Latin American Drugs & links

[davidbfpo]

hat tip to KoW for this pointer, if a little surprising! David Ucko writes:

Over the last month or so, al-Jazeera have featured a series of reports and on the role of the drugs trade in the Americas. For those interested in the relation between drugs, crime and political instability, the on-the-ground reporting and close access to growers, smugglers and ordinary residents affected by the drugs trade all make for interesting and disconcerting viewing. The series as a whole is called Drugs Central and you can find all of the relevant material and videos here. I would in particular recommend scrolling to the bottom of the page, where they have for some reason hidden all of the truly good stuff: 30-minute episodes of Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines programme, providing in-depth investigations of particular problems relating to the drugs trade.

Nearing the end:

All of the videos in this series are interesting and well worth watching, but the longer programmes are probably the most valuable parts of the series. The interviews are also interesting: witness the brutally honest and pragmatic suggestion by Jorge Castaneda, the former foreign minister of Mexico, that all drugs be legalised so as to undercut the power of the gangs that profit from their control over the market.

Link to KoW:http://kingsofwar.org.uk/2011/08/dru...-war-on-drugs/

There are numerous threads on the drugs issue and their regional, international impact. Maybe time for some merging?

[Bill Moore]

http://www.latintelligence.com/2011/...ting-violence/

Latin America has the ignominious distinction of being one of most violent regions in world. Though not known for its wars or even (at least violent) border disputes, homicide rates average nearly 20 per 100,000 people. Central and South America are among the most murderous regions worldwide, behind only Southern Africa. Six of the ten most violent nations in the world are in Latin America, with Honduras and El Salvador claiming the number one and two spots. The biggest headline-grabber this last year has been Mexico, which counted some 12,000 deaths in 2011 and over 40,000 drug related homicides since the start of President Calderns term (non-official estimates put these numbers even higher). Though Mexico is not the most violent in per capita terms, this escalation has deeply impacted the country.

Highlights are mine.

[ganulv]

Six of the ten most violent nations in the world are in Latin America, with Honduras and El Salvador claiming the number one and two spots.

Highlights are mine.

I remember first learning about Salvadoran involvement in human trafficking from Central America to the States while at the Guatemalan/Chiapan border in 1995. Last winter I ate at a place in Woodbridge which might just have been a Mara Salvatrucha laundry. It’s a growth industry, I guess.

[tequila]

Homicides in El Salvador Drop, and Questions Arise

MEXICO CITY — Suddenly, killings have plummeted in El Salvador, one of the most violent countries in Central America and a source of growing worry over gangs and organized crime.

But the possibility that the reduction in violence resulted from a secret deal between the government and gang leaders to halt killings in exchange for better prison conditions has rattled El Salvador’s political establishment and led to various explanations from government leaders.

In countries racked by violence, including Mexico, the notion of negotiating with criminals to curtail violence fills blogs and cocktail chatter but is usually dismissed by government officials.

But a Salvadoran government official and an intelligence agent with knowledge of the discussions, both of whom object to such pacts, said in telephone interviews that a deal was widely discussed by security and intelligence officials in the weeks before gang leaders were moved to less-restrictive prisons.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from their bosses or the gangs, said a high-ranking colonel — part of a new team of former military officers promising to take on crime — put the idea in motion shortly after arriving at the Public Security and Justice Ministry in November, with the goal of reducing homicides by 30 percent and reaping political gains.

An intelligence report prepared in February and provided by the government official asserts that top members of the ministry “offered, if it is necessary, to make deals or negotiate with subjects who have power inside organized crime structures to reduce homicides.”

There is no dispute that, in an unprecedented move, 30 of the top leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 criminal gangs were transferred on March 8 and 9 from a maximum-security prison, where many had been for over a decade, to prisons with perks including family visits.

In the ensuing days, killings in El Salvador dropped to five a day, and sometimes even fewer, from the typical 14. All told, homicides nationwide dropped to 186 in the first 21 days of March from 411 in January and 402 in February ...

[SWJ Blog]

President Peña Nieto and Mexico’s Ongoing War on Drugs

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[SWJ Blog]

Mexican Cartel Smuggling Cocaine into Hong Kong Amid Booming Demand for Drugs

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[SWJED]

Maras in Central America
National Security Implications of Gang Activity South of the Border

By COL Terry Saltsman and LTC Ben Welch III, Small Wars Journal

The strategic nature of conflict and violence, in addition to the definition of insurgent, is in a state of rapid change in both the defense and intelligence community. In the post September 11, 2001 world the United States is compelled to take a 360 degree view of the world in its efforts to “observe, orient, decide and act” against potential threats to vital national interests.

The challenge facing today’s defense establishment is an asymmetrical enemy that most Western militaries are ill equipped to challenge and defeat in a manner that is acceptable to the civilian population. If Iraq has taught us anything it is that even the best publicly supported military plan can turn sour, and that support can wane, if the operation morphs into a perceived tar pit. It is imperative that the public’s discernment of the events that will lead to ultimate victory be molded in an honest and realistic manner. This is increasingly essential in our pursuit of terrorists.

In the months following the unthinkable acts of 9/11, many terrorism experts specializing in violent conflict began to ponder the expanded dimensions of the new face of terror as it might apply toward the United States. Soon after, when President Bush introduced the American public to the “War Against Terrorism,” many of these same individuals turned their attention on the obvious avenues of Middle Eastern and Islamic Fundamentalist centric terrorism.

In the past several years the United States has pursued the “War Against Terrorism” on a number of fronts. In one, fighting in a conventional manner, territory has been the central issue with military forces seeking and then taking control of entire countries (Afghanistan and Iraq). In another scenario, Special Operation cells have worked with the military forces of concerned regimes in order to restrict the use of territory by terrorists seeking to establish training camps in countries such as Algeria and Mali.

With so many issues confronting the National Security interests of the United States it is easy to overlook one particular unprotected, and often ignored, flank – the maras (gangs) of Latin America...

[Jedburgh]

The authors have produced an unfocused, surface treatment of an important issue. The piece adds nothing to the discussion beyond what is already found in existing articles such as Are the Maras Overwhelming Governments in Central America? (Nov-Dec 06 Military Review) and The Maras: A Menace to the Americas (Jul-Aug 07 Military Review).

The first four paragraphs, where they are supposedly setting the stage for their presentation of the Mara issue, wastes space discussing our other security efforts world-wide in an attempt to provide substance to the false premise that the Mara issue is overlooked by our government. There are a couple of federal agencies in particular, not to mention certain elements within the IC, that may take issue with that premise. And a recent surge in legislation focused on the issue – as delineated in a recent CRS Report, also clearly demonstrate that the situation has got the attention of the government in general. The failure of the authors to take these existing and planned measures into consideration and to put them in critical context, demonstrating their shortcomings and/or failure to address certain aspects of the problem, shows that they have not done their homework. (or purposefully ignored such information so as not to disturb a pre-determined premise for the paper)

In the section titled Background, their elaboration on the origins and background of the Maras is much weaker than that presented in the above two articles. In a piddling quibble, I didn’t care for the use of the term “mara” in the statement, In the United States maras can be viewed as the result of….. Here, they are supposedly looking at the gang issue in general, and they should just use the term “gang” – to me, “maras” connotes Hispanic gangs specifically. By using maras in that manner at the outset, they forego an opportunity to effectively put the Hispanic gangs in the context of broader US gang culture.

The authors spend quite a bit of space discussing economic disparities, but never get into specific context for the three countries most under threat: El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Getting to my charge of “unfocused” – they also discuss the economic aspect in both Background and Factors Contributing to the Mara Problem, without really providing any substantive context specific to either section. The ’06 USAID gang assessment, which does a very good job of putting the economic part of the problem in context, isn’t even cited by the authors. Surprising, since this is one doc that pops up in any simple google search on Central American gangs.

General statements and dated statistics are overly used throughout the piece – more current stats are readily available open-source; yet another indicator of the authors' failure to do their homework.

In The Emerging Mara-Terrorism Nexus and Political Solution the article veers all over the place in this section's few short paragraphs without making a cogent point, and talks more about communist insurgencies in South America than substantive links between the Maras and terrorism. And at the end, the final paragraph is vague and fuzzy, not providing a focused conclusion nor offering even the outline of a political solution as in the section title. The closest the authors come to recommending a COA is in the last paragraph on page 6 of the 10 page paper, in the section on Factors Contributing to the Mara Problem. That section is also where they've put all their conjecture and assumption about the Mara-terrorism nexus.

Poorly researched, poorly written, poorly structured.

[bourbon]

Panama could become next narco battleground, by Chris Kraul. Los Angeles Times, May 23, 2009.

FARC insurgents are increasingly crossing the border from Colombia. Authorities fear that they will spread the drug violence that has convulsed parts of Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.

Panamanian and U.S. officials say it's no coincidence that drug-related violence has risen in tandem with the more frequent sightings of the guerrillas, whom the State Department labels drug traffickers and terrorists.

U.S. counter-narcotics officials believe that the FARC and other Colombian traffickers are shipping more drugs from Colombia overland across Panama to avoid tighter control of Pacific and Caribbean coastal waterways by the Panamanian and U.S. naval forces.

All this has Panamanian and U.S. officials concerned that Panama could become the next battleground in narco-wars that have convulsed parts of Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.

[SWJ Blog]

The Story of an American Military Advisor and Colombian Drug War

Entry Excerpt:

Book Announcement: East of the Orteguaza: The Story of an American Military Advisor and Colombian Drug War by Victor M. Roselló, Colonel, USA, Ret. Also available as a Kindle edition and discussed on Facebook.

As stated in the subtitle, East of the Orteguaza is the story of an American military advisor and the Colombian drug war. The book’s title is a geographic reference to an actual place in time…a military base that was at the center of the drug war, deep inside the jungles of southern Colombia…and a place where the author lived and worked.

Tres Esquinas is the name of this military base. In Spanish it means three corners, or the junction where two rivers, the Orteguaza and the Caquetá flow together to create one main river. The Río Orteguaza is a tributary of the Río Caquetá and it runs parallel and west of the base...hence, the title, East of the Orteguaza. Orteguaza is believed to be one of many names derived from the native indigenous groups of this Amazonian region, such as the Tukano, Koreguaje, or Huitoto. Historical research reveals that in 1635, Franciscan missionaries may have been the first to Hispanicize the name Orteguaza from the name of the Oyoguaja tribe of the Tukano Family. Still another conjecture is that Orteguaza originated from the native indigenous word Ocoguaje, which literally means “people of the water.”

This is a story steeped in fact and inspired by true events as experienced by the author while assigned to a counterdrug base near the Ecuadoran/Peruvian border in the drug infested Putumayo and Caquetá region of southern Colombia.

More importantly, this is the story of a quiet war; a war so quiet that it rarely catches the attention of the news media….despite the presence of hundreds of US military advisors in Colombia. It focuses on the many varied facets of the US military advisory mission in the jungles, valleys, plains, and mountainous regions of Colombia in support of the Colombian Armed Forces…and their quiet war.

About the Author: Victor M. Roselló is a retired US Army Colonel, intelligence officer, and Latin America Foreign Area Officer. During his 30 year career he served as a military advisor to the Salvadoran and Colombian Armed Forces and combat parachuted into Panama with the 82nd Airborne Division during the 1989 invasion. An Army Ranger and Master Parachutist, he graduated from the US Army Command and General Staff College, School of Advanced Military Studies, and the US Army War College. He has a Master of Arts degree in Latin American and Caribbean Area Studies from the University of Chicago.

Purchase East of the Orteguaza: The Story of an American Military Advisor and Colombian Drug War at Amazon.



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[SWJ Blog]

OAS: Drug Cartels Threaten Latin American Democracy

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[SWJ Blog]

From Drug Wars to Criminal Insurgency

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[SWJ Blog]

Latin American Countries Pursue Alternatives to US Drug War

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[AdamG]

El Salvador holds its breath after day without murders

Scepticism in barrios, where residents say people are still disappearing despite truce between powerful gangs

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...ers-gang-truce

[SWJ Blog]

Lessons of Iraq Help U.S. Fight a Drug War in Honduras

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[davidbfpo]

An article from 'Open Security' which covers more than El Salvador, notably Mexico and looks at the low profile, tentative success of the state talking to gangs - with the key features being better conditions for those in jail (as in Spain, Italy and the UK IIRC) and a wise retired soldier.

It opens with:

Talk of a pact with criminals is beyond the pale in Mexico’s presidential election campaign. But the tentative success of a deal with gang leaders in one of Central America’s most violent countries suggests the time may have come to explore a new style of negotiations aimed at reducing appalling levels of violence.

A month later, for the first time in years, the country recorded a day without a violent death; the official hope is now that the murder rate will fall in 2012 by 50 percent. The gangs have even agreed to halt forced recruitment of young people.

Citing Interior Minister David Munguía Payés, a retired general:

My hope is that they [the gangs] don’t commit serious crimes, like they are committing at the moment, because in reality the gangs aren’t going to disappear in the next 15 or 20 years. You will die, I will die, and still there will be gangs here in El Salvador. At best they just won’t be as violent as they are now.

Link:http://www.opendemocracy.net/ivan-br...als-with-devil

Brave men, maybe women too, on both sides to do this. Less violence is essential for public safety and civic life.

[davidbfpo]

There are several threads on this problem, so I have created this thread - as the IISS Strategic Comment covers several countries. It opens with:

Central America is the world’s latest drugs hot-spot: up to 90% of the South American cocaine bound for the US now transits the region, most of it passing through the so-called 'northern triangle' of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

(Ends with)The countries of the northern triangle face a complicated crisis, requiring them to act on multiple fronts, improving the justice system and governance as well as security forces. Ultimately, they cannot effectively confront one of the most severe security crises in the world with one of the lowest rates of state revenue. The recent tax reforms in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are likely to have more impact on fiscal deficits than on security. Insufficient external help and deep institutional fragilities mean that more ambitious tax reforms offer these countries the best chance to improve security.

Link:http://www.iiss.org/publications/str...he-drug-gangs/

Curiously the new Mexican President has mooted legalisation, see Post 342:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...t=5370&page=18

[AdamG]

The Duffleblog weighs in
http://www.duffelblog.com/2012/06/is...-war-on-drugs/

This new offensive, emerging just as the United States military winds down its conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and is moving to confront emerging threats, also showcases the nation’s new way of war: small-footprint missions with limited numbers of troops, partnerships with foreign military and police forces that take the lead in security operations, and narrowly defined goals, whether aimed at insurgents, terrorists or criminal groups that threaten American interests.

The effort draws on hard lessons learned from a decade of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq, where troops were moved from giant bases to outposts scattered across remote, hostile areas so they could face off against insurgents.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/wo...anted=all&_r=0


And just for reference sake, from 2010

http://www.talkingdrugs.org/us-speci...king-in-mexico

[davidbfpo]

Nothing on gangs in the region since 2012?Slightly taken aback here, so hat tip to WoTR for a long article (for them):http://warontherocks.com/2015/12/the...-can-imagine/?

[davidbfpo]

More of a backgrounder and the need for a plan to escape. It ends with:

The future of El Salvador depends not on new studies, strategies and funds. It depends on the ability to lay the foundations for a national accord that secures long-term commitments across the political spectrum for a plan that addresses the structural causes of violence, repairs the broken state apparatus and creates real opportunities for the country’s youth. Now, more than ever, Salvadoran society needs to shed its legacy as Latin America’s most socially and politically divided and begin to lay these foundations.

Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/democr...-salvador-busi