustainable long term development. Simple eradication is not sustainable, and unsustainable "development" is really just relief. . .
Matt
Very long article in Rolling Stone. They definitely went for quantity over quality, but an interesting read nonetheless. From the end of the article:
Quote:
The drug war, in the end, has been undone in no small part by the sweeping and inflexible nature of its own metaphor. At the beginning, in the days of Escobar, the campaign was a war as seen from the situation room, a complicated assault that spanned multiple fronts, but one which had identifiable enemies and a goal. Today, the government's anti-drug effort resembles a war as seen from the trenches, an eternal slog, where victory seems not only unattainable but somehow beside the point. For the drug agents and veterans who busted Escobar, the last decade and a half have been a slow, agonizing history of defeat after defeat, the enemy shifting but never retreating. "You get frustrated," Joe Toft, a former DEA country attache in Colombia, tells me. "We've never had a true effort where the U.S. as a whole says, 'We're never going to crack this problem without a real demand-reduction program.' That's something that's just never happened."
A long read and of course focussed on just the USA. Lots to learn and beware of "special interests", lobbyists and easy solution salesmen. Are there lessons to be learnt beyond the USA and places like Colombia & Mexico? Afghanistan has been a thread on SWJ before.
The film 'Traffic' is a very graphic, if slightly dated similar account.
I'd also recommned (again) the book 'From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies and Competitive Adaptation' by Michael Kenny, Pub. Penn State Univ Press 2007.
davidbfpo
I think the best criminological exposition of Prof. David Kennedy's "pulling levers" approach is in this law review article at Harvard. The rolling stone article makes mention of Kennedy's ideas being the lastest, greatest thing in the war on drugs strategy, and I have seen the way law enforcement embraces it, although in my opinion, an i2 approach would be better than the GIS approach in pulling levers. However, what's probably most interesting is the poor way criminologists conceive of outcomes. Prof. Kennedy actually thinks that in a properly-advertised abstinence regime, offenders will not only get arrested less often, but will start turning themselves in.
Interesting intersection. Valparaiso University is next door.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedi...ck=1&cset=trueQuote:
GIOIA TAURO, ITALY -- Europe is fast overtaking the U.S. as the leading destination for the world's cocaine, and a single Italian mafia is largely responsible.
The 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate, a ruthless and mysterious network of 155 families born in the rough hills here in southern Italy's Calabria region, now dominates the European drug trade. By establishing direct ties with Colombian producers and building a multibillion-dollar empire that spans five continents, the syndicate has metamorphosed into one of the craftiest criminal gangs in the world, authorities say.
" 'Ndrangheta is king," said Sabas Pretelt de la Vega, a former Colombian interior minister who is his country's ambassador to Rome.
The 'Ndrangheta (pronounced en-DRAHN-geh-tah) peculiarly combines the modern skills of multinational-corporation high finance with a stubborn grip on archaic rural traditions. Some members live in garishly opulent villas outside Madrid and invest in bustling restaurants and hotels in Germany, whereas others, including key bosses, remain in the dreary, closed Calabrian mountain villages of their birth. It is a mafia of businessmen in Dolce & Gabbana, of sheepherders in scruffy woolens.
From the Jan-Feb 08 Military Review:
Threat Analysis: Organized Crime and Narco-Terrorism in Northern Mexico
Quote:
Organized crime syndicates are modern enemies of democracy that relentlessly engage in kidnapping and assassination of political figures, and traffic not only in addictive and lethal substances, but also increasingly in human beings. To create an environment conducive to success in their criminal interests, they engage in heinous acts intended to instill fear, promote corruption, and undermine democratic governance by undercutting confidence in government. They assassinate or intimidate political figures and pollute democratic processes through bribes and graft in cities along both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border. In the long term, such actions erode individual civil liberties in America and Mexico by undermining both governments’ abilities to maintain societies in which the full exercise of civil liberties is possible. This danger is ominously evident on the Mexican side of the border, where 86 percent of those responding to a poll in Mexico City in 2004 said they would support government restrictions of their civil rights in order to dismantle organized crime, and another 67 percent said militarizing the police force would be the only way to accomplish this. These views suggest that an extremely unhealthy sociopolitical environment is evolving at America’s very doorstep. We should see this not as a collateral issue associated with the War on Terrorism, but as a national security issue deserving of the same level of interest, concern, and resourcing as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This article provides an ethnographic analysis of narco-terrorism, narcocorruption, and human trafficking in the northern states of Mexico, and an overview of Mexican organized crime and its destabilizing effect on Mexico’s attempts to create a functioning, uncorrupt democracy.....
NYT, 22 Jan 08: Mexico Hits Drug Gangs With Full Fury of War
Quote:
These days, it is easy to form the impression that a war is going on in Mexico. Thousands of elite troops in battle gear stream toward border towns and snake through the streets in jeeps with .50-caliber machine guns mounted on top while fighter jets from the Mexican Navy fly reconnaissance missions overhead.
Gun battles between federal forces and drug-cartel members carrying rocket-propelled-grenade launchers have taken place over the past two weeks in border towns like Río Bravo and Tijuana, with deadly results.
Yet what is happening is less a war than a sustained federal intervention in states where for decades corrupt municipal police officers and drug gangs have worked together in relative peace, officials say. The federal forces are not only hunting cartel leaders, but also going after their crews of gunslingers, like Gulf Cartel guards known as the Zetas, who terrorize the towns they control.....
BBC, 23 Jan 08: Colombia's Campaign to Win Rebel Minds
Quote:
As the hostage crisis continues in Colombia, the government is stepping up its efforts to bring another group of people back from the country's jungles: the guerrillas themselves.
New figures show that a record number of illegal fighters - nearly 3,200 - demobilised last year under a government scheme which offers immunity and benefits.
In the words of Colombia's deputy defence minister, Sergio Jaramillo, "Some countries have had amnesties for a few months, but Colombia is perhaps the only one with a permanently open hand."....
ISN Security Watch, 29 Jan 08: Violence on the US-Mexico Border
Quote:
Dozens of murders have resulted from battles between the Mexican security forces and armed criminals along the US-Mexico border since the beginning of this year. It is a spike in violence that has many in the US worried that gun fights may spill across the border, carrying all the reprisals that left a string of Mexican border towns without journalists, mayors, police chiefs and musicians in 2007.
In another bloody encounter for what has already been a violent year, on 7 January, a van full of gunmen ran a roadblock outside the border town of Reynosa, Mexico. Mexican soldiers and federal police chased the van to a small house across the street from the Reynosa police station. The gun battle began soon after. In the aftermath, 10 suspects were arrested and five policemen were dead. Along with the suspects, Mexican police seized three automatic rifles, an Uzi submachine gun, grenades and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
The US Border Patrol has not taken any extra precautions, but is keeping its agents in the field "abreast of the situation," according to Border Patrol spokesman Oscar Saldana.....
2008 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, 29 Feb 08
The 2008 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) is an annual report by the Department of State to Congress prepared in accordance with the Foreign Assistance Act. It describes the efforts of key countries to attack all aspects of the international drug trade in Calendar Year 2007.
Volume I: Drug and Chemical Control
Volume 2: Money Laundering and Financial Crimes
Interesting show on Showtime this month. Called American Drug War. Check local listings for local times. I watched it last night,it's 2 hours long....Tom Odom you should watch this....I think the producer must be related to you...he was very pro legalization. link to website http://www.americandrugwar.com/
I tried watching part of that and it was too much Michael Moore to stomach.
The "DEA Agent" with the camouflage wall hanging complete with an M16 reminded me of the MALL Ninja. Maybe he was real but he came across to me as a real A$$.
best
Tom
The DEA dude looks a lot like Cheech of Cheech and Chong fame to.
Slap
I watched it from beginning to end last night. That let me distinguish between the conspiracy theories and the actual thinking. I will say that when they got to thinking and analyzing what it means, the documentary actually made sense. You know what I think about all of this: a collosal waste of money, manpower, and time. The analysis linking it to the prison industry was quite relevant. I would say the points made concerning alchohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical industries lobbying against marijuana were also telling. I also accept the parallels between the emergence of large scale moonshine under Prohibition and crystal meth today. The US now has more folks in prison than any other country. The PRC is 2nd. the greatest point in the documentary was about the "addiction" of Washington DC power brokers to the money involved in all of this.
Best
Tom
Tom, l am getting soft in my old age. As you said it was kinda like Micheal Moore however once you get past that it does make some points. I have always said that there are 2 DEA's the one inside and the one outside of the USA which has such potential to be used as a convert agency that it needs some serious oversight. Also the part about legalizing the medical use of the products should have been done years ago. A pain killer is a pain killer whether you smoke it or take it as a pill. The people that make the millions off other people's personal misery are the people that should be in jail. Arresting people for using itaccomplishes nothing.
As has been brought up before buying the entire crop of poppies would have a lot of benefits, but the biggest opponent would be drug companies because such a large legal supply would put pressure on the price of legal pain medications which are unbelievable expensive. Never new how bad it was until I started being around hospitals. Helathcare is rationed largely on price despite what people may think.
The thing that originally annoyed me about the Rolling Stone piece was the lazy use of political commentary and stubby metaphors in place of actual analysis. Then I came across this piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Actually, we are. One of the points of the piece was the Head Fed in Atlanta clucking about how his "success" at drug interdiction is driving up crime. And whom, exactly, benefits from the fed's "success"? This is an analysis worth undertaking and the point that was completely missed by the Rolling Stone piece.Quote:
If law enforcement someday succeeds in breaking up established drug territories — the real sign of success from a metropolitan perspective — it could mean a similar spike in murders, as drug organizations vie for a larger market share.
"If the market here gets unstable down to the street, then the streets will get bloody," said Killorin, director of Atlanta High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force (HIDTA). "I don't think we're there yet."
I have believed for a long time now that the main transportation proces is by land, so I think the article makes a lot of sense from that stand point. Was a little shocked to see Forest Park mentioned, my father used to live about 4 miles from there. Like I said used to:wry:
Someone heard you, Slap!
Quote:
Coast Guard hunts drug-running semi-subs
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sophisticated submarine-like boats are the latest tool drug runners are using to bring cocaine north from Colombia, U.S. officials say.
Semi-submersible boats used to smuggle drugs are gaining in quality, the Coast Guard says.
1 of 2 Although the vessels were once viewed as a quirky sideshow in the drug war, they are becoming faster, more seaworthy, and capable of carrying bigger loads of drugs than earlier models, according to those charged with catching them.
"They tend to be one of a kind," U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen said. "They cost up to a million dollars to produce. Sometimes they are put together in pieces and then reassembled in other locations. They're very difficult to locate."
The boats are built in the Colombian jungle. They sail largely beneath the surface of the water but cannot submerge completely like a true submarine.
But they are the latest escalation of a tactical race between smugglers and the U.S. Coast Guard.
In the past three months the Coast Guard has learned of more semi-submersible vessels smuggling drugs than it did in the previous six years, when there were 23 cases, officials said.
Yep and you will see more of it. As border patrol intensifies they will move to unguarded coastlines that is why you have to secure the Border and the Coast and the Airspace at the same time or they will just adapt.
Guys, any recommendations on FARC reading...would like to get a little smarter on it.
thanks in advance!
I've always found the reports by the International Crisis Group to be very useful.
Linda Robinson of US News has written a number of articles about the FARC in cluding one where she had an interview with Raul Reyes (deceased).:D
Dr. Tom Marks has also done some stuff on the FARC insurgency with outstanding access to the govt side.
Hope this helps.
JohnT
Drug cartels operate training camps near Texas border just inside Mexico, By ALFREDO CORCHADO. The Dallas Morning News, March 30, 2008.
Quote:
Mexican drug cartels have conducted military-style training camps in at least six such locations in northern Tamaulipas and Nuevo León states, some within a few miles of the Texas border, according to U.S. and Mexican authorities and the printed testimony of five protected witnesses who were trained in the camps.
The camps near the Texas border and at other locations in Mexico are used to train cartel recruits – ranging from Mexican army deserters to American teenagers – who then carry out killings and other cartel assignments on both sides of the border, authorities say.
Paying Through the Nose: Why cocaine traffickers praise the Euro, by Ryan Grim. Mother Jones, March 19, 2008.
The 500 Euro banknote must also make the Euro pretty attractive.Quote:
And it says it has spied one: The cost of pure coke rose 44 percent in the United States between January and September 2007. The dea credits its own efforts, of course, along with increased Mexican and Colombian cooperation, for the downturn in supply it says caused the price hike.
But the agency omits an important factor: the plummeting value of the dollar, especially as compared to the soaring euro. Even as the dea has made it more bothersome to bring coke into the United States, the sliding dollar has made importing it less profitable. Both the UN and dea note that a kilo of coke brings in two times as much in Europe as it does in America.
As with any commodity, producers look to maximize earnings by selling in markets with the strongest currencies. But unlike oil, for instance, the value of which is measured in dollars, the cocaine market is more fluid. "The euro has become the preferred currency for drug traffickers," declared then-dea administrator Karen Tandy at an anti-drug conference last May. "We're seeing a glut of euro notes throughout South America," she said, adding that "9 of 10 travelers who carried the $1.7 billion euros that came into the United States during 2005 did not come from Europe...They came from Latin America."
The following link will take you to a WashPost story about how Colombian troops are killing civilians and dressing them up as insurgents. The purported reason is that insurgent kills can get you benefits...if true, this is a bad way to conduct COIN...obviously.
Colombian Troops Kill Farmers, Pass Off Bodies as Rebels'
By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 30, 2008; A12
Quote:
....under intense pressure from Colombian military commanders to register combat kills, the army has in recent years also increasingly been killing poor farmers and passing them off as rebels slain in combat, government officials and human rights groups say. The tactic has touched off a fierce debate in the Defense Ministry between tradition-bound generals who favor an aggressive campaign that centers on body counts and reformers who say the army needs to develop other yardsticks to measure battlefield success.
The killings, carried out by combat units under the orders of regional commanders, have always been a problem in the shadowy, 44-year-old conflict here -- one that pits the army against a peasant-based rebel movement.
But with the recent demobilization of thousands of paramilitary fighters, many of whom operated death squads to wipe out rebels, army killings of civilians have grown markedly since 2004, according to rights groups, U.N. investigators and the government's internal affairs agency. The spike has come during a military buildup that has seen the armed forces nearly double to 270,000 members in the last six years, becoming the second-largest military in Latin America......
Suggestion, rather than cut and paste the entire article, what we normally do is post the link and just a paragraph or two as an excerpt, saves bandwidth. You can edit to do that.
the Columbians haven't heard of My Lai.
Poor form that!
From the April 19, 2008 edition of the LA Times
Quote:
MEXICO CITY -- Mexicans are spending more on bribes than they were just a few years ago.
They paid the equivalent of about $2.6 billion in bribes last year, according to the nonprofit group Transparency Mexico. That's 42% more than two years earlier and an average of more than $24 for each of the country's 105 million people. Much of the money went to have garbage collected, parking tickets fixed or to get parking spots from the legions of informal attendants who block spaces, then charge for them.
Hmm...The peso has strengthened against the dollar in the past 2 years. What effect would that have on the cost of graft? The Freakonomics guys should look into it.
Meanwhile the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas appear to be on a membership drive:
Official says cartel hit men posted 'help wanted' sign on border, Associated Press - April 14, 2008.
I imagine they will be posting in Craigslist's Help Wanted section next.Quote:
A giant banner hung across a thoroughfare appeared over the weekend in Nuevo Laredo and read: "Operative group 'The Zetas' wants you, soldier or ex-soldier. We offer a good salary, food and benefits for your family. Don't suffer anymore mistreatment and don't go hungry."
McMafia: Crime without frontiers, By Misha Glenny
Gangsters, profiteers, poisoners and pimps are ripping through global society. A grim new study concludes that peace brings crime to nations, Reviewed by Cal McCrystal. The Independent, 6 April 2008.
Quote:
Their power and occasional resemblance to (or even consanguinity with) some western capitalists have left old international institutions "bewildered", Glenny says of Eastern European crime syndicates. "These men (and occasionally women) understood instinctively that rising living standards in the West, increased trade and migration flows, and the greatly reduced ability of many governments to police their countries combined to form a gold mine." A new Silk Route – "a multi-lane criminal highway" – now links the "thick belt of instability" in the Balkans with Central Asia, China and Pakistan, permitting the swift and easy transfer of people, narcotics, cash for laundering, and other contraband to Western Europe and the United States.
...
"Virtually overnight," Glenny argues, a UN Security Council vote for sanctions against Belgrade in 1992 "created a pan-Balkan mafia of immense power, reach, creativity and venality." Greece, which believed the embargo to be unjust, helped the gangs break it.
emphasis mineQuote:
And so, grimly, to Dubai, Mumbai, the "gaudy opulence" of Nigeria's kleptocracy, South Africa's billion-dollar car thefts, Canada's marijuana trade, the paramilitary gangsters of Colombia, the bent nouveaux riches of China, the notorious yakuza of Japan – all seemingly, in our small, increasingly tightly bound world, tentacles of a single monster.
This is a well-sustained narrative dealing seamlessly, if dismayingly, with the tricks, motives and rewards of the new global underworld and the (for the most part) impotence of governments in tackling it successfully. Indeed, Glenny tells us how President Bill Clinton ordered the Italian authorities to back away from prosecuting Montenegro's young president, Milo Djukanovic, for organising a $20 million-a-year cigarette smuggling racket, because Washington needed him in its battle against Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic.
No wonder, then, that the world's "shadow economy" now accounts for between 15 and 20 per cent of global turnover, or that most countries have their own silnice hanby, the "Road of Shame" linking Dresden and Prague on which prostitutes and pimps openly ply their trade for tourists, truckers and toerag-toffs.