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.

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.

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.

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.

"They're making them in the laboratory...."

It would be funny if it weren't serious; General René Osorio, head of Honduras's Armed Forces, believes one needs a university laboratory to make Molotov cocktails, or so he says in Saturday's Tiempo

"they're making them [Molotov cocktails] in the laboratory of the Teaching University."

Rather than explain the simple components of a Molotov cocktail, something anyone can manufacture in seconds from simple household ingredients, without a university laboratory, I would recommend General Osorio learn what's involved in their fabrication; no laboratory needed.

Speaking of fabrications, the spectre of Nicaraguans invading to disrupt Honduran society has been raised again. First Oscar Alvarez, and now General Rene Osorio claim that foreigners are infiltrating the teacher's protests to cause chaos. Alvarez was specific; they're Nicaraguans. Just last December Alvarez announced that Nicaraguans were importing thousands of weapons and arming and training the FNRP in the Bajo Aguan. Although they announced several times they knew where the arms were (apparently in the local INA office, which they occupied for two months), no arms, or Nicaraguans, were ever found. Only the land titles which show INA owns some of the lands claimed by Miguel Facussé.

When an otherwise seemingly intelligent person, like General Osorio, makes a ridiculous claim in the press, one must look beyond the claim, to its implications, to understand why they might be asserting it. In this case General Osorio almost certainly knows better than to believe Molotov cocktails require a laboratory to manufacture. So what could actually be behind this profoundly outlandish statement? It is likely to be about creating an excuse to move troops and police onto the Teaching University campus. The police used an almost identical claim to justify moving troops and police onto the Autonomous University campus (an illegal act) during the de facto regime. It wasn't true that time, either.

Hey, it worked once....