Pubdate: Mon, 03 Dec 2012 Source: Wall Street Journal (US) Copyright: 2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Contact: http://www.wsj.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487 Author: John Lyons BRAZIL REACHES ACROSS BORDER TO BATTLE SOURCE OF COCAINE TABATINGA, Brazil-Two Brazilian police bolted from a helicopter in Peru's Amazon jungle on a recent day with a squad of Peruvian commandos. Cracks of gunfire shook the forest before the group captured and destroyed a secret cocaine lab. The Brazilians had the legal status of unarmed observers during the Aug. 19 raid led by Peru's elite antidrug police. But both Brazilians carried assault rifles and faced hostile fire. The lab was in Peru, but the raiders flew from a Brazilian airport in a chopper running on Brazilian fuel to hit a target provided by a Brazilian-paid informant. From its Amazon border with Peru to its bustling cities, Brazil is getting drawn deeper into a drug war as surging cocaine use turns it into the world's biggest market after the U.S. It is a surprise since Brazilian politicians once criticized aggressive antidrug strategies espoused by the U.S. as causing more harm than good. Now, Brazil is adopting a controversial U.S. tactic: reaching across borders to stop cocaine at the source. "Brazil is crossing a threshold that it hasn't even come close to in the past," said Douglas Farah, a national security consultant who advises the U.S. Department of Defense on Latin America and drug issues. Conventional wisdom is that Latin America is shifting away from the U.S.-backed war on drugs. In April, longtime U.S. drug allies such as Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos used the annual Summit of the Americas to call the U.S.'s 40-year Latin American drug war a failure and demand a debate on alternatives such as decriminalization. But the case of Brazil suggests Latin America's drug war is expanding, not shrinking. Though Colombia and Mexico have doubts about U.S.-backed drug interdiction strategies, neither country has altered course. Meantime, Brazil, Latin America's biggest economy by far, is becoming a participant after decades spent mostly on the sidelines. President Dilma Rousseff is deploying up to 10,000 soldiers at a time to drug smuggling hot spots. Brazil also agreed to buy 14 Israeli-made drone aircraft to search for traffickers from the sky. The Federal Police are hiring 30% more agents and equipping them with 1,000 new assault rifles, plus river launches and aircraft. Partly as a result, the number of drug defendants jailed in Brazil has doubled since 2006. Brazil's turnabout reflects the globalization of the cocaine business as U.S. cocaine use dropped 40% over the past decade. Drug traffickers responded by pioneering new markets in Europe and in developing nations such as Brazil, Argentina and South Africa. In Sao Paulo, drug-related violence and the spread of open air markets for cheap crack cocaine have prompted politicians to call for action. In Sao Paulo state, at least 90 military police have died so far this year amid a showdown with local cocaine gangs. "We are suffering the consequences of a lack of police on the border," Sao Paulo Gov. Geraldo Alkmin told reporters in October after a particularly bloody seven-day stretch during which three police and 16 others were killed in the state. The widening use of cocaine is attracting more countries to narcotics enforcement, U.S. officials say. "All of these negatives add up to a positive in terms of cooperation," said William Brownfield, who is the U.S.'s drug war ambassador in his role as head of the State Dept.'s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. "I am more optimistic about the international effort now than at any time in the past because narcotics trafficking has become so globalized that most countries see a need to cooperate." Brazil's challenge is to stop cocaine on a vast and sparsely populated border. It shares a 10,000-mile border with the world's three main cocaine producers, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, as well as the smuggling hub of Paraguay. The frontier with Bolivia alone is longer than the U.S.-Mexico line. Brazil signed police cooperation agreements with its neighbors to share intelligence, conduct joint investigations and fund foreign operations. Senior Brazilian officials emphasize that Brazilian police are prohibited from crossing the border armed. Doing so violates agreements with neighboring nations and could cause a diplomatic incident if a Brazilian were injured outside the country, or become involved in a deadly shoot out. "This isn't our policy, which is to respect the sovereignty of our neighbors. If it happened there, it was a mistake. If they entered armed, the Peruvians could arrest them," said Oslain Santana, who heads the organized crime division at the Brazil's Federal Police. But some agents say privately that armed Brazilian agents sometimes do cross the border, reflecting the all-hands-on-deck nature of drug interdiction in dangerous regions where backup is far away and international borderlines often unmarked. The practice was visible in August when Brazil teamed with Peru for a three-week joint operation to crack down on surging cocaine production on Peru's side of the Javari River that separates the nations in the Amazon. Peruvian police led operations on their side of the border. But there was at least one armed Brazilian federal police among them on each of two missions to destroy cocaine labs in Peru accompanied by a Wall Street Journal reporter in August. It was easy to see why. The Brazilian police were the locals with deep knowledge of the jungle region and had cultivated the snitches who knew where the labs were. The Peruvian commandos had flown in from Lima. Brazil's cross-border drug engagement is a far cry from the U.S., which has spent billions of dollars to operate anti-narcotics bases in Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia over the years and engage in controversial tactics such as helping countries shoot down suspected drug planes. All the same, critics in Brazil fear the country's drug war is crossing a dangerous line. The prospect of armed Brazilians in other nations could cost Brazilian lives and damage diplomatic ties with a region already wary of Brazil's rise, these critics say. They also fear it simply won't work. "It won't have much of an effect, because they can always build more labs," said Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a former Brazilian president who has become a prominent advocate for drug decriminalization. Peru also is shifting to a more active battle against illicit drugs. President Ollanta Humala campaigned on backing away from U.S.-backed interdiction and even suggested he would halt U.S. funded coca eradication. But once in office, he has acted differently. He became concerned that rising cocaine production in Peru-partly to meet demand in Brazil-could threaten his country's stability by funding terrorism. These days the U.S. sees Mr. Humala a better drug ally than his predecessors, U.S. policy analysts say. Engagement by Peru and Brazil couldn't come at a better time for the U.S. The rise of anti-U.S. leaders in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela has limited the U.S. ability to operate in the region. Bolivia expelled the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in 2008. But Brazil has warm relations with all these nations, and its police can step into the cocaine enforcement void. Brazilian police working with Bolivian police captured a major Brazilian trafficker operating in Bolivia in 2010, for example. During the August joint operation between Brazil and Peru, both sides made their base at a Brazilian police base in nearby Tabatinga. A Peruvian military helicopter landed with a squad of commandos. "We need to prevent the Amazon from becoming another major cocaine zone," said Col. Cesar Arevalo, who commanded the Peruvian side of the operation. A pair of U.S. DEA observers arrived for the operation's final days. They spent their first day there mostly checking their BlackBerrys in the Brazilian police command center while the Brazilians and Peruvians were out on antidrug operations. Virtually none of the cocaine produced here goes to the U.S. Instead, it goes to Brazil, making it Brazil's problem, Brazilian police say. An overflight with the Federal Police showed how big. Football-field size farms of coca, cocaine's raw material, come into view along the caramel-colored Javari. U.N. data suggest the Peruvian Amazon is the globe's fastest expanding cocaine producing region. Brazil and Peru are tackling the problem on a budget. Unlike Colombia, which has fleets of Blackhawk helicopters paid for by the U.S., police here flew missions in a 20-year-old Russian transport model, too big for precise jungle landings. The work can be deadly. In 2010, two Brazilian Federal Police were killed by men with automatic weapons while searching a boat for cocaine on the Brazilian side of the border. Their photos hang above the door at the nearby police headquarters. On the photo of one of the slain policemen, Mauro Lobo, someone has printed: "Press on. I am with you." The deaths of the men deepened the resolve of the Brazilian Federal Police. Brazilians worked closely with Peruvian police to capture most of the drug gang allegedly behind the murders. The ties forged making those arrests helped make bigger anti-narcotics operations possible. Before one raid, Mauro Sposito lent Mr. Arevalo, the Peruvian colonel, his personal weapon, a semiautomatic rifle preferable to automatic ones because it helps you save ammo "when the adrenaline hits," he explained. Peruvian police were in command and led all missions on their side of the border. Brazilians provided most of the logistics, including fuel. At a cocaine compound captured on Aug. 17, a Brazilian police scientist listened as his Peruvian counterpart explained the chemical processes taking place in Jacuzzi-size blue vat of diced coca leaves steeping in gasoline. A coca and gasoline tea drained out through PVC tubing into 50 gallon drums, a key step to make cocaine. Investigators found clues to the local cocaine industry. Workers had taped flashlights around its wooden structure, suggesting they worked night shifts to keep up with demand. Long wooden spears with prongs for catching fish in streams indicated the workers were local Indian families. They lived in a thatched hut on stilts. Inside were a couple of children's toys. Police suspect a Brazilian working with a Colombian cocaine chemist owned the lab. "This is the new reality: The Brazilians have the money, the Colombians have the know-how, and the Peruvians are the poor S.O.Bs who do the work," a Peruvian intelligence agent at the scene said. Soon, a Peruvian demolitions expert, shot three times during 12 years of service, strung pink detonator cord among the drums of gasoline and promised to send the place up "like Hiroshima." Both sides were at it again on the morning of Aug. 19, when a snitch said that a drug lab linked to the gang behind the 2010 killings was active on the Peruvian side of the Javari. Mr. Sposito, a Brazilian federal police commander, punched the GPS coordinates into Google Earth on his laptop and began discussing logistics with Mr. Arevalo. A squad of Peruvian police in camouflage piled into two pickup trucks and sped off toward their cavernous helicopter. Along for the ride were two Brazilian police observers carrying automatic weapons. Since the deaths of their colleagues, Brazilian Federal Police have vowed not to be caught under-gunned again. Everyone expected a shootout, and the men aboard seemed lost in private thoughts. The big chopper lumbered into the air and within a few moments had crossed the Javari River into Peru. An informant, a local villager disguised behind a black ski-mask, helped guide the pilots. Not used to being airborne, he became disoriented by the birds-eye view. Suddenly, they spotted the target, and within seconds a Peruvian officer was shouting for the men to dive from the helicopter and take cover in a coca field whipped by the giant helicopter rotors. The police said they came under heavy fire. One Brazilian agent theorized that the outnumbered traffickers opened fire before fleeing because killing a policeman would bolster the gang's reputation in the region. By day's end, the traffickers had been chased off and the lab destroyed. A version of this article appeared Dec. 3, 2012, on page A1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Brazil Reaches Across Border To Battle Source of Cocaine. - --- MAP posted-by: Matt