Cocaine's New Route

DRUG TRAFFICKERS TURN TO GUATEMALA

GUATEMALA CITY -- With Washington's attention focused elsewhere,
Guatemala has quietly become the transshipment point for more than 75
percent of the cocaine smuggled into the United States, according to
US authorities. Loosely patrolled borders, two coastlines, staggering
corruption, lax enforcement, and judicial impunity have long made
Guatemala a favored transit point for contraband. But with US
resources channeled toward battling drugs in Colombia and terrorism in
the Middle East, organized crime has made even more dramatic inroads
here in the past several years.

In the first half of this year, traffickers moved 90 percent of
US-bound cocaine through Central America, much of it through
Guatemala, a top US Drug Enforcement Administration official told
Congress this month.

As Mexico has stepped up antidrug patrols and interdiction in recent
years, traffickers are increasingly looking to Guatemala as a dropoff
point for their payloads. Senior Guatemalan officials said in
interviews that they would ask for stepped-up US military cooperation
and a permanent DEA base in the dense jungle bordering Mexico. Their
remarks followed the arrest this month near Washington, D.C., of
Guatemala's top three antidrug investigators on charges of narcotics
trafficking. Guatemalan authorities are also investigating allegations
of involvement by senior members of the Guatemalan armed forces in
the drug trade. The traffickers have already shown an ability to adapt
in the face of increased enforcement efforts.

With Guatemalan authorities increasing air surveillance of the
northern province of Peten, where hundreds of abandoned drug planes
litter the jungle, traffickers have shifted to speedboats to carry
drugs to both the Pacific and Caribbean coasts.

Using mobile refueling stations at sea, the traffickers rely on
cooperation from Guatemalan customs and police, DEA agents and local
prosecutors say.

"The narco nexus may be stronger than the state now," said Julio
Cesar Godoy, Guatemala's deputy minister of security. "There are
areas where the army, police, local officials all work for
narcotraffickers -- it's like Colombia in the 1980s. . . . The narcos
abuse and kill, and nobody says anything because the judges,
prosecutors, military commanders, and governors are all bought off."
In addition, the traffickers are buying loyalty and recruiting among
the population by "playing a role like the state," he said. "They
loan money, host parties, help pay for funerals, provide jobs."

As US Coast Guard and Navy boats have stepped up patrols along the
coast in the past year, traffickers have begun to use small planes to
drop cocaine packets along the coastlines and then pay fishermen to
pick them up and hand them off to the trafficking networks onshore.

Within Guatemala, production of drugs is increasing along with
transhipment, the officials say. Opium poppy cultivation is up in
parts of the countryside where law enforcement cannot operate because
of traffickers' heavily armed security forces.

Guatemalan heroin has become a new worry for the United States.
Another troubling shift, authorities say, is that Mexican and
Colombian cartels have started paying Guatemalan smuggling crews and
off-loaders in drugs, rather than cash. The strategy is to sow drug
use in Guatemala, where an estimated 10 percent of the cocaine shipped
remains for local consumption. In 2003, the most recent year for which
it provides data, the DEA estimated that 150 metric tons, or 330,000
pounds, of cocaine moved through Guatemala annually. But in just two
years, the problem has dramatically worsened. Some 220,000 pounds of
cocaine were shipped through a single Caribbean port -- at Santo
Tomas, in the northeastern province of Izabal -- during the first five
months of this year alone, according to Guatemalan authorities. From
Guatemala, drugs are usually smuggled into the United States on
overland routes across the poorly guarded jungle border into Mexico.
Recently, police have made some advances.

Following a four-month joint investigation by US and Guatemalan
authorities, the antinarcotics official in charge of the Santo Tomas
port, Rubilio Palacios, and Guatemala's top two antinarcotics
officials were charged in a three-count indictment Nov. 16 in
Virginia, where they had traveled for a DEA training course.

They are accused of shielding huge drug shipments from inspection,
tipping off traffickers to enforcement actions, and providing official
vehicles to transport drugs. In response, the Guatemalan government
has pledged to purge and restructure its antidrug agency, known as
SAIA. Random lie-detector and psychological tests will be required of
all agents, Interior Minister Carlos Vielmann said. But revamping the
agency might not solve the underlying problem of poorly trained and
corruptible officers.

Guatemalan convictions of traffickers, whether private citizens or
officials, are rare. None of 16 alleged Guatemalan traffickers wanted
in the United States has been extradited in the last dozen years since
warrants were issued because of delays in the country's judicial
system, said Michael P. O'Brien, the DEA's representative in
Guatemala. The United States has revoked visas for two retired
generals suspected of major trafficking, but the two have not been
arrested here.

The government of President Oscar Berger, which took office in January
2004, says it is doing all it can but lacks technical equipment,
honest personnel, and antiracketeering laws to fight crime networks
that ran rampant starting in 2000, under then-president Alfonso
Portillo. Guatemala is seeking Portillo's extradition from Mexico on
corruption charges, while numerous other top former officials have
been prosecuted or are under investigation. During that four-year
stretch of lawlessness at the highest levels under the former
administration, Mexican and Colombian cartels sowed roots in Guatemala
and built up local cartels, while organized crime bought its way into
nearly every institution from the banks to the courts, according to
antinarcotics specialists here.

"Organized crime is a monster that always existed here . . . but it
was permitted to get out of control, and this shadow power is
devouring the democratic system," said Pedro Trujillo, director of the
Institute of Political Studies and International Relations at
Francisco Marroquin University. Guatemala has also become a regional
money-laundering center, drawing dirty funds from as far as California
and Florida, and lubricating the economy with expensive houses, luxury
cars, and private planes.

In the early 1990s, the DEA had a fleet of helicopters stationed here
for surveillance and interdictions. Since then, "enforcement efforts
have shifted to other areas," leaving a dearth of resources for
enforcement in Central America, DEA director of operations Michael
Braun testified before Congress Nov. 9. Godoy, the deputy security
minister, said President Berger intends to ask Washington for a
permanent DEA station in Peten and for more US assistance. "We want a
'Plan Guatemala' like 'Plan Colombia,' " he said, referring to the $3
billion, five-year US antinarcotics aid package to the world's leading
cocaine producer.

Berger is also asking for a three-year extension of "Plan Maya
Jaguar," a joint operation that allows US aircraft and soldiers to
conduct occasional antinarcotics operations with Guatemalans.
Expanding military cooperation with the United States could be
controversial, however, both among corrupt interests here who fear the
long arm of the United States, and also in Washington. The US
military has withheld military aid to Guatemala since the mid-1990s
because of human rights abuses by the military during the 36-year
civil war that ended in 1996. Levels of drugs seizures by Guatemalan
agents are pitifully low, raising suspicions that dealers are tipped
off, said Fredyn Fernandez, Guatemala's chief narcotics prosecutor.
Nine of every 10 drug raids here are unsuccessful. This month, some 70
border customs agents were transferred under suspicion of taking
bribes to allow contraband to cross into Mexico. Lack of resources is
also a major impediment. The Guatemalan military has only a handful of
aircraft, none with nighttime capabilities, allowing traffickers to
land planes under cover of darkness.

Even when drugs are intercepted, weak laws impede the capture of
suspects, authorities say. Congressman Otto Perez Molina is sponsoring
a bill that would allow undercover agents to infiltrate drug rings and
police to conduct controlled buys. A newly passed law will permit
wiretapping starting in January. "If we don't take action now, we
could become another Colombia," Molina warned.