NORTHERN TRIANGLE | US security agenda ‘stagnant’. In a working paper published by the Inter-American Dialogue*, journalist and former Salvadorean diplomat Héctor Silva says, ‘By 2014, the common security agenda between Washington and the Northern Tier is stagnant to say the least.’ He exemplifies this by noting that while cocaine flows through Central America’s Northern Triangle (he calls it Northern Tier) have increased and the subregion has sprouted a budding methamphetamine industry, drug seizures ‘have remained steady’ [see page 4 for up-to-date figures]. Silva says that in Washington two explanations are offered for this: (1) ‘the lack of progress [...]…

This month Honduras was scheduled to take delivery of three radars purchased from Israel, which will become the basic source of intelligence on unauthorised flights liable to be intercepted by the air force under the ‘shoot-down’ law that came into effect on 3 February. President Juan Orlando Hernández, who took office in late January and was the main promoter of that law, has said that he fully intends to apply it. The Ley de Exclusión Aérea (‘Aerial Exclusion Zone’), approved by congress on 17 January, provides for the interception of aircraft detected flying in the designated exclusion zones between 18:00…

The good news is that over the past two years Haiti has achieved a drastic reduction in its epidemic-proportion rate of a kidnapping for ransom per day. The bad news is that a recent high-profile kidnapping, while foiled, has brought again under the spotlight the cosy relationship between criminal elements and Haitian officialdom — all the way to the top level. Haiti’s success in curbing kidnapping was celebrated in early March by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in an article written by Julienne Gage for the bank’s blog Sin Miedos. Largely responsible for that success was the anti-kidnapping support provided…

The number of homicides in Costa Rica last year was 407, the same as the previous year, but as a result of population growth its rate per 100,000 inhabitants fell to 8.6 — the fourth consecutive year of decline since it crept above the ‘epidemic’ threshold in 2010. The authorities attribute this to a radical change in policing methods. ‘Costa Rica used to allocate its policing resources in a static fashion,’ says security minister Mario Zamora. ‘Now we are operating with a strategy of mobility; we have improved our fleet of vehicles and thus our control of the territory. [Moreover]…