Colombia - Navy Counter-Narcotics Operations
The streets of America are still awash in drugs, and have been for a long, long time. More than ever before, greater volumes of illicit drugs from Colombia and the Andean Region are transmitting into Central America, Mexico, and on into the United States. While having the smallest portion of the Colombian defense budget, the Colombian Navy continue to have their country's highest seizure rate.
The cost of using Colombian ships and airplanes is significantly less than using United States ships and planes near Colombian waters. Due to the distances which they must operate from their home ports and bases, and because of the time required to be deployed. The magnitude of the trip constitutes a significant challenge to the caballitas of the Colombian Navy. For this reason, the Colombian Navy has concentrated a substantial part of its operational, logistical intelligence and budget for detection and maritime interdiction of these narcoterrorist threats to the Colombian seas.
The strategy of cooperation between the Colombian Navy and the United States Marine Forces is expressing the bilateral maritime agreement signed in 1997. The interdiction success achieved has been the most successful ever obtained in combined operations against drug trafficking. Collective success is evidenced by the seizure of 435 tons, metric tons of cocaine between January, 1997 and October, 2005. Sixty-three percent of these seizures are the results of combined operations; 30.5 percent seized exclusive of Colombian Navy operations; and 6.5 seized in joint operations with the Colombian Armed Forces including the police. The operation of labor has increased the average daily rate of seizures from around 51 kilos per day in 1997 to 322 per day in 2005. This quantity of drugs seized in this 9-year period has an estimated street price in the American open market of $17.4 billion. Similarly, this volume is equal to approximately 2,174 million personal doses, representing a street value that exceeds $65 billion.
Between fiscal years 2000 and 2007, the US State and Defense Departments provided over $89 million to helpsustain and expand Colombian Navy and Marine interdiction efforts. According to Defense, from January to June 2007, an estimated 70 percent of Colombia’s cocaine was smuggled out of the country using go-fast vessels, fishing boats, and other forms of maritime transport. State and Defense support for the Colombian Navy is designed to help improve their capacity to stop drug traffickers from using Colombia’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts to conduct drug-trafficking activities.
State and Defense support for the Colombian Marines is designed to help gain control ofColombia’s network of navigable rivers, which traffickers use to transport precursor chemicals and finished products. According to Colombian Ministry of Defense officials, the number of metric tons of cocaine seizedby the Navy and Marines represented over half of all cocaine seized by Colombia in 2007. US State and Defense assistance to the Colombian Navy provided for infrastructure development (such as new storage refueling equipment for the Navy station in Tumaco), the transfer of two vessels to Colombia, eight “Midnight Express” interceptor boats, two Cessna Grand Caravan 45 transport aircraft, weapons, fuel, communications equipment, andtraining.
State assistance also helped the Colombian Navy establish aspecial intelligence unit in the northern city of Cartagena to collect anddistribute time-sensitive intelligence on suspect vessels in the Caribbean. In 2007, the unit coordinated 35 interdiction operations, which resulted inthe arrests of 40 traffickers, the seizure of over 9 metric tons of cocaine,and the seizure of 21 trafficker vessels including one semisubmersiblevessel. The U.S. Embassy Bogotá credits this unit for over 95 percent of allColombian Navy seizures in the Caribbean, forcing traffickers to rely moreon departure sites along the Pacific Coast and areas near Venezuela and Panama.
The Colombian Navy faces certain challenges. First, it generally lacks the resources needed to provide comprehensive coverage over Colombia’s Pacific coastline. For example, according to Colombian Navy officials, the Navy has only three stations to cover all of Colombia’s Pacific coastline. Second, according to U.S. Embassy Bogotá officials, these services lacked adequate intelligence information to guide interdiction efforts along the Pacific coast. According to embassy officials, the United States was working with the Colombians to expand intelligence gathering and dissemination efforts to the Pacific coast, in part by providing support to expand the Navy’s intelligence unit in Cartagena to cover this area. Third, by 2008 traffickers had increasingly diversified their routes and methods, including using semi-submersibles to avoid detection.
The seizure of semi-sumergibles, with which traffickers seek to evade maritime control to transport your merchandise has been fundamental. Since 1993, when it was detected the first semi-submersible, Navy joint, coordinated operations and maritime interdiction, has succeeded in neutralizing 54 artifacts by 2010, eight of which have been seized in the Caribbean and 45 in the Pacific area. During the four years 2006-2010, they have been detected and neutralized semisumergibles 47, with a capacity to accommodate approximately 10 tons of cocaine each. These results have avoided close to 47,000 pounds of the alkaloid coming to other Nations, which prevents some $ 1,175 million coming to the finances of narco groups.
A breakthrough in this area, has been the adoption of the Act on July 9, 2009, that judicializa with sentences of 6 to 14 years in prison and a fine of 1,000 to 70,000 statutory minimum salaries per month, to all those that finance, build, stored, marketing, transporting, acquiring or using semisumergibles or submersible. The proposal for the amendment of the criminal code, arose from problems to trial this crime, taking into account that criminal organizations used the semisumergibles for the transport of large quantities of narcotics and when they are surprised by the authority, destroy the evidence, sinking the artifact.
For the Colombian Marines, US State and Defense provided support for infrastructure development (such as docks and hangars), 95 patrol boats, weapons, ammunition, fuel, communications equipment, night vision goggles, and engines. Colombia’s rivers serve as a vital transport network and are used to transport the precursor chemicals used to make cocaine and heroin, as well as to deliver the final product to ports on Colombia’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts. According to State, up to 40 percent of the cocaine transported in Colombia moves through the complex river network in Colombia’s south-central region to the southwestern coastal shore. According to U.S. Southern Command officials, the key challenge facingthe riverine program is a general lack of resources given the scope of the problem. By 2008 the Colombian marines maintained a permanent presence on only about one-third of Colombia’s nearly 8,000 miles of navigable rivers. U.S. embassy planning documents set a goal of helping the Colombian Marines achieve a coverage rate of at least 60 percent by 2010.
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