[Senate Hearing 112-57]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
S. Hrg. 112-57
A SHARED RESPONSIBILITY: COUNTERNARCOTICS AND CITIZEN SECURITY IN THE
AMERICAS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON WESTERN HEMISPHERE, PEACE
CORPS, AND GLOBAL NARCOTICS AFFAIRS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 31, 2011
__________
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts, Chairman
BARBARA BOXER, California RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey BOB CORKER, Tennessee
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
ROBERT P. CASEY, Jr., Pennsylvania MARCO RUBIO, Florida
JIM WEBB, Virginia JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire JIM DeMINT, South Carolina
CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming
TOM UDALL, New Mexico MIKE LEE, Utah
Frank G. Lowenstein, Staff Director
Kenneth A. Myers, Jr., Republican Staff Director
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON WESTERN HEMISPHERE, PEACE
CORPS, AND GLOBAL NARCOTICS AFFAIRS
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey, Chairman
BARBARA BOXER, California MARCO RUBIO, Florida
JIM WEBB, Virginia MIKE LEE, Utah
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire JIM DeMINT, South Carolina
TOM UDALL, New Mexico JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia
JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming
(ii)
?
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Arnson, Dr. Cynthia, director, Latin American Program, Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC....... 40
Prepared statement........................................... 42
Brownfield, Hon. William R., Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau
of International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement Affairs,
Department of State, Washington, DC............................ 9
Prepared statement........................................... 11
Felbab-Brown, Dr. Vanda, fellow, foreign policy, Brookings
Institution, Washington, DC.................................... 28
Prepared statement........................................... 29
Johnson, Stephen, director, Americas Program, Center for
Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC............ 46
Prepared statement........................................... 48
Kerlikowske, Hon. R. Gil, Director, National Drug Control Policy,
Washington, DC................................................. 3
Prepared statement........................................... 4
Menendez, Hon. Robert, U.S. Senator from New Jersey, opening
statement...................................................... 1
Olson, Eric, senior associate, Mexico Institute, Latin American
Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars,
Washington, DC................................................. 51
Prepared statement........................................... 53
Wechsler, William F., Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Counternarcotics and Global Threats, Department of Defense,
Washington, DC................................................. 13
Prepared statement........................................... 14
(iii)
A SHARED RESPONSIBILITY: COUNTERNARCOTICS AND CITIZEN SECURITY IN THE
AMERICAS
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THURSDAY, MARCH 31, 2011
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere,
Peace Corps and Global Narcotics Affairs,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:07 a.m., in
room SD-419, Dirksen Office Building, Hon. Robert Menendez
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Senators Menendez and Rubio.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT MENENDEZ,
U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW JERSEY
Senator Menendez. Good morning. The committee hearing will
come to order. Welcome to our hearing on shared responsibility,
counternarcotics and citizen security in the Americas. Let me
thank our panelists for coming today. We look forward to your
insights.
Let me begin by laying out the framework for our discussion
today and some sobering statistics. Latin America and the
Caribbean region has one of the highest crime rates of any
region in the world. According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and
Crimes, in 2003 the homicide rate in Latin America and the
Caribbean was 19.9 per 100,000 people. By 2008, the rate had
climbed to an astounding 32.6 per 100,000 people.
In El Salvador, the rate is estimated to be as high as 71
per 100,000, despite President Funes's tremendous efforts to
combat the maras, gangs that are largely responsible for
violent crime. It is not a coincidence that cocaine seizures in
Central America have also tripled during this time period.
The problem is no longer limited to transit or trafficking
in drugs, but has expanded into production and domestic
consumption. Earlier this month, Honduran authorities found a
cocaine processing laboratory in the remote northeastern
mountains capable of producing 440 to 880 pounds of cocaine a
week.
Our successes through Plan Colombia, while significant,
failed to take into account the ability of the market to find
new avenues to move its product and new territories to
infiltrate. However, the successes we achieved in Colombia
through close bilateral cooperation demonstrated that it is
possible to take on the drug trafficking organizations and to
achieve success.
The recipe for victory in my mind is clear. Our efforts
must be shouldered jointly, recognizing a shared responsibility
to address supply and demand for narcotics, as well as a shared
responsibility to take into account the social and economic
factors contributing to the trade. It is also necessary that we
control the flow of weapons and cash from the United States to
the region, for they are fueling the violent attacks that are
leaving hundreds of people dead every week in Mexico and
enabling traffickers to fight off law enforcement officers or
co-opt their efforts.
Let me say, for the record, that I am extremely
disappointed that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms
declined to participate in today's hearing and accept our
invitation to address this aspect of the narcotics equation.
While they may have avoided today's hearing, I can assure them
that they will not avoid a hearing in perpetuity.
In the past, our strategy for dealing with this threat has
been targeted eradication of production and interdiction of
supply. What we have seen in response is a balloon effort,
where supply routes have moved from the Caribbean to Mexico,
with drug trafficking organizations moving from Colombia to
Mexico and now making inroads into Central America. The truth
is, as you can see on the charts, we are being attacked from
all directions.
Unfortunately, in my mind our budget priorities do not
reflect the scale of the problem. The budget request for fiscal
year 2012 for State-INL appears to be significantly lower than
the fiscal year 2010 enacted level, $565.6 million versus
$701.4 million. At the same time, we anticipate cuts to funding
for programs that are crucial to addressing the underlying
social and economic causes of the drug trade.
So our commitment to shared responsibility must also be
shared by our government and the bureaucracies that need to
work together to coordinate efforts to bring a whole government
approach to the task. To that end, in the last Congress I
worked with Senators Kerry and Lugar on legislative vehicles
that would rechannel our efforts to address this issue, and
create a comprehensive multiyear strategy for combating
narcotics, taking into account the demand and supply issues,
the role of U.S. weapons flowing south, and the balloon effort
that has moved the problem from one part of the hemisphere to
the other.
I plan to reintroduce legislation this Congress that I hope
will refocus the administration's efforts on developing a
comprehensive strategy that will bring together all the pieces
of the puzzle and truly commit us to the promises of assistance
and cooperation articulated by President Obama during his
recent visit.
With that, I know that Senator Rubio, the ranking member,
will be here a little later, since we had to change the time of
this hearing and he had a conflicting commitment.
I want to thank our distinguished panel for appearing
today. Let me introduce them. They are: Ambassador William
Brownfield, the Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics
Control and Law Enforcement; Gil Kerlikowske, the Director,
Office of the National Drug Control Policy; and David Wechsler,
the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counternarcotics and Global
Threats.
Gentlemen, we look forward to your testimony. I'd ask you
to summarize your testimony into 5-minute statements. Your full
testimony will be entered into the record and we will start
with Director Kerlikowske.
STATEMENT OF HON. R. GIL KERLIKOWSKE, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL DRUG
CONTROL POLICY, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Kerlikowske. Thank you, Chairman Menendez. I look
forward to the hearing also and appreciate the invitation with
Ranking Member Rubio and members of the subcommittee, for the
opportunity to discuss the counternarcotics and citizen
security in the Western Hemisphere. We're all aware that
substance abuse strains families, communities, economies,
health care, and criminal justice systems, not only in the
United States but in the Western Hemisphere and overseas.
The President's national drug control strategy strengthens
our focus on community-based prevention, evidence-based
treatment, support for those in recovery, coordinated law
enforcement initiatives, innovative criminal justice policies
and programs, and stronger, more productive international
partnerships. The strategy addresses drug production and
consumption throughout the world by building on these
partnerships.
The Western Hemisphere remains our highest priority.
Violent consequences of drug trafficking, social disruption,
and public health consequences are evident. The northern border
is exploited by drug traffickers. The majority of cocaine and
heroin available in our borders is produced by our neighbors to
the south.
To highlight the importance of drug policy issues in the
Western Hemisphere, I visited Colombia twice, Peru once, Mexico
on numerous occasions, and the Southwest border. In this
effort, ONDCP is preparing a Western Hemisphere
counternarcotics strategy to merge the multiple active regional
counternarcotics efforts. We're working to release the strategy
this summer, which will address interdiction and disruption of
transnational criminal syndicates, institutional strengthening,
construction of strong and resilient communities, and drug
demand reduction.
We are coordinating with my colleagues that are here today
and the other Federal agencies to strengthen our efforts to
support security and law enforcement through provision of
equipment, training, and law enforcement intelligence, as well
as to support those resources for the high seas interdiction,
air smuggling detection and monitoring, and intelligence
coordination, the strengthening of institutions through sharing
expertise, sponsoring judicial exchanges, and training
prosecutors, and the provision of assistance in building strong
communities through sharing and increasing access to effective
evidence-based substance abuse prevention and treatment, and
last, prevention and treatment through the sharing of knowledge
and best practices bilaterally.
The Western Hemisphere strategy will also bring together
the multiple interconnected regional approaches to
counternarcotics strategy. They include the Merida Initiative,
the Southwest Border Strategy, the Central America Regional
Security Initiative, and the Caribbean Basin Security
Initiative, and the Colombian Strategic Development Initiative.
This coordinated approach will carry us through as we seek
to help our northern and southern neighbors to reduce the
demand for and interdict the flow of drugs and develop
democratic institutions. Our increased emphasis in
international demand reduction will also require continued
support through guidance, training, and technical assistance.
In a recent example of international demand reduction
coordination, the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs
passed a U.S.-proposed resolution regarding drugged driving.
Supporting countries included Peru, Uruguay, Mexico, Costa
Rica, and Brazil, and the EU. With the help of our
international partners, the United States has also made
historic progress in removing cocaine from the transit zone
year after year.
Not only has Colombia become a safer and more prosperous
country, it has expanded the rule of law and continues to
instill respect for human rights. Gains in Colombia have
directly translated into progress against drug trafficking in
the United States through drastic decreases in potential heroin
and cocaine production, coupled with reductions in purity and
increases in price for street-level cocaine in the United
States.
Colombia remains a strong example of a successful
partnership in Latin America. As with Colombia, partnerships
with our hemispheric neighbors must continue to reinforce
counternarcotics and citizen security efforts.
I look forward to working with the members of this
subcommittee and others in Congress as we continue to
strengthen our coordinated response. Thank you for the
opportunity and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kerlikowske follows:]
Prepared Statement of R. Gil Kerlikowske
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and the Members of this subcommittee,
thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. On behalf of
the Office of National Drug Control Policy, I look forward to
continuing to work with the members of this subcommittee to advance and
improve U.S. policies in the Western Hemisphere.
A NEW APPROACH TO THE THREAT
Substance abuse strains families, communities, economies, health
care and criminal justice systems, not just in the United States, but
throughout the Western Hemisphere and world. Effective drug control
relies upon a comprehensive approach balancing both public health and
public safety. And the Obama administration has such a comprehensive
approach to drug control policy. The President's National Drug Control
Strategy (Strategy) strengthens our focus on community-based
prevention, evidence-based treatment, support for those in recovery
from addiction, coordinated law enforcement initiatives, innovative
criminal justice policies and programs, and stronger, more productive
international partnerships.
The administration's Strategy recognizes that the criminal justice
system plays a vital role in reducing the costs and consequences of
drug crimes and should employ innovative, evidence-based solutions to
stop the all-too-common cycle of arrest, incarceration, release, and
rearrest. An increasing body of evidence suggests that the right
combination of appropriate policies and strategies and the provision of
a continuum of evidence-based interventions can effectively address the
needs of the offender, ensure the safety of the community and
ultimately break that cycle. Some innovations include: Drug Market
Intervention, a prearrest strategy shown to reduce open air drug
markets; testing and sanctions strategies to address probation and
parole violations in a swift yet modest manner to facilitate offender
compliance; reentry support strategies to prepare offenders for life
after release; and of course, drug courts which are well-suited for
high-risk, high-need offenders. These interventions can result in a
more efficient allocation of resources, a reduction in offender
recidivism, while ensuring offender accountability and maintaining
public safety.
The global nature of the drug threat requires a strategic response
that is also global in scope. It is not realistic for countries to
expect to be effective if they are operating in a vacuum. We no longer
live in an either/or world of ``demand reduction'' versus ``supply
reduction'' or ``producer country'' versus ``consumer country.''
Accordingly, the Strategy addresses drug production and consumption
throughout the world and explicitly builds on international
partnerships to achieve our national drug control goals.
By the same token, criminal conduct engaged in by transnational
criminal organizations is not limited to drug trafficking.
Increasingly, international criminal syndicates are involved in
kidnapping, extortion, human trafficking, arms trafficking, and a
variety of other illegal activities.
LEADERSHIP
No environment is more compelling, urgent, or consequential to U.S.
drug control policy than that of the Western Hemisphere. The violent
consequences of illicit drug trafficking and the social disruption and
public health threat caused by drug consumption are evident. Although
the United States itself produces illicit drugs, and the Northern
border is a region exploited by drug traffickers, the majority of the
cocaine and heroin available in the United States is produced by
transnational drug trafficking organizations operating in the nations
to the south. Substantial proportions of methamphetamine traverse
Central America and Mexico en route to the United States. Cocaine also
is exported to Europe, increasingly through West Africa. The quantity
of illegal trafficking leaves nations in the region vulnerable to the
violence, institutional instability, and public corruption caused by
international trafficking organizations and local criminal gangs
involved in a wide variety of criminal enterprises.
President Obama reiterated the need for a clear and cooperative
approach to the most pressing issues in this hemisphere at the Summit
of the Americas in 2009, and followed up during his recent visits to
Brazil, Chile, and El Salvador. As he noted again in Santiago, progress
in the Americas has not come fast enough for ``the communities that are
caught in the brutal grips of cartels and gangs, where the police are
outgunned and too many people live in fear.''
We are working internationally to develop and implement a similar
comprehensive approach through programs that we do at home. Again,
citing the President, we are working with ``our partners from Colombia
to Mexico and new regional initiatives in Central America and the
Caribbean.'' We have increased our support for security forces, border
security, and police to keep communities safe. But we are doing more.
As the President said, `` . . . we will never break the grip of the
cartels and the gangs unless we also address the social and economic
forces that fuel criminality. We need to reach at-risk youth before
they turn to drugs and crime. So we are joining with partners across
the Americas to expand community-based policing, strengthen juvenile
justice systems, and invest in crime and drug prevention programs.''
We do this with the understanding that circumstances differ
dramatically among nations in the hemisphere, requiring flexibility,
pragmatism, and program adaptation. The role of the Office of National
Drug Control Policy remains to lead and coordinate interagency actors
and programs to advance the President's policy efficiently and
effectively domestically and internationally.
To highlight the importance of drug policy issues in the Western
Hemisphere, I have visited and met with high ranking public officials
in Colombia twice, Peru once, and Mexico numerous times since my
confirmation as Director of National Drug Control Policy. In addition,
ONDCP and the State Department cosponsored a bilateral demand reduction
conference with Mexico last year, and we will do the same this summer.
I hold regular discussions with partners involved in Western Hemisphere
drug policy implementation and have visited the Southwest border region
numerous times. This on-the-ground review has underscored the
importance of coordinating U.S. agencies in support of our
international allies' efforts to address drug violence in the
hemisphere, stem the proliferation of drugs, enhance treatment and
prevention programs, and obstruct the southbound flow of money and
weapons. Our policy in the Western Hemisphere will continue to
emphasize the importance of regular and reliable communication with our
international partners. We strive to assist them in meeting the
counterdrug objectives as they are defined and developed within their
countries.
POLICY IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE
The foundation of our Nation's hemispheric counterdrug policy
consists of a series of interconnected regional approaches. These
approaches include the Merida Initiative, the Southwest Border
Counternarcotics Strategy, the Central American Regional Security
Initiative (CARSI), the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI), and
the Colombian Strategic Development Initiative (CSDI). In addition, a
``Northern Border Counternarcotics Strategy'' is under development--
with ONDCP as the lead--pursuant to Public Law 111-356, the Northern
Border Counternarcotics Strategy Act of 2010.
In recognition of the need to clearly and comprehensively enunciate
the administration's approach to Western Hemisphere drug policy issues
(excerpted from the 2010 ``National Drug Control Strategy''), ONDCP, in
consultation with relevant interagency partners, is also preparing a
single document that will merge the interlocking regional plans in
Latin America. We expect this ``Western Hemisphere Counterdrug
Strategy'' to be completed this summer. It will address interdiction
and disruption of transnational criminal organizations, institutional
strengthening, construction of strong and resilient communities, and
drug demand reduction.
In developing this Western Hemisphere Strategy, we must be
cognizant of the unique political, social, and economic circumstances
of the individual nations within the region that could affect
implementation of drug control policies and programs. We will solicit
input from a broad range of government and policy experts with
experience in and knowledge of the issues and the region.
FOUR PARTS TO THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE STRATEGY
Security and Law Enforcement: We are placing much of our attention
and resources in Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean.
Transnational drug trafficking organizations are most active there. In
each of these three geographic areas, we support national institutions
whose first function is to disrupt international criminal syndicates
and powerful national-level criminal groups. The U.S. Government
provides equipment, training, and law enforcement intelligence. In
addition, a fundamental goal of our participation is to bring to bear
the United States unique resources for high-seas interdiction, air
smuggling detection and monitoring, and intelligence coordination to
bolster the capacities of our allies.
Strengthening Institutions: We support the strengthening of
institutions that implement the rule of law, strengthen the democratic
process, and inculcate respect for human rights. In countries such as
Colombia and Mexico, which are transitioning from a paper-bound,
anachronistic criminal judicial system to faster and more transparent
trial procedures, we are providing U.S. experts, sponsoring judicial
exchanges, and training prosecutors and attorneys. In late February
2011, the Department of Justice convened the 12th iteration of a 2-week
Trial Advocacy course for Mexican Federal prosecutors. This course was
held in Mexico City, with three assistant U.S. attorneys from Utah,
Texas, and Oregon serving as instructors. The United States also funds
human rights education for law enforcement and security, as part of the
Merida Initiative, and such programs are a core component of our
assistance to Colombia.
Strong and Resilient Communities: We provide assistance in building
strong communities that resist criminal enterprises and offer
alternatives to drug abuse and crime. The United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) works with regional partners to
address the social and economic forces that fuel narcotics trafficking
and other criminality. In source countries, USAID supports alternative
development programs that provide rural populations with opportunities
to earn sustainable, licit incomes in place of engaging in narcotics
cultivation. USAID programs also work to expand community-based
policing, strengthen juvenile justice systems, and support crime and
substance abuse prevention programs. A critical element of this support
for strong communities includes the sharing of, and increased access
to, effective, evidence-based substance abuse prevention and treatment
programming. For example, our leading nongovernmental demand reduction
organization, the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA),
has been working to equip prevention leaders in several Western
Hemisphere countries with the skills, knowledge, and resources needed
to build effective coalitions. With support from the Department of
State's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs,
CADCA's international work has focused primarily upon providing
training and technical assistance to nongovernment organizations in the
area of core competencies for community mobilization to reduce illegal
drugs. Currently, CADCA is working in Peru, Guatemala, Honduras, El
Salvador, Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil. In addition, the organization
hosted a conference in Kingston, Jamaica, on March 2-4, 2011, for
Caribbean University, government and international organization
representatives to discuss how to prepare graduates to tackle the
social, economic, and criminal consequences of the drug problem in the
Caribbean, especially in the demand reduction field. The underlying
purpose was to prepare government officials and intellectuals to deal
with the consequences of drug trafficking and abuse.
Prevention and Treatment: The United States shares prevention and
treatment knowledge and best practices bilaterally and through
international agencies such as the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control
Commission (CICAD) Experts Group on Demand Reduction, which the United
States currently chairs. In that forum, we anticipate focusing experts
on support for three key elements of CICAD's Hemispheric Drug Strategy
and its implementation plan, which was approved in Guadalajara on
February 25. Specific areas of focus currently being explored mirror
three major demand reduction signature initiatives highlighted in the
National Drug Control Strategy: community-based prevention, drugged
driving, and prescription drug abuse.
BRINGING THE REGIONAL PLANS TOGETHER
Merida Initiative: The United States collaboration with the
Government of Mexico against violent drug trafficking organizations is
monumental in its scope and commitment. In order to disrupt entrenched
drug trafficking organizations throughout the country, significant
time, resources, and perseverance by both governments will be required.
The U.S. Congress has appropriated $1.5 billion for Mexico since the
inception of the Merida Initiative in FY 2008, of which over $400
million has been expended to date and over $500 million more is planned
for delivery in 2011. In 2009, the Governments of the United States and
Mexico agreed on new goals to broaden and deepen our cooperation to
affect lasting change. The programs to increase Mexican counterdrug
capacity and to institutionalize our partnership focus on four pillars:
Disrupt Organized Criminal Groups, Strengthen Institutions, Create a
21st Century Border, and Build Strong and Resilient Communities.
The Southwest Border Security Initiative: The administration is
backing up its commitment by making major investments along the
Southwest border. The Southwest Border Security bill, signed by
President Obama in August 2010, included $600 million in supplemental
funds for enhanced border protection and law enforcement on the U.S.
side of the border. To ensure the effective coordination of resources
and initiatives related to the National Southwest Border
Counternarcotics Strategy (Southwest Border Strategy), I have formed a
Southwest Border Strategy Executive Steering Group, which has met five
times since I became Director of ONDCP in 2009. The group is comprised
of officials from the Departments of Justice, State, Homeland Security,
Defense, Treasury, and others, and meets to oversee Southwest Border
Strategy implementation and address any issues which may impede our
progress. The group has guided preparation of the Southwest Border
Strategy and a companion document on Southwest Border Strategy
implementation that was transmitted to Congress in the fall of 2010.
Northern Border Strategy: Our Northern border communities and our
Nation as a whole are significantly impacted by the large scale
trafficking of synthetic drugs and high potency marijuana from Canada.
Canada is the primary source of MDMA/Ecstasy--a dangerous drug which is
often made more potent due to synthetic drug producers adding
methamphetamine or other substances into the product. DHS and the DOJ
have increased the presence of personnel, technology, and other
resources on the border in response to this significant threat, however
additional efforts are required due to the scale of the trafficking
activity. Canada has also taken some important steps to address the
drug threat--notably enacting in late March 2011 new tougher penalties
for involvement in synthetic drug production. The National Northern
Border Counternarcotics Strategy (Northern Border Strategy), currently
under development by ONDCP and our interagency partners, will
articulate the administration's plans to substantially reduce the flow
of illicit drugs and drug proceeds in both directions across the border
with Canada , with a focus on small border communities and enhanced
relationships and cooperation with tribal governments. The drafting
process for the Northern Border Strategy involves close consultation
with Congress, State and local entities, tribal authorities, community
coalitions, and the Government of Canada. Upon completion this summer,
it will address our combined efforts in the following areas:
intelligence collection and information-sharing; interdiction at and
between ports of entry, as well as in the air and maritime domains;
investigations and prosecutions; and disrupting and dismantling drug
trafficking organizations.
Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI): Addressing
the threat beyond the Mexican border, CARSI responds to multiple
threats facing the region and builds upon existing strategies and
programs, both on a bilateral and regional basis. It is designed to
disrupt the flow of narcotics, arms, weapons, and bulk cash generated
by illicit drug sales, and to confront gangs and criminal
organizations. CARSI aims to integrate our security efforts from the
U.S. Southwest border to Panama, including the littoral waters of the
Caribbean. The pillars of CARSI include fostering streets free of
violence and crime; disrupting the movement of criminals and
contraband; supporting strong and accountable governments willing to
combat the drug threat with trained and resourced law enforcement;
building state presence in communities at risk; and enhancing regional
cooperation. CARSI is designed to produce a safer and more secure
region where criminal organizations no longer wield the power to
destabilize governments or threaten national and regional security and
public safety; as well as to prevent the entry and spread of illicit
drugs, violence, and transnational threats to countries throughout the
region and to the United States.
Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI): CBSI is a broad
initiative focused on citizen safety that brings all members of CARICOM
and the Dominican Republic together to collaborate on regional security
with the United States as a partner. The United States and partnering
Caribbean countries have identified three strategic priorities to deal
with the threats facing the Caribbean: to substantially reduce illicit
trafficking in drugs and interrupt the flow of illegal arms; to advance
public safety and security through programs ranging from reducing crime
and violence to improving border security; and to further promote
social justice through expanding education and workforce development
opportunities for at-risk youth and other vulnerable populations as an
alternative to crime and other illicit activity, and reforming the
juvenile justice sector, combating government corruption, and expanding
community-based policing.
Colombian Strategic Development Initiative (CSDI): CSDI is the
United States interagency program to support the Colombian National
Consolidation Plan. CSDI coordinates U.S. foreign assistance by
focusing, combining, and sequencing aid in priority regions where
international assistance fills gaps in Colombian Government
programming. CSDI will help Colombia transition into a post-conflict
country and aims to strengthen the strategic partnership between the
United States and Colombia by advancing the long-term national security
interests of both nations. Although Colombian Government programming
was weighted toward public security enhancements during the early
phases of state consolidation, CSDI is an inherently civilian-led
effort. USAID is the lead agency within the U.S. Embassy in Bogota for
CSDI coordination and implementation. CSDI collaborates with the
Colombian Federal Government and 14 civilian ministries. CSDI
recognizes that security gains made during the Plan Colombia period
will only be sustainable if local populations become confident that the
Colombian state--in its local, departmental, and national forms--is a
more reliable partner than illegally armed groups which have previously
exercised de facto control in these zones.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND THE WAY AHEAD
We must reduce the demand for drugs and the supply of drugs both at
home and within our partner nations. Rising drug consumption rates
continue to plague nations such as Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. We
must provide more assistance within the hemisphere to understand the
importance of strengthening their public health capacities. There is
considerable work to be done in this area. Accordingly, we are
increasingly emphasizing international efforts in demand reduction to
prevent the onset and progression of drug use among youth and urge that
treatment and recovery support services be provided for individuals
with substance use disorders. We are accomplishing this at home through
guidance, training, and technical assistance in the implementation of
evidence-based best practices, such as school-based prevention
programs; mass media educational campaigns; screening, brief
intervention, and referral to treatment programs; testing and sanctions
criminal justice programs; drug courts; and peer-based recovery support
services.
The United States is demonstrating its leadership on issues of drug
demand reduction in the Western Hemisphere by chairing the Organization
of American States (OAS)/CICAD Experts Group on Demand Reduction during
2011-12, where we will work to emphasize the importance of
strengthening the capacities of our partner nations to reduce the
demand for illegal drugs as an essential component of comprehensive
national drug control policies.
With the help of our international partners, the United States has
made historic progress in removing cocaine from the transit zone \1\
year after year. This removal, in combination with dramatically reduced
cocaine production in Colombia, has resulted in a trend of higher
prices and lower cocaine purity in the United States. From January 2007
through September 2010, the price per pure gram of cocaine increased
68.8 percent from $97.71 to $164.91, while the average purity decreased
by 30 percent. Unlike in the past, we are now in the midst of a
sustained, 3-year period of escalating prices and decreasing purity.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ A 6-million-square-mile area, including the Caribbean, Gulf of
Mexico, and Eastern Pacific. The path(s) used by drug traffickers to
transport illicit drugs to their market. Geographically, these paths
normally connect, but do not include, the source and arrival zones. See
National Interdiction Command and Control Plan--March 17, 2010
(Glossary of Terms).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our strong partnership with Colombia has resulted in unequivocal
success. Not only has Colombia become a safer, more prosperous country,
it has expanded the rule of law and continues to instill respect for
human rights. Gains in Colombia have directly translated into progress
against drug trafficking in the United States. From the high point of
output in 2001, Colombian potential production of heroin plummeted 82
percent by 2009, which represents the latest data available.
Comparably, potential cocaine production has decreased 60 percent over
the same time period; moreover, total Andean potential production of
cocaine has declined by 34 percent during this time. Reductions in
purity and increases in price for street-level cocaine in the United
States coupled with falling rates of cocaine use signal a major
disruption of the market for Colombian cocaine.
These achievements are a result of a comprehensive and balanced
strategy of suppressing illegal drug cultivation and production,
disrupting narcoterrorist organizations, and building effective
national programs to expand government presence and security along with
major economic development in the form of alternative livelihoods.
We continue to move forward to improve the strength and number of
our alliances in the hemisphere and promote the integration of demand
and supply reduction. Today, a comprehensive Western Hemisphere
Counterdrug Strategy, composed of numerous integrated programs and
multinational partnerships, is becoming a reality. In developing the
Strategy we are reaching out to Members of Congress, nongovernmental
organizations, the counterdrug and countercrime divisions of the OAS,
and foreign government partners in the region. We are convinced that
their views need to be taken into consideration if we are to design a
truly comprehensive, collaborative, and viable strategy. Thank you for
your support and encouragement as we continue to strengthen our
coordinated response to counternarcotics and citizen security issues in
the Western Hemisphere. I look forward to working with the members of
this committee and others in Congress toward these goals. Thank you for
the opportunity to appear today and I am happy to address any questions
that you may have.
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Director.
Ambassador Brownfield.
STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM R. BROWNFIELD, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF
STATE, BUREAU OF INTERNATIONAL NARCOTICS CONTROL AND LAW
ENFORCEMENT AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, DC
Ambassador Brownfield. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator
Rubio, for the opportunity to appear today. May I add my
personal thanks for your flexibility in moving this hearing
forward to this morning, thereby permitting the true
aficionados of the great American pastime the possibility of
being at National Stadium at 1:05 promptly this afternoon.
[Laughter.]
Last year, Mr. Chairman, in open hearing before this
committee I said to you I did not intend to be the first INL
Assistant Secretary to deemphasize Latin America programs. I
meant it then. I mean it now. Latin America is at the core of
INL's global mission.
For my part, I divide our counternarcotics and citizen
security challenges in the hemisphere into four strategic
regional components. While they are all interconnected, each
presents its own set of challenges. First, starting in the
south, the Andean Ridge of South America has been our focus for
nearly 40 years. We've made real progress with Plan Colombia
and the Andean Counter-Drug Initiative. Congress has been
generous in providing resources. Our challenge now is to
transition our programs in the Andean Ridge to a long-term
sustainable posture in political, budgetary, and operational
terms. This challenge is complicated by the dichotomy between
some governments of the region, like Colombia and Peru, with
whom we have excellent relations, and other governments with
whom our relationship is more complicated.
Second, to the north, in Mexico we have entered the third
year of our bilateral cooperation under Merida. Both
governments have shown serious political commitment to
cooperation and willingness to put behind us 175 years of
complicated issues and tension. Congress again has been
generous in appropriating funds to support the effort. American
and Mexican citizens have paid the ultimate price for
challenging the vicious organizations that threaten our
communities on both sides of the border.
We see progress today from Merida and the partnership. Our
challenge I suggest is to deliver sufficient support,
equipment, and results so that citizens on both sides of the
border see the value of Merida and the bipartisan political
consensus that maintains it.
Third, we come to that large section of the planet that
connects the north and the south, the Central American isthmus.
Ironically, Central America is a victim of our successes in
Colombia. As we disrupted narcotics shipping routes from the
north coast of South America, the traffickers moved their
networks to the Central American isthmus. There they found weak
government institutions and willing partners in the local
gangs.
All of Central America is caught in this unholy vise of
drugs and gangs. As the President put it in El Salvador last
week, this is a shared problem requiring a shared response.
Fortunately, we do not start from scratch. We already have the
CARSI regional initiative and the Central American governments
have developed their own priorities through the CECA security
consultative mechanism.
We have traditional partners like Canada, Europe, the IDB,
and the OAS, and we have new partners from the region willing
to play a more active role, such as Colombia, Chile, and
Mexico. Several parts of the U.S. Government, State, Defense,
development, law enforcement, have programs and contributions
to make.
Our challenge I suggest is to link these existing partners
and processes together efficiently, provide an overarching
strategic framework for cooperation, and treat Central America
as a regional whole and not a collection of seven individuals.
Fourth--and while few Caribbeans may agree with this, the
Caribbean today does not suffer the same degree of threat as
Central America. But it will. We have seen this movie before.
As our programs and cooperation under Merida and the Central
America security partnership take hold, the traffickers will
react. And if the past is any indication, they will probe their
old routes and networks in the Caribbean.
Our strategic challenge is to build infrastructure in the
Caribbean to discourage their return. If we do not, then we're
merely moving from one side of the tennis court to the other in
order to hit the ball from a different direction.
Mr. Chairman, I've been in the Latin America business for
more than 30 years and I've been in the counternarcotics and
security, citizen security, business for nearly 20. I do not
believe there is a silver bullet solution. I believe we must
think strategically and patiently. I think we must recognize
that Latin America is not a monolithic region and deal
differently with different regions. I believe we must address
all elements of the problem and from all points on the rule of
law continuum, and we must work effectively with our partners
to stretch limited resources.
I foresee tremendous challenges. Skeptics will say they are
insurmountable. Skeptics also said Plan Colombia was
impossible. They were wrong then and I hope they're wrong
again.
I thank you and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Brownfield follows:]
Prepared Statement of Ambassador William R. Brownfield
Chairman Menendez, Ranking Member Rubio, and other distinguished
Senators, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to
discuss counternarcotics and citizen safety efforts in the Western
Hemisphere. Today, we are facing complex and evolving threats from a
wide range of transnational criminal organizations, established drug
traffickers, foreign terrorist groups, and violent youth gangs in the
region. Illegal narcotics remain the financial lifeblood of these
organizations and while the interdiction and eradication of narcotics
remains a major priority, we recognize that these efforts cannot be
sustained without holistic support for the rule of law, measured most
importantly by the safety of citizens in each country.
In South America, drug production often occurs in areas controlled
by groups like Sendero Luminoso in Peru and the FARC and ELN in
Colombia which use proceeds to wage wars on their governments. In
Mexico, we face a different threat from groups willing to use shocking
amounts of violence to protect their criminal interests with no
political aspirations beyond that of sheer profit. The most emergent
threat in the hemisphere is that facing Central America. As our partner
nations in the Andes assume greater responsibility for expanding the
rule of law and as our cooperation with Mexico continues to grow,
transnational criminal organizations are moving deeper into Central
America, where weak institutions and low capacity offer a climate of
impunity for criminal activity. To meet this threat, the Department is
accelerating and refocusing the Central American Regional Security
Initiative (CARSI) as a Citizen Security Partnership for Central
America, to address the region's most urgent needs and support the
growth of the strong institutions needed to fight violence in
coordination with regional partners like Colombia and Mexico as well as
other international donors.
However, progress in Central America will only push drug
traffickers elsewhere if we do not support strong institutions
throughout the hemisphere. Recognizing this, we are also implementing
the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI), to address citizen
safety and regional cooperation throughout the Caribbean, another
conduit through which drugs and other contraband can enter the United
States. As these projects unfold in Central America and the Caribbean,
and our partnerships with Mexico and Colombia continue to grow, we are
putting in place a comprehensive approach to address crime, violence,
and trafficking throughout the hemisphere.
Meeting these challenges will not be easy, but we have considerable
experience to draw upon. In Colombia, we now have a partner assuming
greater responsibility for the rule of law within its own territory.
Over the past decade, Colombia has developed a robust institutional
capacity to combat narcotics cultivation and trafficking. We estimate
that potential pure cocaine production potential in Colombia fell to
280 metric tons in 2009, a 60 percent decline from 2001. More important
than these numbers, however, are the critical reforms made by the
Colombians, who are now increasing responsibility for counternarcotics
programs, to promote development and greater inclusion throughout the
population. Most critical of all, the Government of Colombia has
implemented tax reforms needed to pay for these critical initiatives.
The Colombian experience demonstrates that U.S. assistance, coupled
with strong leadership and political will, provides the support needed
for a country to take responsibility for its own security.
Although each country is different, Colombia's success holds
important lessons for the hemisphere. Today, Mexico faces unprecedented
levels of violence and, while Mexican cartels do not have the political
motives of the FARC or the ELN, the magnitude of the violence overcome
by Colombia suggests that supporting strong institutions is also
essential in Mexico. Together with Mexico, we have already made
significant progress under the Merida Initiative. Since December 2008,
we have delivered a total of $408 million in equipment, technical
assistance, and training to Mexico and we are committed to delivering
$500 million in assistance this calendar year. Assistance delivered to
date has trained over 57,033 Mexican police and justice sector
officials, provided $29 million in nonintrusive inspection equipment,
and provided 11 helicopters, including eight Bell 412's and 3 UH-60M
Black Hawks. Since December 2009, information-sharing and technical
assistance from the United States has contributed to the arrest or
elimination of over 20 major drug cartel figures in Mexico while
information shared by our Mexican counterparts was critical to U.S.
operations such as Xcellerator, Coronado, and Deliverance that resulted
in thousands of arrests of Mexico-linked traffickers in the United
States.
However, as in Colombia, institutions will make the lasting
difference in Mexico. Some major drug trafficking organizations in
Mexico have splintered and increasingly fight among themselves, and are
now expanding into enterprises beyond drug trafficking such as
extortion, kidnapping, immigrant smuggling, protection rackets, and
domestic drug retailing. Supporting our partners in Mexico to face this
evolving threat for the long term must be the primary goal of our
partnership under the Merida Initiative, and with that in mind we are
shifting our focus away from provision of equipment, toward capacity-
building and training efforts.
It is with these lessons that we move to address the threats
challenging Central America. As pressure intensifies on criminal groups
in both Mexico and Colombia, drug traffickers increasingly look to
Central America as a sanctuary. Weak institutions, populations
mistrustful of their governments after years of civil war, and remote,
often unpatrolled national borders allow free reign to drug trafficking
organizations from Mexico and South America as well as violent gangs
with roots in our own cities. The situation in Central America is dire,
with the per capita murder rates in Guatemala, El Salvador, and
Honduras among the highest in the world.
We have learned from Plan Colombia and the Merida Initiative that
citizen safety must be our priority in this region; only by helping to
protect the people of Central America can we hope to build the
partnerships necessary to fight transnational crime. We have also
learned that progress in one region without building institutions in
the next will only move the threat. That is why we have launched both
the Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) and the
Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI), two regional partnerships
aimed at improving these nations' ability to cooperate with each other
as well as with the United States.
We are currently working to accelerate and refocus our assistance
to Central America toward the most critical threats, and will review
our assistance to ensure we coordinate efficiently and effectively with
the international community. Our priorities in the region include
helping Central American nations provide safe streets for their
citizens, disrupting the flow of criminals and contraband across
national borders, and extending governance and rule of law to
vulnerable groups, especially youth. We will do this by rewarding
strong, accountable governments and by enhancing our regional
partnerships with Mexico and Colombia to provide their own assistance
to the region. Already, we are preparing an up to $20 million
``Challenge Grants'' initiative intended to increase host-nation
support. The initiative will award assistance to the country that
submits the most competitive proposal in key law enforcement, citizen
safety, and rule of law areas. We are also working closely with
Colombian police to provide joint training and support to law
enforcement in Central America and pursuing curriculum reform at the
region's police academies drawing from best practices in Panama. In
high-crime communities, we are working with police and local
organizations to establish model precincts, which appear to have
already reduced crime in some of Guatemala's most dangerous
communities.
Continued support for these initiatives, and a continued focus on
what works and what is sustainable, is the only way to meet the
criminal threat facing our half of the globe. Crime and violence
anywhere in this hemisphere threatens the United States as well as its
neighbors, and we must work together to ensure the security and well-
being of all Americans.
Thank you Chairman Menendez, Ranking Member Rubio, and other
distinguished Senators for your time. I look forward to answering your
questions.
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Ambassador.
Mr. Secretary.
STATEMENT OF WILLIAM F. WECHSLER, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF
DEFENSE FOR COUNTERNARCOTICS AND GLOBAL THREATS, DEPARTMENT OF
DEFENSE, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Wechsler. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Senator
Rubio. I really do appreciate this opportunity to discuss the
Department of Defense's efforts to confront narcotics
trafficking and related criminal activity in the Americas. I am
particularly pleased to testify along with Director Kerlikowske
and Ambassador Brownfield, both of whom I've worked with for
some time and I'm pleased to say both made a central focus of
their efforts.
Given the evolving drug-fueled security crisis in Mexico,
the increased drug trafficking threat to Central America, and
the President's recent visit to the region, this hearing is
particularly timely. As the title of this hearing clearly
conveys, controlling drug-related crime and thereby enhancing
the security of our citizens is indeed a shared responsibility,
not only among every country in the Americas, but also among a
variety of institutions within each country.
I'd like to begin by offering some observations on recent
trends in narcotics-related crime. First, drug trafficking and
other forms of organized crime have become truly global
phenomenon. The globalization of the legitimate economy has
benefited the illicit economy in many of the same ways. Today
nearly every country in the world now suffers from some degree
from illegal drug consumption, production, or drug-related
corruption and violence. Where once the Department of Defense's
counternarcotics efforts were focused in this hemisphere only,
today we are supporting counternarcotics activities worldwide,
most notably in Afghanistan.
Second, transnational criminal organizations, or TCOs, are
becoming increasingly networked as they form relationships with
each other and at times with insurgent or terrorist groups.
These relationships range from tactical, episodic interactions
at one end of the spectrum to full narcoterrorism at the other.
This threat networking also undermines legitimate institutions
in a way that create opportunities for other threats. There is
indeed a nexus between all of these related threats and they
shouldn't be approached in siloed individual actions, but as a
whole.
Third, TCOs are increasingly diversifying into other forms
of criminal activity in order to spread risk and maximize
potential profit. In some regions, for example, drug
trafficking TCOs also engage in kidnapping, armed robbery,
extortion, financial crime, and other activities.
It's important to note that the Department of Defense's
counternarcotics support activities are carried out always at
the request of U.S. or foreign law enforcement officials.
Department of Defense support includes training, equipment,
information-sharing, communications, intelligence analysis, and
other cooperation.
I truly give Congress the credit for having had the
original vision, indeed this subcommittee in many respects, to
recognize the important role that the Department of Defense can
and should play to counter the threat of drug trafficking, and
particularly in providing military support to law enforcement.
Mr. Chairman, you referred to, in your opening statement, a
recipe for victory. Indeed, the Department of Defense is proud
to be a part of that recipe. DOD counternarcotics activities
employ two principal force multipliers to make the best use of
finite resources available. These are particularly important in
the current fiscal environment.
First, we always emphasize networked partnership, both with
other countries and among U.S. institutions. Through building
capacity among our international partners, we enhance their
ability to work with their U.S. counterparts and maximize the
value of taxpayer dollars.
Second, we stress intelligence and information-driven
operations. For example, Department of Defense increasingly
provides detection, monitoring, and law enforcement endgame
support based on queued intelligence. Such targeting is more
cost effective than trying to patrol vast areas with limited
air, marine, maritime, and other assets. We always must stress
the need, as you noted, the balloon effect. While we're
squeezing one end of the balloon, then we squeeze another to
keep those hands on while we squeeze in another place.
It's important to recognize that when we discuss the
transnational nature of this threat this includes criminal
activities that take place outside as well as within the United
States. For example, the influence of Mexican TCOs extends well
beyond the Southwest border to cities across the country, such
as Atlanta, Chicago, and Detroit.
Unfortunately, coordination of domestic and international
activities can be especially challenging at times. Such
coordination is, however, also increasingly important in an age
when criminal globalization, threat networking, and
diversification are making distance and borders less important.
In this regard, the Department of Defense can play an
important role in facilitating coordination and information-
sharing through mechanisms such as Joint Task Force North in El
Paso and Joint Inter-Agency Task Force South in Key West, both
of which are models of interagency and international
cooperation.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, Senator Rubio, we must recognize
that it is our own demand for drugs that is the engine for this
illicit supply chain. Ultimately, this threat will only be
eliminated when our demand is eliminated. We take pride in our
efforts at the Department of Defense to reduce drug abuse in
the armed forces and the defense workplace and providing
outreach to DOD families and their communities.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify. I welcome
your questions and comments.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wechsler follows:]
Prepared Statement of William F. Wechsler
INTRODUCTION
Mr. Chairman, Senator Rubio, and other distinguished members of the
subcommittee, I appreciate this opportunity to testify about
counternarcotics-related issues in the Americas.
The title of this hearing, ``A Shared Responsibility--
Counternarcotics and Citizen Security in the Americas,'' frames the
issue perfectly. Controlling drug-related and other criminal
activities, and thereby enhancing citizen security, requires
responsibilities to be shared among every country in the Americas as
well as among a variety of institutions in each country. My remarks are
organized to address the five topics the subcommittee listed for this
hearing:
Regional trends in the spread of narcotics-related activity;
The effectiveness and adequacy of current programs and
funding;
Addressing citizen security within and beyond existing law
enforcement efforts;
The issues of demand reduction and gun control as aspects of
shared responsibility; and
The need for greater coordination between our domestic and
international efforts.
TRENDS
I will address three major, interrelated trends in illegal drug
activities: globalization, networked threats, and criminal
diversification. Globalization refers to the reality that almost every
country in the world now suffers to some degree from illegal drug
consumption, production, or drug-related corruption and violence.
Certain parts of the Americas suffer particularly acute challenges,
which in some circumstances are severe enough to undermine effective
governance. Even in less-afflicted areas, law enforcement and judicial
institutions may need support from national defense and other
instruments of government to build whole-of-government campaigns to
cope with powerful transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) and/or
gangs with international links. United States Department of Defense
(DOD) counternarcotics (CN) programs, which were originally oriented
primarily toward the Andes, the Caribbean and, within our own country,
are likewise now globalizing. The DOD CN program globalization is most
pronounced with regard to Afghanistan, where opium and cannabis profits
help fuel insurgency, but DOD CN efforts also now reach areas as
diverse as Western Africa and Eastern Asia.
The second major trend is toward threat networking. This refers to
a tendency for drug trafficking and other TCOs to network with each
other and at times to enable, support, or facilitate insurgency or
terrorism, as well as to corrupt legitimate government, finance, and
trade. The depth and intensity of such networked relationships vary
widely, from tactical, episodic transactions up through strategic
alliances, but their defining characteristic is flexibility. While DOD
and other parts of the U.S. national security community tend to focus
on violent threats, the counternarcotics community has long understood
the power of money, which is often the main thread binding threat
networks together. In fact, the corrupting influence of hundreds of
millions of illicit dollars may so badly erode governance in some
places that it creates an enabling environment for other threats,
whether or not a more direct nexus exists. In such circumstances, TCOs'
money can be more powerful than violence. At the low end of the
spectrum, an extremist group may use drug-related or other crime to
finance arms purchases. At the high end of the spectrum, profit-
oriented crime can become so intertwined with political/ideological
terrorism or insurgency that the distinctions blur. This narcoterrorism
phenomenon continues to be most pronounced in Colombia, although that
country has made enormous strides in recent years toward defeating such
threats and expanding the rule of law. Colombia, in fact, is now
helping other countries with some of the lessons it has learned.
Globalization and threat association are often linked to criminal
diversification. Some TCOs may specialize in trafficking drugs,
weapons, false identity documents or other contraband, but the overall
trend is toward diversifying criminal activities to spread risk and
maximize profit potential. In some parts of the Americas, for example,
some TCOs that primarily concentrate on drug trafficking also engage in
kidnapping, armed robbery, extortion, petroleum diversion, and/or
financial crime. In some countries, this criminal diversification is
driven in part by governmental success in disrupting the illegal drug
industry. Just as DOD CN efforts are globalizing, they are also
extending into closely associated areas to enhance their effectiveness
against drug trafficking and associated TCOs. For example, DOD is
currently increasing its capabilities to support other U.S. Government
and foreign authorities with Counter Threat Finance (CTF) efforts.
EFFECTIVENESS AND ADEQUACY OF PROGRAMS AND FUNDING
In discussing the effectiveness and adequacy of programs and
funding, it is important to note that DOD CN and associated activities
are carried out at the request of U.S. or foreign law enforcement
officials, or other officials with CN responsibilities. Such DOD
support includes training, equipment, engineering, information-sharing,
communications, intelligence analysis, radar and other sensor
information technology, transportation and other cooperation with U.S.
and foreign authorities. DOD also supports others' efforts as it
fulfills its statutory responsibility as the lead U.S. Federal agency
for detection and monitoring of aerial and maritime transit of illegal
drugs toward the United States, working with U.S. law enforcement and
intelligence partners, as well as with foreign military, law
enforcement, and other security forces. The point throughout is that
DOD supports, and does not drive, CN and related efforts.
In fiscal year 2010, the ``Drug Interdiction and Counterdrug
Activities, Defense'' appropriation included slightly more than $1\1/2\
billion dollars, including $346.6 million appropriated for overseas
contingency operations (OCO) in Afghanistan and for support elsewhere
in Central Asia. When OCO appropriations are subtracted from the total,
this funding tracks closely with the levels provided during most of the
last decade. So, although TCOs are nimbly globalizing, diversifying,
associating with other threat actors, and reaping rapidly-growing
profits, DOD CN efforts are likewise globalizing, expanding and
networking with other U.S. Government and international partners, but
without a proportional increase in resources.
DOD CN and related activities employ two principal ``force
multipliers'' to mitigate the effects of these fiscal constraints.
First, we stress partnership and networking, both with other countries
and among U.S. institutions. Second, we stress ever-more sophisticated
intelligence and information-driven operations. To illustrate
partnership and networking, consider an example in which DOD works with
the Department of State to provide radios, boats, training, and docks
to a Central American country's Navy. DOD would do so not only to help
that country address its drug trafficking challenges, but also to
enhance that country's capacity to work with U.S. and other regional
efforts. Those U.S. efforts increasingly combine military activities
with law enforcement, intelligence, diplomatic, and even economic,
governance development, and public-private partnership initiatives led
by the State Department and other U.S. Government departments and
agencies. The point is that in the long run--and these things take
time--building flexibly networked international and interagency
partnerships is more cost-effective than trying to rely on our own
capabilities.
Information-sharing represents a particularly important subset of
building networked partnerships. Although there are many complexities
to sharing and exploiting information among U.S. agencies and foreign
partners, we view these programs as crucial to ``working smarter.'' To
illustrate the point, DOD is moving toward conducting CN detection,
monitoring, surveillance, reconnaissance, law enforcement ``endgame''
support, and associated missions based on ``cued'' intelligence or
other information from many sources, including foreign liaison. Such
targeting is more cost-effective than trying to patrol vast areas with
limited air, maritime, or other assets. The CN Tactical Analysis Team
(TAT) program provides an example. The U.S. Southern Command places TAT
analysts at U.S. diplomatic missions and international law enforcement
operations centers in 21 countries to coordinate and synchronize
intelligence analysis and reporting to support operations against TCOs.
DOD also works with other U.S. agencies to exchange CN-related
information and expertise with other countries as enabled with efforts
such as the Cooperating Nations Information and Exchange System (CNIES)
program. CNIES provides near real-time air and maritime radar and other
sensor track data to 24 countries in the Americas, enhancing
cooperation with the U.S. Joint Interagency Task Force-South.
CITIZEN SECURITY
President Obama's visit to El Salvador on March 22-23 highlighted
the theme of citizen security in one of the American countries that has
suffered from loosely structured, but transnationally networked
criminal gangs. The idea is actually simple. Most people in almost any
country do not care very much about criminal organizations in the
abstract, but care deeply about whether their children can go to school
without fear of being kidnapped or being pressured to join gangs.
Specifically, the President announced the launch of the Central
American Citizen Security Partnership, under which the United States
will increase efforts to help ``address the social and economic forces
that drive young people toward criminality.'' He added: ``We'll help
strengthen courts, civil society groups, and institutions that uphold
the rule of law,'' and that the United States will work closely with
regional and international partners ``to confront the narcotics
traffickers and gangs that have caused so much violence in all our
countries.'' The President's initiative thus embodies the principle of
networked, whole-of-government partnership a key focus of this hearing.
The implication for DOD is that we will work even harder to broaden and
deepen our interagency and international partnership approach and take
a holistic view of security. As always, DOD will provide supporting
efforts and complementary programs to overall strategic approaches led
for the U.S. Government by the White House and the State Department,
avoiding any overemphasis on military approaches.
While we are on the topic of El Salvador, I would like to note with
deep appreciation that El Salvador hosts a DOD CN forward operating
location at its airport in Comalapa, which is critically important to
regional CN detection and monitoring efforts.
ILLEGAL DRUG DEMAND REDUCTION AND WEAPONS SMUGGLING
The United States bears a special responsibility to improve its own
illegal drug demand reduction efforts and to reduce weapons smuggling,
as well as illegal financial flows, to other countries. Although
illegal drug, weapons, financial, and other markets are global in
scope, countries in our hemisphere are especially harmed by illegal
supply and demand forces in the United States which blight so many of
our own citizens' lives. Reducing illegal drug demand, gunrunning and
money laundering are clearly among the three most prominent specific
needs for increased coordination between domestic and international
activities, which is one of the themes of this hearing.
The DOD role in illegal drug demand reduction concentrates
principally on eliminating drug abuse in the U.S. Armed Forces and
Defense civilian workforce as well as reaching out to DOD families and
their communities to reduce drug abuse. To address rising prescription
drug rates, DOD plans to implement recommendations from the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff for its Drug Demand Reduction Program to
expand testing to include commonly abused prescription drugs, establish
random unannounced drug testing in-theater, establish mobile collection
teams, complete the prescription drug verification portal, and make
drug prosecution statistics part of readiness reporting. The National
Guard, acting under the authority of the State and territorial
governors, also plays an especially important role through community
outreach and helping at-risk youth resist drug-related temptation. This
is in keeping with the President's ``National Drug Control Strategy,''
which points out:
The demand for drugs can be further decreased by comprehensive,
evidence-based prevention programs focused on the adolescent
years, which science confirms is the peak period for substance
use initiation and escalation into addiction. We have a shared
responsibility to educate our young people about the risks of
drug use, and we must do so not only at home, but also in
schools, sports leagues, faith communities, places of work,
and--other settings and activities that attract youth.
The DOD role in reducing weapons smuggling from the United States
to other countries concentrates on analytical support to law
enforcement authorities with regard to weapons captured by foreign
authorities. DOD likewise provides analytical support to U.S. law
enforcement agencies in counterthreat finance efforts.
COORDINATION BETWEEN DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL EFFORTS
The primary implication for the U.S. Government, and particularly
for DOD, of TCOs' globalization, networking and diversification is that
we have to build our own global, flexible, multifaceted networks to
defeat threatening networks. Governments traditionally organized their
functions in categories such as military, law enforcement, trade and
financial regulation, courts, diplomatic, and economic development
functions. Governments also tend to separate domestic and international
activities even within such functions. There are many valid reasons for
specialization, but governments are increasingly finding that we have
to use all these tools and others in well-planned, long-term,
integrated campaigns to be effective. For DOD, these lessons were
powerfully reinforced by our difficult experiences in Iraq and
Afghanistan, where counterinsurgency and stabilization require
integrating all aspects of state activity to deprive the adversary of
support, as well as to defeat his combat capabilities. For the U.S.
Government, this has required drawing on parts of the government and
cooperating with nongovernmental actors which have not traditionally
participated so directly in our country's conflicts. DOD has also
become more sophisticated, working with other U.S., foreign, and
multilateral agencies and organizations, in conducting counternetwork
efforts in areas such as defeating organizations that traffic in
weapons of mass destruction materials, improvised explosive device
materials and other threats. In another context, the critical factor in
Colombia's impressive security progress has been strengthening
governance and extending the effective reach of the state to previously
underserved areas, including building the security forces' unity of
effort with judicial, health, education, and other state functions.
Cooperation within and among governments and other institutions has
been the central theme of my remarks--and cooperation depends on
coordination. In my opinion, the U.S. Government has made important
improvements in recent years in coordinating on issues such as
countering transnational crime, as exemplified by the President's
Citizen Security Partnership with Central America. The DOD CN program
plays an important set of supporting roles in such efforts, such as
through the U.S. Northern Command's component Joint Task Force-North,
in El Paso, TX. JTF-North coordinates much of the military training,
engineering, communications, analytical and other support that DOD
provides to U.S. law enforcement partners within our country. For
example, JTF-North is coordinating DOD intelligence analysis and
training support to the DEA-led interagency El Paso Intelligence Center
(EPIC), including for the DHS-led Border Intelligence Fusion Section
(BIFS). In the United States, we often find that coordinating domestic
policy and activities with international efforts is especially
challenging with our decentralized, federal system. Such coordination
is, however, also increasingly important in an age when criminal
globalization, threat association, and diversification are making
distance and borders less important. JTF-North and EPIC, however,
exemplify how federal task forces can partner with U.S. State and local
officials to achieve effects that ripple well past our own country's
borders.
In dealing with sovereign foreign countries, the United States must
be very careful to bear in mind our partners' sometimes very different
legal, cultural, and political realities. The shared responsibility
that is the theme of this hearing extends to a responsibility to
understand and respect one another.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I welcome your questions
and comments.
Senator Menendez. Thank you all for your testimony.
We'll start with 7-minute rounds since I don't see as many
members.
Ambassador Brownfield, I am used to your humor, but for
those who may not understand, we did not change the hearing for
you to be able to make the 1 o'clock. There is a 2 o'clock
Libya hearing before the full committee and, as much as I would
want to defer to your interest in the national pastime, I just
wanted the record to be clear as to why we changed the hearing.
Ambassador Brownfield. But I remain grateful.
Senator Menendez. We are happy that you're grateful.
Let me start off, Director, with you. In recent weeks we
learned that ATF officers were engaged in gun-walking, allowing
thousands of weapons to be sold to Mexican cartels as part of a
failed plan to gain intelligence and take down a major drug
cartel. Were you aware of this strategy?
Mr. Kerlikowske. No; I was not.
Senator Menendez. To your knowledge, has the practice
ceased?
Mr. Kerlikowske. I know that the Attorney General has taken
this very seriously and has ordered an investigation by the
inspector general. I don't have any knowledge of the current
ATF operations.
Senator Menendez. Well, I am concerned about a major breach
with our partner, Mexico, in this. A former ATF commander said
``stemming the flow of guns to Mexico is a Herculean task,
given the lack of law enforcement resources and political
will.'' And he said ``I don't see how it's realistically going
to slow down if we don't make changes in resources, laws, and
policies.'' He went on to say it's important because people are
being slaughtered.
So I look to you and Ambassador Brownfield here and ask,
What is our response here? The Mexican Government under
President Calderon has taken this fight seriously. But how do
we respond to the challenges?
We have the most militarized border we have had in quite
some time, all on the question of immigration. You would think
that that militarized border would be able to see and act on
gun trafficking.
Mr. Kerlikowske. I would mention a couple things, Senator,
on this issue. One is that the Southwest border strategy, which
was issued by myself, Secretary Napolitano, and the Attorney
General in June 2009 and is now by law being updated and ready
to be released, that strategy 2 years ago for the first time
addressed gun trafficking and had a chapter devoted to it.
In response to that strategy, I think there have been
unprecedented levels of focus and resources placed by the U.S.
Government on gun trafficking and attempting to stem the flow
of guns going south. Technology improvements, the training of
Government of Mexico customs officials to search vehicles that
in fact enter Mexico, gun trafficking cases and investigations,
and an increase in ATF agents that have expertise in this area
are all efforts.
Additionally, the eTrace system, which was put into form
for our Government of Mexico officials to use, will allow them
as it becomes more robust to trace every gun that is seized in
Mexico from its first point of retail sale.
Senator Menendez. Well, I appreciate being able to trace
guns that are sold in Mexico. The question is how we stop the
flow before they get to Mexico. And it seems I hear a lot about
how many people we are intercepting at the border in terms of
immigration issues--and these are people who are basically
looking simply to be able to feed their families but with all
of the Border Patrol agents, Customs agents, DEA agents, ATF
agents, etc., I can't understand how this flow of weapons
continues largely unabated.
Mr. Kerlikowske. Well, I think progress has been made. But
I would also tell you, just from a long experience in law
enforcement, that catching people with guns, particularly a
small number of guns, one or two or three in the trunk of a
vehicle, given the millions of people that transit these
borders, makes it difficult.
I'd love to see improvements in technology and I think that
the----
Senator Menendez. Do we really think it's just two or
three?
Mr. Kerlikowske. It's what's called the ants, that instead
of taking a trunkful of guns, which in fact may be detected by
a K-9, you have unlimited labor that can cross that border only
carrying one or two or three guns at a time. So I think those
days of seeing a trunkful of essentially assault weapons
purchased in the United States are few and far between. It's
the much smaller numbers, and of course I think that makes the
job more difficult for Customs on both sides of the border.
Senator Menendez. Well, the question then might be how we
would stop or stem the sale. We have an incredible number of
licenses along that border. So you have to be looking at how
that sale is taking place as well.
Ambassador Brownfield, the President was in the region last
week. He reaffirmed his commitment to assisting the region in
addressing the security crisis that is perpetuated by the
narcotics trade and by drug trafficking organizations. Yet the
budget request for fiscal year 2012 for State INL appears to be
significantly reduced, at $575.6 million versus $701.4 million.
Why the reduction when the challenge is greater? And is
funding for Merida, CARSI, and CBSI being shifted to other
accounts?
Ambassador Brownfield. Senator, if you were to ask me if I
would be pleased to have more resources to dedicate to this
challenge, of course the answer is ``Yes.'' I, like every other
head of a bureau, organization, or agency, would like to have
more resources. I operate under the same budget, fiscal, and
political realities as everyone else.
I am comfortable that we can in fact seriously pursue our
strategy in the four subregions that I tried to describe in my
statement, the Andean Ridge, Mexico, Central America, and the
Caribbean, with the resources that we have. It will be more
difficult. It will require us integrating all parts of the U.S.
Government into a single coherent approach. It will require us
leveraging our partners, both traditional partners like Canada
and Europe and nontraditional partners like Colombia and Chile
and maybe Mexico. It will require us working more closely than
we have in the past with the host governments themselves on
their programs.
I have said publicly, and I meant it, I believe we can put
$200 million of INCL money into a Central America security
partnership initiative this year, and I think that can in fact
have serious impact. But I go back to the way I closed my
statement: I cannot give you a solution by the end of this
calendar year. We have to think long term. We have to think
incrementally. And we have to be prepared to adjust as the
traffickers adjust their own approach.
Senator Menendez. Well, I appreciate your answer. Let me
just say, we all are dealing with fiscal realities, but then
again part of making budget decisions is looking at where your
challenges and opportunities are and addressing them.
These drugs end up on the streets of our cities. They
ultimately addict our families. And while I am a big proponent
and consider the director's work on demand reduction to be an
essential part of this, I just don't get how, when we are
seeing a rising challenge, when we are looking at every major
drug trafficking route in Latin America and the Caribbean
coming to the United States, when I look at the average
homicide rates by global region and look at Latin America and
the Caribbean being the largest in the world through that time
period, I just don't get it. I just don't get it.
I understand that in many areas we're going to have to do
more with less, but this is a challenge where investing less
has real consequences for us here at home. When we are seeing
more flights and routes into the United States, greater
challenges in Central America, and an inability to interdict
guns going into Mexico we're going to do more with less? This
is just one of those equations that just doesn't work. I wasn't
a math expert, but I've got to be honest with you; this one
doesn't add for to me.
Senator Rubio.
Senator Rubio. Thank you.
Gentlemen, thank you for joining us today.
I want to begin with the Ambassador, Ambassador Brownfield.
I wanted to ask about Venezuela. I know that--well, first of
all, how would you characterize their cooperation with us in
regards to the counternarcotics efforts?
Ambassador Brownfield. Senator, I would say, as I have been
saying since the three very long years that I spent in
Venezuela as the United States Ambassador there, from 2004 to
2007, I would say that we have been very clear, very public,
and very explicit that we are willing to cooperate with that
government in a pragmatic manner to address common
counternarcotics threats. And the response has been as close to
zero as you can get in my diplomatic experience.
Senator Rubio. I know we're focused today on the Central
America routes through Mexico and into the Southwest, and
that's clearly the most emergent issue. But what impact has the
lack of cooperation from Venezuela had on the Caribbean route,
the ability of drugs to enter, for example, through my home
State of South Florida? Maybe that's a question for some other
panelists, who may want to weigh in on it.
Ambassador Brownfield. I'll start, Senator, and then
obviously invite anyone else to add as they wish. My own view
and the figures and statistics that I have read suggest an
explosive growth in the movement, the transit, principally of
cocaine and coca-related products through Venezuela on their
way to market, a growth of somewhere between 500 and 1,000
percent over the last 7 or 8 years.
Logic and geography suggest that much of that that is
pushing out through Venezuela heads through the eastern
Caribbean and then across the Atlantic to West Africa and to
markets in Europe. Some of it does not, obviously, and that
part is of continued importance to the United States of
America.
The bottom line, however, is that in order for all of this
product to process through Venezuela the traffickers require
networks. Networks are formed of individuals who have in
essence been corrupted to permit the flow of the illicit
product, and at the end of the day that hollows out and
corrupts institutions along the entire line.
Now, you could argue that that is not necessarily the
United States of America's problem and it is true. But the
extent to which the product obviously leaves Venezuela and
moves north to North America, it becomes our problem because we
become its victims.
Senator Rubio. Now I'm asking you to speculate, but do we--
or maybe you know the answer. Why is Venezuela so unwilling to
help us or work with us on this, on this effort?
Ambassador Brownfield. I will refrain from speculation,
Senator, not because I don't have opinions, because in fact I
do and they're pretty strongly formed opinions, but because it
is not my place to offer assessments and policies on areas that
are not strictly in my lane. I believe I can say that what the
Government of Venezuela has said, largely through the
mouthpiece of its own President, is: one, he believes that
cooperation with the United States is inherently wrong because
our objectives are inconsistent with his revolutionary
objectives for the future; two, he has suggested publicly and
frequently that the institutions of the United States
Government with which he would be asked to cooperate--United
States law enforcement, the Department of State, and even the
Department of Defense--are not reliable partners for him; and
three, he has suggested publicly and with great frequency that
he is having greater success in this effort without cooperation
with the United States of America than with it.
That is what he has said and I will spare you having to ask
the next question. I actually do not agree with any of those
three conclusions.
Senator Rubio. Briefly I want to talk about insurgent
terrorist groups, particularly the FARC. What is their
relationship and status in Venezuela and how does that all play
into all of this narcotics issues?
Ambassador Brownfield. Senator, you're going to get me in
trouble because once again you put a question to me that
technically is not right up my lane. However, I will answer it.
Senator Rubio. And I----
Ambassador Brownfield. I will answer it, Senator.
Senator Rubio. OK, good. I didn't know whose lane it was.
Ambassador Brownfield. You need not worry. Reticence has
never been something that anyone has accused me of.
I do not answer this question purely as the Assistant
Secretary of State for INL. I do have a right to some views
based upon the fact that I was also United States Ambassador to
Venezuela from 2004 to 2007 and to Colombia from 2007 to 2010.
It is my belief that the FARC is today one of the largest
narcotics trafficking organizations in the entire world, that
they process much of their funding through this industry and
through this business.
It is my opinion that the same networks that move illicit
product, narcotics, from Colombia through Venezuela and out to
market are precisely the same networks by which the FARC is
able to acquire supplies, weapons, munitions, and so forth. It
is my opinion, which I believe has been expressed by a number
of senior U.S. Government officials over the last 2 or 3 years,
that a substantial amount of the senior FARC leadership, three
members of its seven-member Secretariat, do in fact have near-
permanent presence on the Venezuelan side of the border.
How this all ties together in terms of the narcotics
question I submit to you is--it's a matter of common sense. But
I do believe it is part of the larger question of how to
address the flow of cocaine and illicit drugs from the Andean
Ridge to markets either in North America or in Europe.
Senator Rubio. So to summarize your testimony in your
capacity as a former Ambassador to Colombia and Venezuela and
just what we've gathered here today, would it be accurate to
say that the Government of Venezuela does not cooperate with us
on counternarcotics efforts, in fact potentially undermines us
on it; that for some reason, which I'm sure we'll know the
answer to shortly, they in fact allow these organizations to
operate within their country almost with impunity; and to top
it all off, they provide safe harbor to the leaders of
insurgent terrorist groups who, in addition to terrorizing the
neighborhood, the region, also are heavily involved with
narcotics trafficking. Is that an accurate assessment of
Venezuela's role in all of this?
Ambassador Brownfield. Senator, I've learned never to
challenge the observations of a Member of the U.S. Senate.
Senator Rubio. I've only been here 12 weeks. I'm not that
smart yet.
Thank you.
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Senator Rubio.
I have just another round of questions here. Ambassador, in
your estimation, what region of the world poses the greatest
threat to U.S. interests from narcotics trafficking?
Ambassador Brownfield. I believe this is probably the
answer you suspect I'm going to give you, and it would be from
Latin America and the Western Hemisphere.
Senator Menendez. I asked you that because I want to
reiterate that the funding seems to be incongruent with the
threat. And to the extent that we all have to live with the
economic challenges that confront the Nation, we should at
least line up the funding with the threat at the end of the
day.
I hope we can work with our friends in the administration
to at least organize and focus our funding if we have to deal
with a significant reduction of funds in light of a rising
challenge.
Ambassador, in addition to traditional security assistance,
President Obama has recognized that in order to stem the flow
of narcotics we need to address the factors that perpetuate the
narcotics trade, namely poverty and lack of economic
opportunity. Now, these are traditionally areas funded by
USAID. But, having served in the region and witnessed the
process of trial and error that eventually yielded a beneficial
program in Colombia, what value do you place on complementing
traditional narcotic assistance with development assistance,
and do you think we are doing enough in the region to address
the underlying causes of the narcotics trade?
Ambassador Brownfield. Senator, let me offer you kind of
Brownfield's theory on this matter, and it's something that has
developed and I think I have been learning over the last 20
years and certainly over the last say 10 years when I've been
serving as an ambassador, because I do believe this is an
evolving process and we have been learning lessons on this
front since at least the 1970s.
First, I believe it is impossible to do an effective long-
term counternarcotics policy and program without integrating
development, economic, social, educational, and health care
development into the program.
Second, I believe it has to be more complicated than simple
alternative development or, in its simplest possible terms,
crop substitution, what we were trying to do perhaps in the
1970s, where we would deliver a barrel of corn seed to the
campesino and say: Here it is; go forth, grow corn rather than
coca, and the world will be a better place. That did not work,
for rather obvious economic reasons as well as security
reasons.
I believe the economic development eventually has to give
that campesino, that community, a stake in its legitimate
future. It must incorporate roads and drinking water and sewage
and electricity and schools and clinics, so that the campesino
not only sees that he has an alternative crop he can grow than
coca or opium poppy, but he actually sees a future for him and
his family, because I do accept the argument--I don't accept
many of the arguments that I hear from those who are solicitous
of coca growers--but I do accept the argument that these are
not inherent criminals, these are not people who actually want
to commit crime. These are people who live, if you will, at the
margins of economic survival, who are looking out for the best
interests of their families and are in fact therefore quite
vulnerable to the attractions that are offered to them by the
narcotics industry.
Finally, as I address this issue kind of in the larger
macrosense, if you will, my own view is we take a series of
challenges. Let's use Central America as an example. I'm a very
simple man from the Texas Panhandle and I have to think in very
simple terms as to how we address this problem. I see a
pyramid. At the top of the pyramid are two active threats that
are affecting and attacking Central America and, through
Central America, the United States of America. They are drug
trafficking and illegal gangs. The two are connected,
obviously, but not all drug traffickers are in gangs and not
all gangs do drug trafficking.
Those two active threats, next level down, are feeding on
vulnerabilities in the region. The vulnerabilities are
corruption, weak institutions, porous borders, disaffected
youth who don't have education or economic possibilities, poor
corrections systems, et cetera. That's level two.
Level three then is what we, the U.S. Government and our
international partners, can bring to bear to address those
vulnerabilities and those weaknesses. That is where I see the
essential importance of all the communities of the U.S.
Government--the foreign affairs community, the developmental
community, the defense or security community, and the law
enforcement community--coming together, having a coherent
approach by which this pie will be divided up so all of it is
addressed in some way, shape, or form.
Senator Menendez. All right.
Ambassador Brownfield. Development is part of it.
Senator Menendez. Let me ask you then, why, of the $1.6
billion in law enforcement support promised under the Merida
initiative, of which $258 million were assigned to Central
America, only $20 million of it had been spent by April of last
year, according to the GAO? What is happening there?
Ambassador Brownfield. A very valid question, and what is
happening----
Senator Menendez. I have asked all valid questions.
Ambassador Brownfield. An equally valid question, as with
all of your other valid questions.
What I believe is happening is the following. Congress
appropriated very generous sums of money. They appropriated
them to institutions, embassies, and INL sections in countries
that had actually in the preceding 10 to 15 years drawn down to
very, very small sections. They were not staffed and resourced
to move this product quickly.
They have in fact improved enormously. We have reached the
point now where more than $400 million of goods and services
have been delivered to Mexico, and I have promised the
Secretary of State, who in turn has publicly promised the
Mexican Government, that we will deliver another $500 million
worth this calendar year.
I believe that in turn is a function of the commitment of
the various parts of the United States Government who do
contracts, acquisition, and procurement to support us more
aggressively in this effort and, finally, the importance of the
host governments, Mexico and the seven Central Americans, but
particularly Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, to come to
quick decisions on the equipment, the contracts, the services,
and the goods that they want from us.
My prediction, my hope, my prayer, is that we will have a
better story to tell you as this year unfolds.
Senator Menendez. So the answer is their capacity?
Ambassador Brownfield. Capacity on three fronts, Senator.
Yes, capacity on my front, which is to say my own people in the
field, who have now been staffed up to the point where they
have a higher capacity to process, capacity of the governments
to receive and absorb this equipment, and finally capacity back
here in headquarters of those parts of our departments and
agencies who do acquisitions and contracts to move them more
quickly.
Senator Menendez. Finally, Director, you and I had an
opportunity to talk and I think you've done a tremendous job
going around the country on the issue of demand. I hope that we
can focus on the hemisphere in a comprehensive way. As you
know, I consider Merida, CARSI, and CBSI to be piecemeal
approaches. In my mind, I hope integration will be part of your
mission moving forward.
Mr. Kerlikowske. I couldn't agree more, and I believe that
the national drug control strategy serves as a good model of
not only true consultation, but of wrapping together a whole
host of domestic programs and recognizing the international
partnerships. And I believe or I promise to you that that's
what you'll see in a Western Hemisphere strategy.
Senator Menendez. Thank you.
Senator Rubio.
Senator Rubio. Three quick questions for each of the
panelists. Director Kerlikowske, how do we measure success with
regards to our efforts on the southwest border? What are the
metrics that we use?
Mr. Kerlikowske. There are a host of metrics. I think that,
one, we want to see a reduction in violence certainly in
Mexico. Many of the metrics in fact are in Mexico, and
assisting them in building along the four pillars that you're
familiar with is particularly important. The amount of drugs
seized, which can be a metric of both good and bad proportions,
because, as we have seen increases in seizures, we can clearly
attribute that to not only better cooperation with our
government of Mexico counterparts, but we could also see that
or attribute that to the increase in border authorities.
The number of guns seized, the amount of training that
occurs for Government of Mexico officials, not just customs but
organizations such as CSET and others.
Then last, making sure that we recognize--and I think this
is one part that is not always recognized very well by people
here in the United States--is Mexico is not just to be thought
of as a transit or a production nation. As the Ambassador has
so clearly said, it should be thought of as a consumer nation
also. And helping them reduce their own demand is critical to
building up their own institutions.
Senator Rubio. Secretary Wechsler, let's talk a little bit
about Honduras. We have a strong history of cooperation with
them. We saw some events happen governmentally for them in the
summer of 2009. Where is that cooperation now? Is it back to
the 2009 levels? What's the status of our cooperation with
Honduras and our work there?
Mr. Wechsler. We do have very good cooperation with
Honduras. The status is improving, and there is also some way
to go. It's a challenged country, as are many of its neighbors
in Central America, by a growing problem that the Assistant
Secretary so rightfully described, and we are happy to have the
opportunity to cooperate with Honduras in a very positive and
mutually constructive way.
Senator Rubio. Finally, Ambassador, I hate to keep dragging
you back to Venezuela and Colombia on these issues. But take it
as a compliment. Your testimony on it comes with great
credibility. I'm sure you're aware of this case of Walid
Makled. Last Friday the Supreme Court in Colombia authorized
the President to extradite him. We would like to bring him here
and try him and so do the Venezuelans.
Could you talk briefly about what your views are on that
and how important it is to our counternarcotics effort to bring
him here, to have him extradited to the United States?
Ambassador Brownfield. Senator, I will be careful because,
obviously, there is an ongoing U.S. possible prosecution here
and I do not want to cross any redlines that would cause me--
that would cause concerns from the appropriate U.S. attorney's
office and the U.S. law enforcement that are attempting to move
the case.
As you know, we have formally requested Mr. Makled's
extradition to the United States to stand trial on serious
narcotics-related charges. And as you presumably know, while
the Supreme Court of Colombia has approved or authorized his
extradition in response to both extradition requests, the
Venezuelan request and the United States request, the
Government of Colombia up to the level of its President, Juan
Manuel Santos, has in fact stated publicly his intention to
extradite the gentleman to Venezuela.
My own view is the most important thing from our
perspective is to ensure that any information that Mr. Makled
might have that would be of value to U.S. law enforcement and
future prosecutions is made available, that it is made
available in a way that could in fact be of value to both U.S.
law enforcement and for potential U.S. prosecution.
It is my personal view that that is our essential objective
right now, and how the final extradition process plays out I
would guess is going to be a triangular matter between the
Government of Colombia, the Government of Venezuela, and us.
If you will permit me to conclude with one final comment,
it is my personal view that hearing emphatically from some
Members of the U.S. Congress that this extradition request to
the United States is in fact a matter of great importance is
actually helpful, not hurtful.
Senator Rubio. And to that end, I'll make a comment on it
now. You don't have to comment on it. It's always welcome. But
Mr. Makled has--as you've stated, it's important for our
counternarcotics efforts to have information that he may have
made available to us. If that information were to potentially
implicate some other nation state, perhaps one that he might
even be extradited to, he probably is less willing to speak
with regards to that information.
I think it's critically important that he be extradited to
the United States and therefore that our law enforcement
agencies can take that and pursue it as need be. It's my
intention, and I will speak to some other Senators as well in
the hopes, if we can get a bipartisan group that will weigh in
on this matter, stating that it's in the strong national
interest of our Nation for Mr. Makled to be extradited to this
country.
Thank you for your testimony today.
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Senator Rubio.
Thank you all very much for your testimony and your
insights. We look forward to continuing working with you in the
days ahead.
Let me introduce our second panel as we ask them to come
up. In the interest of time, I'll start introducing them. Dr.
Venda Felbab-Brown is a foreign policy and 21st century defense
initiative fellow at the Brookings Institute. She focuses on
the national security implications of illicit economies and
strategies for managing them, and she is the author of
``Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs.'' She
has done research in Mexico and Colombia on many of the
questions that interest us on the subcommittee such as the
nexus between drug trafficking, crime, and the threat to
citizen security, and we welcome her.
Dr. Cynthia Arnson is the director of the Latin American
Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars. She is a coauthor of ``Rethinking the Economics of
War: The Intersection of Need, Creed, and Greed,'' and a
seasoned Latin American hand who knows the challenges of
countries in the Andean region--Central America, and Mexico.
She has served as an academic, an advocate for human rights and
a foreign policy aide in the House of Representatives during
the Carter and Reagan administrations. We welcome her.
Stephen Johnson is the new director of the Americas Program
at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has
more than 20 years of experience in Western Hemisphere affairs,
spanning policymaking, policy advocacy, public affairs, in the
Department of Defense, the Washington policy community, the
State Department, and the U.S. Air Force. In 2007 to 2009 he
served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Western
Hemisphere Affairs.
Eric Olson is the senior advisor to the Security Initiative
at the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars here in Washington. He oversees the
institute's work on United States-Mexico security cooperation
and research on organized crime and drug trafficking between
the United States, Mexico, and Central America. He is the
coeditor of ``Shared Responsibility: U.S.-Mexico Policy Options
for Confronting Organized Crime,'' and he is literally recently
back from Mexico, having successfully made all his connecting
flights. We appreciate you being here as well.
Let's proceed in the order of introductions. Dr. Brown.
STATEMENT OF DR. VANDA FELBAB-BROWN, PH.D., FELLOW, FOREIGN
POLICY, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION, WASHINGTON, DC
Dr. Felbab-Brown. Senator Menendez, thank you for giving me
this opportunity to address the committee on the important
issue.
You had mentioned during the previous session that crime-
related insecurity is a major problem in Latin America. Indeed,
to an unprecedented degree citizens there complain about living
in fear, fear from organized crime, but often critically
neglected, also fear from street crime. Organized crime, such
as drug trafficking and other illicit economies which are
prevalent in the region, pose multiple threats to state and
society. They threaten security and public safety. In some
cases they can reach the very level of threatening national
security of a country. Colombia is experiencing it. Perhaps one
can argue also Mexico is experiencing it.
They also threaten traditional law enforcement
institutions, hollowing them out and corrupting them to a
degree that they can no longer function.
They have complex economic reasons, some of which are
negative. Paradoxically, however, the relationship between
human insecurity, citizen insecurity, organized crime, and law
enforcement is a very complex one. In many parts of Latin
America, governments struggle with the provision of a
multifaceted state presence and public goods, socioeconomic
goods, and critical legal employment. Thus, many segments,
large segments, of society in Latin America find themselves
trapped in dependence on illegal or, at minimum, informal
economies.
Paradoxically, thus, criminal organizations and
belligerents that sponsor such illicit economies obtain not
only large financial resources, but often also political
support. This is because they provide what the state has failed
to provide--jobs, socioeconomic benefits, and often,
paradoxically, even order and safety on the street and dispute
resolution mechanisms.
It is important under these difficult conditions not to
overemphasize or not to solely emphasize law enforcement
response as the appropriate response to deal with the
challenge. In such areas of state weakness and underprovision
of public goods, increased law enforcement actions will often
be insufficient, even though it might be a critical ingredient
of the response.
Rather, an effective state response to dealing with such
organized crime and illicit economies will be equally
multifaceted. It will incorporate socioeconomic programs to
address the dependence, to remove the dependence of the
population on criminal organizations. It will incorporate
expanding access to rule of law and justice, so that
populations do not go to organized crime groups for resolutions
of their disputes.
It will also, critically, incorporate moving from a law
enforcement solely focused on organized crime to one of
community policing that can build bonds with the population.
It requires also a proper sequencing between measures to
suppress illicit economies and once again developing social
options for the population. Often, repressive measures only do
not actually bankrupt belligerent groups, nor do they bankrupt
criminal groups, but they can be deeply counterproductive by
increasing the bonds between them and the population and
weakening the bonds between the population and the state.
Another policy response might well be reconceptualizing how
we think about interdiction and the role of interdiction.
Should it be merely or dominantly to focus on stopping the
flows of illicit commodities or should it rather be one of
focusing on reducing the coercive and corruption power of
criminal groups? Such reconceptualization might require very
different targeting packages than we frequently see.
We need to realize that even with the regional policy, in
the absence of a reduction in demand, drug trafficking will
relocate somewhere, and there are limits to what even regional
policies can do. It is of course very desirable to try to
mitigate the negative responses by focusing on areas that are
experiencing problems. Central America is a very good example.
But we have to be very careful, we in the United States, in how
we provide assistance, lest we run the risk of simply training
more effective drug traffickers by training special forces that
will go rogue in environments of extreme corruption and very
weak law enforcement.
Finally, I would like to suggest that the Obama
administration has in fact moved to such a multifaceted
response in Mexico. We can talk about funding and, as the
previous panel acknowledged, it's always desirable to have more
funding. But Beyond Merida is a much greater structure for a
program than the previous Merida program was. The outgoing
Ambassador, Carlos Pascual, deserves much credit for helping
the Mexican Government to move away solely from high-value
targets to a more multifaceted approach.
Much work remains and Mexico remains a critical challenge.
Much work also remains in Colombia, despite its
achievements. One of the important possibilities for progress
is for the Santos administration to move away from focus on
Zero Coca, from conditioning all economic assistance to coca
farmers upon them having eradicate all of coca. This policy is
ineffective and frequently is also counterproductive.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Felbab-Brown follows:]
Prepared Statement of Vanda Felbab-Brown
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I am honored to have
this opportunity to address the subcommittee on the important issue of
the impact of the drug trade and counternarcotics policies in the
Western Hemisphere on citizens' security and U.S. national security
goals. The threats posed by the production and trafficking of illicit
narcotics and by organized crime, and their impacts on U.S. and local
security issues around the world, are the domain of my work, and the
subject of my book, ``Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on
Drugs'' (Brookings, 2009). I have conducted fieldwork on these issues
in Latin America and elsewhere in the world numerous times, including
this year for 8 weeks in both rural and urban parts of Colombia, Peru,
and Mexico.
In my testimony, I first provide an overview of crime trends in the
Western Hemisphere. I then sketch some of the dynamics of the crime-
insecurity nexus and its complex impacts on state security and
citizens' security. In the third section, I discuss elements of a
multifaceted response for addressing the threats generated by the drug
trade while at the same time enhancing citizens' security. In the
fourth section, I sketch key U.S. and local counternarcotics efforts in
Mexico and Colombia.
I. OVERVIEW OF ORGANIZED CRIME AND STREET CRIME AND
HUMAN SECURITY IN LATIN AMERICA
Citizens' insecurity has greatly intensified over the past two
decades in many parts of the Western Hemisphere. To an unprecedented
degree, ordinary people in the region complain about living in fear of
crime. With the exception of Colombia, criminal activity throughout the
region has exploded. Overall, the rates of violent crime are six times
higher in Latin America than in the rest of the world.\1\ Since the
1980s, homicide rates in Latin America as a whole have doubled and are
among the highest in the world. The available data show El Salvador
with a murder rate of 57.3 per 100,000 in 2007; Colombia with 42.8 per
100,000 in 2006, Venezuela with 36.4 per 100,000 in 2007, and Brazil
with 20.5 in 2008.\2\ The U.S. homicide rate for 2009, the most recent
data available, was 5 per 100,000.\3\ The United Nations considers a
murder rate of more than 10 per 100,000 an epidemic rate of homicides.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ See, for example, Jorge Sapoznikow et al., ``Convivencia y
Seguridad: Un Reto a la Gobernabilidad'' (``Coexistence and Security: A
Challenge to Governability,'' Inter-American Development Bank,
Washington, DC: 2000, and Centro Nacional de Datos, Fondelibertad,
Ministrio de Defensa Nacional, Republica de Colombia, ``Cifras
Extorcion'' (Extortion Rates), June 20, 2007; available from
www.antisecuestro.gov.co/documentos/7_16_2007_4_58_07_
PM_CifrasHistorias.pdf, accessed May 17, 2008.
\2\ ``Murder Rate Among Youths Soars in Brazil,'' The Washington
Post, February 24, 2011. Since data collection, reporting mechanisms,
and strength of law enforcement varies greatly among Latin American
countries and many murders go unreported and undetected, there are
limits to the accuracy of the data. Moreover, data are not always
available for the same year for all countries.
\3\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mexico far exceeds the epidemic threshold, reporting over 6,000
deaths in 2008, over 6,500 in 2009, and over 11,200 in 2010 (more than
a 75 percent increase over 2009), and with drug-related violence
surpassing conflict-caused deaths in both Afghanistan and Iraq.\4\
Although it has received less media attention, Guatemala's homicide
rate is four times that of Mexico's. Kidnapping is also frequent in the
region. Well above 50 percent of the approximately 7,500 worldwide
kidnappings in 2007 took place in Latin America.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ ``Ejecutornetro 2010'' (Metrics of Execution 2010), La Reforma,
accessed April 15, 2010, and December 27, 2010.
\5\ ``La industria del secuestro esquilma a America Latina,'' El
Pais, February 17, 2008.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Organized crime is one of the principal sources of threats to human
security but so is flourishing street crime, which frequently receives
far less attention from governments in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Indeed, law enforcement in Latin America is clearly struggling to cope
with both organized and street crime, and two decades of efforts to
improve and reform law-enforcement institutions have little to show in
improvements in public safety and accountability of law enforcement.
Many Latin Americans are deeply distrustful of and dissatisfied with
their local law-enforcement institutions.\6\ Indeed, the provision of
security in Latin America has been increasingly privatized, with large
segments of the population relying on private security companies or
even criminal organization for protection and basic order on the
streets. Thus in Guatemala and Honduras private security personnel
outnumber police by 5 to 10 times.\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ See, for example, John Bailey and Lucia Dammert, ``Public
Security and Police Reform in the Americas,'' in Public Security and
Police Reform in the Americas, Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg
Press, 2006, pp.1-22.
\7\ Michael Shifter, ``Central America's Security Predicament,''
Current History, February 1, 2011.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Although the negative effects of high levels of pervasive street
and organized crime on citizens' security, sometimes often referred to
as human security, are clear, the relationships between human security,
crime, illicit economies, and law enforcement are highly complex. Human
security includes not only physical safety from violence and crime, but
also economic safety from critical poverty, social marginalization, and
fundamental underprovision of elemental social and public goods such as
infrastructure, education, health care, and rule of law. Chronically,
Latin American governments have been struggling to provide these public
goods in large parts of their countries, in both the rural and urban
areas.
Multifaceted institutional weaknesses are at the core of why the
complex relationships between illegality, crime, and human security are
so inadequately dealt with. By sponsoring illicit economies in areas of
state weakness where legal economic opportunities and public goods are
seriously lacking, criminal groups frequently enhance some elements of
human security even while compromising others. At the same time,
simplistic law enforcement measures can and frequently do further
degrade citizens' security. These pernicious dynamics become especially
severe in the context of violent conflict.
II. DYNAMICS OF THE CRIME-INSECURITY NEXUS AND
THE COMPLEX THREATS THE DRUG TRADE POSES TO STATES
A variety of actors have penetrated various illicit economies,
including the drug trade, usually considered the most lucrative of
illicit economies and estimated to generate revenues on the order of
hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
Participants in illicit economies include the populations that
produce the illicit commodities and services; criminal groups such as
drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) and mafias; belligerent actors
such as terrorist, insurgent, paramilitary, and militia groups; and
corrupt government and law enforcement officials.
The penetration of the illicit economies by terrorist or insurgent
groups provides an especially potent threat to states and regional
stability since belligerent groups typically seek to eliminate the
existing state's presence in particular locales or countries. The FARC
in Colombia and the resurgent Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) in Peru
continue to profit from the drug trade and mobilize cocaleros alienated
from the state as a result of crop eradication policies.
Criminal organizations usually have more limited aims. However,
groups such as the Comando Vermelho in Brazil or the Zetas in Mexico
also seek to dominate the political life of a community, controlling
the community's ability to organize and interact with the state,
determining the extent and functions of local government, and sometimes
even exercising quasi-control over the local territory. Thus they too
can represent an intense and acute threat to governments, at least in
particular locales.
Youth gangs known as maras have spread rapidly through Central
America, now often having individual memberships in the tens of
thousands. Emerging out of limited social opportunities for extensive
youth populations and their deep sense of alienation from the state,
the maras have complex and varied linkages to organized crime.
Sometimes they participate in drug trafficking, at other times they
perpetrate street crime. But they often represent a major source of
insecurity for the citizens of the countries they operate in, even as
they provide a sense of identification, belonging, and empowerment to
their disaffected members.
Many Latin American criminal groups now increasingly operate across
country borders. They traffic in drugs from the source country all the
way to the final street distribution areas, as currently the Mexican
DTOs do from the border of Colombia to the streets of United States.
Similarly, Colombian DTOs operate in Bolivia; as do Brazilian
traffickers in Peru. A newer, and particularly dangerous, development
is the effort by Mexican DTOs, such as the Zetas and the Sinaloa DTO,
do themselves control territory in transshipment countries of Central
America.
Moreover, beyond Colombia, several countries in Latin America have
experienced the emergence of dangerous militia groups who pose
significant threats to both communities and the state, even while
presenting themselves as protectors of the citizenry against crime. In
addition to Colombia, such militia groups have appeared, for example,
in Brazil and Mexico.
Extensive criminality and illicit economies generate multiple
threats to states and societies. They corrupt the political system, by
providing an avenue for criminal organizations to enter the political
space, corrupting and undermining the democratic and legitimate
process. These actors, enjoying financial resources and political
capital generated by sponsoring the illicit economy, frequently
experience great success in politics. They are able to secure official
positions of power as well as wield influence from behind the scenes.
The problem perpetuates itself as successful politicians bankrolled
with illicit money make it more difficult for other actors to resist
participating in the illicit economy, leading to endemic corruption at
both the local and national levels. Guatemala, El Salvador, and Haiti
are cases in point.
Large illicit economies dominated by powerful traffickers also have
pernicious effects on a country's law enforcement and judicial systems.
As the illicit economy grows, the investigative capacity of the law
enforcement and judicial systems diminishes. Impunity for criminal
activity increases, undermining the credibility of law enforcement, the
judicial system, and the authority of the government. Powerful
traffickers frequently adopt violent means to deter and avoid
prosecution, killing or bribing prosecutors, judges, and witnesses.
Colombia in the late 1980s and Mexico today are stark examples of how
the existence of extensive criminal networks and high levels of
violence can corrupt and paralyze law enforcement and indeed the entire
judicial system. The profound collapse of Guatemala's judicial system
resulting from its penetration by criminal entities compelled the
country to invite a special U.N. judicial body, the International
Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CIGIG) to help its judiciary
combat organized crime and state corruption.
In addition to outright corruption by organized crime and impunity
of powerful elites, judicial systems across Latin America are deficient
in other ways: Justice is rarely equally available to all, is often
painfully slow, and rarely produces significant convictions.
Moreover, illicit economies have large and complex economic
effects. Drug cultivation and processing, for example, generate
employment for the poor rural populations and can even facilitate
upward mobility. They also can have powerful macroeconomic spillover
effects through boosting overall economic activity. But a burgeoning
drug economy typically contributes to inflation that and can harm
legitimate, export-oriented, import-substituting industries as well as
tourism. It encourages real estate speculation and undermines currency
stability. It also displaces legitimate production. Since the drug
economy is more profitable than legal production, requires less
security and infrastructure, and imposes smaller sunk and transaction
costs, the local population is frequently uninterested in, or unable
to, participate in other (legal) kinds of economic activity. The
illicit economy can thus lead to a form of so-called Dutch disease
where a boom in an isolated sector of the economy causes or is
accompanied by stagnation in other core sectors since it gives rise to
appreciation of land and labor costs. In Mexico, for example, the drug
violence has already undermined not only Mexican citizens' human
security and overall law and order, but also economic activity,
including tourism.
Most importantly, burgeoning and unconstrained drug production and
other illicit economies and strong organized crime have profound
negative consequences not only for local stability, security, and
public safety, but at times also for national security. Illicit
economies provide an opportunity for belligerent groups to increase
their power along multiple dimensions--by gaining control of physical
resources, and also by obtaining support from local populations. Such
belligerents hence pose a serious security threat to local and national
governments and, depending on the objectives of the group, to regional
and global security. With large financial profits, the belligerent
groups improve their fighting capabilities by increasing their physical
resources, hiring greater numbers of better paid combatants, providing
them with better weapons, and simplifying their logistical and
procurement chains.
Crucially and frequently neglected in the design of policy
responses, however, is the fact that large populations in Latin America
in areas with minimal state presence, great poverty, and social and
political marginalization are dependent on illicit economies, including
the drug trade, for economic survival and the satisfaction of other
socioeconomic needs. For many, participation in informal economies, if
not outright illegal ones, is the only way to satisfy their basic
livelihood needs and obtain any chance of social advancement, even as
they continue to exist in a trap of insecurity, criminality, and
marginalization. The more the state is absent or deficient in the
provision of public goods--starting with public safety and suppression
of street crime and including the provision of dispute resolution
mechanisms and access to justice, enforcement of contracts, and also
socioeconomic public goods, such as infrastructure, access to health
care, and education--the more the neglected communities can become
dependent on, and even supportive of, criminal entities and belligerent
actors who sponsor the drug trade and other illegal economies.
Such belligerents derive significant political capital--legitimacy
with and support from local populations--from their sponsorship of the
drug and other illicit economies, in addition to obtaining large
financial profits. They do so by protecting the local population's
reliable (and frequently sole source of) livelihood from government
efforts to repress the illicit economy. They also derive political
capital by protecting the farmers from brutal and unreliable
traffickers (bargaining with traffickers for better prices on behalf of
the farmers), by using revenues from the illicit economies to provide
otherwise absent social services such as clinics and infrastructure, as
well as other public goods, and by being able to claim nationalist
credit if a foreign power threatens the local illicit economy. In
short, sponsorship of illicit economies allows nonstate armed groups to
function as security providers and economic and political regulators.
They are thus able to transform themselves from mere violent actors to
actors that take on proto-state functions.
Although the political capital such belligerents obtain is
frequently thin, it is nonetheless sufficient to motivate the local
population to withhold intelligence on the belligerent group from the
government if the government attempts to suppress the illicit economy.
Accurate and actionable human intelligence is vital for success in
counterterrorist and counterinsurgency efforts as well as law
enforcement efforts against crime groups.
Four factors determine the size of the political capital which
belligerent groups obtain from their sponsorship of illicit economy:
the state of the overall economy; the character of the illicit economy;
the presence (or absence) of thuggish traffickers; and the government
response to the illicit economy.
The state of the overall economy--poor or rich--determines
the availability of alternative sources of income and the
number of people in a region who depend on the illicit economy
for their basic livelihood.
The character of the illicit economy--labor-intensive or
not--determines the extent to which the illicit economy
provides employment for the local population. The cultivation
of illicit crops, such as in Colombia or Peru, is very labor-
intensive and provides employment to hundreds of thousands to
millions in a particular country. Production of
methamphetamines such as that controlled by La Familia
Michoacana (one of Mexico's drug trafficking organizations), on
the other hand, is not labor-intensive and provides livelihoods
to many fewer people.
The government responses to the illicit economy (which can
range from suppression to laissez-faire to rural development)
determine the extent to which the population depends on the
belligerents to preserve and regulate the illicit economy.
In a nutshell, supporting the illicit economy will generate the
most political capital for belligerents when the state of the overall
economy is poor, the illicit economy is labor-intensive, thuggish
traffickers are active in the illicit economy, and the government has
adopted a harsh strategy, such as eradication, especially in the
absence of legal livelihoods and opportunities. This does not mean that
sponsorship of non-labor-intensive illicit economies brings the
antigovernment belligerents or armed groups no political capital. If a
non-labor-intensive illicit economy, such as drug smuggling in Sinaloa,
Mexico, generates strong positive spillover effects for the overall
economy in that locale (by boosting demands for durables, nondurables,
and services that would otherwise be absent, and hence indirectly
providing livelihoods to and improved economic well-being of poor
populations) it too can be a source of important political capital.
Thus in the Mexican state of Sinaloa the drug trade has at times been
estimated to account for 20 percent of the state's Gross Domestic
Product (GDP); and for some of Mexico's southern states, the proportion
might be higher.\8\ Consequently, the political capital of the sponsors
of the drug trade there, such as the Sinaloa cartel, is hardly
negligible. Moreover, Mexico's drug trafficking organizations (DTOs)
also derive important political capital from their sponsorship and
control of an increasing range of informal economies in the country.
Similarly, in Brazil the ability of drug gangs to provide better social
services and public goods than the state has them to dominate some of
country's poor urban areas. In such circumstances, the criminal groups
and belligerents will also provide socioeconomic services, such as
health clinics and trash disposal.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ Guillermo Ibara in Manuel Roig-Franzia, ``Mexico's Drug
Trafficking Organizations Take Barbarous Turn: Targeting Bystanders,''
Washington Post, July 30, 2008.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In addition, both criminal entities and belligerent groups will
often provide security in the communities they dominate. Although the
sources of insecurity and crime in the first place, once in power they
have an interest in regulating the level of violence, and suppressing
street crime, such as robberies, thefts, kidnapping, and homicides.
Street or common crime in Latin America is extremely intensive, one of
the highest rates in the world. Functioning as providers of public
order and rules brings criminal entities important support from the
community, in addition to facilitating their illegal business since it
too benefits from the reduced transaction costs and increased
predictability.
Indeed, in many parts of Latin America, public safety has become
increasingly privatized: with upper and middle classes relying on a
combination of official law enforcement and legal and illegal private
security entities, while marginalized segments rely on organized
criminal groups to establish order on the streets. Organized criminal
groups and belligerent actors, such as the Primero Comando da Capital
in Sao Paolo's shantytowns, also provide dispute resolution mechanisms
and even set up unofficial courts and enforce contracts. The extent to
which they provide these public goods varies, of course, but it often
takes place regardless of whether the nonstate criminal entities are
politically motivated. Yet the more they do provide such public goods,
the more they become de facto proto-state governing entities.
Moreover, unlike ideologies of politically motivated belligerents,
which promise rewards in the future, sponsorship of illicit economies
allows belligerent groups to deliver in real time concrete material
improvements to lives of marginalized populations and thus gain
support. Especially when ideology wanes, and the brutality of the
belligerents and criminal groups alienates the wider population, their
ability to deliver material benefits to the population can preserve the
belligerents' and criminal groups' political capital.
The ability of illegal groups to provide real-time, immediate
economic improvements to the lives of the population also explains why
even criminal groups without ideology can garner strong political
capital. This will be especially the case if the criminal groups couple
their distribution of material benefits to poor populations with the
provision of otherwise absent order and minimal security. By being able
to outcompete with the state in provision of governance, organized
criminal groups can pose significant threats to states in areas or
domains where the government's writ is weak and its presence limited.
Consequently, discussions of whether a group is a criminal group or a
political one or whether belligerents are motivated by profit,
ideology, or grievances are frequently overstated in their significance
for devising policy responses.
III. POLICY RESPONSES AND CONSIDERATIONS
In areas of state weakness and underprovision of public goods,
increased action by law enforcement agencies to suppress crime rarely
is a sufficient response. Approaches such as mano dura policies,
saturation of areas with law enforcement officers, especially if they
are corrupt and inadequately trained, or the application of highly
repressive measures are rarely effective in suppressing organized crime
and often attack only the symptoms of the social crisis, rather than
its underlying conditions.
Policies that focus on degrading the belligerents' physical
resources by attempting to destroy the illicit economy are frequently
ineffective with respect to the objective of drying up the
belligerents' resources. In the case of labor-intensive illicit
economies where there are no legal economic alternatives in place, such
policies are especially counterproductive with respect to securing
intelligence and weaning the population away from the terrorists and
insurgents. Eradication of illicit crops has dubious effects on the
financial profits of belligerents. Even when carried out effectively,
it might not inflict serious, if any, financial losses upon the
belligerents since partial suppression of part of the illicit economy
might actually increase the international market price for the illicit
commodity. Given continuing demand for the commodity, the final
revenues might be even greater.
Moreover, the extent of the financial losses of the belligerents
also depends on the ability of the belligerents, traffickers, and
farmers to store drugs, replant after eradication, increase the number
of plants per acre, shift production to areas that are not subject to
eradication, or use high-yield, high-resistance crops. Belligerents
also have the opportunity to switch to other kinds of illicit economies
such as synthetic drugs. Yet although the desired impact of
eradication--to substantially curtail belligerents' financial
resources--is far from certain and is likely to take place only under
the most favorable circumstances, eradication will definitely increase
the political capital of the belligerents since the local population
all the more will strongly support the belligerents and will no longer
provide the government with intelligence.
Policies to interdict drug shipments or measures to counter money
laundering, while not alienating the local populations from the
government, are extraordinarily difficult to carry out effectively.
Most belligerent groups maintain diversified revenue portfolios.
Attempts to turn off their income are highly demanding of intelligence
and are resource-intensive. Colombia provides one example when drug
interdiction efforts in particular locales registered important
tactical success against the FARC and reduced its income. The overall
improvement in Colombia's military and counterinsurgency policy,
however, was the critical reason for the vast improvements in security
in the country and the success against the FARC.
Counterinsurgency or anti-organized-crime policies that focus on
directly defeating the belligerents and protecting the population tend
to be more effective than policies that seek to do so indirectly by
suppressing illicit economies as a way to defeat belligerents. Efforts
to limit the belligerents' resources are better served by a focus on
mechanisms that do not harm the wider population directly, even though
such discriminate efforts are difficult to undertake effectively
because of their resource intensiveness.
Overall therefore, counternarcotics policies have to be weighed
very carefully, with a clear eye as to their impact on
counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. Seemingly quick fixes, such as
blanket eradication in the absence of alternative livelihoods, will
only strengthen the insurgency and compromise state-building, and
ultimately the counternarcotics efforts themselves.
Effectiveness in suppressing illicit economies is critically
predicated on security. Without constant and intensive state presence
and security, neither the suppression of illicit economies nor
alternative livelihoods programs have been effective.
It is also important to note that some alternative illicit
economies, and new smuggling methods to which belligerents are pushed
as result of suppression efforts against the original illicit economy,
can have far more dangerous repercussions for state security and public
safety than did the original illicit economy. Such alternative sources
of financing could involve, for example, obtaining radioactive
materials for resale on the black market. Reports that the leftist
Colombian guerrilla group, the FARC, acquired uranium for resale in
order to offset the temporary fall in its revenues as a result of
eradication during early phases of Plan Colombia before coca
cultivation there rebounded, provide an example of how unintended
policy effects in this field can be even more pernicious that the
problem they are attempting to address. The traffickers' switch to
semisubmersibles for transportation of drugs is another worrisome
example of unintended consequences of a policy, this time intensified
air and maritime interdiction. The more widespread such transportation
technologies are among nonstate belligerent actors, the greater the
likelihood that global terrorist groups will attempt to exploit them
for attacks against the U.S. homeland or assets.
Similarly, in the absence of a reduction of global demand for
narcotics, suppression of a narcotics economy in one locale will only
displace production to a different locale where threats to local,
regional, and global security interests may be even greater.
Considerations of such second- and third-degree effects need to be
built into policy. An appropriate response would be a multifaceted
state-building effort that seeks to strengthen the bonds between the
state and marginalized communities dependent on or vulnerable to
participation in the drug trade for reasons of economic survival and
physical insecurity. The goal of supply-side measures in
counternarcotics efforts would be not simply to narrowly suppress the
symptoms of illegality and state-weakness, such as illicit crops or
smuggling, but more broadly and fundamentally to reduce the threat that
the drug trade poses to human security, the state, and overall public
safety.
Effective state response to intense organized crime and illicit
economies usually requires that the state address all the complex
reasons why populations turn to illegality, including law enforcement
deficiencies and physical insecurity, economic poverty, and social
marginalization. Such efforts entail ensuring that peoples and
communities will obey laws. One component is increasing the likelihood
that illegal behavior and corruption will be punished. An equally
important component is creating a social, economic, and political
environment in which the laws are consistent with the needs of the
people and therefore can be seen as legitimate and can be internalized.
In the case of efforts to combat illicit crop cultivation and the
drug trade, one aspect of such a multifaceted approach that seeks to
strengthen the bonds between the state and society and weaken the bonds
between marginalized populations and criminal and armed actors would be
the proper sequencing of eradication and the development of economic
alternatives. Policies that emphasize eradication of illicit crops,
including forced eradication, above rural development, such as
alternative livelihoods efforts, have rarely been effective. Such
sequencing and emphasis has also been at odds with the lessons learned
from the most successful rural development effort in the context of
illicit crop cultivation: Thailand. Indeed, Thailand offers the only
example where rural development succeeded in eliminating illicit crop
cultivation on a countrywide level (even while drug trafficking and
drug production of methamphetamines continue).
Effective rural development does require not only proper sequencing
of security and alternative livelihoods development, but also a well-
funded, long-lasting, and comprehensive approach that does not center
merely on searching for a replacement crop. Alternative development
efforts need to address all the structural drivers of why communities
participate in illegal economies--such as poor access to legal markets,
deficiencies in infrastructure and irrigation systems, no access to
legal microcredit, and the lack of value-added chains.
But the economic approaches to reducing illegality and crime should
not be limited only to rural areas: there is great need for such
programs even in urban areas afflicted by extensive and pervasive
illegality where communities are vulnerable to capture by organized
crime, such as in Mexico or Brazil. Often the single most difficult
problem is the creation of jobs in the legal economy, at times
requiring overall GDP growth. But GDP growth is often not sufficient to
generate jobs and lift people out of poverty as long the structural
political-economic arrangements stimulate capital-intensive growth, but
not job creation--a common feature in Latin America, and one that only
increases inequality.
It is important, however, that such social interventions are
designed as comprehensive rural development or comprehensive urban
planning efforts, not simply limited social handouts or economic
buyoffs. The latter approaches have failed--whether they were conducted
in Medellin as a part of the demobilization process of the former
paramilitaries (many of whom have returned as bandas criminales) or in
Rio de Janeiro's favelas. The handout and buyoff shortcuts
paradoxically can even strengthen criminal and belligerent entities.
Such buyoff approaches can set up difficult-to-break perverse social
equilibria where criminal entities continue to control marginalized
segments of society while striking a let-live bargain with the state,
under which criminal actors even control territories and limit state
access.
Effectiveness of law enforcement efforts to combat organized crime
is enhanced if interdiction policies are designed to diminish the
coercive and corruption power of criminal organizations, rather than
merely and predominantly to stop illicit flows. The former objective
may mandate different targeting strategies and intelligence analysis.
Predominant focus on the latter objective often weeds out the least
capacious criminal groups, giving rise to a vertical integration of the
industry and ``leaner and meaner'' criminal groups.
An effective multifaceted response by the state also entails other
components:
Addressing street crime to restore communities'
associational capacity and give a boost to legal economies;
Providing access to dispute resolution and justice
mechanisms--Colombia's casas de justicia are one example;
Undertaking law enforcement, corrections, and justice
sectors reform to enhance their performance, expand their
accessibility, and increase their accountability;
Encouraging protection of human rights, reconciliation, and
nonviolent approaches;
Improving access to effective education as well as health
care--a form of investment in human capital;
Insulating informal economies from takeover by the state and
limiting the capacity of criminal groups to become polycrime
franchises; and
Creating public spaces free of violence and repression so
that civil society can recreate its associational capacity and
social capital.
Boosting the capacity of communities to resist coercion and
cooptation by criminal enterprises, however, does not mean that the
state can rely on communities themselves to tackle crime, especially
violent organized crime. In fact, there is a great deal of danger in
the state attempting to mobilize civil society to take on crime
prematurely while the state is still incapable of assuring the
protection of the people. Without the state's ability to back up
communities and secure them from violence by organized crime or
belligerents, the population will not provide intelligence to the
state. Actionable and accurate human intelligence is often critical for
success not only of counterinsurgency, but also for anti-organized-
crime efforts. Equally significant, unless the needed backup is
provided, the community can all the more sour on the state. It will
then be very hard for the state to mobilize civil society the second
time around and restore trust in state capacity and commitment.
Whether as a result of organized criminal groups' warfare or as a
side effect of crime suppression policies, intense violence quickly
eviscerates associational and organizational capacity and the social
action potential of communities. Even if the drug traffickers or maras
are killing each other, intense violence on the streets hollows out the
communities. Success hinges on the state's ability to bring violence
down: without a reduction in violence, socioeconomic interventions do
not have a chance to take off and even institutional reforms become
difficult to sustain as political support weakens.
Reducing demand is a critical component of counternarcotics control
policy. The need for demand reduction measures is no longer limited to
Western countries, such as the United States or Western Europe. In
fact, in many countries in Latin America, such as Brazil, Argentina,
and Mexico (as well as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia, and China),
demand for illicit narcotics has greatly increased over the past 20
years. In some of these countries, including in Latin America, the per
capita consumption of illicit narcotics rivals and even surpasses that
of the United States or West European countries.
However, prevention and treatment programs are often lacking in
many of the countries with increasing consumption and tend to assigned
low policy priority. At the same time, demand reduction programs often
suffer from poor design and implementation not grounded in the best
available scientific knowledge.
Regional coordination and the sharing of best practices can
mitigate the dangers of displacing illicit economies and organized
crime to new locales. Nonetheless, in the absence of a significant
reduction in demand, drug supply and transshipment will inevitably
relocate somewhere. Thus, there is a limit to what regional efforts can
accomplish to mitigate this so-called balloon effect. As long as there
is weaker law enforcement and state-presence in one area than in
others, the drug trade will relocate there.
Moreover, areas with very weak state and law enforcement capacity
and high levels of corruption often have constrained capacity to
constructively absorb external assistance. Worse yet, such assistance
risks being perverted: in the context of weak state capacity and high
corruption, there is a substantial chance that counternarcotics efforts
to train antiorganized crime units will only end up training more
effective and technologically savvy drug traffickers. The best
assistance in such cases may be to prioritize strengthening the
capacity to fight street crime, reduce corruption, and increasing the
effectiveness of the justice system. Once such assistance has been
positively incorporated, it may be fruitful to focus on further
antiorganized crime efforts, including through advanced-technology
transfers and training specialized counternarcotics and antiorganized
crime units. Such careful considerations of absorption capacity and
possible unintended consequences are, for example, urgently needed
regarding the level and design of policy interventions in Central
America. Even though the countries there may be severely impacted by
the drug trade, simply rushing in with standard counternarcotics
assistance packages in the form of equipment transfer and specialized
units training could potentially aggravate the situation. Putting a
premium on overall law enforcement and justice sector reforms may well
be more desirable forms of outside assistance.
IV. THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION'S POLICY TOWARD THE DRUG TRADE AND
ORGANIZED CRIME IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE
The Obama administration has unequivocally acknowledged joint
responsibility for efforts to suppress the drug trade and the threats
it poses to states and local communities. Even though U.S. funding for
demand reduction measures has been increased only modestly, the Obama
administration has clearly committed itself to reducing the demand in
the United States. A robust and well-funded commitment to demand
reduction not only reduces consumption, but also greatly facilitates
the effectiveness of supply-side measures. As long as there is a strong
demand for illicit narcotics, supply-side measures cannot be expected
to stop supply and eliminate consumption.
Mexico
The Obama administration has also embraced a multifaceted approach
to dealing with organized crime and illicit economies. Indeed, a focus
on reinforcing the relationship between marginalized communities in
Mexico's cities, such as Cuidad Juarez, and the state is now the fourth
pillar of the new orientation of the Merida Initiative, ``Beyond
Merida.'' Beyond Merida recognizes that there are no quick
technological fixes to the threat that DTOs pose to the Mexican state
and society. It also recognizes that high-value-targeting of drug
capos, even while backed up by the Mexican military will not end the
power of the Mexican DTOs; paradoxically, it is one important driver of
violence in Mexico, with all its deleterious effects on rule of law and
society.
Instead, Beyond Merida focuses on four pillars: a comprehensive
effort to weaken the DTOs that goes beyond high-value decapitation;
institutional development and capacity-building, including in the
civilian law enforcement, intelligence, and justice sectors; building a
21st century border to secure communities while encouraging economic
trade and growth; and building community resilience against
participation in the drug trade or drug consumption. Beyond Merida thus
seeks to expand interdiction efforts from a narrow high-value targeting
of DTO bosses to a more comprehensive interdiction effort that targets
the entire drug organization and giving newly trained police forces the
primary street security function once again while gradually putting the
military in a background support function. By focusing on the building
of a secure but smart United States-Mexico border that also facilitates
trade, the strategy not only helps U.S. border States for which trade
with Mexico often represents an economic lifeline, but also helps
generate economic opportunities in Mexico that reduce the citizens'
need to participate in illegality for obtaining basic livelihood.
Pillar three then critically meshes with fourth pillar--focused on
weaning the population away from the drug traffickers--which again
seeks to build resilient communities in Mexico to prevent their
takeover by Mexican crime organizations.
Beyond Merida is designed to also significantly enhance the
capacity of the Government of Mexico. The outgoing U.S. Ambassador to
Mexico, Carlos Pascual, deserves much credit for helping to devise such
a comprehensive and multifaceted U.S. policy toward Mexico and for
helping Mexico's Government recognize the need to expand its law
enforcement strategy, institutionalize its rule of law reforms, and
complement its law enforcement strategy with socioeconomic programs
that can break the bonds of Mexico's poor and marginalized communities
with the criminal groups. Social programs sponsored by the U.S. fourth
pillar, such as Todos Somos Juarez, aim to restore hope for
underprivileged Mexicans--20 percent of Mexicans live below the extreme
poverty line and at least 40 percent of the Mexican economy is
informal--that a better future and possibility of social progress lies
ahead if they remain in the legal economy. Such bonds between the
community and the state are what at the end of the day will allow the
state to prevail and crime to be weakened. But they are very hard to
effectuate--especially given the structural deficiencies of Mexico's
economy as well as political obstacles. Indeed, Mexico's implementation
of Todos Somos Juarez has encountered some serious problems.
Notwithstanding the level of U.S. assistance so far, including
having generated over several thousand newly trained Mexican Federal
police officers, Mexico's law enforcement remains deeply eviscerated,
deficient in combating street and organized crime and corrupt.
Corruption persists even among the newly trained police. Expanding the
investigative capacity of Mexico's police is an imperative yet
frequently difficult component of police reform, especially during
times of intense criminal violence when law enforcement tends to become
overwhelmed, apathetic, and all the more susceptible to corruption. The
needed comprehensive police reform will require sustained commitment
over a generation at least.
U.S. assistance to Mexico in its reform of the judicial system and
implementation of the accusatorial system, including training
prosecutors, can be particularly fruitful. Urgent attention also needs
to be given to reform of Mexico's prisons, currently breeding grounds
and schools for current and potential members of drug trafficking
organizations.
Such a multifaceted approach toward narcotics and crime and
emphasizing social policies as one tool to mitigate crime, is
increasingly resonating in Latin America beyond Mexico. Socioeconomic
programs designed to mitigate violence and crime--for example, the
Virada Social in Sao Paolo or the socioeconomic component of the
Pacification (UPP) policy in Rio de Janeiro's favelas--have been
embraced by state governments in Brazil.
Colombia
Yet they continue to be slow to expand in Colombia, even as
President Juan Manuel Santos has initiated a range of socioeconomic
programs, such as land restitution to victims of forced displacement.
The National Consolidation Plan of the Government of Colombia,
currently under reevaluation, recognizes the importance of addressing
the socioeconomic needs of the populations previously controlled by
illegal armed actors. But state presence in many areas remains highly
limited and many socioeconomic programs often consist of limited one-
time handouts, rather than robust socioeconomic development. The
Government of Colombia also lacks the resources to robustly expand its
socioeconomic development efforts and its security and law enforcement
presence to all of its territory and even its strategic zones.
Although the size and power of illegal armed groups, such as the
leftist guerillas, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia
(FARC) have been substantially reduced, and the guerrillas have been
pushed away from strategic corridors, they still maintain a presence of
perhaps several thousand, critically undermine security in parts of
Colombia, and participate in the drug trade and extortion. Despite the
formal demobilization of the paramilitary groups, new paramilitary
groups, referred to by the Government of Colombia as bandas criminales,
have emerged and by some accounts number 10,000. They too participate
in the drug trade and undermine public safety in ways analogous to the
former paramilitaries. Such paramilitary groups have also penetrated
the political structures in Colombia at both the local and national
levels, distorting democratic processes, accountability, and
socioeconomic development, often to the detriment of the most needy.
New conflicts over land have increased once again and displacement of
populations from land persists at very high levels. Homicides and
kidnapping murders are up in Bogota and Medellin, once hailed as a
model success. The government's provision of security in many areas
remains sporadic and spotty.
Yet the government of President Santos needs to be given major
credit for recognizing the need to focus rigorously on combating the
bandas criminales, all the more so as municipal elections are scheduled
in Colombia this year. The government also deserves credit for focusing
on combating street crime and urban violence and for unveiling a well-
designed plan for combating urban crime, Plan Nacional de Vigiliancia
Comunitaria por Cuadrantes, emphasizing crime prevention, community
policing, and local intelligence.
Critically, with all its emphasis on social policies, the Santos
administration has yet to move away from the ineffective and
counterproductive zero-coca policy of inherited from Colombia's
previous administration. The zero-coca policy conditions all economic
aid on a total eradication of all coca plants in a particular locality.
Even a small-scale violation by one family disqualifies an area, such
as a municipality, from receiving any economic assistance from the
Government of Colombia or from cooperating international partners. Such
a policy thus disqualifies the most marginalized and coca-dependent
communities from receiving assistance to sustainably abandon illicit
crop cultivation, subjects them to food insecurity and often also
physical insecurity, pushes them into the hands of illegal armed
groups, and adopts the wrong sequencing approach for supply-side
counternarcotics policies. In cooperating with the Santos
administration in Colombia, the United States Government should
encourage the new Colombian leadership to drop this counterproductive
policy.
Over the past 9 years, reflecting the results of U.S. assistance
under Plan Colombia and the Andean Counterdrug Initiative, Colombia has
experienced very significant progress. Nonetheless, the success remains
incomplete. It is important not to be blinded by the success and
uncritically present policies adopted in Colombia as a blanket model to
be emulated in other parts of the world, including in Mexico. While its
accomplishments, including in police reform and the impressive
strengthening of the judicial system, need to be recognized and indeed
may serve as a model, the limitations of progress equally need to be
stressed, for it is important to continue working with Colombia in
areas of deficient progress and to avoid repeating mistakes elsewhere
around the world.
Furthermore, in counternarcotics and anticrime policies, as in
other aspects of public policy, it is important to recognize that a
one-shoe-fits-all approach limits the effectiveness of policy designs.
Local institutional and cultural settings will be critical determinants
of policy effectiveness; and addressing local drivers of the drug trade
and criminal violence and corruption will be necessary for increasing
the effectiveness of policies.
Central America
In its efforts against organized crime and narcotics in the Western
Hemisphere, the Obama administration has also recognized the danger of
countering the balloon effect and the possibility that intensified law
enforcement efforts in Mexico risk increasing drug shipment flows and
associated threats to the states and societies in Central America and
the Caribbean. To mitigate the spillover effects, the Obama
administration has adopted two initiatives: the Central American
Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) and the Caribbean Basin Security
Initiative (CBSI). During his recent visit to El Salvador, President
Barack Obama significantly increased U.S. assistance to CARSI, pledging
$200 million. However, I would like to emphasize that even such
regional efforts are unlikely to prevent the emergence of a crime
displacement effort altogether and countries in Central America are
constrained in their capacity to absorb various types of assistance.
Careful consideration of the design of counternarcotics and
antiorganized crime efforts, vetting of the recipients of U.S.
assistance, and overall careful and constant monitoring of such
assistance programs and their side effect is needed in Central America.
CONCLUSION
Efforts to strengthen the state in Latin America will facilitate
what local governments can accomplish against organized crime. An
indispensible component of state-strengthening capacity in Latin
America includes reforming the law-and-order apparatus and the justice
sector so that the state can provide public safety and the rule of law
for all of its citizens. But states in Latin America would be more
effective in combating transnational organized crime if they also
focused more than they now do on combating street crime. The latter,
often receiving little priority in U.S. development-assistance policies
and in policies of many Latin American countries, would provide new
opportunities for cooperation with the United States, where innovative
local community-policing programs have been experiencing considerable
success in recent years. The needed comprehensive law-enforcement and
justice-sector reforms would involve expanding police presence and
limiting police corruption, brutality, and abuse, in addition to
greater emphasis placed on community policing.
The governments in Latin America are also likely to become more
effective in combating crime if they intensify their focus on the
socioeconomic issues that underlie key aspects of criminality and
informal and illegal economies in Latin America. Expanding economic and
social opportunities for underprivileged marginalized populations can
facilitate community cooperation against organized crime. If the
manifestation of the state becomes benevolent by providing legal
economic opportunities for social development and legitimate and
reliable security and justice, many root causes of transnational crime
would be addressed and belligerent and crime organizations
delegitimized. Latin American citizens would become both far less
interested in participating in illicit economies and far more willing
to participate with the state in tackling transnational crime.
Thank you for giving me this opportunity to address the
subcommittee on this important issue.
Senator Menendez. Thank you.
Dr. Arnson.
STATEMENT OF DR. CYNTHIA J. ARNSON, PH.D., DIRECTOR, LATIN
AMERICAN PROGRAM, WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR
SCHOLARS, WASHINGTON, DC
Dr. Arnson. Senator Menendez, thank you very much for the
invitation to testify. I will touch on many of the themes that
were raised by the administration witnesses and hopefully
underscore some of the problems that I see that have been
reflected in your questions.
The dimensions of the citizen security crisis in Central
America cannot be understated. For those of us who have
followed Latin America for a long time, I think it's indeed
tragic to note that the levels of violence associated with
crime and organized crime are now much higher than the levels
of violence associated with the internal armed conflicts of the
1980s.
The situation is obviously most acute in the countries of
the so-called Northern Tier--Honduras, El Salvador, and
Guatemala. Because levels of crime and violence are associated
with large numbers of young people, they indeed strike hard at
a country's future. The OAS Inter-American Commission for Human
Rights has indicated that Central America and Latin America
have the highest levels of youth violence in the world. That is
something that is more than double that of Africa and 36 times
that of developing countries. In El Salvador alone, 68 percent
of homicide victims are between the ages of 15 and 34. Nine out
of ten victims are male.
The deterioration in public security in Central America is
longstanding and has multiple causes, just as do the
explanations for the rise of youth gangs. The explanations
range from severely stressed family structures due to high
rates of emigration, low levels of education, low levels of
access particularly to secondary education, high levels of
youth unemployment, rapid and chaotic urbanization, and an
abundance of illegal light as well as heavy caliber weapons.
I think you were right in pointing out that the social
indicators shed important light on the dimensions of the
problem. The countries of the Northern Triangle have
development indicators compiled by the United Nations
Development Program and the World Bank, among others, that are
among the lowest in Latin America. In Central America the
scores, according to the World Bank Opportunity Index, are as
much as 20 points below the average for Latin America and the
Caribbean.
Official responses to crime in many cases have not remedied
the problem; have only exacerbated it. Hard-line policies,
known as mano dura, iron fist or strong hand, have increased
the size of the prison population, resulting in longer
sentences, without improving and indeed I think exacerbating
the surging rates of crime and violence.
The growing activity of organized crime takes advantage, as
others have noted, of the region's weak and fragile
institutions, as well as its geographic proximity to North
American drug markets.
I think Central America--we have talked about the balloon
effect earlier in the hearing. Central America in my view is a
classic representation of the unrelenting dynamic of the drug
trade over the last several decades. Improvements in one
country or subregion translate into deterioration elsewhere.
Typically, we've used the term ``balloon effect'' to talk about
the displacement of coca cultivation from one area to another,
but I think the full dimensions of the balloon effect are much
more pernicious. All aspects of organized crime, from the
cultivation of drugs to production to all forms of illegal
trafficking constantly change shape as traffickers adapt to
increased enforcement and to meet persistent levels of demand
and the corresponding levels of profit.
I'd like to switch quickly to some suggestions for policy.
In my view and tragically, U.S. policy over several decades has
failed to anticipate the changing dynamics of the drug trade, a
tendency that became more pronounced with the launching of Plan
Colombia in the year 2000. The United States Government was
slow to respond to the ways that increased counterdrug efforts
in Colombia would affect neighbors in the Andean region, slow
to adjust to the ways that improvements in the Andes would
affect Mexico and the countries of Central America.
Central America, as you know, was initially an afterthought
to Plan Merida, although now with the deteriorating situation
in Central America the Obama administration has increased its
support for CARSI and for the Caribbean through CBSI.
Organized crime groups, unfortunately, have demonstrated a
much higher learning curve regarding the subregional dynamics
of illegal economies, and I think there's no substitute at this
point for a comprehensive approach that addresses
simultaneously the Andean region, Mexico, Central America, and
the Caribbean, indeed, as the first panel, many members of the
first panel indicated.
The multiply U.S. agencies that are engaged in this
effort--State, DOD, AID, DEA, FBI, ATF, Homeland Security, and
others--as the U.S. assistance expands, the need for
coordination among the different agencies of the U.S.
Government is more critical than ever.
No one has mentioned yet United States immigration policy
and, given the high percentage of criminals among deportees
from the United States to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras,
I think we must take special care to minimize the impact of our
own law enforcement policies on the countries already
struggling with high levels of crime and violence.
There's also I think a need for coordination with other
international donors--the IDB, the World Bank, the agencies of
the U.N. system--as well as with, obviously, the Central
American governments and regional security organizations, such
as SECA.
The Obama administration has made major strides in
redirecting significant portions of the counterdrug budget in
the United States to reduce domestic demand. It is positive, I
believe, that drug use has been redefined as a public health
problem in addition to being a law enforcement problem.
I think, however, that the Obama administration has failed
to couple the discourse of shared responsibility with concrete
measures, for example to reduce the flow of weapons, as you
have noted earlier in your questions, from north to south, or
to foster a much broader debate in the United States and the
U.S. Congress on alternative antidrug strategies as called for
by many Members of the U.S. Congress.
I think it's no exaggeration that crime and violence
abetted by organized crime constitute central threats to
democratic governance in Central America and the survival of
democratic institutions. The task finally at the end of the day
is to not only increase law enforcement and judicial capacity,
but also to address the poverty, exclusion, and lack of
opportunity that provide a vast breeding ground for crime and
violence throughout the region.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Arnson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Cynthia J. Arnson
Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, I am grateful for
this opportunity to discuss the crisis of citizen security and
organized crime in Central America, and offer some modest suggestions
for addressing it.
The dimensions of the citizen security crisis in Central America
cannot be understated. It is tragic to note that 15 to 20 years after
the end of brutal armed conflicts in the region, levels of criminal
violence in Central America are higher than during the wars. The United
Nations Development Program (UNDP) noted in 2009 that the seven
countries of Central America--Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama--registered the highest
levels of nonpolitical violence in the world. The situation is most
acute in the countries of the so-called ``Northern Triangle''--El
Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras--but countries such as Costa Rica and
Nicaragua are also witnessing rising rates of insecurity associated
with the increased presence of organized crime.\1\
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\1\ United Nations Development Program, ``Informe Sobre Desarrollo
Humano Para America Central 20092010'' (New York: UNDP, October 2009).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Statistics compiled by governments as well as international
institutions vary somewhat, but all paint a similarly grim picture.
According to the UNDP, the overall homicide rate in Central America is
more than three times the global average; it exceeds the Latin American
average by 7 percentage points, and is increasing.\2\ According to the
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in 2010, murder rates in the
countries of the Northern Triangle are five to six times higher than in
Mexico, a country whose orgy of narcotrafficking violence has captured
U.S. and international attention.\3\ National averages themselves may
understate and mask important subnational variations. Just as within
Mexico, border cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez suffer homicide
rates that far exceed the national average, the murder rates in
specific regions in Central America--Guatemala's Peten or the
Department of Atlantida in Honduras, for example--similarly exceed the
national averages and are closely correlated with drug trafficking
corridors. In El Salvador, the number of murders in and around the
capital is more than four times as high as the national average.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Ibid. The increase in violence between 2000 and 2008 was most
severe in Guatemala, where homicides increased 20 percent.
\3\ United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, ``Crime and
Instability: Case Studies of Transnational Threats'' (Vienna: UNODC,
February 2010), 22. In 2008, the murder rates were 60.9 per 100,000 in
Honduras; 51.8 in El Salvador; 49.0 in Guatemala; 11.6 in Mexico; 5.2
in the United States.
\4\ Marcela Smutt, UNDP, ``La (in)seguridad ciudadana en El
Salvador,'' presentation at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars, June 24, 2010.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Because levels of crime and violence are strongly correlated with
large numbers of young people, they strike hard against a country's
future. In mid-2010 the OAS Inter-American Commission for Human Rights
reported that Latin America has the highest levels of youth violence in
the world.\5\ U.N. figures indicate that the rate of youth homicide in
Latin America is more than double that of Africa, and 36 times the rate
of developed countries.\6\ In El Salvador alone, 68 percent of homicide
victims are between the ages of 15 and 34, and 9 out of 10 victims are
male.\7\ To appreciate the full magnitude of the problem, one should
recall that citizen insecurity is not solely reflected in the number of
homicides. Indeed, the United Nations estimated in 2010 that for every
fatality, there were 20-40 victims of nonfatal youth violence.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Organization of American States, Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights, ``Report on Citizen Security and Human Rights,'' May 10,
2010.
\6\ United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, ``The Globalization
of Crime: A Transnational Organized Threat Assessment'' (Vienna: UNODC,
2010), 32.
\7\ Marcela Smutt, op. cit.
\8\ United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, ``The Globalization
of Crime,'' 32.
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The deterioration in public security in Central America is
longstanding and has multiple causes, just as do explanations for the
rise of youth gangs, whose members number in the tens of thousands in
El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.\9\ Oft-cited explanations for the
growth of gangs include severely stressed family structures due to high
rates of emigration, low levels of education, high levels of youth
unemployment, rapid and chaotic urbanization, and an abundance of
illegal light as well as heavy-caliber weapons (reflecting inadequate
programs of post-war disarmament and reintegration as well as illegal
weapons flows from the United States).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ The U.S. Southern Command in 2007 estimated Central American
gang membership at 70,000. That same year, UNODC estimated gang
membership to be 10,500 in El Salvador; 36,000 in Honduras, and 14,000
in Guatemala. Cited in Clare Ribando Seelke, ``Gangs in Central
America,'' Congressional Research Service, January 3, 2011, 5.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
A number of social and economic indicators help to shed light on
the dimension of the problem. By 2008, the number of primary-school-age
children who were enrolled in school reached 94 percent in El Salvador,
95 percent in Guatemala, and 97 percent in Honduras. But progress in
expanding access to basic education, was not matched in enrollment
rates in secondary school, which were only 55 percent in El Salvador
and 40 percent in Guatemala (figures for Honduras are not
available).\10\ The countries of the Northern Triangle have human
development indicators (compiled by the United Nations Development
Program) that are among the lowest in Latin America. The three
countries similarly rank low on the World Bank's Human Opportunity
Index, with scores as much as 20 points below the average for Latin
American and the Caribbean.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ Figures are from the World Bank, World Development Indicators,
and United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) Institute for Statistics, cited in Aaron Terrazas, Demetrios
G. Papademetriou, and Marc R. Rosenblum, ``Demographic and Human
Capital Trends in Mexico and Central America, Draft, Migration Policy
Institute,'' February 2011, 10-13.
\11\ Jose R. Molinas, Ricardo Paes de Barros, et. al., ``Do Our
Children Have a Chance?'' The 2010 Human Opportunity Report for Latin
America and the Caribbean (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2010), 55.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The costs of violence are huge. The UNDP estimates that violence in
a country such as El Salvador costs the country roughly 11.5 percent of
yearly GDP, double the spending on education and health combined. The
figure is roughly equivalent to 8 months of remittances from
Salvadorans abroad. The amount that individuals and private companies
pay for private security and surveillance exceeded the Salvadoran
Government's public spending for the security sector in 2008-09. The
costs of crime to business are higher in El Salvador than in any other
Latin American country and among the highest in the world, according to
a survey of World Bank data compiled by Latin Business Chronicle.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ Losses due to theft, robbery, vandalism, or arson represent
2.6 percent of company sales, the highest rate in Latin America and the
10th highest in the world. See ``Crime Cost: El Salvador Worst,'' Latin
American Business Chronicle, August 10, 2010.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Official responses to the rise in violent crime have not remedied
the problem, and indeed, some analysts blame government policies for
worsening the crisis of citizen security.\13\ Hard-line policies known
as mano dura (``strong hand'' or ``iron fist'') have increased the size
of the prison population and resulted in longer sentences throughout
the Northern Tier, without resolving, and indeed, exacerbating the
surging rates of crime and violence. In El Salvador alone, for example,
the prison population increased by 184 percent between 2000 and 2009 as
a result of the previous administration's mano dura policy. Severe
overcrowding--the main men's prison outside the capital was at 424
percent capacity in 2009--has converted prisons into veritable
incubators for future criminal activity.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ See, for example, Jose Miguel Cruz, Rafael Fernandez de
Castro, and Gema Santamaria Balmaceda, ``Political Transition, Social
Violence, and Gangs,'' in Cynthia J. Arnson, ed., ``In the Wake of War:
Democratization and Internal Armed Conflict in Latin America''
(Washington, DC, and Palo Alto, CA: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and
Stanford University Press, forthcoming, 2011).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
DRUG TRAFFICKING HAS EXACERBATED ALREADY HIGH LEVELS OF VIOLENCE
The growing activity of organized crime groups in Central America,
particularly drug traffickers, takes advantage of the region's weak and
fragile institutions as well as its geographical proximity to North
American drug markets. Dysfunctional judicial systems throughout the
subregion foster high levels of impunity, while processes of police
reform and professionalization in the wake of peace settlements in
Guatemala and El Salvador have been incomplete. The region's porous
land borders and extensive coastlines are not adequately controlled,
making them vulnerable to exploitation by criminal groups.
Criminal networks--including some originating during the era of
internal armed conflict--have operated in Central America for decades
(moving drugs, contraband, arms, and human beings), there is no doubt
that pressures on drug cartels in Mexico have led to the expansion of
organized crime in the contiguous territories of Central America.\14\
The region is geographically close to North America, which constitutes
the largest global market for cocaine, among other drugs.\15\ Cocaine
from Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia--the world's largest producers--is
trafficked to the United States and Canada through Central America and
Mexico, by sea as well as land. The United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime estimated that 180-200 tons of cocaine were trafficked through
Mexico and Central America in 2009, worth about $38 billion in U.S.
markets.\16\ The share of cocaine flowing through Guatemala and
Honduras, in particular, has increased. The U.S. State Department
estimated in 2010 that some 42 percent of the cocaine entering the
United States passes through Central America.\17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ See Steven Dudley, ``Drug Trafficking Organizations in Central
America: Transportistas, Mexican Cartels and Maras,'' in Eric L. Olson,
David A. Shirk, and Andrew Selee, eds., ``Shared Responsibility: U.S.-
Mexico Policy Options for Confronting Organized Crime,'' Woodrow Wilson
Center Mexico Institute and University of San Diego Trans-border
Institute, 2010; and three Latin American Program Working Papers on
Organized Crime in Central America: James Bosworth, ``Honduras:
Organized Crime Gaining Amid Political Crisis,'' December 2010; Douglas
Farah, ``Organized Crime in El Salvador: The Homegrown and
Transnational Dimensions,'' February 2011; and Julie Lopez,
``Guatemala's Crossroads: Democratization of Violence and Second
Chances,'' December 2010.
\15\ North America alone accounts for some 43 percent of the global
market value of cocaine. See United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime,
``Crime and Instability,'' 5.
\16\ Ibid., 19, 21.
\17\ Clare Ribando Seekle, op. cit., 3.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Central America is a classic representation of the unrelenting
dynamic of the drug trade over the past several decades, in which
improvements in one country or subregion translate into deterioration
elsewhere. The ``balloon effect'' usually describes the phenomenon by
which reductions in coca cultivation in one country lead to increases
in another. But the balloon effect is much more pernicious; all aspects
of organized crime--from cultivation of drugs to production to all
forms of illegal trafficking--constantly change shape as traffickers
adapt to increased enforcement to meet persistent levels of demand and
corresponding levels of profit.
Not all sources agree on the extent to which existing youth gangs
are involved in--or potentially taken over by--organized crime. The
U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime has tended to downplay the relationship,
but a stream of reporting from the region points to the growing
involvement of maras in organized crime.\18\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\18\ See Hannah Stone, ``Street Gang No More, MS-13 Moves Into
Organized Crime,'' InsightCrime, March 9, 2011; Katherine Corcoran,
``Mexican Drug Cartels Move Into Central America,'' Associated Press,
March 14, 2011; and Tracy Wilkenson, ``El Salvador Becomes Drug
Traffickers' `little pathway','' Los Angeles Times, March 22, 2011.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE EFFECT OF INSECURITY ON GOVERNANCE AND
ON CITIZEN SUPPORT FOR DEMOCRACY
The huge amounts of money and cash involved drug trafficking,
coupled with Central America's weak institutionality, make public
officials at all levels of government susceptible to corruption by drug
money. In Guatemala in 2009, the chief and deputy chief of the National
Police, together with the heads of operations and investigations, were
purged for their involvement in drug trafficking. In 2008, something
similar occurred in El Salvador, when the police chief was forced to
resign after two top assistants were accused of involvement in drug
trafficking. Other times, however, public servants have paid with their
lives for standing up to crime syndicates, as when Honduras' chief
counternarcotics official, Gen. Aristides Gonzalez, was murdered in
2009.\19\ The intended effect of threats against and killings of
members of the police, judicial officials, and local authorities is to
sow terror among the population and weaken the resolve and ability of
the state to assert its authority against criminal organizations.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\19\ See UNODC, ``Crime and Instability: Case Studies of
Transnational Threats,'' 23.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Various regional public opinion polls register the degree to which
citizens throughout Latin America are concerned about crime and
violence and the ways that high levels of crime and violence as well as
corruption detract from support for democracy and the rule of law.
According to the Chilean firm Latinobarometro in 2010, citizen security
is now the principal concern among citizens of the region, overtaking
concern with unemployment for only the second time since the mid-
1990s.\20\ While satisfaction with democracy increased in El Salvador
following the election of President Mauricio Funes, the three countries
of the Northern Triangle are among the bottom 5 of 26 countries of the
region in terms of support for the idea of democracy, and El Salvador
and Honduras were in the bottom 6 out in terms of support for the rule
of law.\21\ The AmericasBarometer of the Latin American Public Opinion
Project (LAPOP) demonstrates the degree to which crime victimization
and the perception of insecurity detract from support for democratic
systems as well as respect for the rule of law.\22\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\20\ Corporacion Latinobarometro, ``Informe 2010,'' Santiago,
December 2010, www.latino
barometro.org.
\21\ Support for democracy is measured in terms of agreement with
the statement ``democracy may have problems, but it is better than any
other form of government.'' Support for the rule of law is measured in
terms of agreement with the statement that ``in order to catch
criminals . . . the authorities should always abide by the law.'' See
Latin American Public Opinion Project, ``Political Culture of
Democracy,'' 2010, http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/ab2010/2010-
comparative-en-revised.pdf.
\22\ Ibid., 81, 84-85.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE NEED FOR A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH
In general, U.S. policy over several decades has failed to
anticipate the changing dynamics of the drug trade, a tendency that
became more pronounced with the launching of Plan Colombia in 2000. The
U.S. Government was slow to respond to the ways that increased
counterdrug efforts in Colombia would affect its neighbors in the
Andean region, and then slow to adjust to the ways that increased
enforcement throughout the Andes would affect Mexico and other
countries closest to the world's largest drug market in North America.
Central America was initially an afterthought as the United States and
Mexico launched Plan Merida; although faced with the deteriorating
situation in Central America, the Obama administration has increased
its support for the countries of Central America through CARSI, and for
the Caribbean through the CBSI.
Organized crime groups have exhibited a much steeper learning curve
regarding the subregional dynamics of illegal economies, and there is
no substitute now
for a comprehensive approach that, at a minimum, addresses
simultaneously the Andean region, Mexico, Central America, and the
Caribbean; that is, all the geographical areas including and in between
the source countries of illegal drugs and the major consumption markets
in the United States and Canada.
Multiple U.S. agencies--the State Department, Agency for
International Development, DEA, FBI, ATFE, Homeland Security, and
others--are involved in the efforts to improve citizen security and
combat organized crime in Central America and elsewhere. As U.S.
assistance expands, the need for coordination among different
government agencies is more critical than ever. Given the high
percentage of criminals among deportees from the United States to El
Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, the U.S. Government must take
special care to minimize the impact of its own law enforcement policies
on nations already struggling with high rates of crime and violence.
Similarly, there is a need for coordination with other international
donors, including the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank,
and the agencies of the U.N. system, as well as with Central American
governments and regional security institutions such as SICA.
Coordinating strategy among national stakeholders and members of the
international community is all the more essential as increased
resources flow into the Central American region. The administration
should be especially supportive of efforts of Central American nations
to create additional bodies such as the United Nations Commission
Against Impunity In Guatemala (CICIG), which has investigated major
criminal cases and contributed to capacity building in Guatemala.
The Obama administration has made major strides in redirecting
significant portions of the U.S. counterdrug budget to reduce domestic
demand and in redefining drug use as a public health as well as law
enforcement problem. It has also devised incentives for Central
Americans to contribute resources to the fight against organized crime,
by offering small challenge grants to those who meet the required
criteria.\23\ In general, however, the Obama administration has failed
to couple the discourse of shared responsibility with concrete measures
to reduce the flow of illegal weapons from North to South, or to foster
a broad national debate on U.S. demand reduction and antidrug
strategies, as called for by many in Congress. More and more countries
of the region who have suffered the violence associated with drug
trafficking and organized crime have called on the United States to
engage in the search for new paradigms.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\23\ ``Estados Unidos Promete Mas Fondos Para Combater Mafias,''
Prensa Libre (Guatemala), March 29, 2011.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is no exaggeration to say that crime and violence abetted by
organized crime constitute central threats to democratic governance in
Central America and the survival of democratic institutions. The task
is not only to increase law enforcement and judicial capacity, but also
to address the poverty, exclusion, and lack of opportunity that provide
a vast breeding ground for crime and violence throughout the region.
Senator Menendez. Thank you.
Mr. Johnson.
STATEMENT OF STEPHEN JOHNSON, DIRECTOR, AMERICAS PROGRAM,
CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Johnson. Chairman Menendez, Ranking Member Rubio. Thank
you very much for inviting me to testify on this crucial
subject today. As a foreign policy analyst and former Defense
Department official, I see the Americas as a complex region,
with governments of different sizes and capabilities, a lot of
them overwhelmed by the challenges they face.
Drug trafficking and transnational crime is a global
multibillion dollar enterprise that's hard to offset, even when
countries like our own have resources and trained personnel.
With tiny budgets and limited ability to collect taxes, most of
our neighbors in the hemisphere are challenged by this task.
Some even deny that they're impacted by the threat, so the
problems seem to multiply.
The war on drugs is not a war that anyone can win, but a
condition that requires control. The question is how badly will
it impact most Americans' lives. Now, if we're serious about
pursuing drug trafficking and attendant ills of other forms--
and other forms of trafficking and violence, then strategy and
cooperation are the keys to successful mediation. Currently
it's not clear that the United States has what could be called
a strategy, and it most assuredly does not have all its
neighbors' cooperation.
But that hasn't stopped the United States from responding
to drug trafficking and attendant ills in the past. Typically,
we lurch from one crisis to the next. Plan Colombia, the Merida
Initiative, and the Central American Regional Security
Initiative all developed rather suddenly in response to
situations that were deemed out of control. Reaction, as
opposed to anticipation, has its costs in efficiency. In
Colombia the United States was lucky it had a partner willing
to make sacrifices and structural changes. Colombia now helps
other countries.
In Mexico the crisis came at a vulnerable moment when the
state was making its democratic transformation. In Central
America, longstanding governance and resource problems, crime
problems, dog any solution. The problems, we now realize--their
problems, we now realize, affect Mexico.
Only in the Caribbean have we thought ahead with the
Caribbean Basin Security Initiative, anticipating a shift in
trafficking patterns as we help our neighbors in Mexico and
Central America.
In the President's annual determinations of which countries
cooperate with us in counternarcotics efforts, the emphasis is
on political will. Only Bolivia and Venezuela are marginal in
this respect. Bolivia kicked out our Ambassador in 2008 and
cooperates at a very low level. Venezuela has refused to accept
our Ambassador-designee and only occasionally extradites drug
kingpins. Most suspect air tracks originate from its
southwestern flank. Yet it has embarked on a billion dollar
weapons buildup that has nothing to do with defeating the
hemisphere's most pressing threat--transnational crime.
But there is another determination to be made that impacts
cooperation: capacity to act. Most neighbors would like to
reduce the threat of drug trafficking and attendant crime, but
face significant limitations, such as available resources--
Central America and the Caribbean don't have much--public
opinion; is counternarcotics anticrime assistance positively
viewed? Are there sensitive aspects, like status of force
agreements and heavy military footprints that might be
involved? Law enforcement and justice systems. Are the police
poorly trained, equipped? Are the courts adequately
functioning? Environmental challenges. Are there isolated
borders or large swaths of ungoverned territory?
The capacity to absorb is also important. Is equipment easy
to use, maintain? Are needed skills easily learned? Sometimes
we don't take this into account.
All this is to say that we need to develop and strengthen a
planning culture with regards to counternarcotics and
transnational crime. I'm pleased to hear that Director
Kerlikowske said today that there would be a new strategy for
the Western Hemisphere forthcoming this summer. But we have to
realize what a strategy is. It's something that is
comprehensive. It's a plan of action that considers resources,
strengths and weaknesses, and assigns priorities. Multiple
agencies are involved, but the Office of National Drug Control
Policy and the State Department's Bureau of International
Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs are probably two good
places to start.
Second, our annual findings on drug producing or
transitting countries should include a more robust capacity
determination, including the factors that I've just mentioned.
Perhaps that will enable better forecasting of where threats
will become more acute in the future.
Finally, Congress must understand that these are not wars.
I can see that that isn't a problem in this committee, in this
subcommittee. But our work will not be finished any time soon.
To the degree that our countries are connected, we must learn
how to address these threats together.
Again, thank you, Chairman Menendez and ranking member. I
appreciate the opportunity.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Johnson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Stephen Johnson
Chairman Menendez, Ranking Member Rubio, distinguished members of
the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify on this crucial
subject of the shared responsibility the countries of the Western
Hemisphere faces in counternarcotics and securing citizen safety. I am
honored to do so, mindful of the deep experience on this topic among
the committee members and staff, as well as the expertise of my
colleagues on this panel. For the record, I would like to state that
the views I express are entirely my own and do not represent the Center
for Strategic and International Studies, the U.S. Government, or any
entities or individuals with whom I may consult.
As a foreign policy analyst and former Defense Department official,
I've come to know the Americas as a complex region, with governments of
different sizes and capabilities, a lot of them overwhelmed by the
challenges they face. Drug trafficking and transnational crime is a
global multibillion-dollar enterprise that is hard to offset, even when
countries like the United States have resources and trained personnel.
With tiny budgets and limited ability to collect taxes, most neighbors
in the hemisphere are challenged by the task. Some deny they are
impacted by the threat. So the problems multiply.
Popularly dubbed a ``war on drugs,'' it is not a war anyone can
win, but a condition that requires control. No one has ever been able
to stamp out crime, and we are not about to disband our police anytime
soon. Likewise, drug trafficking has been around a long time, and will
remain so. The question is how badly it will impact most American's
lives. Libertarians say legalization is the right approach. Narcotics
production and distribution would not be a crime, violent criminals
would not be involved in distribution, and it would thus not be a
problem. Users would be responsible for their own health and safety.
Yet, in today's society in which so many of us are coming to rely on
government benefits and health care, such indulgences would cost
taxpayers plenty. And as we all know, espousing that view at a local
elementary school PTA meeting is a political dead letter.
If we are serious about pursuing drug trafficking and the attendant
ills of other forms of trafficking and violence, then strategy and
cooperation are the keys to successful mediation. Currently, it is not
clear that the United States has what could be called a strategy. And
it most assuredly does not have all its neighbors' cooperation. That
has not stopped the United States from responding to drug trafficking
and attendant ills in the past. But efforts are likely to be more
effective if guided by a strategy and if more countries in the
hemisphere are encouraged to cooperate in ways that make sense for
them.
A strategy is a plan of action to achieve policy goals in a
competitive global environment, using instruments at hand, taking
advantage of opportunities and using available resources to maximum
effect to defeat threats or adversaries. As the definition suggests, a
strategy requires considerable analysis. Most plans touting themselves
as strategies, including the President's own National Security
Strategy, are not so much strategies, per se, as lists of objectives.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy's National Drug Control
Strategy belongs in that category, in that it presents a guide to
actions but offers little consideration of the trafficking environment
or how best to prioritize scarce resources.
This is not to blame responsible authorities in present or past
administrations for trying to be all things to all people. But
executive branch strategies are often political statements that reflect
what bureaucracies would like to do or show that they are doing.
Moreover, strategic thinking is made difficult by the lack of planning
cultures outside of the U.S. Armed Forces. Add to that a national
budgeting process that funnels agency requests through the White House
to Congress, then back again for consultation before budgets are
passed, it is no wonder that original requests are often sliced and
diced, mixed and paired with other programs such that appropriations
bear little resemblance to agency desires.
Given that strategies are conceptual exercises at best, the United
States has tended to react episodically to perceived threats. During
the late 1970s, illicit drug use in the United States rose
dramatically. It was in that climate that the State Department created
the International Narcotics Matters Bureau, the forerunner of the
Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. It was
then that policymakers began thinking seriously about drug crop
eradication on foreign soil and narcotics interdiction. The first
``International Narcotics Control Strategy Report'' came out in 1987.
The White House stood up its Office of National Drug Control Policy
(ONDCP) in 1988. Yet by then, hard drug use had leveled off and started
to come down.
In 1993, the Clinton administration cut the ONDCP staff and reduced
budgets for drug interdiction in the hemisphere. In 1994, Ernesto
Samper was elected President of Colombia, allegedly with the aid of
campaign contributions from drug traffickers. Colombia was decertified
as cooperating in counternarcotics, and barred from receiving U.S.
security assistance. In 1999, after assistance had been restored, ONDCP
Director Barry McCaffrey described Colombia as a near failing
narcostate. Coca cultivation had tripled, Marxist guerrillas and right-
wing paramilitaries controlled more than half of the countryside,
murders, kidnappings, and massacres were all up, and some 3.5 million
people had left the country. The U.S. response was a $1.3 billion
emergency aid package and collaboration on a 10-point agenda known as
Plan Colombia.
Initially, Plan Colombia looked like it was going nowhere. Then,
under the inspired leadership of President Alvaro Uribe, Colombians
developed the political will to make it work. Most of all, the plan
combined institutional reforms with the professsionalization of
security forces that started to roll back decades of rural lawlessness.
President Uribe collected a $780 million war tax to finance security
sector reforms that increased the size and improved the training of the
armed forces and police. From 2002 to 2007, homicides dropped 40
percent, kidnappings went down 83 percent, and terror attacks
diminished by 76 percent. In the past 11 years, the United States has
contributed $7 billion to that effort.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, coca
cultivation fell by half from 2001 to 2008,\1\ but hardly put a dent in
cocaine going to some 20 million U.S. users from Colombia and other
countries. As Colombia's Attorney General told me in 2005, the drug
lords and trafficking arms of the illegal armed groups learned a lesson
from the coffee industry--they warehoused their product for later sale,
hiding it in underground huacas or pits.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC),
``Colombia Coca Cultivation Survey,'' Government of Colombia, Bogota,
June 2009. The Department of State's ``Bureau of International
Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs International Narcotics Control
Strategy Report 2009'' disputes this. However in 2005, U.S. areas
surveyed by U.S. aerial imagery were enlarged to measure a much greater
area than before.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In a similar situation to Colombia, the United States had been
helping Mexico with low to moderate levels of counternarcotics training
and surplus equipment since the 1990s.\2\ Coming into office in 2006,
President Felipe Calderon decided to take on drug trafficking
organizations that had operated with alleged tacit acknowledgement of
the government during the seven decades Mexico was under one-party
rule. Alarm bells rang when these organizations started fighting back.
Meeting in the city of Merida at the end of a whirlwind tour of Latin
America in March 2007, U.S. President George Bush listened as Calderon
asked for help combating crime levels that had started to spike.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ At the time, equipment transfers reflected an ``off-the-shelf''
approach. The Department of Defense transferred 72 Vietnam-era UH-1H
Huey helicopters to Mexico in 1997, that were returned when safety of
flight issues grounded the fleet.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The outcome was the $1.4 million multiyear assistance package for
Mexico, Central America, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti called the
Merida Initiative. As the project was unexpected on the U.S. side,
requirements had to be drawn up and funding cobbled together from
existing authorities and accounts. Coupled with congressional
certifications and lead times for the development of some technical
equipment to be transferred, some two-thirds of the funds appropriated
had yet to be spent as of 2011--a less than nimble response that became
an irritant in the bilateral relationship.
As Merida was conceived as a United States-Mexico counternarcotics
effort, enhancing existing support to combat transnational crime in
Central America and the Caribbean was an afterthought. Initially, the
Bush administration asked for $950 million for Mexico and $150 million
for Central America in its FY 2008 supplemental and FY 2009 requests.
Congress then carved out $5 million of the supplemental funding for the
Dominican Republic and Haiti--two major drug transit countries.
However, it became clear that Mexico's problems with drugs and crime
were related to Central American shipping networks that account for
nearly 90 percent of the cocaine destined for the United States.
In December 2009, Congress split off Central America
counternarcotics and anticrime funding from Merida into what is known
as the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI). Once
sleepy countries during the 1960s, the northern triangle states of
Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) now have the
highest murder rates in the world according to United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime statistics, and are home to most of the region's gang
members. Estimated at between 69,000 and 100,000 strong, they are
described by Honduran Security Minister Oscar Alvarez as the ``reserve
army for organized crime.'' \3\ Some $260 million in CARSI funds have
been committed to support law enforcement and justice sector reforms,
as well as security force training, gang prevention, and social
programs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Danilo Valladares, ``Central America: Youth Gangs--Reserve Army
for Organized Crime,'' Inter Press Service, September 21, 2010.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the 1980s, the Caribbean had been the favored route for South
American drugs to reach the United States. As U.S. interdiction efforts
picked up there, traffickers moved west. So, in perhaps the only
proactive move by U.S. policymakers against narcotics trafficking and
crime, the State Department led an interagency effort to develop a
Caribbean regional security effort as a complement to Merida, assuming
that gathering interdiction capabilities in Mexico and Central America
might shift trafficking back to the east. That was at the end of the
Bush era. The Obama administration developed it into the $124 million
Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI) to strengthen maritime
border control over a million square miles of ocean among 13 island
nations and 3 European territories. Also included were projects to
train police, improve information-sharing, and social programs for at
risk youth.
As it is, the Caribbean could be a smuggler's paradise, located
between North and South America and consisting of mostly open water.
Haiti and the Dominican Republic are the most heavily countries
impacted. Traffickers like Haiti because of rudimentary law enforcement
and plentiful volunteers who will set out in small boats to pick up
floating packets in open waters. The Dominican Republic has its hands
full with illegal Haitian migrants, a difficult coastline, and drug
money that promotes corruption. Both governments cooperate with U.S.
authorities, but have limited resources. The ``good'' news is that only
about 10 percent of the flow now moves through the Caribbean. However,
if Mexican and Central American interdiction capabilities improve under
Merida, the routes will shift.
If CBSI represents an advance toward strategic thinking, it is only
partial. Further evolution is needed in U.S. expectations of just how
cooperative neighbors might be in stemming narcotics flows and
implementing security reforms. Political will has always been an
important measure. Some countries have it, as Colombia and Mexico have
demonstrated. Others are less interested. Venezuela, for example,
reportedly has maintained an unofficial friendship with Colombia's FARC
guerrillas who have sustained their struggle to overthrow the Colombian
Government mostly through drug trafficking. In 2010, much of the
suspect air activity departing South America to Central America and the
Caribbean came from Venezuela's southwest border with Colombia, as
tracked by the U.S. Joint Interagency Task Force South. Currently, a
Venezuelan businessman is being held in Colombia in connection with 5.5
tons of cocaine that turned up in Campeche, Mexico, in 2006.
For years, Congress required the President to annually certify the
willingness of major drug producing or transiting countries to
cooperate in order for them to receive foreign assistance. That process
was made less rigid in 2002, as a result of what happened when
Washington denied assistance to Colombia in the 1990s. However, other,
more practical factors can affect levels of cooperation:
Available resources--How much can a partner nation
contribute on its own? For example, one Caribbean nation has a
population of 72,000 and a gross domestic product of $377
million. Its 2011 government budget will run close to US$181
million. If it needs a helicopter for coastal patrol aircraft
that costs $15 million, it will eat up about 8 percent of the
budget. That may be a tough choice for its leaders, but not so
hard for transnational criminals who want a similarly priced
jet and participate in a $394 billion a year global enterprise.
Public opinion--Is counternarcotics/anticrime assistance
positively viewed, are any aspects negative? Following the
election of President Rafael Correa in Ecuador, new
sensitivities came into play with the U.S. forward operating
location for drug monitoring flights at Manta. Despite millions
of U.S. dollars spent upgrading the airfield, public opinion
was divided as it was seen (rightly or wrongly) as mostly a
U.S. operation in which Ecuador got little benefit. The U.S.
lease on ramp space ran out in November 2009. This could have
cast a cloud on Ecuadoran counternarcotics cooperation, except
that, in other aspects, cooperation improved.
Law enforcement and justice systems--Are the police properly
trained, equipped, and deployed in sufficient numbers? Is the
criminal justice system underresourced and backlogged? In the
1990s following civil conflicts in Central America, the
international community and the United States advised Central
American governments to separate their police forces from their
armies and link them more closely to their justice systems. As
levels of drug trafficking and violent crime increased,
soldiers had to be brought back in to reinforce the police,
especially in rural patrols. In Haiti, finding recruits with
adequate levels of education has been a challenge. In Colombia,
criminal cases were backlogged several years in some cases,
until the justice system itself adopted oral, adversarial
trials and invested in adequate infrastructure. That process is
still a work in progress.
Environmental challenges--Are there isolated borders or
large swaths of ungoverned territory? Many countries in South
and Central America have large, undeveloped regions that lack
infrastructure and representatives of state authority such as
police. Colombia's illegal armed groups controlled such areas
until security forces began to rout them and encourage
demobilizations. Now, authorities are trying to find a way to
occupy these areas to keep traffickers and criminals out. A
similar scenario is repeating itself in Guatemala's mountains
and northern marshlands. And,
The capacity to absorb--Is equipment easy to use, maintain;
are needed skills easily learned? From 1999 to 2006, U.S.
Southern Command's $67 million Operation Enduring Friendship
program provided a package of 60-mile-per-hour fast boats and
maintenance training to Caribbean and Central American states
to improve maritime drug interdiction capabilities. However, in
some countries, the required maintenance was beyond the skill
levels of available mechanics.
As evidenced by the President's annual determinations, almost all
countries in the hemisphere are cooperative on some level. But some are
much less so than others. Cooperation is limited in Central America,
the Caribbean, and some of South America because of microbudgets,
environmental hurdles, and sometimes the capacity to absorb. Bolivia
and Venezuela are marginally cooperative for current lack of political
will.
In conclusion, U.S. policies toward drug trafficking and
transnational crime in the Western Hemisphere could be more effective
if policymakers thought more strategically: considering trends,
strengths, and weaknesses in our abilities to build multilateral
cooperation, and technological advantages that the United States might
have. As we develop sensoring and surveillance capabilities for defense
missions in other parts of the world, we have yet to apply many of them
to our transnational crime monitoring efforts. The development of a
true planning culture in the U.S. agencies that combat transnational
crime would encourage that kind of integration and perhaps help us to
meet future challenges head on, as opposed to lurching from one crisis
to the next.
The other key to success is to address cooperative deficits. One
way is to plan on some partners needing more help than others in
resolving their security situations, and then finding a way to get it
to them before their security situations become acute and expensive.
ONDCP and the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement
Affairs at the Department of State could do more analysis in that
regard. Another is to leverage the accomplishments of some partners.
This has already begun to happen. Colombia has been providing advice to
Mexico and to El Salvador in police and justice sector reforms.
Meanwhile the International Commission Against Impunity Agreement in
Guatemala (CICIG) is being examined by other countries as a way to
invite international involvement in strengthening local prosecutions
against corrupt officials--needed where justice systems are extremely
weak.
Finally, the good news is that with the forward-looking Caribbean
Basin Security Initiative, U.S. policymakers are beginning to think
proactively. It is a start. The flip side is that they can't stop
there.
Again, Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to testify
before this distinguished committee.
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Olson.
STATEMENT OF ERIC OLSON, SENIOR ASSOCIATE, MEXICO INSTITUTE,
LATIN AMERICAN PROGRAM, WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR
SCHOLARS, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Olson. Thank you, Chairman Menendez and Ranking Member
Rubio, for the invitation to appear before you today on this
panel on behalf of the Woodrow Wilson's Mexico Institute.
I've been asked to talk about firearms trafficking
specifically and most of what I want to say is found in a
recent volume that we edited on the subject. You so graciously
mentioned our book, ``Shared Responsibility: U.S. Policy
Options for U.S. and Mexico to Confront Organized Crime.'' The
chapter was actually written by my good friend and colleague,
Colby Goodman, who is here with me this morning, and I'm going
to just summarize some of the main findings from that article
or that chapter.
First, it's clear to me that the erupting organized crime-
related violence in Mexico is exacerbated by the relatively
easy access organized crime has to military-style firearms like
AK-47s, AR-15s, and even 50 BMG caliber rifles. Well-armed
organized crime groups are often more likely to attack their
rivals, law enforcement, and government officials when they
have superior weapons and can act with total impunity. And
journalists and innocent bystanders often pay the price.
Last year, Colby and I and four other researchers were in
Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, the day after 15 young people were
gunned down while they celebrated a victory of their sports
team at home in their working class neighborhood. We went to
express our condolences the next day and what we were told was
that the hit men who carried out this crime were looking for a
rival gang member, but apparently found it easier to spray the
room with bullets and kill many innocent young people at a
time. One of the weapons used was traced back to the United
States.
So the question is what is being done to disrupt the flow
of weapons to organized crime? Here we have some good news and
bad news. On the good news side, Mexico's security forces are
doing a much better job of capturing and seizing weapons.
Between December 2006 and May 2010, Mexico seized more than
85,000 total firearms, including 50,000 AK-47 and AR-15 rifles.
They also seized an estimated 5 million rounds of ammunition.
With increased seizures comes increased opportunities to
identify and trace these firearms. While this process isn't
perfect, traces suggest that the vast majority of weapons come
from the United States. It also suggests that AK-47 type
semiautomatic rifles and also AR-15 semiautomatic rifle clones
are the most preferred firearms by organized crime in Mexico,
and that Texas, Arizona, and California are the top source
States for those firearms.
Now, there are caveats with each one of those statements,
but it begins to paint a general picture of the phenomenon. But
there are also problems. Mexico's process for identifying,
registering, and tracing firearms is improving, but it is still
very slow at times, inaccurate, overly centralized. It can take
as long as 1 year for some firearms to go through the process.
ATF could help with training and providing better access to
the online database system known as eTrace and making that
available to the Mexican law enforcement. But they do not have
the staff and I'm afraid that in the wake of the scandal
surrounding Operation Fast and Furious ATF is not likely to
have greater presence and access to firearms in Mexico in the
short term.
Mexican officials also complain that ATF is slow to provide
them with intelligence and background information that would
allow them to better track trafficking networks in Mexico.
U.S. border agencies and ports of exits are still ill
prepared to disrupt trafficking, even when there is good
intelligence about potential traffickers. There are not enough
agents and the infrastructure and technology for southbound
inspection are woefully lacking. The United States has only 48
license plate readers in some 118 outbound lanes on the
southwest border.
Personally, I do not believe one can stop the trafficking
of weapons at the border, but outbound inspections could be
used effectively if they're done in a targeted and strategic
manner and there is adequate personnel and equipment.
Within the United States, ATF has had some success in
combatting trafficking when it has been strategic and focused.
A special operation in the Houston area netted some good
results, so focusing their efforts in high trafficking areas
makes a lot of sense.
On the other hand, the Department of Justice inspector
general's report on ATF's Project Gunrunner found several
problems, including that ATF does not systematically share
leads and intelligence with other United States agencies and
the Government of Mexico, and they seem to be resistant to
press for prosecutions for smuggling violations, which carry
much stiffer penalties than misdemeanor firearms infractions.
Now, I see my time has run out and I just want to refer you
to the written testimony that includes a number of policy
suggestions, policy options. I'm happy to talk about those in
more detail, but let me just finish by saying the United States
Government has a historic opportunity to assist the Government
of Mexico to reduce the violence and weaken transnational
criminal organizations operating from Mexico. Helping curb
access to large quantities of sophisticated firearms and
ammunition and thus their ability to carry out atrocities
against civilians and overpower Mexican authorities is one
critical way the U.S. Government can address this serious
threat to Mexico and increasingly to the United States.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Olson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Eric L. Olson
Senator Menendez, Ranking Member Rubio, and Members of the
subcommittee I am grateful for the opportunity to appear before you
today on behalf of the Woodrow Wilson Center to discuss an issue of
enormous importance in United States-Mexican relations, firearms
trafficking.
As you know, in 2007 Presidents George W. Bush and Felipe Calderon
Hinojosa announced a landmark security cooperation agreement called the
Merida Initiative. The significance of this agreement was not only the
money and equipment involved but the innovative framework of ``shared
responsibility'' that formalized the commitment of both countries to
work together to address the serious security problems posed by
organized crime. For the first time both countries acknowledged that
the roots of the crime and violence convulsing Mexico were to be found
in both countries. Mexico acknowledged that it needed to more
aggressively confront organized crime by increasing deployments of its
security forces, and dramatically strengthening its institutions by
rooting out corruption, professionalizing its police, transforming its
justice system, and improving the capacity of its military and
intelligence services. For its part, the United States acknowledged
that consumption of illegal drugs in the United States, the profits
generated, and the trafficking of firearms was feeding the violence in
Mexico.
The Obama administration continued and deepened this cooperative
framework and reemphasized the shared nature of the problem and the
urgency of working cooperatively to address the problem.
Last year, the Wilson Center's Mexico Institute, which is part of
the Latin America Program directed by Dr. Cynthia Arnson, undertook an
extensive study of the security challenges posed by organized crime in
United States-Mexico relations. We commissioned 13 papers to examine
multiple aspects of the problem. The resulting volume is entitled,
``Shared Responsibility: U.S.-Mexico Policy Options for Confronting
Organized Crime,'' which I had the honor to coedit with Dr. Andrew
Selee, Director of the Mexico Institute, and Dr. David Shirk, Director
of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.
Since I have been invited today to talk specifically about firearms
trafficking to Mexico, I would like to take the remainder of my time to
summarize some of the key findings in the chapter on the subject
authored by Colby Goodman and Michel Marizco, and add some additional
information that has come to light since our publication. While our
study focused on a number of issues related to the nature and
consequences of U.S. firearms trafficking to Mexico, I am going to
focus on the issues most relevant to the Senate Subcommittee on Western
Hemisphere, Peace Corps and Narcotics Affairs. After an overview of the
main findings of the report, I will provide more detail about the
challenges the United States and Mexican Government are facing in
working together to tackle this problem, especially related to firearms
trace requests, intelligence-sharing, and border enforcement, and offer
some policy options for addressing these challenges.
Firearms Violence. Traditionally, Mexican organized crime groups
used firearms to establish and maintain dominance over trafficking
routes, access points into the United States, and territory (known as
``plazas'' in Spanish), usually by wresting rival drug syndicates away
and establishing the environment necessary to maintain a reliable
trafficking enterprise. Much of this was performed through specific
assassinations, focused attacks that allowed for the establishment of
regional control. However, as the rivalries between criminal
organizations increased, and the Mexican Government more directly
challenged organized crime, the demand for firearms increased
dramatically, especially for more sophisticated military-style firearms
from the United States. In the last 3 years we have witnessed the use
of these weapons in open combat with rival organizations, and often
resulting in the increasing lethality of these attacks and the deaths
of innocent by-standers. The resulting murder rate is now seven times
what it was at the beginning of the decade, and Mexico's democratic
governance is at serious risk. The most recent data from the Government
of Mexico shows a 60-percent increase in homicides between 2009 and
2010 with last year being the most violent since the beginning of the
Calderon administration with approximately 15,300 people were killed in
organized-crime related violence.
While most of the violence and killings are amongst and between
organized crime groups they have also used firearms to target both
local and federal officials, politicians, journalists, businesses, and
the general public. In late 2006, for example, in the Sinaloan village
of Zazalpa, 60 drug traffickers looking for a rival DTO gathered all
the residents and destroyed the town, raking buildings with U.S.-
purchased
AR-15 firearms. According to Mexican President Calderon, crime groups
are also ``imposing fees like taxes in areas they dominate and trying
to impose their own laws by force of arms.'' In February 2010, U.S. and
Mexican citizens waiting to cross into Mexico from Nogales, AZ, were
trapped in a firefight erupted in the plaza on the Mexican side. In the
spring of 2008, tourists returning through the Lukeville port of entry
were also trapped in line waiting to cross when a gunfight ensued. In
that same year, a woman from Nogales, AZ, was murdered at a fake
checkpoint on a federal interstate in Sonora. Authorities said she was
shot with AK-47 gunfire. A Mexican Government official familiar with
the murder said three .50 BMG caliber rifle shells were found at the
scene.
Seizures and Tracing. In light of the increasing use of firearms by
organized crime groups in more dangerous and threatening ways, the U.S.
and Mexican Governments have increased their efforts both independently
and collectively to curb Mexican DTO's access to firearms and
ammunition in the last few years. The Mexican Government, for example,
has significantly increased the number of firearms it has seized per
year since the start of the Calderon administration. According to the
latest figures from Mexico, the Mexican Government confiscated 32,332
firearms in 2009, an increase of more than 22,770 firearms over 2007
seizures. From December 2006 to May 2010, Mexico seized more than
85,000 total firearms, including 50,000 AK-47 and AR-15 riles. An
estimated 5 million rounds of ammunition has been confiscated from
December 2006 to May 2010.
Recognizing that submitting firearm trace requests to the United
States is key to combating U.S. firearms trafficking, the Mexican
authorities have also increased the number of firearm trace requests to
ATF in the last few years. In late October 2009, for example, the
Mexican military submitted an extensive list of firearms seized over
the past few years to ATF for tracing. While ATF was not able to use
much of the data--because it either already had information on the
firearm or there were duplicates in the list--among other challenges,
the list provided ATF with new data on tens of thousands of firearms
recovered in Mexico. As of May 2010, ATF said they had inputted data on
a total of 69,808 firearms recovered in Mexico from 2007 to 2009. Since
then, the Washington Post has reported that number has increased to
around 75,000.
To assist Mexican authorities with firearms tracing and related
investigations, ATF and ICE have pledged to add personnel to U.S.
consulates in Mexico and to provide Mexican officials with training and
support on electronic firearms tracing or eTrace. In late December
2009, ATF started the initial rollout of a bilingual (Spanish and
English) version of eTrace with limited deployment to Mexico and other
Central American countries for testing. Through eTrace, Mexican
officials can submit a firearm trace request to ATF electronically,
which is more accurate than the older paper-based tracing system. If
ATF is able to trace the firearm to the first purchaser, then officials
from both governments can use this information to build leads on
firearms trafficking investigations and prosecution. From FY 2007 to
2008, ATF personnel trained 375 Mexican law enforcement officials on
eTrace. Once eTrace is expanded throughout Mexico, as planned, ATF
expects to provide more training to Mexican authorities. ATF and ICE
officials have also been tracing some firearms seized in Mexico
themselves, particularly in cities close to the United States-Mexico
border.
Cooperation in the United States has also increased. Personnel from
the office of Mexico's Federal Attorney General (PGR in Spanish) now
work with ATF directly in Phoenix, AZ, and they have sent a PGR
specialist to work with U.S. authorities at the El Paso Intelligence
Center (EPIC) in El Paso, TX.
For the future, the United States and Mexico will reportedly
establish a working group to increase the number of firearms
trafficking prosecutions on each side of the border and create a unit
to help link firearms to drug cartels for prosecution. Mexico also
plans to develop a list of individuals who have a history of obtaining
firearms in Mexico to share with the U.S. Government.
Firearms and Ammunition Origins. According to information provided
by U.S. and Mexican Government officials, U.S.-origin firearms account
for the vast majority of firearms seized in Mexico over the last few
years. As Mexico has submitted many more firearms to ATF for tracing,
ATF now has a much better capability to determine the percentage of
U.S.-origin firearms recovered in Mexico than it had just 2 years ago.
However, ATF has been unwilling to release this information because of
a debate within ATF about what constitutes a U.S. origin firearm. In
many cases, for example, ATF has been unable to trace a firearm
recovered in Mexico to the first purchaser in the United States and,
thus, there are questions as to whether the firearm is of U.S. origin.
In other cases, ATF has been able to determine that the firearm was
manufactured in or imported into the United States, and as a result,
ATF officials have said they can only determine there is a very strong
possibility the firearm was sold in the U.S. domestic market and
directly smuggled into Mexico.
Although the above information is important for understanding the
total amount of U.S.-origin firearms seized in Mexico, it does not
provide a clear sense of the number of firearms regularly and illegally
crossing the United States-Mexico border. Data on U.S. prosecutions
shines some light on this issue. According to ATF congressional
testimony in March 2010, individuals illegally transferred an estimated
14,923 U.S. firearms to Mexico from FY 2005 to FY 2009. In FY 2009
alone, an estimated 4,976 U.S. firearms were trafficked to Mexico, up
more than 2,000 firearms from FY 2007. A Violence Policy Center (VPC)
study that reviewed just 21 indictments alleging illegal firearm
trafficking filed in U.S. Federal courts from February 2006 to 2009
showed that defendants also participated in trafficking 70,709 rounds
of ammunition to Mexico. It is likely these annual trafficking numbers
only represent a small percentage of the total amount of trafficking
per year because these numbers are only based on U.S. prosecutions and
do not include thousands of U.S. firearms seized in Mexico per year
that are not part of U.S. prosecutions.
Another way to approximate the demand for U.S. firearms in Mexico
is by examining the price differential between U.S.-origin AK-47
semiautomatic rifles sold just across the United States-Mexican border
($1,200 to $1,600) and U.S.-origin AK-47s sold in southern Mexico
($2,000 to $4,000). Such a price difference suggests a strong demand
for U.S. firearms in Mexico and the lack of quality assault-type rifles
from Central America.
As ATF does not regularly attempt to trace rounds of ammunition, it
is harder to assess the annual trafficking of ammunition to Mexico.
Hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition intended for Mexico and
seized each year in the United States suggests it is a significant
problem. In addition, several U.S. law enforcement authorities in El
Paso, TX, say traffickers regularly use large amounts of ammunition in
their firearm attacks. The quantity of rounds of ammunition owned by
some criminals has helped them win some firefights with Mexican
authorities. For instance, in May 2008 seven Mexican Federal police
officers were gunned down trying to raid a home in Culiadn, Mexico. The
traffickers inside the house responded to the Mexican Federal police
officers raid with AK-47s and overpowered the Federal police after a
period of time because the police ran out of ammunition.
New data from ATF on firearms recovered in Mexico from 2007 to 2009
also shows that Texas, California, and Arizona respectively are the top
three U.S. States where U.S. firearms are purchased and later
trafficked to Mexico. It, however, is important to note that this data
does not show when the firearm was purchased in the United States. As
the average time-to-crime was 15.7 years for U.S. firearms recovered in
Mexico and traced to the first purchaser in 2009, it is possible there
are significant differences in which U.S. States account for the most
firearm purchases in the last 3 to 5 years. Despite California being a
top source State, ATF in California has said the State is not among the
top three U.S. source States if one limits the analysis by firearms
purchased in the United States in the last 3 years. ATF in California
also reports that most of their investigations in the last few years
involve individuals transporting firearms through California to Mexico
instead of purchasing the firearms in California. This shift in
purchasing patterns for firearms trafficked to Mexico appears to be the
result of stiffer laws on buying firearms in California.
Trafficking Trends. Based on firearms recovered in Mexico and where
ATF was able to determine that the firearm was purchased in the United
States, the top two firearms were AK-47 type semiautomatic rifles and
then AR-15 semiautomatic rifle clones. The Romarms (Romanian
manufactured) AK-47 rifle and the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle clone have
been particularly popular. The NORINCO (Chinese manufactured) AK-47 was
also popular for 2010. While these firearms were in a semiautomatic
configuration when purchased in the United States, many of them were
converted to fire as select fire machineguns by the time they were
discovered in Mexico. ATF officials have also said organized crime
continues to seek .50 BMG caliber rifles, which are especially lethal
because they can strike accurately from more than a mile away and
penetrate light armor, as well as FN Five-seven 5.7 mm pistols. There
has also been some concern about .50 BMG caliber uppers conversions
fitted into AR-15s because of the lack of Federal restrictions on
purchasing these uppers in the United States.\1\
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\1\ http://www.safetyharborfirearms.com/news/articles/
arrifleman.pdf.
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According to officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) and the Bureau for Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives
(ATF), individuals and groups seeking to traffic U.S. firearms to
Mexico use several different schemes to purchase and transport U.S.
firearms to Mexico. In a large number of cases, several straw
purchasers and one or more intermediaries or brokers are used to
traffic the firearms to Mexico. The straw purchasers are eligible to
purchase firearms in the United States while the brokers are usually
legally prohibited from purchasing firearms because they are convicted
felons, not U.S. citizens or residents, or for other reasons. Sometimes
taking orders from a person in Mexico, the U.S.-based broker may hire
three or more straw purchasers to buy a few firearms each at various
locations. In a more complex scheme intended to better hide a
trafficker's identity and avoid prosecution, a managing broker hires
additional brokers, and these brokers then hire the straw purchasers.
Perhaps not surprisingly, some brokers arranging firearms
trafficking to Mexico are also involved in other illegal activities.
According to ATF, ICE, and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
officials based along the U.S. and Mexican border, there are cases in
which individuals involved in distributing illegal narcotics in the
United States are also engaged in trafficking U.S. firearms to Mexico.
ATF officials also say firearms traffickers purchase firearms at
U.S. gun stores and pawn shops as well as U.S. gun shows and other
secondary sources, which require fewer checks on a person's identity
and criminal history.
According to U.S. authorities, it appears there has been little
change in the main routes used by traffickers to transport firearms
purchased in the United States across the border into Mexico. In
September 2009, for instance, the U.S. Department of Justice's
inspector general included the most recent official map of trafficking
routes in an interim review of ATF's Project Gunrunner. The three main
trafficking corridors are: (1) the ``Houston Corridor,'' running from
Houston, San Antonio, and Laredo, TX, and crossing the border into
Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa, and Matamoros; (2) the ``El Paso Corridor,''
running from El Paso, TX, across the border at Ciudad Juarez; and (3)
the ``Tucson Corridor,'' running from Tucson, AZ, across the border at
Nogales. ATF officials, however, are increasingly concerned that an
additional corridor could be from Florida to Guatemala to Mexico. ATF
officials say that once the firearms reach Mexico, they mostly follow
major transportation routes through Mexico.
By far, the most common method of transporting the firearms across
the United States-Mexican border is by vehicle using U.S. highways.
While U.S. authorities sometimes catch individuals with dozens of
firearms, most are carrying smaller numbers of firearms in order to
avoid detection. ATF officials have said a good time to catch firearm
smugglers is right after a U.S. gun show in Arizona or Texas. A source
within the Mexican Center for Research and National Security (CISEN)
said most weapons now cross through remote Arizona ports of entry, such
as Lukeville and Sasabe. These two ports see very little traffic
compared to nearby Nogales or Tijuana and, more importantly, there is
no checkpoint infrastructure beyond that of Mexican Customs at the port
of entry.
Both U.S. and Mexican citizens are also engaged in smuggling
firearms with commercial and noncommercial vehicles, and they use
various techniques--some unsophisticated like concealing a weapon in a
detergent box, and some quite sophisticated such as underground
tunnels. Using cars, trucks, vans, or buses, traffickers employ
techniques such as zip-tying the firearms to a hidden compartment of
the vehicle, or they stuff the firearms under a truck bed liner or in a
fuel tank. In other cases, the transporters have no fear of capture.
For example, traffickers had about 30,000 rounds of ammunition sitting
near the front seat of a civilian passenger bus when Mexican
authorities caught them at an inspection point several miles inside
Mexico from the Arizona border in March 2010.
Some Major Challenges in U.S.-Mexican Government Efforts. Several
U.S. Government agencies are involved in fighting firearms trafficking
to Mexico including a number in the Department of Homeland Security--
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border
Protection (CBP), and the Department of Justice's Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA). But the agency with the largest responsibility is
DOJ's Bureau for Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
Despite increased efforts by the U.S. and Mexican Governments to
combat firearms trafficking, both countries continue to face
significant challenges in bringing the phenomenon under control. One
major challenge is the incompleteness and timeliness of some of
Mexico's firearm trace requests to ATF. Of the estimated 20,451
firearms recovered in Mexico in 2009 and for which ATF had information,
it was only able to trace 4,999 firearms to the first U.S. purchaser.
According to ATF, one major reason is that Mexican authorities often
leave out the import stamp number for AK-47 variants and other
essential identification information on U.S. manufactured firearms.
Since many AK-47s sold in the United States are imported from other
countries, ATF needs the import number to determine where the firearm
was first sold in the United States. ATF officials face difficulties
with AK-47 part kits imported to the United States as well as because
there are no markings on the parts that indicate they have been
imported into the United States. Firearms traffickers are also
increasingly obliterating the serial numbers on the firearms.
ATF officials also recommend that Mexico submit more timely trace
requests, among other challenges. It appears one major reason why it
takes so long to submit the requests is that all Mexican firearm trace
requests are submitted by the PGR in Mexico City, which has a limited
number of staff working on eTrace, instead of having Federal or local
officials throughout Mexico submit the requests to ATF directly.
When U.S. officials ask Mexican authorities to inspect and trace a
firearm used in a crime in Mexico, the U.S. officials also sometimes
run into problems. In some cities such as Tijuana, where U.S. law
enforcement has a fairly strong relationship with Mexican law
enforcement and the military, ATF receives regular access to the
firearms. As a result, ATF has been able to trace a firearm within a
few days after Mexican authorities seize it. In other Mexican states
such as Sinaloa, where ATF has little presence and corruption is a
larger problem, ATF is relatively restricted from accessing the
firearms. ATF agents working with Mexican authorities say the key to
getting access to firearms is a physical presence in the Mexican city
and building personal relationships with the respective Mexican
officials. These same ATF agents say it would also help if Mexico City
provided clear support for ATF to physically inspect the firearms. In
some cases, Mexican law enforcement has to seek approval for each
firearm by a Mexican judge in order for ATF to inspect the firearm.
Thanks to some increased funding from the U.S. Congress in the last
few years, ATF has hired additional staff to follow up on firearms
trace requests and address U.S. firearms trafficking to Mexico in
general. Starting in FY 2007, ATF had around 100 special agents and 25
industry operations investigators working for Project Gunrunner.
According to ATF, as of mid-February 2010 they have about 190 special
agents, 145 Industry Operations Investigators, and 25 support staff
working on Project Gunrunner in States along the southwest border.
While this staff increase appears to have helped with firearms seizures
and prosecutions, ATF officials stationed along the U.S. southwest
border say they still do not have enough staff to investigate many
leads. Additionally, ATF's plans to add staff to U.S. consulates in
Hermosillo, Guadalajara, Matamoros, Merida, Nogales, and Nuevo Laredo,
which are key to improving the accuracy and timeliness of Mexico's
firearm trace requests, but ATF has not received specific congressional
funding for such positions.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General's
report on Project Gunrunner released in November 2010, ATF could also
do more to provide Mexican authorities with key information on U.S.
firearms trafficking to Mexico. For example, ``ATF has a substantial
backlog in responding to requests for information from Mexican
authorities, which has hindered coordination between ATF and Mexican
law enforcement.'' This is in part because of lack of ATF officials in
Mexico. ``Although ATF has shared strategic intelligence products with
Mexican and other U.S. agencies, it is not doing so consistently and
systematically. For example, we [DOJIG] found that ATF is not
systematically sharing strategic intelligence on cartel firearms
trafficking--including trends and patterns in their operations, where
they are operating, and the composition of their membership and
associates--with Mexican law enforcement, the DEA, or ICE.'' ATF is
also not regularly giving Mexican authorities the criminal histories of
those who may be involved in firearms trafficking, which Mexico has
repeatedly asked for.
The U.S. Department of Justice inspector general report also noted
that ATF was reluctant to develop cases against defendants engaged in
U.S. firearms trafficking to Mexico using smuggling charges despite the
longer sentence prosecutors could obtain from such charges. The IG
report, for example, ``found that from FY 2004 through FY 2009, only
seven defendants in Project Gunrunner cases were convicted of
smuggling.'' The same report also ``found that the average sentence for
smuggling violations was 5 years (60 months), several times longer than
the average sentences for the types of convictions frequently made from
ATF investigations.'' It appears ATF's unwillingness to pursue cases in
connection with smuggling charges is related to some difficulties in
the interagency coordination between ICE and ATF.
Because it is difficult for Federal and local authorities to search
vehicles for illegally possessed firearms in the United States, ATF
officials have said they sometimes prefer to call ahead to CBP and ask
them to inspect a vehicle ATF suspects is smuggling firearms across the
United States-Mexican border. However, sometimes CBP is not able to
identify the vehicle before it crosses the border because some U.S.
ports of exit do not have license plate readers or they are using
license plate readers that sometimes confuse ``8s'' with ``Bs''.
According to a Government Accountability Office report on Money
Laundering released this month, CBP only has license plate readers at
48 of 118 outbound lanes on the southwest border. CBP officials may
also attempt to stop a vehicle heading south by just standing in front
of the cars, which could be dangerous if a vehicle decided to speed
through the border check point. Compared with vehicles going north or
into the United States from Mexico, U.S. authorities also conduct
relatively few checks on vehicles going south.
Policy options: The Woodrow Wilson Center is a nonpartisan research
institution created by the U.S. Congress. We do not make
recommendations nor do we promote specific solutions to policy
questions. Our goal is to provide the best in scholarly research to
inform issues of policy importance and relevance to the U.S.
Government. In conducting our research we have developed a number of
policy options that the U.S. Congress and administration may want to
consider as it wrestles with these complex issues. These include:
Increase funding for ATF programs that have demonstrated a positive
impact on prosecutions and seizures, including adding ATF staff along
the southwest U.S. border and in Mexico where U.S. firearms are being
seized. As demonstrated by ATF's GRIT operation in Houston, TX, in
2009, an influx of 100 ATF agents into an area of heavy U.S. firearms
trafficking resulted in a large increase in U.S. prosecutions, as well
as, firearms and ammunition seizures. Since the Mexican Government is
seizing a large number of firearms in the Mexican states of Michoacan,
Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, and Jalisco, increased funding for ATF to add
agents to U.S. consulates in Guadalajara (for Jalisco and Michoacan),
Hermosillo (for Sinaloa), and Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa (for Tamaulipas)
might be considered. This increase in ATF funding and resulting staff
could be used to help ATF better respond to Mexican requests for
information on criminal histories of arms traffickers and on trends and
patterns of DTO operations, among other types of information. It would
also show that the United States continues to recognize this as a
serious problem that needs to be addressed immediately.
The U.S. Government could continue to encourage the Mexican
Government to improve some of its efforts related to tracing firearms.
In order to speed up the time between when a firearm is seized in
Mexico and when it is submitted for tracing to ATF, the PGR could more
quickly move ahead with plans to provide field staff in all Mexican
states with the capacity to independently submit an electronic trace
request to ATF. This action would be key for ATF to track down criminal
suspects in the United States and thwart future firearm trafficking to
Mexico. Once PGR's plan is approved, it would help if ATF provided PGR
officials in Mexican states with Spanish-language eTrace, training on
identifying firearms and filling out the eTrace forms, and eventually
and potentially full access to ballistics information through NIBIN.
The PGR should also create a formal policy that allows ATF to
physically inspect firearms housed with Mexican authorities to speed up
the tracing and assist with U.S. criminal prosecutions in the United
States.
Both the U.S. and Mexican Governments could strengthen some of
their efforts at the border that would help stem firearms smuggling and
not curtail the flow of passenger and commercial vehicle traffic
significantly. For instance, U.S. authorities at the border could
improve their ability to detect and stop vehicles they are aware are
attempting to smuggle firearms from the United States to Mexico,
including increasing the number of quality license plate readers for
southbound operations at the border. Building some infrastructure at
U.S. southbound areas would also help prevent vehicles from escaping
inspection by speeding across the border and protect CBP and ICE staff.
Both the U.S. and Mexican Governments could also engage in random
inspections of vehicles at times where the likelihood of firearms
smuggling may occur. For example, it is more likely that one would find
a few cars attempting to smuggle firearms into Mexico several hours
after a U.S. gun show in U.S. cities along the United States-Mexico
border. Pursuing such efforts could also improve the number of cases
where defendants are charged with arms smuggling, which often provides
stiffer penalties and may be more attractive for U.S. attorneys.
The U.S. Government could also consider changes in Federal law
related to firearms purchasing and some Federal enforcement practices.
Similar to when individuals buy multiple handguns, for example, a
Federal or State law could be created so that U.S. authorities would be
notified when individuals buy a certain amount of military-style
firearms in a short period of time.
Since the U.S. Government already bans the importation of
semiautomatic assault rifles into the United States and many assault
rifles that reach Mexican organized crime groups come from U.S.
imports, ATF could better enforce this law. The U.S. Government might
also consider requiring some type of import markings are placed on AK-
47 semiautomatic rifle part kits imported into the United States.
Finally, the U.S. Government has a historic opportunity to assist
the Government of Mexico to reduce the violence and weaken
transnational criminal organizations operating from Mexico. Helping
curb access to large quantities of sophisticated firearms and
ammunition and thus their ability to carry out atrocities against
civilians and overpower Mexican authorities is one critical way the
U.S. Government can address this serious threat to Mexico and
increasingly to the United States.
Senator Menendez. Well, thank you. Thank you all for your
testimony. Your full statements will be included in the record.
Let me start with you, Mr. Olson. First of all, ATF reports
that there are about 6,400 or 6,600 Federal firearm licensees
operating on the Southwest border regions of Texas, New Mexico,
Arizona, and California, and that the drug trafficking
organizations are using surrogates, straw purchasers, to buy
anywhere between 10 and 20 military-style firearms at a time,
which are then smuggled into Mexico.
Do you have any idea of how many of these licensees ATF is
able to inspect or examine annually to ensure their compliance
with the recordkeeping requirements of the Gun Control Act?
Mr. Olson. Well, by law they're required to inspect them
once a year. I don't believe that they actually are doing that,
again because of insufficient staff. They're totally
overwhelmed.
But they're required to do one annual warrantless, in other
words just to show up and do an inspection, a year, and I don't
think they're doing an adequate job of that.
Senator Menendez. This seems to be a circular situation.
You said even when there is good intelligence, which is key in
any of our efforts here, there is not the ability to use that
intelligence to intercept potential gunrunners into Mexico.
Then we have all of these guns being used in Mexico to arm the
different drug traffickers and cartels. Then we spend an
enormous amount of United States money to try to help the
Mexican Government meet the security challenge this poses to
them and us.
I don't understand the lack of effort. While it may not be
an absolute ability, I don't understand the lack of effort on
the front end to undermine the gunrunning into Mexico, which
would be in our own interests at the end of the day. How does
that public policy make sense for the United States in terms of
our own interests and security?
Mr. Olson. I don't think it does make a lot of sense. I
think what we have seen is that when they're focused and
targeted in high trafficking areas--and there is roughly three
main corridors and a growing fourth corridor--when they're
focused in those areas and they put, deploy their limited
resources in those areas, they can be successful.
But again, they're stretched enormously thin. Sometimes
they're overly cautious in my opinion. They don't pursue bigger
violations. Smuggling is not one that they push. They push more
these gun infractions. And they don't take the steps they could
take to be more effective.
I don't happen to believe that all the efforts should be
right on the border. I think it could be more targeted on the
border, but it has to be in Houston, in the areas where there
is known corridors of trafficking, and they need to pursue, as
you mentioned, both straw purchasers and the brokers who
actually are behind those individual straw purchasers.
Senator Menendez. Let me ask--and I'll open this to anyone
on the panel--when does the citizen security threat become a
national security threat? You know, the level of violence in
these countries is already among the worst in the world. You
can tell that in the graphic on the homicide chart. At what
point do we consider this not only a threat to citizen
security, but a threat to national security?
Dr. Felbab-Brown. I would make two observations, Senator.
One is at the point where citizens lose faith in their state,
in their government, in their institutions, where they look to
other actors for the provision of public goods that we expect
the state to provide. Second, when the institutions become so
hollowed out that even when the state finds the motivation to
undertake law enforcement actions, its capacity to implement
that is very limited because of the lack of capacity and the
extent of corruption.
Senator Menendez. Doctor.
Dr. Arnson. I couldn't agree more. There is I think a
crisis of citizen security all over the region, high levels of
crime and violence, particularly in urban areas, throughout
Latin America. This has been an issue that's been focused on
extensively by regional and intergovernment institutions.
I would agree with Vanda, it is a threat--when organized
crime and crime and violence become threats to the survival of
democratic institutions, it is indeed a matter of national
security. The tendency has been to see using the armed forces
as a way of responding to threats to national security. I think
when that happens--and I'm not opposed to that in certain
cases; it has to be done with extreme levels of care,
particularly given the history of the role of the military in
internal societies in places like Central America.
Senator Menendez. Mr. Johnson, do you want to add your
view?
Mr. Johnson. Mr. Chairman, I'd just like to say that when
it impacts the United States it's usually through increased
immigration, migration of transnational crime into our country,
lost GDP. I think that has to be considered, and the
possibility of lost trade opportunities with countries that
have to deal with these situations. And then the possibility
that these threats will generate other threats or opportunities
for other threats to emerge. So those are the specific----
Senator Menendez. One of my concerns is that we always
think, for example, of Central America as a transit point, and
now increasingly it seems to be a production point. But it's
not just awash in smugglers. The region has become a major
cocaine consumer in the process because cartels are now paying
people in drugs and local dealers turn those payments into
crack that sells for a dollar a hit.
I look at the Dominican Republic as an example in the
Caribbean. It was always a transit point, never a consuming
population, and now it's an increasingly consuming population.
How do we deal with this problem when there are no real
alternatives to recruitment in the slums of San Pedro Sulas, in
Salvador, and Guatemala City?
Dr. Arnson. I was just going to agree with you that I think
one of the really pernicious effects of this is that drug
traffickers are no longer paying in cash, but also paying in
product, and turning local drug dealers into the providers of
narcotics to poor neighborhoods.
How do you deal with this? You attack it as one more aspect
of the development challenge that comes with attempting to
restore institutionality and fight drug gangs and provide
alternative opportunities. I don't think that there is a quick
and easy solution. I don't think it's short term. I think it
could last easily a generation. But the resources and the
commitment need to be significant.
Senator Menendez. Dr. Brown.
Dr. Felbab-Brown. What I would add is that it is imperative
that the United States and other traditional consumers like
Western Europe reduce demand. But it is equally imperative that
we help countries in Latin America reduce their own demand. In
Brazil and Argentina, per capita use is on par with the United
States. In other countries it is expanding rapidly.
If you look broadly at the region, the United States is no
longer necessarily the biggest consumer of drugs, or at least
in particular kinds of drugs. Yet often in these countries
efforts at prevention and treatment continue to be deeply
underfunded and arguably neglected. Many of these countries
still put the onus on the United States to reduce its own
demand, neglecting their own internal problems.
I think we have gone through a big learning curve in the
United States knowing what prevention and treatment works, how
they can be improved, and part of our international assistance
package should be encouraging and helping those countries to
develop adequate programs at home.
Senator Menendez. Mr. Johnson, and then I'll turn to
Senator Rubio.
Mr. Johnson. I would just add to that that, as bad as the
burgeoning consumption problems are in some countries, in
neighboring countries in Latin America, there is a silver
lining to it, and that is that it becomes very obvious to
leaders in those countries that they need to cooperate more and
do more in this area. One obvious example would be Ecuador,
which has developed a consumption problem and where they have
made efforts to improve police and armed forces responses
toward trafficking and transitting organizations in their
country. Despite the loss of the lease on the Manta facility,
Ecuador continues to cooperate with United States
counternarcotics efforts and has actually improved some of
their capabilities.
Senator Menendez. Senator Rubio.
Senator Rubio. Dr. Brown, you spoke or in your statement
you wrote a little bit about socioeconomic programs,
particularly in the context of Colombia and some of the
programs that they should--can you elaborate a little bit on
some of those programs that they should pursue in terms of
continuing progress?
Dr. Felbab-Brown. The new administration of President
Santos has very much embraced the idea that now it's time to
focus on socioeconomic issues in Colombia, which have received
limited attention during the administration of President Uribe.
They have launched several exciting initiatives. One is to
return land to those who have been forcibly displaced from
land.
How much of a capacity the government has to implement the
policy, it remains to be the question mark. One of Colombia's
longstanding problems is that the part of the government that
functions is the Government in Bogota, and in the
municipalities, especially further from big towns, local
government capacity is extremely limited. To the extent that
there is any local government capacity, it has frequently been
penetrated by paramilitary organizations, which these days are
called bandas criminales.
So with all the good intentions and the appropriate focus
on land restitution, it yet remains to be seen how much they
will actually be able to accomplish.
But I think there is one easy opportunity that
implementation would not be difficult, where the decision lies
in Bogota, and it is to move away from the so-called Zero Coca
policy, which mandates that before a community, however a
community is defined, a municipality, is eligible for any
assistance, it needs to eradicate all of its coca a priori. The
problem with that policy, of course, is that immediately food
security for the cocaleros is extremely threatened. Food
intake--or income, rather, collapses, often by 80 to 90
percent. That might mean that a family that could afford to eat
meat once a week can now afford to eat meat once a month,
sometimes even less than that. That has repercussions on health
and human capacity.
Also, part of the problem, of course, is that creating
legal opportunities is extremely challenging and it takes a lot
of different steps, from infrastructure to access to
microcredit to access to land to developing value-added chains
and sustainable and accessible markets. The latter two parts
are frequently the most difficult component of alternative
development.
With all these challenges, to demand that all of coca is
eradicated immediately means that the family often faces 2 or 3
years with very suppressed income, is not able to cope with the
suppression of income, and resorts to coca.
So one easy way to achieve a move forward would be for
Bogota to abandon Zero Coca.
Senator Rubio. The gist of it seems to be, however, that
the next step to continue progress in Colombia is to do
everything we can to assist in economic growth, opportunity,
the ability of the growers to find an alternative crop, not
only an alternative crop but an economically viable one. In
essence to help them grow their economy and to be empowered
economically is the gist of the direction.
Dr. Felbab-Brown. Yes, I think it's a very critical
component. However, Colombia still continues to face very
serious security challenges. Although there has been great
improvement in security, there are parts of Colombia that are
worse than they were a few years ago. I spend a few weeks in
Narina, which is a depart-
ment in southern Colombia, a very difficult security situation.
I also went north to the border with Venezuela, another
difficult situation.
So focusing on the socioeconomic part and enabling the
growth of a legal economy that is accessible to marginalized
groups is critically important. But so is continuing focus on
quality law enforcement, on police that are not abusive to the
population, that in fact have the capacity for community
policing.
Colombia will continue to address continuing deficiencies
in security, including the rise of bandas criminales, many of
whom are reconstituted paramilitaries.
Senator Rubio. I think the key phrase that you used was the
growth in the legal economy, and I'm not going to ask you to
opine on it or drag you into it, but we're having a debate
around here with regards to free trade with Colombia and what
that could mean for the growth. Clearly, I believe it would
help foster this desire to have socioeconomic progress.
Dr. Arnson, you spoke a little bit about something I'm very
curious about, the balloon effect, and something I want to look
at. It also ties into Mr. Johnson's testimony, written
testimony as well, the notion that the balloon effect is real.
As we succeed in one place, we face challenges somewhere else.
How do we--I think it will be the same question for both of
you, Mr. Johnson and Dr. Arnson. How do we face that? What do
we do moving forward to anticipate, if we're successful in our
current initiatives, what that balloon effect will look like in
other parts of the region 10 years down the road, 5 years down
the road?
Dr. Arnson. Sure. Well, I think as Steve mentioned, there
is part of a learning curve in fortifying what's going on in
the Caribbean right now, so that successes in Central America
and in Mexico don't worsen the situation. There had been a
great deal of progress in breaking up the trafficking routes
through the Caribbean and the threat, obviously, is that those
would return when there is pressure elsewhere.
I think the only way to look at it is in terms of a
comprehensive approach. I agree this is not a war, and there
have to be I think more discussion in the United States about
how--the United States and elsewhere, as Vanda has pointed
out--how to reduce demand, how to invest in our own poor
communities, in which drug violence and drug consumption are
major, major problems, and how to mobilize the resources in
countries that are now experiencing problems of organized crime
and violence related to drug trafficking, how to mobilize the
resources of society to invest in the kinds of state-level
programs that are going to assist in creating opportunities.
I think the challenge is not only in Latin America to grow
the economies, but also to have a strong and effective state
policy capable of carrying out antipoverty and social policies
that would address many of the root causes. That also involves
making sure that there are effective tax administrations and
ways that people who are able to contribute to these efforts in
Latin America do in fact contribute.
Mr. Johnson. I would just add to that that over a long
period of time we've known about drug trafficking and
transnational crime groups operating in places like Central
America. We've tracked them, but it never has seemed to be a
policy priority, and perhaps they've operated at lower levels
that sort of went under the radar.
In the 1980s when I was a military attache in Honduras, it
was a problem. Clandestine airfields and landings at night to
various places were things that got talked about. But it was
not the priority at the time.
The problem for us in developing our institutions is
perhaps looking at them in strategic ways. This is beginning to
happen and, as I said, the Caribbean Basin security initiative
kind of anticipates a problem that could develop because of the
movement of trafficking into the Caribbean.
But what is really at issue here is, are we able to sit
down and analyze whether these things are real threats to us,
whether these things could converge with other things that are
happening? For instance the democratic transformation in Mexico
opened up a possibility that the police would be much weaker
than they were absent partisan control, than they were in the
past. Eric could probably talk about that much better than I
could.
These are things that you begin to anticipate when you
analyze things a little bit better and don't necessarily try to
present a strategy as a list of objectives that looks good to
the American public. That's why I think it's important for
organizations like INL and ONDCP to begin to develop this
capacity.
One thing that I learned at the Pentagon is planning is
something that can be very useful, not just one plan that you
stick to rigidly despite all evidence that it's not working,
but several different plans that you can pull out in a
contingency and begin to adapt, because it makes you think
about the different kinds of possibilities, and then you begin
to see holes in your own capabilities and resources and
spending where those might be. That's what would help us
develop that better forecasting ability so that we could see
these things happening.
Again, I think it's heartening that the administration is
beginning to take a look at this with the CBSI.
Senator Menendez. Thank you very much.
One last question from me: If you had the ability to
effectuate two policy suggestions or initiatives that you think
are critical for the administration and for Congress to proceed
on, what would they be?
Dr. Brown.
Dr. Felbab-Brown. Expand and institutionalize socioeconomic
approaches to dealing with threats of illicit economies, such
as the narcotics trade; and focus on helping local governments
reform their police forces, focusing on community prevention
and improving access to rule of law and making justice systems
more effective.
Senator Menendez. Dr. Arnson.
Dr. Arnson. I would agree with that, also suggest that
there be efforts to establish a political consensus around
reinstating the assault weapons ban that was allowed to expire
several years ago and has not been reinstated either by the
administration or by Congress. That would be one.
And a second would be to engage in a very serious way with
a number of former Presidents in Latin America who have
directly experienced the cost on their own societies of
organized crime and drug trafficking, and engage in a very
sustained conversation about what might be alternatives to
conceiving of counterdrug policy and changes in U.S. law that
would get us out of the dominant paradigm of demand reduction,
law enforcement.
Senator Menendez. Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Johnson. Develop a strategic planning capability in INL
and ONDCP to produce realistic budget assessments for what we
need to meet these current threats and threats in the future,
and also approve the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement and the
U.S.-Panama Free Trade Agreement. Not to do so I think is
unconscionable, given the sacrifices that Colombia has made to
produce real progress in this area.
Senator Menendez. Mr. Olson.
Mr. Olson. Well, I would say two things which have already
been hinted at. This effort that you've been a part of to
rethink counternarcotics policy and evaluate it and try to
think broader than that, I would say that we need to focus not
just on drug trafficking, but organized crime generally, and
look at the multi-level ways in which we need to approach that.
I think it's a good initiative.
Specifically on firearms trafficking, I think ATF has
become a very weakened organization. Some of it's of its own
doing. Some of it's they don't have the resources. Some of it's
political pressures they feel from outside. So I think somehow
we need to either strengthen ATF and give them the cover they
need to do their jobs or figure out a way for them to work more
in an interagency way, because this issue of firearms
trafficking is really a critical one, as you've pointed out. In
the long run, it costs us enormously, too, by letting it
persist the way it is now.
Senator Menendez. Well, thank you all. This has been very
helpful to the committee's work and we look forward to
continuing to pick your brain in the days ahead.
The record will remain open for 5 days for any member who
wishes to ask any questions. We urge you to respond to it as
soon as possible.
With that, with our thanks, this hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:53 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
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