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:

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.

More, More, I'm Still Not Satisfied

General Rene Osorio was hoping that the 2012 budget would include an increase in the size of the military, by 1000 to 2000 soldiers.

He said he'd be happy if they even had to do it in increments, say 1000 this year, and 1000 next year. He also made it clear he wants 40 million lempiras more (slightly more than $2 million) just to support Operation Lightning, the military deployment with the police which Porfirio Lobo Sosa ordered back in October.

Why you ask, does the military need to increase in size?

Osorio cites an increase in the size of the Salvadoran military as justification. We are hoping that doesn't mean he is planning for another Central American war.

Closer to home, he argues that he needs more troops to support Operation Lightning.

Then there's forest protection, part of the mission creep in the military we wrote about here and here. Osorio already got funded in the 2012 budget to add the 2000 new soldiers destined for a special "forest protection" brigade. Congress member Rigoberto Chang Castillo noted that the 100 million lempiras dedicated for the forestry protection brigade are part of the 2012 budget.

Apparently Osorio wants the 2000 soldiers already funded for the "forest protection brigade", and 2000 more soldiers on top of those.

Mainly what he got handed in the 2012 budget was a 25% across the board budget cut.

So he's going to talk to his boss, Porfirio Lobo Sosa:

We are thinking of talking with president Porfirio Lobo to explain to him that the Secretariat of Defense should not have its budget cut, and logically also the Secretariat of Security.

So far, Osorio says, the deployment of troops in Operation Lightning has cost $17 million lempiras (about $900,000):

We cannot stay in the streets with the ordinary budget we have... If the president makes the decision that we need to increase (the soldiers in the streets), he better have more budget.

Osorio clarified to El Heraldo that the extra funds to support Operation Lightning are needed for food and fuel.

Public reaction (in the form of comments on newspaper articles) suggests that Osorio's arguments aren't persuasive to most El Heraldo and La Prensa readers, who oppose any additional funds for the military.

One commenter noted that both the police and the military have the same excuse, "they don't have sufficient budget to do anything" so they just get paid and sit on their ass for the last two years.

Another pointedly noted, "didn't we pass a Security Tax to cover these costs?"

Osorio's boss, Defense Minister Marlon Pascua said he's not that worried about the cuts to the military in the 2012 budget. He noted that there will be funding available shortly from the seized assets program (the proceeds of selling allegedly drug related assets), funding which is split between the Defense Ministry and the Security Ministry.

Rigoberto Chang Castilllo noted that the Finance Minister has set aside a special fund to help pay for Operation Lightning. He argued that the cuts to the military could be easily absorbed by reducing their office equipment and supply budget by 20%, without endangering their military readiness.

Now to wait for Osorio to explain why photocopiers are indispensable to the mission of the armed forces.

(title with apologies to Tom Lehrer)

Losing Democracy, or Military Mission Creep

Militarization in Honduras is expanding, muddling the constitutional mission of the armed forces of Honduras.

The recent suggestion by Porfirio Lobo Sosa and Minister of Defense, Marlon Pascua, to abolish the Minister of Security position and make it a Vice Ministry under Defense, is further retrograde motion. Surprisingly, the current Security Minister, Pompeyo Bonilla, is in favor of abolishing his job.

In 1997 Honduras made the leap to separate the Police from the Military. This involved several changes to the constitution and created the separate Minister of Defense and Minister of Security positions. This was also when, for the first time, the President was designated as the Commander in Chief of the armed forces.

The next phase in the separation of the Police and Military was to be the removal of elections from the list of responsibilities of the armed forces, who currently are charged with guarding the ballots, a circumstance that means any Honduran citizen voting is under the scrutiny of the armed forces.

In 1998, the military lost control of HONDUTEL, the Merchant Marine, and Immigration. Then-president Carlos Flores said

"The changes we are making are necessary and inevitable if effective democracy is to become a reality."

Yet all these changes are being rolled back under Porfirio Lobo Sosa.

Only under the military dictatorships have there been more ex-military men in charge of the state institutions than in the present administration.

Currently, retired military offices direct the Merchant Marine, Immigration, Hondutel, several branches of Foreign Relations, Health, Education, and the Honduran equivalent of FEMA.

The military also receive 70% of the congressionally budgeted money to protect forests from illegal logging, rather than the civilian branch of Forestry which has that as its responsibility.

All of this, dare I say it, points to a resurgence of military involvement in the democratic institutions of government not seen since before 1994. It's a regression to the way things were, when Honduras was a protected democracy.

Unifying the Defense and Security Ministries, the police and armed forces, under one leadership would be another step backwards in time, and another step away from democracy in Honduras.

Cover Up in the Bajo Aguan?

Competing stories have developed about what happened in the Bajo Aguan last Friday, when a combined military-police patrol alleges it was ambushed by foreign guerrillas at La Consentida plantation, near Sonaguera.

The official story today, as told by Secretary of Defense Marlon Pascua, is that foreigners ambushed the patrol in the La Consentida orange plantation. Found at the scene were rifle bullet casings (other reports specify AK-47 casings) and fragments of an exploded grenade. Pascua is quoted as saying

"The intent of these bands is that we not patrol this sector, that the patrols not do their job..."

Well, that's one theory... Its not clear how Pascua knows the intent of the attackers with such certainty, nor why he knows with the same certainty that the attackers were foreigners. Surely by now his troops have had enough time to identify all the foreigners in the zone. Yet as of yesterday, none of the identified foreigners were doing anything suspicious, according to the military.

Pascua went on the radio to tell everyone he's given the patrols permission to return fire if fired upon.

Meanwhile, the campesinos of MUCA tell a much different story about what happened on Friday.

The MUCA spokesperson, Vitalino Alvarez, told La Tribuna that the site of the supposed ambush is not one where ambush is possible. The road is straight, and there is no forest nor bushes to hide in.

According to him, a drunken soldier detonated a grenade inside his patrol vehicle. There are no guerrillas in the Bajo Aguan, he told La Tribuna, only people dedicated to their work.

Vitalino Alvarez was quoted El Heraldo as saying:

"It was a grenade that exploded in the cabin of the car. Also I was at the hospital when they arrived; there was a boy wounded only in the lower legs below the knee; ....how could they shoot him only below the knee.... Another had a wound only on his nose produced by a grenade fragment. If it had been a rife shot, he'd be dead."

El Heraldo's coverage today makes it clear that both the Police and Military agree with the MUCA spokesperson that grenade fragments were in the passenger compartment of the truck, and that it was the driver and passenger in the truck that died, from the explosion of a grenade on the floor of the truck.

Yet the spokesperson for the Xatruch II batallion, Roger Martinez, claims to have bullet casings from Falk rifles, AK-47s, and .22 calibre rifles. He also claims the area where the ambush occurred is forested. He denied there were grenade fragments in the cabin of the car. A grenade would have dismembered the occupants, according to Martinez.

The only Falke rifles I can find are all air rifles; probably the patrol was not ambushed by pellet guns! Perhaps he meant FN-FAL rifles, which are in abundant use by the Army in Honduras according to Janes, and take the very same caliber ammunition as the AK-47, 7.62 mm. NATO standard ammo.

A .22 rifle would be an insane thing to use to attack an armed military patrol. It is 1850s military technology.

It is good for rabbit and squirrel hunting, though.

Super Tucanos

The head of the Honduran Armed Forces, General René Arnoldo Osorio Canales wants to buy 4 "Super Tucano" Embraer EMB-314 light attack aircraft. Everyone in Central America appears to be buying Super Tucanos and General Osorio doesn't want to be left out. Guatemala is expected to buy 8, El Salvador 6, Nicaragua 3, and Panama 4. The US has proposed to buy 100 of these for counterinsurgency operations. Even Honduras's model for everything security related, Colombia, has 25 Super Tucanos. Osorio also wants to buy helicopters and fast naval launches.

Osorio wants 8 "Super Tucanos" but because of the economic crisis in Honduras he'll settle for 4. The Secretary of Defense, Marlon Pascua, has asked the United States to donate 4 others, along with helicopters.

He proposes to buy these for slightly more than $40 million dollars with funds that will come to him from the new "Ley de Seguridad Poblacional" which promises to funnel lots of money to the Armed Forces and National Police, if it survives legal challenges. The "Ley de Seguridad Poblacional" is expected to bring in around 1,500 million lempiras this year alone. The entire purchase price of 4 Super Tucanos is around 760 million lempiras, or slightly more than half the expected receipts.

Honduras bought 12 Embraer EMB-312 Tucanos, the predecessor to the Super Tucano, in 1984, but virtually everyone who bought that model that long ago has retired them, or is in the process of retiring them. Repair parts are hard to get. When Honduras brought this up with Brazil, they suggested Honduras buy the Super Tucanos. It is unknown how many of Honduras's original fleet of 12 Tucanos are still flying, but one recently crashed in Comayagua.

How do the two aircraft compare? Both aircraft have the same wingspan, but the Super Tucano has a longer fuselage (about 1.5 meters longer), a much more powerful engine, and as a result, a slightly reduced operating range. It can carry slightly less payload (1200 lbs versus 1300 lbs), but can fly 100 kph faster than the Tucano. Despite being of Brazilian manufacture, over 70% of the parts are American. The speed and agility, and armaments are the keys to its success in drug interdiction missions.

The General explained that the main use of these aircraft will be in drug interdiction (forcing drug aircraft to land, not shooting them down). After the Dominican Republic bought and deployed its fleet of Super Tucanos, and used them to intercept drug flights, drug runners stopped overflying the Dominican Republic according to Time Magazine.

Unfortunately, these aircraft are built to order with at least a two year lead time. Even if it ordered them today, it would be 2013 or 2014 before they could be delivered, and still longer before they could have an effect on drug trafficking in Honduras.

FFAA Replies to Wikileaks

In the interest of fairness, we want to point to a series of articles that appeared after our post about the Wikileaks cable alleging the Armed Forces of Honduras were selling weapons to the drug cartels. The gist of their response is, "we found it and told the US" and "its been distorted in the press."

Perhaps the first hint of a response came in an El Heraldo story from mid day yesterday which adopted the story line that it was the Honduran military who notified the US of the missing weapons after an inventory in 2007. It was current Defense Minister Marlon Pascua who spoke to the press. Pascua called the Defense Intelligence Agency report entitled "Honduras: Military Weapons Fuel Black Arms Market," a distorted tale of what actually happened.

Strangely, that story notes that there was a hearing in 2008 in which the evidence against the person or persons responsible was presented, but they're still waiting for a judicial decision in the case. Either justice moves slower than a glacier in the Honduran military courts, or more likely they locked this person in jail and threw away the key. Except in this case, the only weapons the person had access to were the light anti-tank weapons (law) and AR-16 and AK-47 rifles used by the Honduran armed forces. No access here to the M433 grenades reportedly recovered as well.

Shortly thereafter EFE covered the story, substantially the same as the El Heraldo story, noting that Pascua claimed that Honduras "was the victim, not the promoter of drug and arms trafficking." A follow up El Heraldo story notes that when asked what guarantee there was that this sort of thing would not happen again, both Pascua and General Osorio Canales, Head of the Honduran Joint Chiefs, replied "well, that's the danger of having these kinds of arms." El Heraldo noted that those responsible for the robbery of an aircraft from the Air Force base in San Pedro Sula have yet to be punished. The also noted that weapons captured from a drug traffickers bunker at the end of last year have disappeared as well.

La Tribuna's coverage notes that Pascua said the International coverage was meant to embarrass Honduras. Pascua said the information came from a leaked cable from an organization (Wikileaks) with a dubious reputation and anyhow the whole thing was covered in the Honduran press four years ago. Its from La Tribuna that we find out that the arrested naval officer is Lieutenant Selvin Castro Zelaya, and that he was one of 10 students at the TESON school at the time, and the only one charged with the crime. At the time he was the instructor of the course and in charge of logistics, which meant he had a key to the arms locker.

La Tribuna also reminds us that the military stored arms for private arms dealers after the Contras disbanded in the 1980s and that between 2000 and 2004 about 500 rifles disappeared from military custody, according to General Osorio Canales.

So rather than being a one time thing, as Pascua tried to imply, arms in the custody of the Armed Forces of Honduras have disappeared with some frequency since at least 2000. Ironically, the Armed Forces directly own the only licensed arms dealer in Honduras, "La Armeria", the only company that can sell and license guns in Honduras.

While its clear that the light anti-tank weapons stolen in 2007 ended up in the hands of drug traffickers, its not so much that there's a systematic effort by the Honduran military to sell weapons to the drug traffickers and organized crime in general; but rather a continuing culture of corruption which enables individuals to decide to steal weapons for person gain.

If the Honduran military is OK with that as the story, so are we.

"The demonstrations of the past week are truly frightening": A response

Via Quotha, a translation of a COFADEH summary of police actions during the recent escalation of repression against those supporting the striking teachers and the called-for general strike. In their statement, COFADEH puts the case starkly:

The attention of the world community to the crisis generated by the coup and coup ideology is still very insufficient, but it is key to brewing institutional solutions that create the minimal social and political consensus to transform the country.

Shamefully, as has been widely reported, the US State Department, through its Human Rights Labor Attaché in Tegucigalpa, came down solidly on the side of the oppressed military, threatened by the violence of protesters, writing

we cannot condone the violence currently being used by demonstrators ... While we have consistently urged the police to use restraint, some demonstrators have engaged in a level of violence not seen in many years. ...The demonstrations of the past week are truly frightening and a cause for concern. We ask that those in contact with teachers groups encourage them to stop the violence...

and concluding that "the majority of reported injuries are on the side of the security officials". Thus the US slides from tacit permission for militarization of the response to civil disobedience, to active approval of police and military actions.

Knowingly or not, the US State Department is echoing the arguments offered by Oscar Alvarez and Defense Minister Marlon Pascua against beleaguered Ana Pineda, whose appointment to a new ministry the Lobo Sosa government touts as a sign of commitment to the protection of human rights, even though it was widely opposed, endorsed in an atmosphere of political cynicism, and has been entirely ineffective.

We extract from COFADEH's statement only the reports from affected communities in the area around San Pedro Sula, communities we know well. We think they counter the US attaché's impression that, in the current unrest, it is the military and police who are the real victims. Dozens of people engaged in protest, in communities across this small region, illegally detained, beaten, shot at, and tear gassed.

When the police tear gas a town in reaction to a road blockade, that violates international expectations about restraint, and is an unproportional use of force. When they shoot tear gas canisters at individuals exercising their rights of free speech, they violate international expectations, not to mention display their misunderstanding of the effective use of the weapons that the international community, regrettably, provides them. Don't just take our word for it; ask Ana Pineda. She knows this, and is trying to communicate it to the Lobo Sosa government.

In San Pedro Sula, capital of the province of Cortes, the daughter of an ex-congresswoman from the Party of Democratic Unification (UD), Silvia Ayala, was wounded during the violent eviction of students from the University Center of the Valley of Sula, where dozens of students and professors were also detained.

A young student, Josue Rodriguez (20) was hit on the side of his head by his right ear by a metal tear gas canister fired by the policy into the interior of the university facility.

The installations of the Regional University Center were surrounded by lines of police and soldiers impeding the exit of students and professors while they were being attacked by tear gas bombs fired directly at their bodies, fainting and vomiting were caused by the inhalation of the gases.

In the municipalities of Santa Cruz de Yojoa, Potrerillos, La Lima and Choloma, in the province of Cortes, there were 43 persons detained for participating in the Civic Strike; they were not freed from the police station until yesterday, Wednesday, during the night; in some cases they had marks from the beatings they received and gave testimony of insults and discriminatory remarks made to them.

At the highway turn-off to La Flores, Santa Cruz, in Cortes, the (Police) Commissioner Rubi, nephew of the current Attorney General, unleashed a violent repression against the protest and ordered the detention of 17 people who were transferred to the First Police Station of San Pedro Sula. Among the detained were : Lidia Arita, Nedi Santos Castillo, Antonio Maradiaga and Glenda Cabrera. There were 6 people wounded by bullets, including Daisy Sabillon and Manuel Miranda, who were taken by private transport to the Mario Catarino Rivas Hospital in San Pedro Sula.

In addition, the riot police punctured the tires of more than 30 vehicles using their firearms, and knives and then chased the owners with tear gas and gunfire while they sought refuge in the forested area of the locale.

In Potrerillo, a town in the province of Cortes, in the area of the Colonia El Triunfo 5 people were detained: with head wounds (Alejandro Duarte Garcia), blows to the legs (Luciano Barrera Monroy) and lesions on the thighs (Haydee Marquez del Cid; Junior Mejia Murillo and Gloria Marina Perdomo Rodriguez).

Lawyers, Evaristo Euceda and Iris Bude, who were carrying out human rights defense work in the police station of Villanueva were verbally and physically assaulted by the police sub-inspector of the locale.

In the community of Tacamiche, a peasant settlement that belongs to the municipality of La Lima, Cortes, the repressive forces entered the settlement to fire toxic gases into the interiors of homes as revenge for the protest blockade of the highway to the town of San Manuel and Villaneva, Cortes. The director of the community school, Professor Esmeralda Flores along with teachers, Favricio Sevilla and Pedro Valladares, were taken to the First Police Station of San Pedro Sula.

We agree that this is a "truly frightening" situation. But we think it is more frightening for the Honduran people who are being punished for disagreeing with the policies of the Lobo Sosa administration, now with the open approval of the US State Department.

Human Rights Loses Again

The security forces in Honduras continue to be in denial about their trampling on the human rights of Hondurans. For the second week in a row, Ana Pineda, the Minister of Justice and Human Rights, called on the Police and Military to change their procedures to comply with UN protocols and observe human rights to no avail.

In the council of ministers meeting yesterday Pineda pointed out that the security forces are using teargas "irrationally". They are, she asserted, violating UN protocols on how to use teargas on several fronts; foremost by launching the teargas canisters directly at people instead of into the air, which also makes the teargas less effective overall and is an improper use of force. She also noted that security forces were shooting teargas into enclosed spaces like offices and the interior of cars, causing more harm and damage than necessary. She noted that the security forces were violating UN protocols because they failed to initiate any form of dialogue with the protesters before resorting to force. The UN protocol states that force should only be a last resort after all attempts at dialogue are exhausted. Finally she noted that proper arrest procedures were ignored in the detention yesterday of Garifuna leader Miriam Miranda in Tela. Miranda was held 9 hours and her rights were violated numerous times during that detention.

Last week it was Oscar Alvarez, the security minister, who was in denial. It was Marlon Pascua who was in denial of the problems this time. Pascua, the defense minister and nominally in charge of the military asserted that it was the police and military whose human rights were being violated.

"Unfortunately human rights only work in one direction,"

said Pascua, ignoring the power differential between an unarmed public and the armed security forces. Pascua went on to remind the ministers of the three soldiers hospitalized with burns from Molotov cocktails. Perhaps not fully realizing the irony of his statements, Pascua noted that so far the international human rights organizations had not ruled in favor of the security forces. Gee, I wonder why?

Armando Caledonio, vice minister of Security read a letter written by Ramon Custodio, the Human Rights commissioner, to the security agency noting that the police use of wooden clubs (toletes y garrotes in Honduran Spanish) violated the UN conventions on the use of force and asked them to cease using them immediately. One wonders where this concern about the use of wooden clubs was during the de facto regime, but better late than never.

La Tribuna notes that Porfirio Lobo Sosa asked both sides to meet and work out their differences, perhaps appoint an ombudsperson and review the security force procedures in light of UN protocols. He called on the ministers to put aside their differences and work as a team. This is much the same thing he told them last week, so obviously it is working well as a plan.

Until there is a recognition on the part of the police and military that they are violating the human rights of the Honduran people, the problem will persist. The problem, caused by poor training, cannot be addressed until it is recognized as a problem by those who lead, and so far they are in denial. Until then, Honduras will continue to be called to task by the international community.

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.

More Coup Talk

More stories have been printed in Honduras today about a coup being planned against Porfirio Lobo Sosa, with articles in all the daily newspapers. Here's a summary of what's new.

During the Cabinet meeting yesterday Lobo Sosa issued a directive that La Tribuna specified was directed at the military and police, suggesting where a threat may be coming from. Proceso Digital reported the directive was to all ministries.

What both sources agree is that the order was not to align themselves with either the far right or the far left, represented by the Unión Cívica Democratica on the right and the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular for the left:

"Minister of Security, Minister of Defense, I don't want members of the National Police or the Armed Forces participating with either of the two sectors; our mandate is with the Honduran people,"

Lobo is quoted as saying.

"It isn't possible that one is elected with a clear mandate and takes another route; I ask you to absent yourselves, and we greatly restrict participation in meetings or praise for either side; our function is not to be part of the confrontation for either side, rather part of the process of reconciliation,"

Proceso Digital reports him continuing.

La Prensa reported that Lobo Sosa flashed the number "3" with his hands, interpreting it as indicating that it was 3 highly placed individuals in the Nationalist Party that were plotting against him.

With unfortunate timing, yesterday the US military resumed military aid to the Honduran Armed Forces. Lieutenant General Ken Kleen presented the Minister of Defense, Marlon Pascua, and head of the Joint Chiefs, General Carlos Cuéllar, with the keys to 25 all-terrain vehicles in a public ceremony in Tegucigalpa. The vehicles will be assigned to the Special Forces units in Francisco Morazán and Colon.

The US Military Commander in Honduras, Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence Ott, said the presentation completed military aid promised last year. Then he added,

"The government of the United States has come to realize training missions as a key initiative to identifying the potential problems in the region."

In return, General Carlos Cuéllar spoke of how the gift from the US government would help them carry out "the established constitutional mission."

In light of the press reports implying that the military may not be entirely under the control of Lobo Sosa, we can't be blamed for hearing echoes of last year's Armed Forces statements that equated their role in the coup with their constitutional role.