Drugs & US Law Enforcement (2006-2017)

[sgmgrumpy]

And then this happens


Colombia rebels kidnap local police commander

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

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.

[Jedburgh]

ISN Security Watch, 3 Sep 07: Colombia, Israel and Rogue Mercenaries

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.....

[SWJED]

10 May Washington Post commentary - How to Lose an Ally by Robert Novak.

Colombia's president, Alvaro Uribe, returned to Bogota this week in a state of shock. His three-day visit to Capitol Hill to win over Democrats in Congress was described by one American supporter as "catastrophic." Colombian sources said Uribe was stunned by the ferocity of his Democratic opponents, and Vice President Francisco Santos publicly talked about cutting U.S.-Colombian ties.

Uribe got nothing from his meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders. Military aid remains stalled, overall assistance is reduced, and the vital U.S.-Colombian trade bill looks dead. Uribe is the first Colombian president to crack down on his country's corrupt army officer hierarchy and to assault both right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing guerrillas, but last week he confronted Democrats wedded to outdated claims of civil rights abuses and rigidly protectionist dogma.

This is remarkable U.S. treatment for a rare friend in South America, where Venezuela's leftist dictator, Hugo Chavez, can only exult in Uribe's embarrassment as he builds an anti-American bloc of nations. A former congressional staffer, who in 1999 helped write Plan Colombia to combat narco-guerrillas, told me: "President Uribe may be the odd man out, and that's no way to treat our best ally in South America."...

[tequila]

Uribe is the first Colombian president to crack down on his country's corrupt army officer hierarchy and to assault both right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing guerrillas

Amnesty and "demobilization" (light or nonexistent prison sentences) for the paramilitaries is an interesting way to define "assault." Novak also omits the fact that the AUC funds itself almost exclusively through drug trafficking to the United States --- that is, they are the problem, at least as much as the FARC, in terms of U.S. interests in Colombia.

That the paramilitaries/narcotraffickers enjoy widespread connections through Colombia's security hierarchy and with President Uribe's administration, up to (at least) President Uribe's brother, is worth some concern. Uribe remains, for instance, unwilling to sanction extradition of any of his paramilitary/narcotrafficker allies to the U.S. You'd think that a free trade deal would be worth sacrificing one or two drug kingpins.

[120mm]

Or, alternatively, we could be seeing a return to the Jimmy Carter-era "punish your friends and reward your enemies" form of foreign relations.

We've been hearing for years how much more sophisticated and astute the Democratic foreign relations would be, if we only gave them the chance. Without any concrete details of what they WOULD do, of course. It will be interesting to see, going forward, how foreign policy develops.

It seems that Bush & Co. aren't the only Idealogues in D.C....

[tequila]

Who says President Uribe is a friend given his refusal to do anything about narcotrafficking? Because he can give us a verbal massage for his $5 billion while cocaine purity increases and prices drop?

Some results would be nice for $5 billion.

[NDD]

Amnesty and "demobilization" (light or nonexistent prison sentences) for the paramilitaries is an interesting way to define "assault." Novak also omits the fact that the AUC funds itself almost exclusively through drug trafficking to the United States --- that is, they are the problem, at least as much as the FARC, in terms of U.S. interests in Colombia.

That the paramilitaries/narcotraffickers enjoy widespread connections through Colombia's security hierarchy and with President Uribe's administration, up to (at least) President Uribe's brother, is worth some concern. Uribe remains, for instance, unwilling to sanction extradition of any of his paramilitary/narcotrafficker allies to the U.S. You'd think that a free trade deal would be worth sacrificing one or two drug kingpins.

You've never been to Colombia have you.

[NDD]

Perhaps someone should remind the new Congress that Plan Colombia is a Clinton initiative. And that Colombia is not in the ME.

The problem could be they are so focused on getting the POTUS, they can't find Colombia on a map.

[SWJED]

8 July Washington Post - Calderón's Offensive Against Drug Cartels by Manuel Roig-Franzia.

... 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...

[Jedburgh]

IHT, 17 Sep 07: Mexican Drug Gang Attacks Government Intelligence Network

....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....

It appears their police anti-corruption drive isn't being too sucessful.....

“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.”

[Jedburgh]

From the Jan-Feb 08 Military Review:

Threat Analysis: Organized Crime and Narco-Terrorism in Northern Mexico

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.....

[Jedburgh]

NYT, 22 Jan 08: Mexico Hits Drug Gangs With Full Fury of War

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.....

[SWJED]

26 July Washington Post - Report Cites Rebels' Wide Use of Mines In Colombia by Juan Forero.

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...

[Sarajevo071]

Diary secrets of Dutch woman fighting for FARC

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.
...

http://news.scotsman.com/internation...?id=1460942007

[tulanealum]

Guys, any recommendations on FARC reading...would like to get a little smarter on it.

thanks in advance!

[carl]

I've always found the reports by the International Crisis Group to be very useful.

[John T. Fishel]

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).

Dr. Tom Marks has also done some stuff on the FARC insurgency with outstanding access to the govt side.

Hope this helps.

JohnT

[tulanealum]

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

....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......

[Ken White]

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.

[Steve Blair]

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.

It also avoids nasty copyright issues....