Agents of the Guatemalan Government and the US Drug Enforcement Agency arrested Rubén Arita Rivera, alleged to be part of a narco-network in Guatemala that articulated with the Valle Valle family network in Honduras.
Arita Rivera was arrested in the small community of Chamagua, near San Jose Zacapa, in Guatemala. This is a prime location for transshipment of drugs from Honduras, through Guatemala, to El Salvador, one of the known routes of the Cartel del Pacifico (formerly the Sinaloa Cartel), allegedly managed by the Lorenzano family in Guatemala.
It's an ideal location to intercept drug shipments going through the Honduras - Guatemala border from blind crossings at La Florida (where the Valle Valle family ranch was located) and El Paraiso, as well as shipments going through the border crossings of Copan Ruinas and Ocotepeque. From there the drugs could be shipped northward to Mexico, or southwesterly into El Salvador.
But Arita Rivera isn't accused of running drugs, just being a money courier. Guatemala began investigating Arita Rivera in 2014 when they captured one of his couriers, Flavio Dimas Rojas, transporting a large sum of currency supposedly belonging to Arita Rivera. Guatemala alleges that Arita Rivera regularly ran drug money from Chiquimula in eastern Guatemala to Huehuetenango, along the border near Comitan, Mexico.
Arita Rivera has a US drug running conviction. In March, 2008, he accepted delivery of a package in Spring Valley, NY that contained more than 500 grams (slightly over a pound) of cocaine. He was charged with conspiracy with unnamed others to violate the US narcotics laws, and with possession with intent to distribute the cocaine. On January 12, 2009 he was sentenced to be imprisoned for 37 months and fined $100.00 (US 7:08-cr-00571-SCR). He was to serve 3 years probation after he served his sentence, and if he left the country or was deported, was not to re-enter the US without permission of the US Attorney. If he had remained in the US he would just be completing his probation this coming June.
Instead, today he was arrested in Guatemala with the participation of the US DEA.
Showing posts with label DEA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DEA. Show all posts
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Operation Neptune Leaked
When Honduran authorities announced they had taken down over $800 million belonging to Los Cachiros, a drug trafficking organization in Honduras, in conjunction with DEA operatives as part of "Operation Neptune", there was one problem: Los Cachiros knew the government was coming after them. More than a month before the raids they had disposed of most of their liquid assets.
Operation Neptune was the Honduran name for the effort to seize assets identified as belonging to Los Cachiros in Honduras. In the several days of raids, the operation reportedly seized 64 bank accounts, real estate, businesses, and cars-- and a private zoo and eco-park.
Now we find that someone with knowledge of the planned seizure tipped off Los Cachiros at least a month before the raid, according to the director of the Oficina Administradora de Bienes Incautados (OABI), Humberto Palacios Moya, who told the press:
Palacios Moya says the leak wasn't from the police or the anti-narcotics unit because they didn't know about the raid that far in advance. He added
The identity of that "other committee", that La Tribuna called a "Committee of Toads" in a subheadline, may be unclear, but the implication is not: there is an internal leak in the Honduran government that helped Los Cachiros evade most of the financial losses intended by Operation Neptune.
Something similar happened with the attempts to seize the assets of Chepe Handel on April 9th. Somehow it took the Honduran authorities a week from the time the US Treasury added him to the list of drug kingpins, to their attempts to seize his assets. In the meantime all the related bank accounts were cleaned out, and houses emptied of belongings, and the family "disappeared", all done in that week between the US Treasury announcement and the Honduran police operation.
Once warned, Los Cachiros reportedly cleaned out bank accounts, removed all the commercial stock from stores, cleaned out their possessions from the houses, and sold off heavy machinery belonging to the construction and mining companies later seized. They sold off all the cattle in their ranching operation. They removed all the business records that would have allowed tracing their suppliers and customers.
They even tipped off a man renting one of the houses that he needed to find a new place to rent because the government was going to seize it.
They couldn't sell the real estate without tipping off the government that they knew of Operation Neptune, so significant, valuable assets were seized. The OABI has not put a final value on the assets seized, and is still making an inventory.
What is clear is that the cash is gone, and that much of the value beyond the real estate was liquidated before the government seized properties. Palacios Moya put the value of the real estate at around $64 million dollars.
So Operation Neptune leaked about $736 million. But don't expect any government press releases owning up to the mistake.
Operation Neptune was the Honduran name for the effort to seize assets identified as belonging to Los Cachiros in Honduras. In the several days of raids, the operation reportedly seized 64 bank accounts, real estate, businesses, and cars-- and a private zoo and eco-park.
Now we find that someone with knowledge of the planned seizure tipped off Los Cachiros at least a month before the raid, according to the director of the Oficina Administradora de Bienes Incautados (OABI), Humberto Palacios Moya, who told the press:
"They leaked information about Operation Neptune... with at least a month's notice... There was a leak of information, what that means is that the investigative entities of the State did not have... it's what is said all the time, that they are penetrated."
Palacios Moya says the leak wasn't from the police or the anti-narcotics unit because they didn't know about the raid that far in advance. He added
"In my view, it wasn't the Dirección de Lucha, nor the Dirección Nacional de Investigación Criminal, nor the Police, but rather another type of committee that is being formed, neither is it the TIGRES, nor the others (Policía Militar)".
The identity of that "other committee", that La Tribuna called a "Committee of Toads" in a subheadline, may be unclear, but the implication is not: there is an internal leak in the Honduran government that helped Los Cachiros evade most of the financial losses intended by Operation Neptune.
Something similar happened with the attempts to seize the assets of Chepe Handel on April 9th. Somehow it took the Honduran authorities a week from the time the US Treasury added him to the list of drug kingpins, to their attempts to seize his assets. In the meantime all the related bank accounts were cleaned out, and houses emptied of belongings, and the family "disappeared", all done in that week between the US Treasury announcement and the Honduran police operation.
Once warned, Los Cachiros reportedly cleaned out bank accounts, removed all the commercial stock from stores, cleaned out their possessions from the houses, and sold off heavy machinery belonging to the construction and mining companies later seized. They sold off all the cattle in their ranching operation. They removed all the business records that would have allowed tracing their suppliers and customers.
They even tipped off a man renting one of the houses that he needed to find a new place to rent because the government was going to seize it.
They couldn't sell the real estate without tipping off the government that they knew of Operation Neptune, so significant, valuable assets were seized. The OABI has not put a final value on the assets seized, and is still making an inventory.
What is clear is that the cash is gone, and that much of the value beyond the real estate was liquidated before the government seized properties. Palacios Moya put the value of the real estate at around $64 million dollars.
So Operation Neptune leaked about $736 million. But don't expect any government press releases owning up to the mistake.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Command Change in Honduras: US Role?
Did the United States force the removal of the Honduran Air Force Commander?
On September 1, 2012, the then-current head of the Honduran Air Force, Colonel Luis (or Ruiz) Pastor Landa stepped down as head of the Air Force, turning over his command to Colonel Miguel Palacios.
At the ceremony, Armed Forces Chief General Rene Osorio Canales lavishly praised Pastor Landa, and later told Radio Globo:
What did Osorio Canales mean by this?
On June 13, 2012, the Honduran Air Force shot down an alleged civilian drug plane, killing the two crew members. One of the crew members, the Honduran press says, was a DEA agent who had infiltrated the drug cartel. This was not revealed to the press at the time.
Shooting down suspected drug planes is controversial, on its face, an illegal act in violation of paragraph 3bis of International Civil Aviation Organization's (ICAO) Convention on International Civil Aviation.
This is not to say there is universal agreement as to the meaning of paragraph 3bis. As we wrote last April, the Convention says:
It establishes that civil aviation aircraft are supposed to obey orders from military aircraft. The Convention, however, recognizes a nation's sovereignty over its airspace, a loophole that in the past has been used by some nations to justify the downing of civilian aircraft.
The Honduran military, since last spring, has been vocally in favor of shooting down drug planes, though at the same time they claim not to be capable of doing so without the purchase of new aircraft.
General Rene Osorio Canales, back in April, called shooting down civilian airplanes suspect of drug trafficking, "more effective than legalizing drugs" for combating the drug cartels. In fact, the Honduran military itself advocated for shooting down civilian aircraft suspected of engaging in drug trafficking back in March, 2012 when they supported Juan Orlando Hernandez, president of Congress, in his call for such a procedure.
So why is General Osorio Canales unhappy?
It seems, based on the evidence at hand, that the head of the US Southern Command, General Douglas Fraser, met with Porfirio Lobo Sosa on August 24, 2012 in Honduras. Ambassador Lisa Kubiske also was at the meeting. Based on a letter from the Defense Minister, Marlon Pascua, translated below, General Fraser expressed his unhappiness with the current Honduran policy (unacknowledged) of shooting down civilian aircraft suspected of drug running; and objected to Honduras compromising an ongoing investigation of the DEA. As Porfirio Lobo Sosa stated at the time, Fraser
Air Force Colonel José San Martin F. wrote an editorial in La Tribuna published on September 2 calling for a rewrite of paragraph 3 bis of the OACI Convention. Colonel San Martin F. was frustrated by the Honduran Air Force's inability to respond in 2009 when a plane carrying deposed President Manuel Zelaya was trying to land in Tegucigalpa. Paragraph 3bis, Colonel San Martin F. writes,
La Tribuna published a letter from Secretary of Defense, Marlon Pascua to his Foreign Minister, Arturo Corrales the same day stating:
The letter is signed Marlon Pascua Cerrato and dated August 24, 2012.
The letter from Pascua seems pretty clear. The US Southern Command "requested" a change in the command structure of the Honduran Air Force in General Fraser's meeting with Porfirio Lobo Sosa, and Corrales is being told of the results of the meeting, what Lobo Sosa will order as civilian commander of the Honduran Armed Forces. Its also clear that General Osorio Canales doesn't like it.
Nor do high ranking members of the Honduran Air Force.
The editorial by Colonel José San Martin F. on September 2 challenges the decision expressed in Marlon Pascua's letter to rescind the policy the Air Force had been using to train pilots. He wants clearer guidelines about when he can shoot, and he wants shooting down civilian aircraft suspected of drug running to be the policy in Honduras. He best expressed this position in writing of his frustration at not being able to do anything in 2009 against the plane that was carrying President Manuel Zelaya trying to land in Tegucigalpa after the coup. Unstated was his clear desire to shoot it down.
In March, General Osorio Canales seemed to be both for it, and against it on the same day, in articles in the same newspaper. On the same day, in another newspaper, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, Osorio Canales's commander in chief, said that such a policy would be a violation of international law. Even Osorio Canales, in one of the two articles, acknowledged that there needed to be legal changes before drug planes could be shot down.
It therefore seems likely this the adoption of a shoot-down policy was instituted by the military without civilian government approval.
Pascua's letter confirms that the United States forced the removal of Colonel Pastor Landa as head of the Honduran Air Force.
On September 1, 2012, the then-current head of the Honduran Air Force, Colonel Luis (or Ruiz) Pastor Landa stepped down as head of the Air Force, turning over his command to Colonel Miguel Palacios.
At the ceremony, Armed Forces Chief General Rene Osorio Canales lavishly praised Pastor Landa, and later told Radio Globo:
We're not happy; we're uncomfortable with these situations because we must be Hondurans with love of country..."
What did Osorio Canales mean by this?
On June 13, 2012, the Honduran Air Force shot down an alleged civilian drug plane, killing the two crew members. One of the crew members, the Honduran press says, was a DEA agent who had infiltrated the drug cartel. This was not revealed to the press at the time.
Shooting down suspected drug planes is controversial, on its face, an illegal act in violation of paragraph 3bis of International Civil Aviation Organization's (ICAO) Convention on International Civil Aviation.
This is not to say there is universal agreement as to the meaning of paragraph 3bis. As we wrote last April, the Convention says:
the contracting states recognize that every state must refrain from resorting to the use of military weapons against civil aircraft in flight, and that in case of interception, the lives of persons on board and the safety of aircraft must not be endangered.
It establishes that civil aviation aircraft are supposed to obey orders from military aircraft. The Convention, however, recognizes a nation's sovereignty over its airspace, a loophole that in the past has been used by some nations to justify the downing of civilian aircraft.
The Honduran military, since last spring, has been vocally in favor of shooting down drug planes, though at the same time they claim not to be capable of doing so without the purchase of new aircraft.
General Rene Osorio Canales, back in April, called shooting down civilian airplanes suspect of drug trafficking, "more effective than legalizing drugs" for combating the drug cartels. In fact, the Honduran military itself advocated for shooting down civilian aircraft suspected of engaging in drug trafficking back in March, 2012 when they supported Juan Orlando Hernandez, president of Congress, in his call for such a procedure.
So why is General Osorio Canales unhappy?
It seems, based on the evidence at hand, that the head of the US Southern Command, General Douglas Fraser, met with Porfirio Lobo Sosa on August 24, 2012 in Honduras. Ambassador Lisa Kubiske also was at the meeting. Based on a letter from the Defense Minister, Marlon Pascua, translated below, General Fraser expressed his unhappiness with the current Honduran policy (unacknowledged) of shooting down civilian aircraft suspected of drug running; and objected to Honduras compromising an ongoing investigation of the DEA. As Porfirio Lobo Sosa stated at the time, Fraser
"expressed his concern over some incidents that in some manner violated the agreements on aerial navigation."
Air Force Colonel José San Martin F. wrote an editorial in La Tribuna published on September 2 calling for a rewrite of paragraph 3 bis of the OACI Convention. Colonel San Martin F. was frustrated by the Honduran Air Force's inability to respond in 2009 when a plane carrying deposed President Manuel Zelaya was trying to land in Tegucigalpa. Paragraph 3bis, Colonel San Martin F. writes,
"unfortunately permitted that that violation [of Honduran airspace] went unpunished."
La Tribuna published a letter from Secretary of Defense, Marlon Pascua to his Foreign Minister, Arturo Corrales the same day stating:
With respect to what was discussed in our recent visit to the Southern Command of the United States in a meeting held this day with General Fraser and Ambassador Kubiske, and following the instructions of the President we have sent the following instructions:
1. In the command structure we make the following changes
a) The Commander of the Air Force starting September 1 will be Colonel Miguel Palacios Romero.
b) The head of the Air Force command starting September 1 will be Colonel Jimmy Rommel Ayala Cerrato.
2. [We will] restructure the Operations Center of the Air Force.
3. [We will change] the general process of certification of the pilots in the finding, identification, surveillance and interception of civilian aircraft
4. Honduran Air Force pilots who have participated in interception missions in this year will be sent back for a process of reinduction and retraining.
The letter is signed Marlon Pascua Cerrato and dated August 24, 2012.
The letter from Pascua seems pretty clear. The US Southern Command "requested" a change in the command structure of the Honduran Air Force in General Fraser's meeting with Porfirio Lobo Sosa, and Corrales is being told of the results of the meeting, what Lobo Sosa will order as civilian commander of the Honduran Armed Forces. Its also clear that General Osorio Canales doesn't like it.
Nor do high ranking members of the Honduran Air Force.
The editorial by Colonel José San Martin F. on September 2 challenges the decision expressed in Marlon Pascua's letter to rescind the policy the Air Force had been using to train pilots. He wants clearer guidelines about when he can shoot, and he wants shooting down civilian aircraft suspected of drug running to be the policy in Honduras. He best expressed this position in writing of his frustration at not being able to do anything in 2009 against the plane that was carrying President Manuel Zelaya trying to land in Tegucigalpa after the coup. Unstated was his clear desire to shoot it down.
In March, General Osorio Canales seemed to be both for it, and against it on the same day, in articles in the same newspaper. On the same day, in another newspaper, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, Osorio Canales's commander in chief, said that such a policy would be a violation of international law. Even Osorio Canales, in one of the two articles, acknowledged that there needed to be legal changes before drug planes could be shot down.
It therefore seems likely this the adoption of a shoot-down policy was instituted by the military without civilian government approval.
Pascua's letter confirms that the United States forced the removal of Colonel Pastor Landa as head of the Honduran Air Force.
Monday, July 9, 2012
DEA kills another in Honduras
The DEA has shot to death another alleged drug runner in Honduras, the second this month. The latest incident happened a week ago.
If you live in Honduras and rely on the Honduran media, you probably didn't know that until now.
On July 3 a small plane crashed or was forced down (depending on the news source) near Catacamas in Olancho. In the plane were 954 kilograms of cocaine. The original Honduran press reports stated that one pilot, a Brazilian, was badly injured in the crash and surrendered to the police and DEA agents present. The other pilot, also Brazilian, was said to have been killed in the crash. The news of the two Brazilians was reported to their embassy according to statements by the Honduran police spokesperson.
Except that the pilot wasn't killed in the crash.
According to DEA spokesperson Dawn Dearden, two DEA agents shot the second Brazilian when he refused to surrender "and made a threatening gesture." He died from his wounds.
The New York Times coverage notes that "[Honduran authorities] did not disclose that the pilot had been shot by American agents."
None of the press reports tell us the context in which the DEA spokesperson revealed DEA responsibility for the death of this suspect, or why it was revealed.
The DEA agents in question are members of a FAST team deployed in Honduras to help Honduran authorities stop drugs before they get to the United States. Their rules of engagement allow them to fire on suspects if they are threatened or fired on.
This is the second person they've killed in Honduras.
There will be no inquiry.
It's understandable that Honduran authorities kept quiet about DEA responsibility for shooting the suspect, given Honduran reactions to DEA agent participation in the Ahuas shootings of 4 people, and their killing of another suspect in Olancho in June.
If you live in Honduras and rely on the Honduran media, you probably didn't know that until now.
On July 3 a small plane crashed or was forced down (depending on the news source) near Catacamas in Olancho. In the plane were 954 kilograms of cocaine. The original Honduran press reports stated that one pilot, a Brazilian, was badly injured in the crash and surrendered to the police and DEA agents present. The other pilot, also Brazilian, was said to have been killed in the crash. The news of the two Brazilians was reported to their embassy according to statements by the Honduran police spokesperson.
Except that the pilot wasn't killed in the crash.
According to DEA spokesperson Dawn Dearden, two DEA agents shot the second Brazilian when he refused to surrender "and made a threatening gesture." He died from his wounds.
The New York Times coverage notes that "[Honduran authorities] did not disclose that the pilot had been shot by American agents."
None of the press reports tell us the context in which the DEA spokesperson revealed DEA responsibility for the death of this suspect, or why it was revealed.
The DEA agents in question are members of a FAST team deployed in Honduras to help Honduran authorities stop drugs before they get to the United States. Their rules of engagement allow them to fire on suspects if they are threatened or fired on.
This is the second person they've killed in Honduras.
There will be no inquiry.
It's understandable that Honduran authorities kept quiet about DEA responsibility for shooting the suspect, given Honduran reactions to DEA agent participation in the Ahuas shootings of 4 people, and their killing of another suspect in Olancho in June.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Collateral Damage
Usually the stories we cover about Honduras are invisible in the US press.
So it has been notable that the New York Times has over the last few weeks published a series of stories about Honduras. Such coverage, potentially, could give US readers much more insight into the conditions of a country that has been wracked by violence under the powerless government that was installed through flawed elections held in 2009 while the country was controlled by a de facto regime operating with impunity.
I hope you caught that "potentially". Because as all of us who actually work on Honduras have noted, the New York Times has used this opportunity to advance story-lines that are essentially propaganda, claims that the current Honduran government is cleaning up its police force, using the armed forces to protect its citizenry, moving rapidly and supposedly effectively to investigate the kidnapping of at least (some) journalists, and oh, yes, collaborating with the US Drug Enforcement Agency in ever-more effective drug interdiction.
When the subject matter of these celebratory "we're helping the backward nation stop drugs before they reach your suburb" line was illustrated mainly by crowing about cutting the time it took to get helicopters in the air, this didn't even strike us as reporting about Honduras. Indeed, the NY Times actually used that opportunity to make a case that the US was employing "lessons" it "learned" in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, making it clear that Honduras was interchangeable with all the other threatening foreign places whose specificities we are being allowed to ignore in our new reality that construes the world in terms of friends, enemies, and potential enemies in the "war on terror".
But the latest New York Times coverage is indeed about Honduran reality: the reality that the US has assisted in the killing of innocent civilians, redefined as what once would have been clinically labeled "collateral damage": people in the wrong place at the wrong time, because their country was in our way, people who can be categorically suspect because they can be assumed to be guilty (in this case, of working for drug traffickers; in other times and places, of being terrorists or insurgents...).
The latest episode in this long and shameful history has led to demands by the Honduran people affected that the US cease operations that endanger innocent citizens of the country.
The BBC covered the story properly, titling its story Honduras protest over shootings, writing that
Unfortunately, no one at the Washington Post seems to understand what these names are: MASTA is described by David Dodds as "an indigenous federation...formed by a group of Moskito schoolteachers" that brings together village-level affiliates representing largely autonomous Moskito villages. Tanya Hayes identifies BAMIASTA as one of these chapters/affiliates of the larger group, centered in Ahuas, the village whose mayor Luis Baquedano has been quoted most widely as the source for the information about the murder of local people. Hayes identifies RAYAKA as the affiliate for Banaka, another village, and I assume that DIUNAT and BATIASTA are representative organizations of other local Miskito villages, not, as the Post described them, "ethnic groups".
As as recently as yesterday the New York Times coverage still emphasized the goodness of having DEA in security operations in Honduras: D.E.A.'s Agents Join Counternarcotics Efforts in Honduras. It would be hard from that title to predict what the actual lead was:
"Backlash"? That's what's important here-- that the Honduran people have expressed their outrage at becoming targets for US-funded, equipped, and guided murder?
The murdered villagers from Ahuas, a small community in indigenous Miskito territory, included pregnant women.
The Times coverage includes that fact-- but it also trots out a lightly veiled smear that attempts to undermine the otherwise clearly acknowledged fact that the boat destroyed was not a boat of drug smugglers:
The difference between our reaction and that of the Times is this: if you are likely to be shooting at people from a "poor village", you shouldn't be shooting. Period.
Honduran security forces are incapable on their own of discriminating between the citizens of the country engaged in lawful activities, and legitimate targets of policing efforts, as the history of violent repression of protests and murder by corrupt police has amply demonstrated.
A US-inspired policy of shooting at poorly identified targets in civilian areas makes a bad situation worse. While no one could have predicted the specific time and place that innocent people would be affected, that something like this would happen was inevitable.
It is time, and long past time, for the US to stop supporting the militarization of everyday life among the already suffering innocent people of Honduras.
So it has been notable that the New York Times has over the last few weeks published a series of stories about Honduras. Such coverage, potentially, could give US readers much more insight into the conditions of a country that has been wracked by violence under the powerless government that was installed through flawed elections held in 2009 while the country was controlled by a de facto regime operating with impunity.
I hope you caught that "potentially". Because as all of us who actually work on Honduras have noted, the New York Times has used this opportunity to advance story-lines that are essentially propaganda, claims that the current Honduran government is cleaning up its police force, using the armed forces to protect its citizenry, moving rapidly and supposedly effectively to investigate the kidnapping of at least (some) journalists, and oh, yes, collaborating with the US Drug Enforcement Agency in ever-more effective drug interdiction.
When the subject matter of these celebratory "we're helping the backward nation stop drugs before they reach your suburb" line was illustrated mainly by crowing about cutting the time it took to get helicopters in the air, this didn't even strike us as reporting about Honduras. Indeed, the NY Times actually used that opportunity to make a case that the US was employing "lessons" it "learned" in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, making it clear that Honduras was interchangeable with all the other threatening foreign places whose specificities we are being allowed to ignore in our new reality that construes the world in terms of friends, enemies, and potential enemies in the "war on terror".
But the latest New York Times coverage is indeed about Honduran reality: the reality that the US has assisted in the killing of innocent civilians, redefined as what once would have been clinically labeled "collateral damage": people in the wrong place at the wrong time, because their country was in our way, people who can be categorically suspect because they can be assumed to be guilty (in this case, of working for drug traffickers; in other times and places, of being terrorists or insurgents...).
The latest episode in this long and shameful history has led to demands by the Honduran people affected that the US cease operations that endanger innocent citizens of the country.
The BBC covered the story properly, titling its story Honduras protest over shootings, writing that
The leaders of several of the ethnic groups in the area said in a joint statement that "the people in that canoe were fishermen, not drug traffickers.
"For centuries we have been a peaceful people who live in harmony with nature, but today we declared these Americans to be persona non grata in our territory."The ever-awful Washington Post titled its version of the story Angered by deadly drug operation, Honduran Indians burn offices, demand DEA leave. The stereotypes in that one sentence are horrifying, but the article at least specifies that the statement was issued by representatives of the Masta, Diunat, Rayaka, Batiasta and Bamiasta, a detail absent from the BBC story.
Unfortunately, no one at the Washington Post seems to understand what these names are: MASTA is described by David Dodds as "an indigenous federation...formed by a group of Moskito schoolteachers" that brings together village-level affiliates representing largely autonomous Moskito villages. Tanya Hayes identifies BAMIASTA as one of these chapters/affiliates of the larger group, centered in Ahuas, the village whose mayor Luis Baquedano has been quoted most widely as the source for the information about the murder of local people. Hayes identifies RAYAKA as the affiliate for Banaka, another village, and I assume that DIUNAT and BATIASTA are representative organizations of other local Miskito villages, not, as the Post described them, "ethnic groups".
As as recently as yesterday the New York Times coverage still emphasized the goodness of having DEA in security operations in Honduras: D.E.A.'s Agents Join Counternarcotics Efforts in Honduras. It would be hard from that title to predict what the actual lead was:
agents accompanied the Honduran counternarcotics police during two firefights with cocaine smugglers in the jungles of the Central American country this month, according to officials in both countries who were briefed on the matter. One of the fights, which occurred last week, left as many as four people dead and has set off a backlash against the American presence there
"Backlash"? That's what's important here-- that the Honduran people have expressed their outrage at becoming targets for US-funded, equipped, and guided murder?
The murdered villagers from Ahuas, a small community in indigenous Miskito territory, included pregnant women.
The Times coverage includes that fact-- but it also trots out a lightly veiled smear that attempts to undermine the otherwise clearly acknowledged fact that the boat destroyed was not a boat of drug smugglers:
it is often difficult to distinguish insurgents from villagers when combating drugs in Central America. One official said it is a common practice for smugglers to pay thousands of dollars to a poor village if its people will help bring a shipment through the jungle to the coast.
The difference between our reaction and that of the Times is this: if you are likely to be shooting at people from a "poor village", you shouldn't be shooting. Period.
Honduran security forces are incapable on their own of discriminating between the citizens of the country engaged in lawful activities, and legitimate targets of policing efforts, as the history of violent repression of protests and murder by corrupt police has amply demonstrated.
A US-inspired policy of shooting at poorly identified targets in civilian areas makes a bad situation worse. While no one could have predicted the specific time and place that innocent people would be affected, that something like this would happen was inevitable.
It is time, and long past time, for the US to stop supporting the militarization of everyday life among the already suffering innocent people of Honduras.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Honduras and Drugs: Fact Check
Porfirio Lobo Sosa made a plea Saturday for the United States to cut its drug use because doing so would reduce the level of criminal activity in Central America. He said the US must reduce its demand for drugs to zero because Honduras cannot change its geographic position. He claims that a State Department document says that 79% of the cocaine that transits Mexico from South America is destined for the United States.
On the surface, at least, Lobo Sosa's argument seems logical, but is it supported by data on increasing drug use in the United States that could be correlated with the increasing criminal activity in Honduras?
Oh that it were so simple. Lobo Sosa is dead wrong.
When we talk about drug trafficking in Honduras, we are, these days, talking about cocaine. Cocaine is by far the most common drug to be seized in Honduras.
To support Porfirio Lobo Sosa's claims we would expect to see increasing cocaine use in the United States over a period when criminal activity also rose in Honduras. We would see an increase either in the number of users of cocaine, or in the per capita amount that each used in a year. Sadly, the numbers fail to support Lobo Sosa's argument.
A 2011 study by the United States National Institute on Drug Abuse found that in general, cocaine use in the United States has been declining since 2003. They also cite significant declines in the use of methamphetamines and amphetamines, while marijuana and ecstasy use has been increasing since 2009. The usage of other hallucinogens and inhalents remained steady. The US National Drug Threat Assessment for 2011 cites the above data to raise an alarm over increasing levels of student drug use (mostly marijuana, with a little ecstasy alarm too).
OK, that didn't support Lobo Sosa so let's try another angle. The US Drug Enforcement Administration seizes drugs from traffickers in the US every year. Given that enforcement efforts have been maintained or increasing, seizures should have increased if the amount of drugs entering the country was increasing. What trends do these seizures show?
The DEA Stride system data shows that cocaine seizures (by weight) have declined by about 50% since 2007. Marijuana seizures have about doubled in the same time period, suggesting that there hasn't been either a general decline in drug imports or in efficacy of the DEA.
OK, that doesn't support Lobo Sosa either. Let's look at see what the world consumption of cocaine is like.
The UN World Drug Report for 2010 puts a final stake in Lobo Sosa's argument. It shows that the area under cultivation for coca has remained relatively constant since 2007, well below the high of 2000, and that yields of cocaine have also remained relatively constant since 2007.
In Colombia, coca cultivation decreased by 58% from 2000 to 2009 while Peru and Bolivia increased their production during the same period. There were slight declines in the yield from processing coca leaves in 2008 and 2009, with Colombia being responsible for about half of the total cocaine production, Peru accounting for slightly more than a third of the total production, and Bolivia making up the rest.
While cocaine seizures skyrocketed in the last several years in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean, they have declined slightly in North America.
In the two largest cocaine markets, for the last decade the number of cocaine users has remained fairly constant, at 6.2 million users in North America, and 4.1 million users in Europe.
It is precisely in Central and South America that use has been rising during this same period, to 2.7 million users consuming about 20% of the total production, versus 41% for North America and 26% for Europe.
Most of the drug planes that crash in Honduras are Venezuelan flagged. The UN suggests Venezuela handles about 10% of the world cocaine exports, almost all of it grown and produced in Colombia. Venezuela's ultimate customers are in the United States and Europe, but their transhipment points are in the markets where drug consumption is increasing, Central America and the Caribbean.
So to sum up, there an inverse relationship between cocaine consumption in the US and Canada and rising levels of criminal activity and drug trafficking in Honduras. There is a clear correlation with increasing cocaine consumption among Latin Americans, and particularly Central American and Caribbean populations.
And in any event, cocaine trafficking might be on its way out for Hondurans. Drug synthesis appears be the new drug trafficking business in Honduras. Recent news stories suggest that such a change has taken place.
The Mexican authorities in the port of Lazaro Cardenas in Michoacan recently stopped 136 tons of chemicals being trans-shipped from China to Honduras, all of them with legal as well as illegal uses. The fact that the shipping manifest listed the shipment as aluminum sulphate when it arrived at the port of Veracruz from China, but the contents were found to be things like methylamine, used to make the synthetic drug methamphetamine, and phenylacetate, used in making phenyl-2-propanone (P2P) which in turn is used in synthesizing amphetamines, was the basis for believing it was destined for illegal drug manufacture.
Combine this with the April 1 interdiction of 320 tons of precursor chemicals in Guatemala, also being shipped to Honduras and we get the impression Honduras has already become a center for drug synthesis.
That's 456 tons of synthetic drug precursors that were bound for Honduras intercepted in two months of this year. You'd need industrial scale facilities to make use of that volume of chemicals. So far, no drug labs synthesizing these drugs have been identified in Honduras.
Perhaps Porfirio Lobo Sosa should do a little research before he assigns blame to United States demand, which is not increasing, for increased criminal activity and drug trafficking in Honduras. He could look closer to home, at the impunity with which crimes are committed in Honduras, in order to help explain increased criminal activity there.
Ultimately the cocaine that transits Honduras, whatever its destination, comes from Colombia whose president Lobo Sosa counts among his closest advisors.
Maybe they should chat about this?
On the surface, at least, Lobo Sosa's argument seems logical, but is it supported by data on increasing drug use in the United States that could be correlated with the increasing criminal activity in Honduras?
Oh that it were so simple. Lobo Sosa is dead wrong.
When we talk about drug trafficking in Honduras, we are, these days, talking about cocaine. Cocaine is by far the most common drug to be seized in Honduras.
To support Porfirio Lobo Sosa's claims we would expect to see increasing cocaine use in the United States over a period when criminal activity also rose in Honduras. We would see an increase either in the number of users of cocaine, or in the per capita amount that each used in a year. Sadly, the numbers fail to support Lobo Sosa's argument.
A 2011 study by the United States National Institute on Drug Abuse found that in general, cocaine use in the United States has been declining since 2003. They also cite significant declines in the use of methamphetamines and amphetamines, while marijuana and ecstasy use has been increasing since 2009. The usage of other hallucinogens and inhalents remained steady. The US National Drug Threat Assessment for 2011 cites the above data to raise an alarm over increasing levels of student drug use (mostly marijuana, with a little ecstasy alarm too).
OK, that didn't support Lobo Sosa so let's try another angle. The US Drug Enforcement Administration seizes drugs from traffickers in the US every year. Given that enforcement efforts have been maintained or increasing, seizures should have increased if the amount of drugs entering the country was increasing. What trends do these seizures show?
The DEA Stride system data shows that cocaine seizures (by weight) have declined by about 50% since 2007. Marijuana seizures have about doubled in the same time period, suggesting that there hasn't been either a general decline in drug imports or in efficacy of the DEA.
OK, that doesn't support Lobo Sosa either. Let's look at see what the world consumption of cocaine is like.
The UN World Drug Report for 2010 puts a final stake in Lobo Sosa's argument. It shows that the area under cultivation for coca has remained relatively constant since 2007, well below the high of 2000, and that yields of cocaine have also remained relatively constant since 2007.
In Colombia, coca cultivation decreased by 58% from 2000 to 2009 while Peru and Bolivia increased their production during the same period. There were slight declines in the yield from processing coca leaves in 2008 and 2009, with Colombia being responsible for about half of the total cocaine production, Peru accounting for slightly more than a third of the total production, and Bolivia making up the rest.
While cocaine seizures skyrocketed in the last several years in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean, they have declined slightly in North America.
In the two largest cocaine markets, for the last decade the number of cocaine users has remained fairly constant, at 6.2 million users in North America, and 4.1 million users in Europe.
It is precisely in Central and South America that use has been rising during this same period, to 2.7 million users consuming about 20% of the total production, versus 41% for North America and 26% for Europe.
Most of the drug planes that crash in Honduras are Venezuelan flagged. The UN suggests Venezuela handles about 10% of the world cocaine exports, almost all of it grown and produced in Colombia. Venezuela's ultimate customers are in the United States and Europe, but their transhipment points are in the markets where drug consumption is increasing, Central America and the Caribbean.
So to sum up, there an inverse relationship between cocaine consumption in the US and Canada and rising levels of criminal activity and drug trafficking in Honduras. There is a clear correlation with increasing cocaine consumption among Latin Americans, and particularly Central American and Caribbean populations.
And in any event, cocaine trafficking might be on its way out for Hondurans. Drug synthesis appears be the new drug trafficking business in Honduras. Recent news stories suggest that such a change has taken place.
The Mexican authorities in the port of Lazaro Cardenas in Michoacan recently stopped 136 tons of chemicals being trans-shipped from China to Honduras, all of them with legal as well as illegal uses. The fact that the shipping manifest listed the shipment as aluminum sulphate when it arrived at the port of Veracruz from China, but the contents were found to be things like methylamine, used to make the synthetic drug methamphetamine, and phenylacetate, used in making phenyl-2-propanone (P2P) which in turn is used in synthesizing amphetamines, was the basis for believing it was destined for illegal drug manufacture.
Combine this with the April 1 interdiction of 320 tons of precursor chemicals in Guatemala, also being shipped to Honduras and we get the impression Honduras has already become a center for drug synthesis.
That's 456 tons of synthetic drug precursors that were bound for Honduras intercepted in two months of this year. You'd need industrial scale facilities to make use of that volume of chemicals. So far, no drug labs synthesizing these drugs have been identified in Honduras.
Perhaps Porfirio Lobo Sosa should do a little research before he assigns blame to United States demand, which is not increasing, for increased criminal activity and drug trafficking in Honduras. He could look closer to home, at the impunity with which crimes are committed in Honduras, in order to help explain increased criminal activity there.
Ultimately the cocaine that transits Honduras, whatever its destination, comes from Colombia whose president Lobo Sosa counts among his closest advisors.
Maybe they should chat about this?
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
How Many Clandestine Airstrips?
The new math has come to the Armed Forces of Honduras! If you follow the statements by the Honduran Armed Forces, you are forced to conclude that 24+26= 70
There are 70 clandestine drug airstrips known to the military in Honduras. Think about it; they know about 70 clandestine drug airfields, and haven't done anything about them. When they first made this admission a few months ago it puzzled me.
If the enemy is using a resource, deny that resource to the enemy. That seems obvious, right? Among the constitutionally assigned duties of the Honduran military is fighting drug trafficking. So destroying those landing strips seems like an obvious tactic.
Why weren't they doing anything to destroy these airfields until now?
Now they're doing something. As a recent New York Times article informs us, in association with the stationing of US military forces at four US built forward bases at Guanaja, Puerto Castilla, Aguacate, and Morocon, joint operations are now targeting the destruction of some of these airfields.
Three Honduran departments hold the majority of these airfields: 25 in Olancho, 15 in Colon, and 10 in El Paraiso. In case you're counting, that adds up to 50 airfields, or roughly 71% of the total 70.
Notice that the Department of Gracias a Dios, bordering on Nicaragua, is not mentioned. More about that later.
The Honduran military are working with a DEA FAST (Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team) team to now blow up airstrips, some of which have been known to the Honduran military for years.
Since the military love naming their projects, this one is called Operation Armadillo 2. The second phase of Operation Armadillo 2 ended in April with the destruction of 17 clandestine airstrips. How are they destroying the airstrips? Helicopters fly teams from these forward bases to the airstrip, where US trainers guide Honduran Special Forces in the placement of 5 to 7 explosive charges to create craters in the runway.
The 17 destroyed airstrips were apparently in the department of Gracias a Dios.
Reading between the lines, it seems likely that the Honduran military lacked the explosives and expertise in using them, and that may, in part, account for their lack of action until now.
Honduran Joint Chiefs Chairman General Rene Osorio Canales told the Honduran press that the third phase of Operation Armadillo 2 was about to kick off, but he couldn't mention details. He assured us that all of the known airfields will be destroyed by the end of 2012.
But the official spokesperson for the Defense Ministry, colonel Jeremías Arévalo Guifarro, has some different numbers. He says that there are only 50 clandestine airfields known to the military, and that they have already destroyed 24 of them. The other 26, according to Colonel Arévalo Guifarro, are scheduled for destruction.
So which is it? 50 total airfields, as Arévalo Guifarro claims, or the 70 that the Armed Forces previously announced? 17 airfields destroyed as reported by General Osorio Canales, or 24 as reported by Colonel Arévalo Guifarro?
While Osorio Canales assures us that all of the known clandestine airfields will be destroyed by the end of 2012, Arévalo Guifarro says 50 of them will be destroyed.
It seems pertinent to point out that Colonel Arévalo Guifarro is the same spokesman who seemed out of touch in reporting on the "forced" landing of a drug plane in Yoro a few days ago.
Still, I find myself left with a question. These are grass-covered dirt landing strips build in remote areas by labor organized by the drug traffickers long before airplanes could land there. Why can't they just fill in the holes in the same way that they created the airfield? or level the terrain adjacent to the existing landing strip in the same way they created it in the first place? Isn't this just a game of Whack A Mole?
The drug traffickers almost certainly can restore these airfields, so without a program of continued surveillance of these locations this is just an inconvenience for them.
The only clear enduring product of this campaign is Armed Forces PR. And they can't even get their math straight.
There are 70 clandestine drug airstrips known to the military in Honduras. Think about it; they know about 70 clandestine drug airfields, and haven't done anything about them. When they first made this admission a few months ago it puzzled me.
If the enemy is using a resource, deny that resource to the enemy. That seems obvious, right? Among the constitutionally assigned duties of the Honduran military is fighting drug trafficking. So destroying those landing strips seems like an obvious tactic.
Why weren't they doing anything to destroy these airfields until now?
Now they're doing something. As a recent New York Times article informs us, in association with the stationing of US military forces at four US built forward bases at Guanaja, Puerto Castilla, Aguacate, and Morocon, joint operations are now targeting the destruction of some of these airfields.
Three Honduran departments hold the majority of these airfields: 25 in Olancho, 15 in Colon, and 10 in El Paraiso. In case you're counting, that adds up to 50 airfields, or roughly 71% of the total 70.
Notice that the Department of Gracias a Dios, bordering on Nicaragua, is not mentioned. More about that later.
The Honduran military are working with a DEA FAST (Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team) team to now blow up airstrips, some of which have been known to the Honduran military for years.
Since the military love naming their projects, this one is called Operation Armadillo 2. The second phase of Operation Armadillo 2 ended in April with the destruction of 17 clandestine airstrips. How are they destroying the airstrips? Helicopters fly teams from these forward bases to the airstrip, where US trainers guide Honduran Special Forces in the placement of 5 to 7 explosive charges to create craters in the runway.
The 17 destroyed airstrips were apparently in the department of Gracias a Dios.
Reading between the lines, it seems likely that the Honduran military lacked the explosives and expertise in using them, and that may, in part, account for their lack of action until now.
Honduran Joint Chiefs Chairman General Rene Osorio Canales told the Honduran press that the third phase of Operation Armadillo 2 was about to kick off, but he couldn't mention details. He assured us that all of the known airfields will be destroyed by the end of 2012.
But the official spokesperson for the Defense Ministry, colonel Jeremías Arévalo Guifarro, has some different numbers. He says that there are only 50 clandestine airfields known to the military, and that they have already destroyed 24 of them. The other 26, according to Colonel Arévalo Guifarro, are scheduled for destruction.
So which is it? 50 total airfields, as Arévalo Guifarro claims, or the 70 that the Armed Forces previously announced? 17 airfields destroyed as reported by General Osorio Canales, or 24 as reported by Colonel Arévalo Guifarro?
While Osorio Canales assures us that all of the known clandestine airfields will be destroyed by the end of 2012, Arévalo Guifarro says 50 of them will be destroyed.
It seems pertinent to point out that Colonel Arévalo Guifarro is the same spokesman who seemed out of touch in reporting on the "forced" landing of a drug plane in Yoro a few days ago.
Still, I find myself left with a question. These are grass-covered dirt landing strips build in remote areas by labor organized by the drug traffickers long before airplanes could land there. Why can't they just fill in the holes in the same way that they created the airfield? or level the terrain adjacent to the existing landing strip in the same way they created it in the first place? Isn't this just a game of Whack A Mole?
The drug traffickers almost certainly can restore these airfields, so without a program of continued surveillance of these locations this is just an inconvenience for them.
The only clear enduring product of this campaign is Armed Forces PR. And they can't even get their math straight.
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