Pubdate: Thu, 17 May 2012
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2012 New York Times
Contact:  http://www.mercurynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/390
Authors: Charlie Savage and Thom Shanker, New York Times

DEA DRAWS FIRE FOR BATTLE IN HONDURAS

WASHINGTON -- A commando-style squad of Drug Enforcement 
Administration agents accompanied Honduran counternarcotics police 
during two firefights with cocaine smugglers in the jungles of the 
Central American country this month, according to officials in both 
countries who were briefed on the matter. One of the fights, which 
occurred last week, left as many as four people dead and has sparked 
a backlash against the U.S. presence there.

It remains unclear whether the DEA agents took part in the shooting 
during either incident, the first in the early hours of May 6 and the 
second early last Friday.

In an initial account of the second incident, the Honduran government 
told local reporters that two drug traffickers had been killed and a 
large shipment of cocaine seized; he did not mention any U.S. 
involvement. Several U.S. officials said the DEA agents did not 
return fire during the encounter.

But this week, a local mayor and a Honduran lawmaker said that four 
innocent bystanders had been killed and called for an investigation 
into what the Honduran media are now portraying as a botched DEA operation.

Lucio Baquedano, the mayor of Ahuas, a small town near the incident, 
told El Tiempo, a Honduran newspaper, that a helicopter-borne unit 
consisting of both Honduran police and DEA agents was pursuing a 
boatload of drug smugglers when it mistakenly opened fire on another 
boat carrying villagers. Four people died -- including two pregnant 
women -- and four others were wounded, he said.

Honduras is a growing focus of U.S. counternarcotics efforts aimed at 
the drug cartels that have increasingly sought to use its ungoverned 
spaces as a way point in shipping cocaine from South America to the 
United States.

But the murky circumstances surrounding the firefights underscore the 
potential successes and risks in the United States' escalating 
efforts to help small Central American governments battle well-armed 
and financed transnational narcotics smugglers by adapting 
counterinsurgency techniques honed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. 
The challenge has been to help bolster local security forces without 
raising a nationalist backlash fueled by memories of U.S. 
interventions during the Cold War.

The U.S. efforts include the use of DEA commando squads -- called 
FAST, or Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team -- to train and work 
alongside specially vetted local forces in the Western Hemisphere. 
Earlier this year, the military built three "forward operating bases" 
in isolated areas of Honduras to prestage helicopter-borne units so 
they could more quickly respond.

Dawn Dearden, a DEA spokeswoman, confirmed that U.S. agents had been 
present alongside Honduran counterparts at both incidents. She said 
the DEA worked "hand in hand with our Honduran counterparts" but were 
"involved in a supportive role only" during the two operations.

She declined to comment further, citing the delicacy of the matter. 
But other officials said that government forces in the two operations 
seized more than a ton of cocaine that had just been flown in on 
small planes from Venezuela and was likely bound for the United 
States. They also said door gunners for the helicopters were Honduran.

The incident Friday began when a U.S. intelligence task force 
detected a plane from Venezuela headed for a remote airstrip in 
Honduras. The military sent a Navy P-3 surveillance plane -- 
developed for anti-submarine warfare in the Cold War -- high over the 
site, where it detected about 30 people unloading cargo from the 
plane into a vehicle, according to officials briefed on the matter.

The smugglers, they said, then drove to a nearby river and loaded the 
materials into a canoe. It is a standard technique for smugglers to 
ferry their contraband in canoes, which glide under triple-canopy 
rain forest to the coast, where the cargo is put into fast boats or 
submersibles for the trip north to the United States.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom