FLORIDA,
USA, Friday September 14, 2012 — Law enforcement officials fighting the war
against illegal drugs are facing a new challenge as narcotics organizations
bankroll machine shops operating under the dense cover of South American
jungles to build increasingly high-tech diesel-powered submarines.
American
authorities have recently discovered at least three models of a new and
sophisticated drug-trafficking submarine capable of travelling completely
underwater from South America to the United States, and the use of these covert
vessels has spiked in the Caribbean over the last year.
Older
models pressed into service by drug barons were only semi-submersible,
requiring a snorkel for air intake, but three newer captured vessels were fully
submersible, capable of hauling 10 tons of cocaine and, by surfacing at night
to charge their batteries, could sail beneath the surface from Ecuador to Los
Angeles.
American
officials now fear that the trafficking networks are shifting from so-called
fast boats, the high-powered surface craft that can carry about a ton of
cocaine and are easier to spot, in favour of semi-submersible and fully
submersible vessels that can covertly transport many more tons of drugs, which
are unloaded in shallow waters or transported to shore by small boats.
Another
concern for American officials is the possibility that these high-tech
long-range vessels could be used by terrorists to transport attackers or
weapons. They nevertheless emphasize that no use of submersibles by militants
has been detected.
Illegal
drug networks were traditionally organized to combine the tasks of production,
transportation and distribution, and there has been little reason to cooperate
with terrorists. These new advanced submarines are nevertheless sometimes built
by independent contractors who may be more willing to sell their products to
anyone offering the right price.
“These
vessels are seaworthy enough that I have no doubt in my mind that if they had
enough fuel, they could easily sail into a port in the United States,”
according to Cmdr Mark J Fedor of the US Coast Guard, who commands the cutter
Mohawk, a 200-foot vessel whose fast boat and helicopter interdicted a
submersible in the Caribbean last September.
As
well as the Coast Guard ships and aircraft patrolling the seas, the American
counternarcotics effort includes a sophisticated command centre that combines
intelligence from across the United States and from nations in the region that
are increasingly cooperating to battle cocaine trafficking.
The
around-the-clock mission to sort and analyze intelligence on drug trafficking
and then coordinate the response takes place behind the walls of an interagency
task force in Key West.
Inside
the command centre, officially known as Joint Interagency Task Force-South, the
Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, State and Defence are joined by
intelligence agencies and liaison officers from more than a dozen nations to
analyze information on drug trafficking. The 600-person task force is in charge
of cuing ships, aircraft and counternarcotics units on the ground for
interdiction missions up and down the hemisphere.
Rear
Admiral Charles D Michel of the Coast Guard, the task force’s commander, said
that drug interdictions for 2012 are already up more than 50 percent from a
year ago. He attributed that to a counternarcotics coalition assembled at Key
West that is trying innovative and aggressive measures to cut off drug
traffickers leaving South America.”
“Operation
Martillo”, the current mission, focuses on setting up interdiction “boxes” in
two zones off the coast of South America where the drugs start their voyage,
and two more just offshore of the favoured trans-shipment points in Honduras
and Guatemala, where the drugs are divided up into smaller shipments and harder
to track.
The
admiral said that while the task force consists mostly of Americans, the end
game is “getting to prosecution,” which requires working “by, with and through
the local partners” in Central and South America.
Last
year, interdiction missions coordinated by the joint task force captured 129
tons of cocaine en route to the United States — more than five times the
cocaine seized over the same period by operations in the United States, where
agents and officers stopped about 24 tons of the drug.
Despite
these advances, three-quarters of potential drug shipments identified by the
task force are not interdicted, simply because there are not enough ships and
aircraft available for the missions. “My staff watches multi-ton loads go by,”
Admiral Michel said.
SOURCE:
http://www.caribbean360.com/index.php/news/615933.html#ixzz26bQI8fww
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