Pubdate: Thu, 17 May 2012
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2012 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Authors: Charlie Savage and Thom Shanker

D.E.A.'S AGENTS JOIN HONDURANS IN DRUG BATTLES

WASHINGTON - A commando-style squad of Drug Enforcement 
Administration 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.

It remains unclear whether the D.E.A. agents took part in the 
shooting during either episode, the first in the early hours of May 6 
and the second early last Friday. In an initial account of the second 
episode, the Honduran government told local reporters that two drug 
traffickers had been killed and a large shipment of cocaine seized; 
he did not mention any American involvement. Several American 
officials said the D.E.A. agents did not return fire during the encounter.

But this week, a local mayor and a Honduran lawmaker said that four 
innocent bystanders had been killed and called for an investigation 
into what the Honduran news media are now portraying as a botched 
D.E.A. operation.

Lucio Baquedano, the mayor of Ahuas, a small town near the incident, 
told El Tiempo, a Honduran newspaper, that a helicopter-borne unit 
consisting of both Honduran police officers and D.E.A. agents was 
pursuing a boatload of drug smugglers when it mistakenly opened fire 
on another boat carrying villagers. Four people died - including two 
pregnant women - and four others were wounded, he said.

Honduras is a growing focus of American counternarcotics efforts 
aimed at the drug cartels that have increasingly sought to use its 
ungoverned spaces as a way point in shipping cocaine from South 
America to the United States.

But the murky circumstances surrounding the firefights underscore the 
potential successes and risks in the United States' escalating 
efforts to help small Central American governments battle well-armed 
and financed transnational narcotics smugglers by adapting 
counterinsurgency techniques honed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. 
The challenge has been to help bolster local security forces without 
raising a nationalist backlash fueled by memories of interventions by 
the United States during the cold war.

The American efforts include the use of D.E.A. commando squads - 
called FAST, or Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team - to train and 
work along side specially vetted local forces in the Western 
Hemisphere. This year, the military built three "forward operating 
bases" in isolated areas of Honduras to prestage helicopter-borne 
units so they could more quickly respond.

Dawn Dearden, a D.E.A. spokeswoman, confirmed that American agents 
had been present alongside Honduran counterparts at both episodes. 
She said the D.E.A. worked "hand in hand with our Honduran 
counterparts" but were "involved in a supportive role only" during 
the two operations.

She declined to comment further, citing the delicacy of the matter. 
But other officials said that government forces in the two operations 
seized more than a ton of cocaine that had just been flown in on 
small planes from Venezuela and was probably bound for the United 
States. They also said door gunners for the helicopters were Honduran.

The episode last Friday began when an American intelligence task 
force detected a plane from Venezuela headed for a remote airstrip in 
Honduras. The military sent a Navy P-3 surveillance plane - developed 
for anti-submarine warfare in the cold war - high over the site, 
where it detected about 30 people unloading cargo from the plane into 
a vehicle, according to officials briefed on the matter.

The smugglers, they said, then drove to a nearby river and loaded the 
materials into a canoe. It is a standard technique for smugglers to 
ferry their contraband in canoes, which glide under triple-canopy 
rain forest to the coast, where the cargo is put into fast boats or 
submersibles for the trip north to the United States.

Meanwhile, helicopters were scrambling from one of several "forward 
operating bases" that the United States military has recently built, 
this one at Puerto Castilla on the coast. The helicopters carried a 
Honduran strike force along with members of a FAST unit.

The helicopters, officials said, landed and seized the boat along 
with its cargo, about 2,000 pounds of cocaine. American and Honduran 
officials have said a second boat arrived and opened fire on the 
government agents, and a brief but intense shootout ensued in which 
government forces on the ground killed two drug traffickers.

But Mr. Baquedano told El Tiempo that the helicopter was pursuing the 
drug traffickers when they mistook another boat, filled with 
villagers and traveling with a light on, for the traffickers, whose 
boat was unlighted. He said gunners on the helicopter fired on the 
villagers' boat, while the smugglers abandoned their boat and 
escaped. Mr. Baquedan said the four slain villagers were innocent bystanders.

Just as in operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen, 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 FAST teams were created in 2005 to help Afghan forces go after 
drug traffickers in the war zone who were helping to finance the 
Taliban. Most of them were military veterans and received Special 
Operations-style training from the military. The D.E.A. had a similar 
program during the 1980s and early 1990s in which agents worked 
alongside Latin American police and military officials to go after 
jungle labs and smuggling planes. That program was ended early in the 
Clinton administration after complaints that it was not having enough 
of an impact to justify its risks.

Because they are considered law enforcement agents, not soldiers, 
their presence on another country's soil may raise fewer 
sensitivities about sovereignty. The American military personnel 
deployed in Honduras, for example, are barred from responding with 
force even if Honduran or D.E.A. agents are in danger. But if their 
Honduran counterparts come under fire, FAST teams may shoot back. For 
similar reasons, the helicopters are part of a State Department 
counternarcotics program - and not military.

A FAST team was involved in a firefight in Honduras in March 2011 in 
which a Honduran officer was wounded and two drug traffickers were 
killed. In that case, the presence of the team was fortuitous - it 
had been on a training exercise with Honduran counterparts nearby 
when a smuggling plane was detected coming into a remote airstrip. On 
the May 6 mission, an American intelligence task force identified a 
plane leaving Venezuela and heading toward Honduras. A surveillance 
plane spotted the single-engine airplane as it landed in the 
wilderness of Miskito Indian country of eastern Honduras, and watched 
as about 100 people unloaded bales of cargo into several vehicles, 
officials said.

The landing strip was less than 30 miles from one of the new 
outposts, called Forward Operating Base Mocoron. A joint 
Honduran-D.E.A. squad arrived on a State Department helicopter as two 
vehicles were leaving the landing zone. Drug smugglers on the ground, 
officials said, opened fire on the helicopter, and the government 
forces returned fire. In that episode, officials said, the drug 
smugglers fled into the rain forest, and there were no casualties.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom