The immediate top priority the US Southern Command (Southcom) has set itself in its role as ‘the lead US agency responsible for directing illicit trafficking detection and monitoring activities’ is ‘strengthening the security capacities of our partners in Central America’. This reflects the appreciation that this subregion, a key transshipment zone for illicit trafficking, is where organised crime has ‘most acutely [...] evolved into a volatile and potentially destabilising threat to both citizen and regional security.’
This is what the outgoing chief of Southcom, General Douglas Fraser, told representatives of the House Armed Forces Committee in the Posture Statement he delivered on 6 March. His key reading of the situation was, ‘While we do not see a traditional military threat emanating from the region, nations throughout our hemisphere are contending with an asymmetric threat to national and international security: Transnational Organised Crime (TOC).’
The situation is felt most acutely in Central America: ‘Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are experiencing alarming increases in murders and brutality. The rising wave of violence and illicit trafficking, coupled with the expansive resources of transnational organized crime, is challenging the law enforcement capacities of some Central American governments. Accordingly, these countries view their militaries as the only entities capable of responding to these threats.’ Hence, Southcom ‘is supporting the efforts of militaries throughout Central America that have been tasked by their civilian governments to assist in countering transnational organised crime.’
A point highlighted by General Fraser is that the networks of organised crime ‘traverse the boundaries of the Geographic Combatant Commands (GCCs). Illicit trafficking by transnational criminal organisations is expanding between our AOR [area of responsibility] and the AORs of United States Northern Command, United States Africa Command, and United States European Command, underscoring the truly global nature of this networked threat.’
The boundaries he appears to have most in mind are those that split responsibilities between Southcom and Northcom in Latin America and the Caribbean. The latter’s remit includes Mexico and the Bahamas; the former’s stretches south of Guatemala and the rest of the Caribbean. ‘Events in Mexico and in [Southcom’s] AOR’, says Fraser, ‘are inherently connected, requiring an integrated effort across law enforcement, military, and civilian agencies. Many countries in Central America face challenges in addressing impunity, porous borders, and large areas of under-governed territory.’
To this is added the strong suggestion that Southcom is doing a more efficient job than others. Fraser notes that in 2011 operations conducted by Southcom’s Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATF South) resulted in the ‘disruption’ of 117 tonnes of cocaine. 'Our return on investment is substantial; in 2010, JIATF South supported the interdiction of eight times the amount of cocaine than was interdicted on the Southwest border [of the US], at a third of the cost and in an operating area that covers 42 million square miles.’
This claim is supported in the distributed version of Fraser’s Posture Statement with the following data: In FY2010, 11 US government agencies jointly spent US$1.8bn on interdiction efforts along the 1,969-mile south-west border, while JIATF’s total operating cost was US$565.5m. Law enforcement agencies seized 19t of cocaine along the south-west border; JIATF achieved the ‘disruption’ of 154t (see table in page 7 for US Coast Guard seizures in FY2011).
Fraser points out that many Central American states lack the financial reserves of transnational criminal organisations. He cites the UNODC calculation that retail and wholesale drug-trafficking profits in North America amount to some US$35bn, and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)'s calculation that Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers generate, remove and launder between US$18bn and US$39bn annually in wholesale drug proceeds, which are largely smuggled in bulk out of the US via the south-west Border.
The distributed version of his Posture Statement includes data suggesting that Southcom expects the flow of cocaine towards the US to decline this year. JIATF South’s Projected Cocaine Movement (PCM) towards the US for calendar 2012 is between 775t and 930t. This is compared with the US inter-agency’s Documented Cocaine Movement (DCM) for calendar 2011 of 1,086t. The latter, which despite its name is an estimate, is described as ‘drawn from analysis of the Consolidated Counterdrug Database (CCDB) and augmented by law enforcement reporting’. The former is described as ‘calculated based on demand-driven methodology to project the amount of cocaine that must be leaving South America to satisfy global demand’ using a methodology that ‘attempts to capture the “unknowns” inherent to cocaine flow figures.’
Impact on US security
Fraser pointed to several potential and actual threats to US security arising from the activities of the TOCs. Prominent among them are the following:
- Their smuggling routes represent potential access points that could be leveraged by other groups: South American-based Alien Smuggling Organizations (ASOs) provide a critical link for international trafficking networks and facilitate the illegal movement of Special Interest Aliens (SIAs) through South and Central America for attempted entry into the United States. He does note that ‘we have not yet seen any attempts by international terrorist groups to leverage these smuggling routes.’
- Mexican-based TOCs and their associates operate in more than 1,000 US cities, working with domestic US gangs to distribute and traffic illicit drugs.
- Transnational gang activity in the US is a growing concern: ‘MS-13 [Mara Salvatruchas] leaders in El Salvador manage five regional “programs” of cliques in cities such as Boston, Greensboro, Miami, and Dallas, and have authorised retaliatory actions against US law enforcement personnel in the Virginia and Maryland areas, which fortunately did not come to fruition.’
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