Ponce Fonseca: Gang and Foreigners are Protesting in Honduras

General Rene Orlando Ponce Fonseca, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Honduran Armed Forces, sees Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, and Salvadorans protesting in Honduras; but not Hondurans.  I suggest he open his eyes.

On Monday, after 100,000 Hondurans marched in San Pedro Sula on Saturday to protest the fraudulent "official" results of the Honduran elections of last November, and tens of thousands marched in Tegucigalpa on Sunday for the same reason, General Ponce Fonseca gave an interview in which he said:

"These marches are infiltrated by members of criminal structures who have been joined by elements from other countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, a point that's been well established."

Lets translate that.  For "members of criminal structures" read "gang members", and for "elements from other countries" read "foreign interference".  For "a point that's been well established" read "I say so". 

So according to General Ponce Fonseca gangs and foreigners are marching in Honduras, upsetting the peace, causing violence, and hurting his soldiers by pelting them with rocks.  Bear in mind that his soldiers have automatic weapons with live ammunition and have been firing on the crowds without provocation, and to deadly effect.

To make it clear, Ponce Fonseca continued:

"The intention to maintain chaos and burn down the country are objectives that take us to another dimension which is outside of all order, but the Armed Forces are prepared to defend the people."

So protesters are not Honduran people to General Ponce Fonseca.  The Honduran people are those who are not protesting.

No wonder we see the Honduran Military Police violating the human rights of protesters all the time. 

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.

Permanent Policing by the Military?

On Tuesday at the weekly cabinet meeting, the Honduran government voted to extend the state of emergency declaration that allows the Honduran military to exercise most police functions.

Now Porfirio Lobo Sosa is talking about making it permanent.

The role of the Honduran military is spelled out in the constitution, in article 272:

The Armed Forces of Honduras, is a permanent national institution, essentially professional, apolitical, obedient and not deliberative.

They were instituted to defend the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Republic, preserve peace, the rule of the Constitution, the principles of free elections and alternation in office of President of the Republic.

They will cooperate with the National Police in maintaining public order in order to guarantee the free exercise of suffrage, custody, transportation and supervision of election materials and other safety aspects of the process, the President of the Republic shall make available the Armed Forces for the Supreme Electoral Tribunal from one month (1) before the election, until they are decided.

This is the mission as defined in the constitution, but over the years the military has gained control of other budgets and other institutions, so that today it controls many of the strategic sectors of Honduras.

These include the merchant marine, immigration, intelligence, civil aviation, and most recently, forestry. The military also has a strategic partner in communications, where retired General Romeo Vasquez Velasquez was appointed head of HONDUTEL.

Only during the days of military dictatorship that preceded the 1982 constitution has the Armed Forces had a hand in more parts of the government. We've commented previously on this mission creep (here, here, and here).

And now, Porfirio Lobo Sosa would like to make their policing function permanent.

Clearly,there are new challenges that we have, new realities too. I am going to arrange in my government that the military participate in giving security to the people; this will be my fight. Its doesn't matter to me if that requires constitutional reforms.

With timing that could not have been anticipated, Paul Stockton, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas' Security Affairs, in a Congressional hearing today called for Latin American countries to carefully evaluate the use of their military to control organized crime and drug trafficking, because there always exists the possibility of human rights violations.

And it wasn't just Stockton.

In the same hearings, Carmen Lomelin, United States Ambassador to the OAS told Congress:

I can understand the frustration of the president (of Guatemala, Otto) Perez Molino and others, but I believe that this decision (to use the military) needs to be taken with much care, because of the past history. For obvious reasons you need to observe the history of the Americas and their relation with the military.

Stockton added:

The challenges in citizen security are better confronted by the institutions charged with citizen security.

In Honduras, it is the police who are constitutionally supposed to be in charge of citizen security.

Stockton pointed to Colombia under Uribe as an example of what can go wrong when you employ the military as police. There, among other things, the military showed off "rebels" it had caught and killed. Except they turned out to be Colombian citizens murdered by the military, some after being kidnapped, others killed during operations.

Stockton said:

If the military violates human rights they lose popular support, which makes it harder to reach the final objective.

He called Colombia under Uribe a good example of how human rights violations take root. He acknowledged that under Santos Colombia has begun to prosecute human rights violations.

And it is not just foreigners that think permanently militarizing policing is a bad idea. Retired General Mario Hung Pacheco, former commander of the Honduran Army, said

That's a tough topic and you have to handle it well. but it is not within the possibilities for reforming the role of the armed forces; they have their specific missions specified in the constitution of the Republic and one of those is to support the Police when there is a national or regional state of emergency.

General Rene Osorio Canales, the current head of the Honduran Armed Forces also spoke against the idea:

We need to do a detailed study before giving more public security powers to the Armed Forces.

But Tiempo reports Lobo Sosa replied:

This will cause deep debate...but we should have it and in some way make the constitutional changes necessary so that the Armed Forces participate in giving security to the people.

Give the man credit for sticking to his guns; in this case, all too literally. But maybe it would be worth noticing that even the military doesn't want to continue on this path.

Delayed Gratification, Military Edition

In 2008, under the government of Manuel Zelaya Rosales, Honduras asked the United States for military aid to include 4 Maule MXT-7-180 aircraft with Lycoming O-360-C1F engines. They also asked for replacements for the current AT-27 flight training aircraft.

Somewhere along the line, that request, which was granted, got delayed, and the aircraft were never received.....until now.

The US Southern command has now delivered two batches of two Maule aircraft, painted a fetching yellow, to the Honduran Air Force.

These are relatively slow aircraft (top speed 164 MPH or 256 KMH) that can carry up to six passengers, or equivalent weight in cargo, for up to 1000 miles (1600 km.).

La Tribuna said the Maule Air 7-180s will be used in pilot training, search and rescue, and aerial spying, as well as disaster relief.

This echoes a story from June of 2008, in the Moultrie, Georgia, Observer that quoted Honduran Air Force Colonel Jorge Cabrera saying that while the primary use would be for air force pilot training, they could also serve in search and rescue, surveillance, and reconnaissance. (Moultrie is the location of the Maule Air, Inc., manufacturer of these planes.)

Some Honduran press reports suggest that these small planes will now be used as part of the drug interdiction program in Honduras, though how has not been made clear.

The US Embassy in Honduras made note of the delivery of the Maule aircraft in a press release marking the visit of SOUTHCOM Commander Douglas Fraser.

So what's the explanation for the long delay in turning over the last of the Maule aircraft first requested in 2008?

Some Honduran media mentioned the suspension of military aid that followed the coup of June 2009 as contributing to the delay. Announced September 3, 2009, the suspension of aid came so late that it had no real effect on the political emergency. But that doesn't mean it didn't have substantial effects on specific programs. So we decided to try to follow the money here.

International media attributed the financing for the Maule aircraft just delivered to the Foreign Military Financing Program of the Department of Defense.

According to an October 2011 GAO review, over $6.5 million in Foreign Military Financing Program funds (administered by the Department of State) were suspended in September 2009. Suspended categories of aid were restored after the inauguration of Porfirio Lobo Sosa. A Congressional Budget justification of the USAID budget for Honduras, undated but after the inauguration of Lobo Sosa, projected $1.075 million in 2010 and $1.3 million in 2011 for the Foreign Military Financing Program. (The funding from this program for Honduras is not singled out in the "highlights" sections of the full budget reports, that give the only specificity to the proposed and completed uses of the funds in this program.)

This level of funding is a sharp increase from the total recorded for 2008 under the same program, when $496,000 was expended.

The sometimes unreliable Honduran media, however, gave the source of the funds for the Maule aircraft as a different program, Foreign Military Sales. Honduras received rather less from that program over the period of interest: $292,000 in 2008; $845,000 in 2009; and $117,000 in 2010, the last year for which we found data.

For those of you curious about how many Maule MXT-7-180 planes Honduras could have purchased with funds from either of those programs, we found 2007 models going for just under $160,000. A bargain.

Military Policing Again

Porfirio Lobo Sosa is standing firm; he wants the Honduran armed forces to have police powers; never mind that it takes us back to Honduras before 1986. That was the year the Honduran Congress voted to separate the Police and military.

After a several hour meeting with the top brass of the National Police, Lobo Sosa told the press:

"I convened a meeting with the heads of the police to explain that my determination [to proceed] with the participation of the institution of the armed forces is firm and that there is no reason for there to be trouble between either institution."

Lobo Sosa also called on civil society to support his security actions, and in particular mentioned the debate begun in Congress Monday. Congress proposes to interpret Article 274 of the Honduran constitution as giving the military some policing powers, including the ability to stop, search, and detain individuals.

Lobo Sosa stated that the military supported his actions, and that they had asked for a legal basis to act as police. He said:

"They have told me that it is not possible that the Armed Forces, being able to aid our people, cannot do so; we ask that we be given the legal right [to help]."

Lobo Sosa acknowledged that the military does not have the right kinds of training to carry out the role he envisages for them, and so has requested that the UN provide accelerated police training for the soldiers.

While El Heraldo wrote that the new law would enable up to 180 days of military policing via presidential decree, Alfredo Saavedra, a Liberal Party Congress person, said they were looking at a year and a half (545 days) life for the decree.

Lobo Sosa told La Tribuna that the militarization of policing would last as long as necessary to clean up the National Police.

Under Honduran law, emergency decrees that do not restrict constitutional guarantees can be assigned any desired duration, so these extended time frames would actually be legal.

In fact, the current draft of the law is not the limited grant of policing powers described in the government's statements to the press.

The current draft of the new law, in full, reads as follows:

Article 1: To interpret the second and last paragraphs of Article 274 of the Constitution of the Republic, in the sense that the Armed Forces may carry out specific police functions when there is declared a state of emergency in public security, through a decree from the executive branch by the President of the Republic and the Cabinet, as an exceptional case and in conformity with the corresponding legal regulations

To interpret the second and last paragraphs of article 274 of the Constitution of the Republic in the sense that, with the proposition of restoring public order and achieving social peace and respecting the Constitution: In exceptional circumstances the armed forces may carry out police functions for a limited period, in situations of emergency that affect people and property; may participate permanently in the fight against drug trafficking; also cooperate in the fighting of terrorism, arms trafficking, and organized crime; at the request of the Secretary of State for Security they may carry out limited policing functions if the Executive Branch issues the corresponding decree of emergency, establishing in it the duration of the decree and any other scope.

Article 2: The Executive Branch decree which declares a Public Security State of Emergency should guarantee:
1) the unrestricted respect of human rights
2) the constitutional guarantees
3) the dignity of the person; and
4) due process.

In acts of internal security which the Armed Forces carries out, they should be accompanied by a Prosecutor from the Public Prosecutor's office, or make known to one immediately the knowledge of these actions, as established by the Ley Procesal Penal; preferably the different police operations should be carried out in different geographic areas of the national territory, jointly or separately with the National Police, such that both institutions can achieve better results in their activities. While carrying out police functions, the armed forces must frame their actions within the terms and scope of the emergency decree, guaranteeing to their members the same rights (Article 125 of the Ley Organica de la Policia Nacional de Hondurs) as held by members of the National Police, and imposing the same responsibilities and obligations (Article 106 of the Ley Organica de la Policia Nacional); the coordination of operations in emergency situations is the job of the Constitutional president of the Republic and the Secretaries of State for Security and Defense, along with their respective commands.

Article 3: This present decree will enter into effect on the day of its publication in the Official Newspaper La Gaceta.

This draft of the law, still subject to modification by Congress, does not specify a limited set of policing powers for the military. By not specifying a subset of powers, it grants all policing powers to the military. They may carry out any function a National Police officer may under existing police regulations.

Yesterday the law, promulgated by Head of Congress Juan Orlando Hernandez, passed in its first debate session. So Congress will skip the second debate and go right to final approval, perhaps as early as today. La Tribuna reported today that the emergency decree has a duration of 18 months written in now, but Congressional Vice President Marvin Ponce said that may change depending on what the Executive branch wants.

Quite a sweeping change, for such a short legal text.

UPDATE Nov. 30, 2011 10:15 AM: The law was passed late yesterday on its final vote in Congress and will become law once its published.

Too Many Generals

The Honduran armed forces are restless because for the last two years, the Honduran Congress has sat on the promotion of officers.

This is unprecedented in Honduran history.

Like in the United States, in Honduras, once you get above a certain grade, the military proposes career advancement, and the legislative branch (in Honduras, the Congress; in the US, the Senate) ratifies the promotion.

The US Senate routinely fails to promote officers proposed by the armed forces, for a variety of reasons. Now the Honduran Congress is using its authority to do the same in Honduras.

Among proposed advancements now under consideration are the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Brigadier General René Osorio Canales (to Major General) and Coronel Wilfredo Oliva Lopez (to Brigadier General). Left over from last year are Coronel Marco Vitelio Castillo (Air Force), General Jose Gerardo Funtes Gonzalez, and General Javier Prince Suazo.

Congress has said that some of these promotions don't make sense because the individuals will shortly retire (Fuentes Gonzalez, for example).

The advancement of Vitelio is rumored to have been withheld as a punishment for the theft of an airplane in San Pedro Sula while it was under the control of the Air Force there.

General Prince is clearly not in good regard; he was removed from the Joint Chiefs council and installed instead as Auditor of the Armed Forces last year.

Whatever the truth is about the motivations for not advancing these officers, the large number of pending promotions draws attention to a peculiarity of the Honduran military: it is top heavy.

In 1993 it had as many senior officers as the Salvadoran Army (about 250), yet the Salvadoran army was, at that time, double the size of the Honduran one.

The Honduran military is still top heavy today. Honduras has 12 flag officers (Generals and Admirals) for around 11,000 troops (2009 data), or about 1 General for every 916 soldiers. In contrast, the United States has 1.4 million troops, and 919 Generals (and Admirals), or one General for every 1536 troops (2009 data).

What that means in day to day practice is worth further consideration. Meanwhile, the excess generals-- and other high officers-- are getting restless as the Honduran congress appears less motivated to grant what once were automatic advancements.

Flying under suspicious circumstances

Five armed men broke into a military base at the major international airport in northern Honduras early Monday and made off with a small airplane that authorities seized last year in an anti-drug operation.

So says the Washington Post, so that must be what really happened.

But: El Heraldo's coverage of the events earlier today had, shall we say, an undertone.

And now the same thread is in Tiempo, which-- due to its unusually fact-based reporting during the de facto regime-- always seems to be that little bit more reliable.

The plane had been seized in 2008, suspected of being used in drug smuggling. Security Minister Oscar Alvarez, not surprisingly, immediately blamed organized crime for the theft:

"It was really a temptation for organized crime or drug traffickers to have the plane there."

Well, yes. But that undertone running through Honduran press coverage is not about drug traffickers: it is about a possible inside job. As La Prensa put it,

The northwestern coordinator of the Public Prosecutor's office, Marlene Banegas, said this Tuesday that there were preparations for the last two weeks to abstract the small plane Monday morning from the installations of the Armando Escalón military base in San Pedro Sula...

"The runway had everything needed for the plane to take off, also, every day it was warmed up and a week ago one of the two keys of the plane was lost and that was not reported"....

The guards informed the prosecutor that the plane had around 40 to 50 gallons of fuel which would not allow it even to arrive at La Ceiba [on the northeast coast]. "Nonetheless there were encountered in the place various cylinders with the remains of fuel which indicates that it was filled up there".

(El Heraldo's story seems to have disappeared or been edited, but La Prensa retains what we saw earlier today in its sister paper.)

In case readers missed the not-so-subtle implication, La Prensa later summarized:

Unofficial versions pointed out that technicians of the air base were warming up the plane hours earlier, that it was full of fuel and even had the key in place. The indications that there were members of the air base implicated in the operation are considerable because not one of those on duty noticed or reacted to the situation.

What seems to rouse the most concern is that someone communicated to the air traffic control tower that the take off of the stolen plane was authorized. Public prosecutor Luis Rubí-- famous for his relentless crusade to charge ex-president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales with something, anything that will stick-- bluntly said it was not an action of organized crime, but rather, one in which the military officers were complicit:

“It is a product of a degree of boldness that organized crime and the bands that operate in the country have. This was an operation in complicity with someone, definitely. It cannot be an act that someone arrives at an air base and carries off a plane, it causes us concern".

Defense Minister Marlon Pascua and Chief of Staff Carlos Cuéllar, meanwhile, were quoted as saying the theft might have been intended to damage the image of the Armed Forces. At the same time, their actions, removing from command Lieutenant Colonel Juan Carlos Gónzalez, suggest some degree of suspicion of the military contingent that was somehow overcome by five thieves. Some critics went so far as to call on the Minister of Defense to resign.

But it took Tiempo to come right out and say it:

As the hours pass, the Hollywood-esque story about the robbery of a small plane at the Armando Escalón Air Base loses ever more force and loose ends pop up that flow into a history of corruption inside that military unit.

Suspicions are focused on soldiers who testified that the plane was being serviced for the past two weeks in anticipation of it being absorbed by the Air Force, according to the sources cited by Tiempo, because the Air Force had not been approved to transfer the plane.

It may well be that the air force was acting in advance of authorization, and drew the attention of a particularly clever gang. Perhaps the claim by the defense secretary that this was a plot to embarrass the armed forces is true-- although it is utterly unclear why that would be a goal of drug traffickers.

But it is the suspicion of corruption and complicity that appears to resonate with Honduran observers, who seem well prepared to accept that the Air Force is corrupt and in league with organized crime.

Ortez Colindres joins Lobo Sosa in admitting it was a coup

Is confession good for the soul? It must be, because it sure isn't obvious how it is good politically, yet here comes another Honduran politician to join Porfirio Lobo Sosa in admitting that what happened June 28, 2009 was a coup.

In the latest episode, Honduras' Tiempo brings back one of the most outrageous members of the Micheletti regime, Enrique Ortez Colindres, the man whose racist comments about Barack Obama never were translated into completely accurate equivalents in English language coverage.

And it isn't just that Ortez Colindres-- briefly the Secretary of State for Micheletti until his impolitic comments brought him down-- admits it was a coup. He says it was completely planned and executed by the Armed Forces.

Colindres made the comments by telephone to Cholusat Sur (Channel 36), a noted anti-coup media outlet in Tegucigalpa.

Esdras Amado López, the reporter Colindres tried to take on, was reportedly criticizing Ortez Colindres for suggesting that Lobo Sosa should be talking to Hugo Chavez in pursuit of readmission to the OAS. Amado López expressed the view that Ortez Colindres was contradicting the position he took during the coup, when he characterized Chavez as "the devil".

Seeking to explain his position, here's what Ortez Colindres said, live, on television:

“The conditions did not exist to negotiate with Chávez [in the de facto regime] because the enemy of the Army of Honduras is Chávez and Micheletti had been put in the hierarchy of command by the Army."

“I don't believe that Micheletti would have had the courage, nor the individual ability to go to sit with Chávez without having the approval of the commander who put him in that moment, which was the Armed Forces, today it's different."

“The military are those that made the legal chain run and put in [Micheletti]."

"The Army put him in and why would I am deny it, they are the ones that made the succession."

Now, the one thing obvious after Ortez Colindres brief, disastrous "career" as a diplomat for Micheletti is that he is-- well, loose cannon hardly seems strong enough. A buffoon?

But still: these seem likely to be explosive comments among politicians so eager to pretend that what happened was completely legitimate that they have bullied their "Truth Commission" not to even use the words "coup d'etat".

It has always been clear that one way for the civilian authors of the coup to attempt to wriggle out of responsibility would be to blame the whole thing on the military. That was one of the reasons there were so many press statements by the military last year. But unlike their almost hysterical efforts at PR during the coup, the current military seems disinclined to respond to this provocation.

Yet these are the most open attempts to implicate the army that are possible. Ortez Colindres said

“I recommended to the [military] command that they go to speak with Zelaya Rosales to respect him, but they said: He is olanchano [from Olancho] and he is going to command us... if we ask that he stops the cuarta urna and he fired Romeo Vásquez Velásquez."

So: is this blame-shifting? or what Ortez Colindres actually thinks happened? And how can the Armed Forces actually ignore being blamed, not just for the decision to remove Zelaya (illegally) from Honduras-- which Ortez Colindres says set in motion the (presumably constitutional) installation of Micheletti-- but the very idea of a coup?

And: what on earth does it mean to say that the enemy of the Honduran Army is Hugo Chávez?